Page 80 of A Land So Wide
“Why does it bother you?”
Greer could feel it baiting her, trying to get her to scream again. “It was my father’s nickname for my mother.”
The words were out before she even realized she recalled such a thing. For all their fights and her mother’s melancholy, there had been happy times between her parents. Hessel would softly tease Ailie about the scattering of freckles across her face, about her hair, pitched in moody shades of night, calling her his Starling.
The creature blinked at her, unsurprised.
“How would you know that?”
“How do you think?” Its response came infuriatingly fast. It didn’t need space to ponder, time to think. It went straight for the answer most guaranteed to inflame Greer.
“You watch us, obviously,” she began. “But how? The Benevolence keeps you away. The Warding Stones hold you back.”
“Do they?” it wondered aloud.
“Don’t they?” she threw back, pulling out her necklace and brandishing the beads.
The eye-shine tilted, studying the stones, studying her. “So, so full of surprises.”
“Why do you want Ellis?” she demanded.
“Why do you? He’s no longer yours. He chose to leave.”
“He was forced!” Greer protested.
The Bright-Eyed shook its head, revealing a quick glimpse of a snout, wrinkled and boxy, and thin lips flexed around a mouth full of fangs. “The sacrifice always goes with a willing heart. That has always been the way.”
“What do you do with them?”
“What don’t we?” The Bright-Eyed smiled so broadly its serrated teeth winked out of the darkness, and Greer’s heart sank.
Overhead, the clouds began to drift apart, revealing a sliver of moonlight.
From somewhere in the woods, alarmingly nearby, a familiar howl rose up, and both Greer and the monster glanced toward the sound.
The Bright-Eyed tipped back its head and let out a similar cry, eerily vulpine but somehow bigger, somehow more dangerous.
The wolf fell silent, clearly cowed.
Greer wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry.
She’d seen the damage wolves could bring. Steward Kinship’s entire line of sled dogs had been torn to pieces by a rogue male and his mate. The sounds of the attack had haunted Greer for weeks afterward.
But this wolf, the alpha of its pack, had immediately turned tail, ceding its territory and place as top predator.
“Where is he going?” she asked, drawing back the Bright-Eyed’s attention.
“The wolf?”
“Ellis.”
“Say you do make it to my mine, what then? Do you truly believetwo puny, fragile creatures such as yourselves could really best my Gathered?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, too quickly to decide if she meant it or not.
The Bright-Eyed let out a snort of laughter, sounding stronger than before. “I hadn’t thought you’d be so humorous, little Starling. How we’ve underestimated you.”
“Yes,” she said, keeping up her wall of bravado. “You have.”
