It was wider than she’d expected and looked deep. Its dark waters frothed with little white-tipped eddies. The current was surprisingly fast.
Greer stood along its bank, acutely aware that the sky above her was beginning to dim. Hidden behind a scattering of slate gray clouds, the sun was sinking with dangerous speed toward the horizon.
Another day gone, and Greer still hadn’t found Ellis.
Her eyes shifted back and forth along the riverbank as she tried to plan out her next move. Ellis’s tracks were at her feet, and there were more on the other shore, as if he’d merely hopped over the offending rapids with a great leap.
Perhaps it wasn’t as deep as it looked.
Greer poked through the undergrowth, looking for a long stick. She leaned out as far as she dared—falling in so close to sunset, with no campfire prepared, would be a death sentence, no matter how effectively Noah Finn’s coat kept away the cold—and stabbed the branch into the swirling depths.
In an instant, the water swallowed it up all the way to her hand and jerked the stick away with terrifying strength.
There was no way Greer could ford this river on foot.
“How did you do it, Ellis?” she muttered, walking up and down the bend, trying to spot his trick.
Eventually, she gave up, resolving to work it out in the morning. There had to be a series of rocks hidden just beneath the rapids’ surface. She’d see them when the sky was bright and would cross them when the day was warmer.
Till then, she needed to find a spot to set up camp.
Downstream from Ellis’s tracks was a little berm, sloping up from the river’s edge. The ground was softer there and less rocky. She searched the area for other tracks. It wouldn’t do to set up along a game trail, but this one seemed clear enough.
Using the last of the day’s light, Greer searched for kindling. Once her fire was going, she opened the pack and withdrew her cloak and the blanket Noah Finn had left behind.
She’d tried to not think of him throughout the day, tried to not wonder if he had family somewhere who would notice his disappearance, who would miss him. She tried to not conjure theories on where he’d come from, where he’d gone, and how it had happened. She tried, she tried so hard, not to remember the way his eyes had caught in the campfire, the faint red glow of them. She hadn’t known a person’s eyes could shine like that.
But even that had not been able to save him.
He had to have been taken by a Bright-Eyed.
There’d been no other prints in that clearing save his and Greer’s. Whatever had stolen him away had come from the sky, swooping and snatching like an owl after a marmot.
She couldn’t imagine the strength it would take to pull a grown manfrom the ground. It made her think twice about wandering off to look for juniper berries for some tea.
Greer scanned the skies overhead but saw nothing. The clouds were thick and low, and she worried that another snowfall would come and cover up Ellis’s tracks once again.
Across the river, up along the ravine, small flickers of light caught her attention. For a moment, she thought it was fireflies, dancing in a grove of trees. But their time of year had long passed.
So why did she see lights now?
It was a pair of dots, there one moment, then gone the next, then appearing farther downstream, then up again. Almost as if…
She remembered Noah Finn’s eye-shine with a sudden, queasy recognition.
…something was pacing back and forth.
Something was watching Greer.
Pretending she hadn’t spotted them, she took one of her collected sticks and poked at the bonfire. She waved at the smoke, as if a breeze had blown some in her eyes, and shifted seats, giving her a better vantage while hiding behind the wall of flames.
Greer watched the eyes; they shone a bright amber.
They were high off the ground, at least six feet, and moved back and forth with an easy grace. There was no stumbling, no dodging around tree roots or dips in the land. The languid repetitiveness reminded Greer of the feral cats allowed to roam the mill’s outbuildings to keep down the population of rodents who might otherwise nest in the wood chips.
Greer wanted to believe it was a deer drawn to her fire, or even a bear, standing on its hind legs as it decided whether she would make an easy prey. But a bear would lumber back and forth. And a deer wouldn’t pace.
Greer was certain it was the creature who’d been following her. The creature taunting her. The creature with two toes.
