Page 6 of A Land So Wide

S econd bellows— two lumbering rolls of chaos that signaled just one half-hour left until sunset—rumbled as Greer opened the front door, her wool cloak soaked through and rainwater dripping from her dark braid.

Martha Kingston was in the kitchen, wrestling with an eel.

“You shan’t get the best of me,” she muttered, and cursed at the beast.

The long black body thrashed against the worktable, wriggling furiously to escape her grasp.

Martha hissed as the eel snapped at her, drawing blood.

Holding the squirming creature down with one hand, she sucked absentmindedly at the wounded finger, then pulled out a mallet.

The battle ended with an abrupt, meaty thwunk .

“That you, Greer?” the older woman called out, sounding out of breath.

“It’s raining hard enough for a second flood,” Greer announced, hanging her cloak and satchel from a series of pegs near the front door.

She kicked off her boots and shimmied free of her wet stockings.

These went on the line before the hearth, joining a pinned set of Hessel’s socks and Martha’s gloves. She entered the kitchen.

“It’ll be snow by nightfall,” Martha predicted, picking up a cleaver.

Her face was pink from the struggle with the eel, and the short wisps of silvered hair poking free of her bun looked like a saint’s halo.

The thick blade glinted brightly before sailing in a smooth arc through the air.

The eel’s head fell free, thudding upon the wooden table. “That’ll teach you to bite me.”

As if in response, the rest of its body thrashed with angry fervor, a final mimicry of life.

Martha went to work, peeling away the eel’s skin from its now flaccid length. It came off in a squelch wet enough to make Greer cringe. “You’re late,” Martha said.

Greer deposited the loaf of cinnamon bread on the table, careful to keep it from the mess of eel staining the work space. “Dessert is already done. Technically, I’m early.” She gave the older woman a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to grab her apron.

Martha eyed the brown paper wrapping skeptically as she pulled innards from the eel’s body cavity. “Your father is already in a foul mood—stomping about and snapping all through lunch—he doesn’t need additional aggrievements.”

Greer brought the apron over her head and adjusted the crossed back. “The schooner didn’t really leave without buying the lumber, did it?”

“That it did,” Martha said, slicing the eel into short segments. “Hand me the pie dish, won’t you?”

Greer crossed to the hutch and stood on tiptoe to reach for the crockery. “But they’ll be back, surely. They wouldn’t have come all this way just to—”

The older woman shook her head, silencing Greer.

“It’s a bad mess they’re in,” Martha said darkly, as she flattened out the meat with a rolling pin.

“I’ve always said Hessel’s temper would get the better of him, and that day has come.

” She turned to the stove and dropped a pat of butter into the heated cast-iron skillet.

It sizzled instantly. “All the more reason to not bring up your day with that boy in front of him.”

“I didn’t spend my day with Ellis,” Greer said, her tone prickling. “I was up past the northern ridge with Louise.”

Martha pfft- ed a curl off her forehead, as if to say there was not much difference between the two Beauforts. She went on pressing pieces of eel into the pie dish, then threw in shallots, parsley, and nutmeg. “Anything to show for it?”

“There was a whole new area of Redcaps…I made a map.”

“Someday you’re going to run out of world to chart.”

Greer certainly hoped not.

As a Steward, Hessel Mackenzie was keeper of the town’s records and custodian of Resolution Beaufort’s diaries and maps. Hessel kept them locked away in his study.

When Greer was seven, she’d stolen her father’s ring of keys and spent an exhilarating night poring over the illustrations of coastlines and waves, wind charts and mountain ranges. The lines they formed, the information they offered, captivated her.

Here was the known.

Here was the not.

Growing up within the unbreakable confines of the Warding Stones, Greer well knew her known.

It was the land beyond the Stones—those dark, impenetrable forests and all the dangerous uncertainties they contained—that set her mind racing, that caused her anxieties to spike and her fears to grow.

But if she could chart those mysterious depths, bring understanding to their enigmatic wilds, she wouldn’t have to be afraid.

The next morning, she created her first map.

It was a poorly drawn rendering of the town’s main road. The proportions were wrong, and her lines were misshapen and sloping. But she’d never been more proud.

She set out to chart every inch of Mistaken.

And, map by map, she improved.

She experimented with scale and scope, texture and notation.

Ailie had always praised her endeavors, calling Greer her little scout and urging her to explore new areas. On lazy spring days, she’d pack them picnic lunches and they’d bravely march into the unknown, searching for a stream to follow or a rocky outcrop to measure.

Martha hated their trips, and went on long diatribes about the foolishness of leaving the safety of Mistaken’s borders.

Shortly before Greer’s birth, Martha and two other women had wandered into town, reeling from shock, starvation, and blood loss.

They’d come from a small settlement in the north, an outpost along the coast that had been destroyed when a group of Bright-Eyeds attacked, killing nearly everyone.

It had been an arduous seven-day journey for the women, who’d been drawn to Mistaken after hearing whispered tales of a cursed village kept wholly safe from the monsters of the woods by a ring of strange stones.

They’d come and stayed within the borders as the sun set, deciding that a life of being penned by those protective stones was far preferable to taking their chances in the wilds.

Martha did everything she could to persuade Hessel to forbid Ailie and Greer’s daily wanderings, but when Greer discovered a new grove of Redcaps—a find more lucrative than anything the mill’s scouts had come across—the matter was settled.

When Greer was old enough to venture beyond the Warding Stones without her mother, she took her maps and wrote down every bit of the journey, inch by inch.

Ailie would study them each night, with a proud smile curving her full lips.

Hessel would scan them, making gruff noises of approval as he noted each new Redcap.

