22
The sun roseinto a day so blue it was almost painful to take in.
It was bracingly cold, and the wind whipped through the pines, stinging the exposed skin of Greer’s cheeks, but she pushed on, checking her compass, checking the map, and keeping her ears sharply attuned for the roaring rush of the river.
Without clouds to obscure her view, she could chart the sun’s arc and guess at the time of day, allowing her to mark her pace as she ventured deeper into the woods.
They were far busier than she expected, so late in the season. Squirrels raced through the canopy above her, hurrying to gather the last nuts and berries of the year. Snowshoe hares darted in and out of thickets, leaving soft tracks to mark their progress. White-tailed deer crept on impossibly long and slender legs, their liquid eyes startling as they caught sight of Greer.
Every hour or so, Greer would pause to drink from the canteen, quenching her thirst before refilling the flask with handfuls of snow. It would melt as she hiked, ensuring she never grew dehydrated.
During one of these breaks, she took a moment to remove her pack and stretch out on a length of fallen tree. She rolled her shoulders back and forth, letting her spine flex and crack. Satisfied, Greer reacheddown for her canteen, then shrieked as she caught sight of what she’d grabbed instead.
It was a length of white bone. A jaw, studded with teeth. She pitched it far from her, and it landed in a clump of ferns.
“Just a deer,” Greer reassured herself. “It was just a—”
She glanced down, looking for the rest of the skull. Hot bile filled her throat, its sudden bite stinging at her sinuses, as a pair of empty eye sockets stared up at her.
They were forward-facing and so terribly round, not at all like those of a deer. A hollowed heart-shaped hole was positioned beneath them. Greer absently reached up to feel at her own nose.
Human.
It was a human skull.
“Ellis,” she gasped. Her heart ripped in two, unable to take the sudden rush of pain that filled it. She couldn’t draw breath, or think straight.
Her hands fluttered toward the skull, unsure of what to do. She wanted to reach for it, reach forhim,but the gesture felt macabre and obscene. So she stared down at it, studying the curves and ridges of bone, the cavernous holes where eyes should have been.
Ellis had had such beautiful eyes.
“I’m taking you home,” she promised, her voice cracking. She ached to cry, but the tears would not come. “Mary will want to…” Greer bit her lip. How would she ever begin to tell the Beauforts?
Greer stared forlornly at the area around her, trying to determine where the rest of Ellis was. As terrible as it would be, she’d need to gather everything she could and take him back to his family, back to Mistaken. She could not bear to leave him here alone.
A few yards away, in a sprawling mess of hobblebush, she spotted the rising curve of a rib cage. The vine was tangled through the bones, and Greer paused, taking in the way it had spiraled around several of the ribs.
Even in the heat of summer, the hobblebush would not have spread so quickly.
She searched the area again with fresh eyes, taking in all the details she’d missed when she so quickly jumped to the wrong conclusion.The bones were the color of aged parchment, sun-bleached and picked clean. There wasn’t a trace of muscle or tendon remaining. There was no blood. This had not happened recently. This could not be Ellis.
The skull stared up miserably, as if pleading for help. Greer turned it away from her, unable to bear the blank gaze, and gasped as she noticed the two thick lines running across the arc. They were scored in deep, slashes of unimaginable strength.
What could carve into bone like that?
“Who were you?” she asked the skull, even as the answer came to her.
This was one of the girls who ran. One of the girls who’d picked death over a life of enforced matrimony. One of Mistaken’s sacrifices.
She’d been fast, to have gotten so far. She must have been incredibly brave and fearless. Greer envisioned her racing through the undergrowth, skirts kicked up, braids flying, hell-bent on freedom. But then…her ending was too grim to bear imagining.
Greer could see evidence of it all over the clearing. There was a long femur, shattered to splinters; ribs scattered like confetti; when she dared to glanced up, she saw a section of vertebrae dangling from the branches of a tamarack, looking too much like links of sausages hanging in a smokehouse.
Greer didn’t know if she’d ever known this girl. Her clothing had long since rotted away. She didn’t know if she’d ever sat beside her in a sewing circle, if they’d skipped rope or played jacks in the schoolyard. She did not know her name or family, but she did know that this young woman, whoever she was, did not deserve what had happened to her.
If the world was good and just, Greer should have lovingly gathered these bones and taken them back to Mistaken. Allowed her family to bury and mourn her. Allowed her to be remembered with love.
But the sun was past noon, and the shadows were already growing long, and somewhere out there was Ellis, and he was alive, and he needed her more.
