Page 50 of A Land So Wide

T he figure turned, and her hope plummeted.

This was not Ellis.

It was a girl, not much younger than Greer herself. Her skin was a rich copper. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, like those of a deer catching the scent of a nearby predator.

With dismay, Greer looked again at the coat’s sleeve.

Yes. There, near the elbow, was the patch she’d sewn on after a spark from the bakery’s ovens had singed the wool.

She’d carefully darned the hole over, even embroidering a tiny heart into the sleeve.

She’d teased that Ellis could take her love with him wherever he went.

Except her heart was now here with this stranger, and Ellis was not.

“Where did you get that coat?” Greer demanded, forgoing any attempt at civility as she braced herself for the worst. She couldn’t imagine a scenario in which, with winter fast approaching, Ellis felt compelled to give up his coat.

The two strangers stood motionless.

“Do you…do you speak English?” Greer asked, heart faltering. There were a few groups of hunters and nomads from the south who occasioned through Mistaken, looking to trade. They never stayed for long, knowing to cross the town’s border well before sunset.

The stranger took a step back, eyeing her warily. Her mittened hands clutched at the gaping collar. The coat was far too big on her small frame. “It was an even trade; I didn’t steal it.”

“A trade?” Greer repeated, trying to temper her flare of irritation.

She had the overwhelming urge to grab the young girl and shake her.

She could feel herself lean into the motion but held back, alarmed by the dark impulses that festered under her skin, ever since Finn had slipped her that canteen of blood.

She licked her lips, trying so hard to slow her thoughts, to hold back her urgency.

“I just…I’ve been searching for the man who wore that coat. When did you trade with him?”

The stranger looked to her companion, as if wondering how to answer.

He wore a furred cloak and was far older than the girl. His eyes were lined and weathered. Wide streaks of silver ran through his long black hair. The girl had so many similar features that Greer thought she must be a granddaughter.

“Yesterday,” the man finally answered. “We were checking traps along the river, and he wandered out of the trees.”

“He was full of hunger,” the girl interjected. “Delirious with the pains of it. He gave me the coat in exchange for a meal. When I tried to give it back, he wouldn’t take it. He said he owed me more than he could ever repay.”

That sounded just like Ellis, stubborn and proud to a fault.

“How did he look? Was anyone else with him?”

The pair exchanged a glance that Greer could not read.

“I’ve been looking for him for days and have been so worried,” she pressed. “Anything you could share, no matter how small a detail, would be so welcome. Even if it…even if it sounds upsetting. I can handle it. Please.”

The older man shifted, looking uneasy. “How do you know him, this man? Are you kin?”

Greer nodded eagerly, hungry for information. “Yes! Well, nearly. We’re to be wed. But…” Greer’s words faltered, losing their momentum.

The granddaughter opened her mouth, ready to say something, but apparently thought better of it and looked away, uncomfortable.

The man offered a small wince of remorse. “It would be best to forget him. He is gone.”

“Gone?” Greer repeated, trying and failing to draw breath.

“Bewitched,” he intoned. He toyed at a strap of leather around his throat, studded with metal beads and woven wires, and mustered an expression of sympathy for Greer. “You won’t see him again. The Fire-Eyed Ones will have had their way with him by now. I’m sorry.”

“The Fire-Eyed Ones,” she echoed.

The older man nodded. “Evil spirits that walk the earth, always looking to feed. They can look like you or me but are not.” He frowned, as if searching for the right words. “You can always tell their true nature by their eyes,” he went on. “They burn like flames, like animals in the dark.”

“My grandfather thought you were one at first,” the girl admitted, looking sheepish.

“Oh,” Greer said, uncertain of how to deny it, thankful it was daylight. She had no idea how long Finn’s infusion would affect her and couldn’t imagine what would happen if these strangers should happen to see her eyes flash.

“But now we know you’re not.”

“You do?”

The girl pointed at her throat to a necklace that looked just like the one her grandfather wore. “The iron keeps them back. It…” She frowned, searching. “It wards them away. You would not be so close now if you were one of them.”

“But that man you are with,” the grandfather began. His thick eyebrows were drawn to an almost solid line, concern evident on his face. “He is not a good man. He is not even a man at all.”

“I know,” she admitted reluctantly.

“You know what he truly is?”

Reluctantly, Greer nodded. “We call them the Bright-Eyeds.”

He looked surprised. “You know this, yet you travel with him?”

“I need his help.”

The set of the grandfather’s jaw hardened. “Then I think you do not know the Fire-Eyed Ones at all. If you did, you would not trust them. You would let your beloved go and not follow after.”