Slowly, the vast wilderness surrounding Mistaken became a little more known, a little less feared.

Quickly, Greer had filled her bedroom, hanging her maps over every bit of wall space until they were layered ten deep, the stacks too heavy to be held up by tacks. Every so often they’d fall, fluttering to the floor like so much confetti.

Greer’s gaze drifted to the front room, where the new map remained, still tucked into her satchel. “I thought all the new trees would please Ayaan and Father, but…”

Martha glanced up from her work, and her dark-brown eyes softened with understanding as they met Greer’s. “They’ll want to see it. Later. Show them later.”

Greer nodded.

Martha removed a piece of cloth covering the dish at her elbow to reveal a mound of resting dough. “Start the sauce, won’t you?”

Carrots and celery were at the end of the table. Greer picked up the longest, greenest stalk and held it thoughtfully. “Martha…” She trailed off, the question on her lips too terrible to finish.

The older woman grunted as she spread out the dough, urging her to go on.

Greer started chopping the celery into even slices and the steady rhythm of the knife helped set her thoughts in order. “Have you ever heard the Benevolence?”

Martha made a strange tsk- ing noise that was somehow both laughter and admonishment. “Did you take a tumble in the woods today? Strike your head on something? What a question.”

“No!” Greer set the knife aside, irritation flickering within her. “Not heard of them. Heard them . Have you ever heard them ?”

Martha frowned. “Heard them what?”

Greer hesitated. “Speak.”

An unbearably long moment spread between them, and Greer wished she could seize her words back.

“Have you?” Martha finally asked, carefully, cautiously. “Heard them speak?”

Greer squirmed under her watchful gaze. “I…I don’t know. I thought…when I was in the woods before, I thought I heard…well, I thought I heard something.”

“Louise,” Martha supplied. “Could it have been Louise?”

“It didn’t sound like her. It sounded…” She paused, remembering the slippery hiss. “It sounded wrong, somehow.”

“Wrong,” Martha echoed.

“Not…” She sucked in a breath. “Not human. It must have been one of them, don’t you think? It’s nearly Reaping. They must be somewhere nearby.”

“No one has seen the Benevolence since the truce was made, so many years ago,” Martha reminded Greer, her cadence worn and familiar. “But they protect us still. That’s all we can ever hope for. To wish to see or hear them…” She swallowed and shook her head. “We should not seek such things.”

“Then was it… them ?”

It made Greer uncomfortable even to speak their name.

The Bright-Eyeds were things dredged from the darkest of nightmares, feral monsters of legend and myth turned flesh.

Some said they could control the weather, bringing about raging storms and damaging winds.

Others said they could change shape, taking whatever form best suited their needs: fangs and claws one moment, winged membranes and talons the next.

But everyone agreed that their hunger—for meat, for blood, for utter destruction—was insatiable, and that, should you be unlucky enough to catch their shining eyes, nothing would stop them from destroying everything you held dear.

Nothing but the Benevolence.

Nothing but their Stones.

Martha tsk- ed, but she turned with a shudder, as if Greer’s question was too terrible to bear.

What frightened Greer most about the Bright-Eyeds was their total silence. She knew they were out there, in the woods, in the trees, gorging themselves with their kills. But she’d never heard them. She, who could hear everything, had never picked up on even a whisper of their passing.

Until today.

Maybe.

“Mama heard things, too,” Greer probed carefully.

Greer’s memories of her mother were soft and vague and always recalled through a filter of golden, sun-dappled light.

A warm smile. A deep, throaty laugh. Her eyes just like Greer’s—a dazzling pale gray ringed in charcoal—hair just as dark and wavy, and the same constellation of freckles dotted across one cheek.

She’d been one of the finest seamstresses in all of Mistaken, forever bent over a hoop, tracing rows of stitches across patchwork hues, creating wonders with her strands of colorful threads.

She sang while she worked, making up songs that seemed to have no real rhythm or tune.

The stories she told were dark and sometimes dreadful, songs of thieves and hangmen, murdered lovers and glittering eyes watching at windows.

But, no matter how scary they’d been to young Greer, she’d loved to listen all the same, the terrifying melodies made sweet by the playful lilt of her mother’s voice.

Often, however, Ailie Mackenzie would pause, cutting a note short, and tilt her head toward the woods, listening to something even Greer could not hear. Ailie would nod or frown, answering questions no one else noticed, then return to her work and start on a new sad song.

Seven years after Ailie’s passing, Martha was the only one Greer could talk about her with. Hessel would brush aside any attempt Greer might make. She found his reticence perplexing: Hessel always had so much to say about everything else.

Martha let out a sigh. “I think…”

Before her thoughts could slip free, the final Bellows came.

Thirds was three sharp blasts, roaring just as the last ray of sun warmed the horizon.

They warned anyone who wasn’t back inside the town border that it was now too late.

The Warding Stones would pull them home whether they wanted to go or not.

Greer pictured Callum Cairn traipsing down the hillside, leaving his post. She’d never liked visiting the Bellows. The curving horn looked just like the sharp antler of the Biasd Na Srogaig, a towering, long-necked water beast with a fondness for terrorizing loud children to silence.

This was the time of day Greer hated most.

The sun had set, and Mistaken was penned in for the night. No one could venture out beyond the boundary till sunrise.

Greer felt the confines of the Warding Stones tighten around her, squeezing at the hollow of her throat like a noose. She was grateful for the protection they offered, grateful that their magic kept the Bright-Eyeds at bay, but, oh, how it chafed.

Just as darkness fell and early night took hold, the front door opened, letting in a string of muttered curses and stomping boots.

Hessel Mackenzie had come home.