Page 96 of A Land So Wide
But then, one day, the queen was not pleased.
She watched her daughter notice the neighbor boy, saw the way she smiled at him, heard her laughter, gentle and soft, and knew that, despite all her careful planning, he would be her undoing.
She prepared to leave, eager to take her daughter into the wilds and save her from the disastrous curve of the neighbor boy’s smile. As she gathered her things, she paused at the box of her daughter’s baby teeth, counting their pearly number, and remembering when each had fallen out. It had not been that long ago. Her daughter was so very young.
Too young, the queen realized. Too young, and not at all prepared. She needed to be older, wiser, and stronger. The queen put away her bag and went back to waiting, watching, and listening to death’s approach.
Years passed.
On the day when the hoofbeats of death grew too loud for the queen to hear anything else, she pulled out her hidden cloak. They needed to escape the village, and it had to be that afternoon.
The girl had grown and, as predicted, had fallen in love with the neighbor boy. The queen knew they planned to wed. She knew her daughter’s heart would break. She knew the patient young guard would heal it.
Bundling up her cloak, the queen was about to set off after her daughter when the door to the cabin opened, revealing the silhouette of a man.
He stepped into the cabin, lunging for the cloak, and the queen’s eyes went wide with surprise.
Death had arrived for her at last.
33
The dream beganthe way it always did.
Night.
Spring.
Barrenman’s Hill.
And the jagged, jittery shapes that were not the night, were not the sky, but were somehow just as big and ancient as both.
Greer felt the stirring of shadows behind her, felt his approach, just at the shapes swooped down from on high, descending over the town, like locusts, hungry to feed.
“Finn.” This part of the dream was new, knowing his name.
“My sovereign.”
The screams began, ragged and raw and piercing through her heart.
“How do I stop them? How do I stop this?”
She felt him step closer to watch with her, his chest brushing the line of her shoulder blades. From the periphery of her vision, Greer saw the tips of his wings curling overhead, as tall and forbidding as a sentinel.
“Why would you want to?” His breath stirred the air across her neck, his whisper hot in her ear.
“They’re going to destroy everything.”
“They already have,” he countered, and she suddenly realized they were not talking about the same thing. “Do you know how many trees have been cut for that mill?” Finn went on. “How many ragged wounds have been gouged into the earth for ore? Do you hear how she cries?”
Greer watched a winged figure fall out of the night and rend Michael Morag apart. The wind shifted, bringing the tang of blood. She thought she shook her head but wasn’t sure. Everything felt hazy to her, lit in a dreamy filter that let her catch every moment of Mistaken’s end.
“It’s better like this,” Finn said. He traced a finger along her, starting at the nape of her neck, letting it fall down her spine.
In the dream, she didn’t think of Ellis. In the dream, there was no Ellis, just Finn and the way his simple touch made her breath catch.
The end began with the turning of the winds and the whispered slice of wings unseen.
She blinked, wondering where such a thought had come from.
