Page 7 of A Land So Wide

D inner was a silent affair. Silent for everyone but Greer.

She heard every bite and chew, every sip and slurp.

She turned her focus to the slice of pie before her, cutting the pieces of eel into precise, identical segments to drown out the sound of her father’s supper sliding into his gullet.

“There’s sweet bread for dessert,” Martha mentioned. “Cinnamon.”

Greer watched from the corner of her eye as Hessel picked up his mug, considering the remaining ale within. “Hmph,” he grunted, then drained the glass.

Martha scurried to the kitchen, her own dinner half eaten. Greer hoped she’d be quick to return.

It wasn’t that Greer disliked her father—he was her father, she had to love him, she supposed—but she never knew what to say when around him. She always felt, no matter what was on her mind, that Hessel would rather be speaking of something else, to anyone else.

Since Ailie’s death, Hessel and Greer had moved through the home as guests in a boardinghouse might, cordial to each other but not strictly certain of whom it was they shared a roof with.

Hessel often seemed bemused by Greer’s presence, as though she were a feral creature, wild and untamed, who had wandered in through an open door and wasn’t sure how to leave again.

Ailie had similarly perplexed him. He’d never known how to reconcile her capricious whims with his carefully constructed world of order and reason.

Whenever Hessel Mackenzie met with something he didn’t understand, the only way he could manage the conundrum was to take total control and bend the problem to his will, refusing to give up his grasp until it caved or broke.

Hessel cleared his throat now, his voice grating, as raspy as gravel. “I don’t expect I have to ask where the bread came from.”

Greer remained silent, certain he wasn’t finished.

“Of all the days you had to go and visit that boy.” He shook his head.

Greer shifted the cuts of eel across her plate.

Perhaps, if she could get them lined up just so, this conversation would go differently.

Hessel might not poke and prod her till she wanted to explode.

She wouldn’t fling out words she only partially meant.

It was foolish thinking, of course. One action didn’t impact the other. And yet…

“I wasn’t visiting him,” she began, adding another piece to the line.

Hessel’s breath puffed, neither a cough nor a laugh, just a sound. A dangerous one, warning Greer into silence.

She swallowed back the rest of her protest and listened to Martha in the kitchen, slicing thick cuts of bread before stabbing them through with a long fork. She heard them toasting near the fire’s flames, like a hiss of steam from a kettle.

“I saw Lachlan Davis today,” Hessel said, continuing as if he’d been the one talking all along.

“Fine lad, very fine. I couldn’t ask for a harder-working young man.

Has a head for figures, you know. I’m thinking of letting him keep the accounts now.

He’ll be at the barn warming tonight.” He shoveled the last piece of eel into his mouth before adding: “Promised to offer you a dance. You be sure to accept.”

Greer pressed her lips together.

Hessel was forever mentioning young men in town, finding endless ways to extol their virtues casually, citing them in a way to make Ellis Beaufort look less by comparison.

Whoever caught Greer was assured to inherit the mill one day, and the Mackenzies’ land, and the mountain of wealth both afforded.

Hessel was hell-bent that his legacy would not pass to a Beaufort, but Greer had fallen for Ellis long ago, and nothing her father did would sway her from him.

Greer wondered if all daughters suffered so in the weeks leading up to the Hunt.

She imagined it must be a difficult time in every household, as parents tried their best to tip outcomes in their family’s favor, positioning their children for advantageous matches, but she couldn’t think of anyone more dogged in his ways or tactics than Hessel Mackenzie.

In truth, she was more than ready for it all to be over and done with.

At twenty-seven, she would be the oldest participant hiding in this Hunt.

She’d been under her father’s roof for so many more years than she’d expected—seven more than she’d wanted—giving both her and Hessel ample time to rub each other raw.

The Hunt couldn’t come soon enough.

When Mistaken had been nothing but a settlement, a tiny outpost floundering in a vast and wholly isolated corner of the world, it became evident that if it was to survive, to grow and thrive, many more hands would be needed to carry out the work.

Trees needed to be felled, homes needed to be built.

The land needed taming and tending. Gardens needed to be planted and maintained. Water sources had to be diverted.

The list of things that must be done was endlessly long.

Too long for the handful of souls who remained trapped within the confines of the Warding Stones.

When Resolution Beaufort set sail for the frigid north, there had been seventy-eight men, forty-seven women, and an assortment of children on board. Those children aged quickly, but it soon became painfully clear, as the town grew, that not every young man was guaranteed a bride.