Tears pricked at Greer’s eyes. “I can’t. I’m not…I’m not leaving him out here. Not with them.”

“Where is your protection?” he asked, unmoved. “What weapons do you have?”

Greer hesitated, unwilling to admit that she was alone without so much as a pocketknife. “I have wards,” she began, pulling out the beaded necklace. They inspected it with narrowed eyes, unimpressed. “And…other things.”

The granddaughter’s expression darkened.

“You have nothing. The Fire-Eyed Ones are a pestilence that cannot be stopped. They’ve eaten nearly everything the land has.

Elk, caribou, musk ox. Even the white bears are no match for them.

They go after the sturgeon, plucking them from the waters like minnows. You cannot fight beasts like this.”

“I don’t want to fight them,” Greer said, feeling foolish and small. “I just want to save Ellis—the man you met.”

The girl made a snort of dismissal.

“Tell me about your beads. I’ve never seen anything like them,” the man said, gesturing to her necklace.

“I’m not sure where they came from,” she confessed. “I think maybe the Benevolence?”

“Benevolence,” he repeated carefully, as though it was the first time he’d ever said the word.

Greer paused, wondering what they would call them. “The ones who keep the Fire-Eyed Ones away. The Benevolence is like…their minders? Their wardens?” With curved fingers, she pantomimed a circle of protection.

The older man shook his head. “No one holds power over those spirits.”

“They do.” She explained how Mistaken’s settlers had made the truce, how the Stones the Benevolence gave them repelled the creatures but also held their people to the same stretch of earth. The strangers looked horrified. “Without the Benevolence, how do you stay safe?”

The grandfather glanced at the buildings around them.

“Our people wander, following the earth’s gentle tugs.

It has been many years since we were so close to these mountains.

It is much changed here. The Fire-Eyed Ones have reshaped the land, reshaped everything.

Patterns and rhythms that have held since the rivers were created no longer make sense.

They’ve broken down, they’re breaking apart. ”

“The Bright-Eyeds weren’t always here?”

He shook his head. “They arrived with the white men from across the sea. They come from your ancestors’ world, not ours.” His eyes shifted, leaving hers to study the trees just beyond the broken buildings. “I often wonder what that world must be like, to have created so many kinds of monsters.”

Greer frowned, uncomfortable with the implication. She’d always assumed the Bright-Eyeds were of this new world, part of its vast landscape, as ancient as the mountain themselves. But if not…had a settler from across the sea unknowingly brought them over?

Not them, she realized with horror. Ailie .

Ailie had been sovereign then. It would have been her on the ship.

What had prompted her mother to leave behind her homeland and venture into the unknown?

She pictured her clinging to the sides of a great schooner, her wings folded into tight, serpentine lines, like a lamprey suctioned onto prey.

How had no one noticed her? Perhaps she’d masqueraded as livestock, or a member of the crew itself.

Greer imagined her mother stepping off the ship, regarding the wilds before her. She could feel Ailie’s hungers stirring, insatiable appetites wakening. She glanced around Laird’s remains. This was what those appetites and hungers had brought.

“Forget the boy,” the older man advised. “Forget the monster you travel with, return home, and pray your mighty Stones keep their power.”

“What about you? You’re not safe out here. Where are your people?”

The girl began to answer but her grandfather silenced her with a sharp look.

“She’s not one of them,” she protested.

“She was with one of them,” he hissed. “We cannot risk trusting her.”

“That’s fair,” Greer allowed. “Though I truly mean you no harm. I’ll leave now. Not for home,” she added in a rush, seeing the grandfather’s face begin to relax. “I’m not going back without Ellis.”

His expression dimmed. “Then I fear you will not be going back at all.” He placed a hand on his granddaughter’s shoulder. “Leave her to her mad endeavor.”

The girl nodded, and they turned to leave.

“Safe travels,” Greer called after them, wishing it with all her heart.

The girl looked back, offering a small smile. She paused, indecision flickering over her face, then ran to Greer, ignoring her grandfather’s protests.

“Food wasn’t the only thing that man traded his coat for,” she began in a whispered rush. “He asked for protection. He said he was in great danger. Grandfather doesn’t know, but I gave him my knife,” she admitted. “My iron knife,” she added meaningfully.

The older man reached them and pulled the girl away without another word.

Greer watched them leave before turning to her own journey. She could feel a small flicker of hope kindle inside her.

No matter what Elowen had done to bewitch him, Ellis knew he was in danger.

But now he had a weapon.

Now he was prepared to fight back.