Marthatsk-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.
4
Dinner wasa 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 throughan 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.