This seemed to be a problem with no solution.

It wasn’t as though the men could set out past the Stones in search of a wife.

There were no towns within half a day’s journey, and though nomadic trappers and wandering hunters occasionally stumbled across the town’s border, most knew to leave well before sunset, and few had women in their ranks.

In an attempt to thwart the crisis, the founding Stewards created the Hunt.

Every seven years, all young women over the age of sixteen would set off into the Hunting Grounds—a wide swath of unclaimed land that followed the northern border of town.

Each girl would select a spot to hide in until she was found by a searching, seeking lad.

Once the girls were claimed, the town would hold a grand group wedding.

Each couple would go to their new homestead and while away their first winter together, not emerging till spring.

The wives were expected to be heavily pregnant by then, ready to bring forth the next generation.

It didn’t always go like that, of course.

There was always someone who’d rather run than hide.

A girl—it was always a girl—determined not to be caught and willing to risk death, would race into the woods, running as fast and as far from Mistaken as she could get.

Her body would never be found, hauled off and eaten by the things of the woods with claws and fangs shaper than her desire for freedom.

Mistaken would move past her death without fanfare or mourning, and it was only in the weeks leading up to the next Hunt that her name would be spoken aloud, whispered as a cautionary tale for any other doubtful brides sporting cold feet.

Greer had never had cold feet. She had never had any doubts.

At twenty, she’d scoured her renderings of the Hunting Grounds, searching and scheming for the perfect spot to wait for Ellis.

Then, days before their Hunt, Ailie passed away.

It had been sudden and unexpected. Hessel Mackenzie had stumbled into a sewing circle at the women’s gathering house, looking for Greer. She noticed that, though his eyes were not red, his hands were.

An accident at the mill, he’d said. A bad one. So bad they’d placed Greer’s mama in a box of knotty pine and nailed the lid shut before she could even say goodbye.

The days that followed had been hazy with grief. Time passed in such an unordered fashion that it wasn’t until months later that Greer even realized she’d missed the Hunt. A kindness from Hessel and the other Stewards, allowing her to stay at home and mourn.

Ellis had opted to not take part and patiently waited another seven years.

The wait had not been easy, but it was nearly over.

Soon, Greer would slip into the Hunting Grounds and emerge as Ellis’s bride. Despite his blusterings, there was not a thing her father could do to stop it.

Hessel pushed the last of the pie’s gravy about the plate, making no motion to finish it. His chair creaked as he shifted, clearing his throat. “I know you and that boy have been…close,” he began. His tone was different, subdued and conversational.

Uncertain of what he was trying now, she nodded.

“Quite close. And I know that, of all the girls in town, you are his first—his only—choice.”

“Yes.”

Hessel sighed. “All I’m asking you to remember is that this partnership is for life. This choice dictates your future. And I would hate for it to be tangled up with that boy.”

“He’s not a boy,” she said, daring to disagree.

“He’s not good enough for you,” Hessel snapped, striking the table.

His words were deep and ferocious, a growl you’d hear echoing in a cave just before meeting your end.

“He’s not who you deserve. Who our family needs.

He and his are blights on this town, stains corrupting everything around them.

I’ll not have my mill, my fortunes, or my daughter sullied by their lot.

You will not marry that boy, Greer Mackenzie. I will make certain of it!”

Greer balled her hands, nails digging into her palms as defiance licked her spine. She could no longer bear to tiptoe around Hessel’s rages. “You can’t stop me. You can’t stop him. You ran your Hunt, you had your turn. This is our decision.”

Hessel’s face darkened, turning sharp and dangerous.

His hand raised, and Greer could see its almost-trajectory.

It was going to swing hard and fast and strike her right across the cheek.

The one full of Ailie’s stars. Startled, she pushed herself back against the chair, nearly toppling it.

Hessel had never harmed her before; this was new, unfamiliar ground.

Her retreat broke something inside him, giving his action pause. When he dropped his hand, he looked guilty, although he hadn’t touched her.

The house was silent, even Martha knowing to not intrude.

“I need to get ready for the barn warming,” Greer finally said.

Hessel bit at the inside of his cheek. “Greer, I—”

She didn’t want his apology. She didn’t want his explanation. “May I be excused?”

Hessel stared at her for a long, hard moment before releasing a sigh of resignation. “As you like.”