Martha Kingston was in the kitchen, wrestling with an eel.
“You shan’t get the best of me,” she muttered, and cursed at the beast.
The long black body thrashed against the worktable, wriggling furiously to escape her grasp. Martha hissed as the eel snapped at her, drawing blood. Holding the squirming creature down with one hand, she sucked absentmindedly at the wounded finger, then pulled out a mallet. The battle ended with an abrupt, meatythwunk.
“That you, Greer?” the older woman called out, sounding out of breath.
“It’s raining hard enough for a second flood,” Greer announced, hanging her cloak and satchel from a series of pegs near the front door. She kicked off her boots and shimmied free of her wet stockings. These went on the line before the hearth, joining a pinned set of Hessel’s socks and Martha’s gloves. She entered the kitchen.
“It’ll be snow by nightfall,” Martha predicted, picking up a cleaver. Her face was pink from the struggle with the eel, and the short wispsof silvered hair poking free of her bun looked like a saint’s halo. The thick blade glinted brightly before sailing in a smooth arc through the air. The eel’s head fell free, thudding upon the wooden table. “That’ll teach you to bite me.”
As if in response, the rest of its body thrashed with angry fervor, a final mimicry of life.
Martha went to work, peeling away the eel’s skin from its now flaccid length. It came off in a squelch wet enough to make Greer cringe. “You’re late,” Martha said.
Greer deposited the loaf of cinnamon bread on the table, careful to keep it from the mess of eel staining the work space. “Dessert is already done. Technically, I’m early.” She gave the older woman a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to grab her apron.
Martha eyed the brown paper wrapping skeptically as she pulled innards from the eel’s body cavity. “Your father is already in a foul mood—stomping about and snapping all through lunch—he doesn’t need additional aggrievements.”
Greer brought the apron over her head and adjusted the crossed back. “The schooner didn’t really leave without buying the lumber, did it?”
“That it did,” Martha said, slicing the eel into short segments. “Hand me the pie dish, won’t you?”
Greer crossed to the hutch and stood on tiptoe to reach for the crockery. “But they’ll be back, surely. They wouldn’t have come all this way just to—”
The older woman shook her head, silencing Greer.
“It’s a bad mess they’re in,” Martha said darkly, as she flattened out the meat with a rolling pin. “I’ve always said Hessel’s temper would get the better of him, and that day has come.” She turned to the stove and dropped a pat of butter into the heated cast-iron skillet. It sizzled instantly. “All the more reason to not bring up your day with that boy in front of him.”
“I didn’t spend my day with Ellis,” Greer said, her tone prickling. “I was up past the northern ridge with Louise.”
Marthapfft-ed a curl off her forehead, as if to say there was not much difference between the two Beauforts. She went on pressing piecesof eel into the pie dish, then threw in shallots, parsley, and nutmeg. “Anything to show for it?”
“There was a whole new area of Redcaps…I made a map.”
“Someday you’re going to run out of world to chart.”
Greer certainly hoped not.
As a Steward, Hessel Mackenzie was keeper of the town’s records and custodian of Resolution Beaufort’s diaries and maps. Hessel kept them locked away in his study.
When Greer was seven, she’d stolen her father’s ring of keys and spent an exhilarating night poring over the illustrations of coastlines and waves, wind charts and mountain ranges. The lines they formed, the information they offered, captivated her.
Here was the known.
Here was the not.
Growing up within the unbreakable confines of the Warding Stones, Greer well knew her known. It was the land beyond the Stones—those dark, impenetrable forests and all the dangerous uncertainties they contained—that set her mind racing, that caused her anxieties to spike and her fears to grow. But if she could chart those mysterious depths, bring understanding to their enigmatic wilds, she wouldn’t have to be afraid.
The next morning, she created her first map.
It was a poorly drawn rendering of the town’s main road. The proportions were wrong, and her lines were misshapen and sloping. But she’d never been more proud.
She set out to chart every inch of Mistaken.
And, map by map, she improved.
She experimented with scale and scope, texture and notation.
