Unbidden memories of last night’s pulpy mess rose in Greer’s mind, and she winced, wondering that her father could so succinctly sum up the unspeakable tragedy as “one instance.”
“While there were no witnesses, we feel confident that the Benevolence was responsible for the movement of the Stones.”
“But why?” someone at the far side of the room asked. Greer recognized Tywynn Flanagan’s reedy voice, even though she couldn’t spot the baker. “Why would the Benevolence do this? We’ve honored them; we’ve given our tithes. Things like this happen in other places. Not our Mistaken.”
Murmurs stirred, running through the gathered like a dangerous undercurrent.
Tywynn pushed himself to standing, leaning heavily against his cane. “We’ve always had an understanding with them. We have their blessings, their protection. We’re not like those other towns. We’ve not had such attacks. Our sky has never shattered!”
The room fell into uneasy silence.
Other towns’ misfortunes were almost never spoken of in Mistaken.
It didn’t happen often, but occasionally bands of frightened travelers would wander into town, emerging from the forest like a gathering of ghosts. They’d come from settlements along the coast, outposts from the north. They were like Martha, survivors of the Bright-Eyeds.
As keeper of the records, Hessel had interviewed each refugee, committing their grisly accounts into ledgers.
The attacks were always the same. The Bright-Eyeds would come at night, jagged shadows of chaos descending from the sky in whizzing blurs too fast to make sense of. They struck fast, bringing screams, then silence.
One interminable afternoon when she was small, Greer, tired of being confined inside by yet another winter storm, had sneaked into Hessel’s study. With awestruck horror, she’d read through the memories of the attacks, the way the monsters moved with skittering, preternatural speed, the strangeness of their clicking, clattering calls, and the way those sounds mixed with their prey’s death rattles.
For months after, Greer’s dreams were plagued by nightmares of leathery wings and curved claws. Though they always began the same way—finding herself on the crest of Barrenman’s Hill, watching in horror as pieces of the sky fell over the cove, swooping and diving and ripping townspeople asunder—the endings varied. Sometimes Greer, too, was caught and pulled apart, her organs spilling like rain over the town square. Other times she found herself cornered, pressed up against the invisible line of the Warding Stones, unable to escape as the hulking shape of a Bright-Eyed stalked closer, zigging in and out of shadows as if made of the night itself. The worst was when nothing happened to her at all, when she watched from her spot on the hill, moving neither to hide nor to help. An impassive witness, observing the terrible night over and over again without reacting.
The first time she’d had such a dream, she’d raced to her parents’ bedroom, crying and seeking comfort. Hessel had told her the Warding Stones would always protect Mistaken, then rolled over and huffed back to sleep. But Ailie, in the dark silence that had followed, had whispered into Greer’s hair that she was far fiercer than any creature lurking in the woods.
“It hasn’t, it hasn’t,” Hessel said now, agreeing with the elderly baker, his placations as easy as the rote reassurances he’d given Greer so many years before. Ready to move forward, he held up one of the new maps. “We will post this in the square. It shows the Warding Stones’ former positions in black, and the new, marked in red. Study it, andmake sure everyone you know has seen it, too. We don’t want anyone caught unaware come sunset.”
As if summoned by his speech, two more Bellows blasted out, reverberating across the cove like a roll of thunder. Greer pitied Callum Cairn, up on the hill all by his lonesome, with another half an hour till he could join everyone else at Steward House.
“The Calloways weren’t caught unaware,” spoke up Meribeck Matthews, waiting until the last note died away. “They wouldn’t dare go past the Stones so close to sunset, not even for a wayward sheep. They followed the rules, theyalwaysfollowed the rules, and still they ended up like”—voice broke—“like that.”
The two lines between Hessel’s eyebrows furrowed deeper. “Bad luck, certainly. There was obviously no way to foresee that—”
“What if they move again?” the older woman demanded. “What if they keep moving in? In and in, until there’s nothing left of the town but a miserable pile of”—her fingers danced in the air like buzzing hornets, swarming around to grab the right turn of phrase—“exactly what was left in that field last night?”
Behind Hessel, Ian Brennigan visibly paled. Other Stewards shifted in their seats, troubled by the full weight of the town’s stares. Hessel cleared his throat, and Greer heard a worrying catch at its end. He was rattled. They all were.
“It’s easy to worry, to grasp and guess at what might come next, but, Mistaken, we urge you to cast aside such thoughts. After hours of deliberations, the council of Stewards has come to the following decisions.” Hessel withdrew a folded scrap of paper from his pocket. “We believe that the shifting of the Stones—an act which hasneverbefore occurred—was a message from the Benevolence. A reminder.”
“A reminder?” scoffed Meribeck. “We’ve been trapped by them for more than a century—what more reminders do we need?”
“A reminder,” Hessel pressed on, “of their presence, yes, but also of their continued generosity. A reminder of what we owe them. Wearen’tlike other settlements out in the wilds, fearful of the Bright-Eyeds, forever worrying over an attack. We’ve struck an understanding with our benefactors. We honor them freely.”
Greer dared a glance at Louise, but her friend was keeping a pointed stare fixed on Hessel, her face a mask of perfunctory attention. Greer’s stomach ached as she remembered the flayed rabbits taken from the forest without a word of thanks, without a gesture of gratitude.
Surely, three rabbits could not have so upset the Benevolence. Greer had left behind tokens, and it wasn’t even Reaping. Not quite. Louise could not be responsible for this.
Greer worried over her thumbnail anyway, scratching till the cuticles bled.
Hessel turned the page over and continued reading. “We believe last night was intended only as a warning. But…to show our commitment to the truce, to show our appreciation and ensure that this does not happen again…we will move up this year’s Reaping.”
Noises of surprise and alarm rose, spinning into heated conferences as the people talked through the scheduling change. Fields would need to be cut sooner than expected, orchards harvested early, meats removed from their smokehouses before the planned time.
“We understand the enormous amount of work which will need to be carried out,” Hessel said, raising his voice to be heard over the growing chatter. “And we sympathize. We will absolutely do our part, working alongside you all, brother to brother as it has always been.”
“When?” someone shouted. “When do you propose Reaping to take place?”
Hessel visibly winced. “Tomorrow.”
