“Your scream did catch me off guard,” it admitted, swaying from foot to foot. The branch creaked heavily. “That won’t happen again.”
Without warning, the Bright-Eyed sprang forward, crossing over the river with talons outstretched. Before it reached Greer, it exploded into hundreds of smaller creatures. Furry moths and swooping bats. Barred owls, barn owls, and great horned beasts. They fluttered around Greer in a dizzying dance of absolute chaos, swooping and scratching and driving her mad with their clicks and screeching, before scattering into the night.
Greer stared upat the sky, unable to sleep. Before settling into her nest of fur and pine boughs, she’d built up the campfire to a towering inferno, letting the flames keep watch. She felt confident the Bright-Eyed wouldn’t come back that night and was mostly convinced it had scared away the wolves, but Greer didn’t want the light burning low. She couldn’t bear the thought of waking to absolute darkness, not after she’d seen what the Bright-Eyeds truly looked like. Not after seeing what they truly could do.
Everything around her now seemed suspicious.
Were those soft hoots across the ravine actually from a saw-whet owl, or had the Bright-Eyed returned, mimicking their calls as it had the wolf? Flickers of eye-shine, set low to the ground, appeared to belong to a male fisher out on a hunt, but what if they weren’t? What if a part of the Bright-Eyed that had burst free was spying on her? The night felt full of eyes, and Greer squirmed in her makeshift bed.
She’d expected to fall into a stupor of exhaustion, but instead she watched the starry sky, feeling something amiss. Sleep would not come, no matter how she wished for it.
Greer thought through the day: waking to find Noah Finn hadn’t returned, exulting over Ellis’s tracks, meeting the Bright-Eyed, then releasing that scream…
She felt as though she’d overlooked something, something important that needed to be noted. It prickled at the back of her neck, so persistent she finally rolled over and sat up.
There would be no sleep for her.
Greer stood and stretched and set to work making tea. It was hours before sunrise, but she wanted to be prepared to face the river at first light. She studied the map while the juniper sprigs brewed, following the river’s line until she spotted a quirk in its bend that looked just like the one in front of her now.
Greer was about to set aside the map, ready to fill her mug, when she caught sight of three unexpected words halfway up the first mountain range on the paper.
Sandry Mining Company.
She frowned, remembering. The Bright-Eyed had said something about Greer making it to its mine. She scanned the map once more, searching for any other mining settlements.
There was only Sandry.
The Bright-Eyeds must be using the old mining camp as their…Greer paused, uncertain of what to call it. Roost? Den? Lair?
Whatever it was didn’t matter.
Greer had located where Ellis was headed.
And as soon as the sun rose, she was going after him.
28
Greer glared atthe swirling eddies before her.
The river seemed even more swollen than it had the day before. Fallen leaves raced by at alarming speeds. The footprints on the opposite bank mocked her, and, for the thousandth time, Greer wondered how Ellis had managed to cross the frigid water.
She scratched at the back of her scalp. After her encounter with the Bright-Eyed, Greer hadn’t been able to find her hat. She felt all right in this moment—the day was surprisingly warm—but she knew she would miss it dearly as she began her climb to Sandry.
She checked the map, studying the river’s winding bends. There was a spot downstream where the water briefly split into two, the halves veering sharply away from the other.
There’s an island,she realized.Cross there, then go back to Ellis’s tracks.
It took nearly an hour to reach the little spit of land. There was a scattering of boulders spanning the southern edge of the river, nearly twenty feet across. Greer guessed she could use them as a bridge to get to the island. From her vantage point, the water running along the north side looked shallower, the current easier to ford as well.
Taking a deep breath, she began climbing the first rock. It was hard work, scrabbling up the porous, slick surface. The rucksack tugged ather back, taunting gravity. Though it didn’t take her long to reach the top, she was already out of breath.
It wasn’t a far jump to the second—three feet, maybe four—but that boulder’s surface was full of uneven crags. Greer worried she might catch an ankle and skid over into the river below.
Saying a quick prayer, she took as much of a running start as she could and leapt.
She landed hard, and the weight of her bag wanted to keep going, knocking Greer to her knees as she clung to whatever handholds she could find.
Three rocks left.
