Their grasp was impossible to break.
People tried, of course. Attempting to defy the Stones was a rite of childhood. Nervous, giggling youths would venture past the border just before sunset, only to be swept back by an unseen force, like dust bunnies rooted out from under a bed.
It was harmless fun, for the most part.
But every so often, someone would roam too far. The Stones would always bring the person back, heedless of what lay between thewanderer and the town line. There were the occasional bruises or split lips as people struck trees or stumbled over dips in the ground. Clintock Finley once broke his ankle when his foot snagged on a tree root.
But never had Mistaken seen anything like the Calloways.
In the early days of the town, intrepid farmers, wanting to buy themselves a bit more land, had attempted to pull the Stones down. They’d tried dragging them away. They’d used ropes and chains and teams of cattle. They’d wielded levers and pulleys. They’d even used black-powder explosives.
The Stones would not budge.
Except—now they had.
They’d somehow shifted, cutting the size and sprawl of the land.
Greer could imagine how the terrible scene must have played out.
The Calloways would have been gathering the flock before sunset. They wouldn’t have had any worries at all. That part of the forest was well within the borders of town.
Until tonight.
The Stones had moved, herding every living thing along with them. Lambs. Ewes. The entire Calloway family. They must have been carried for hundreds of yards, thrown against trees and brambles, tossed over rocky outcroppings, smashing through streams and into one another.
Greer wondered how it had felt, to lose control of your body, of yourself. She hoped, for their sake, that the first strikes had done them in. She hoped they had not suffered.
Hearing Greer, the townspeople turned from the massacre toward the towering Stones.
Gasps of surprise filled the air.
“Were those always…?”
“Haven’t those…?”
“How did they…?”
“Who could have…?”
Ellis knelt beside Tàmhas, trying to loosen the young man’s hold on Fiona Calloway. His movements were slow and gentle. With utmost care, he extricated the girl’s severed hand from Tàmhas’s and laid it out upon the sodden grass.
It didn’t look real. It was like a broken curve of pottery, a discardedoyster shell left after a day of shucking. Not a hand. Not a piece of a human who had been breathing and flushed with life only hours before. Fiona was just a few years younger than Greer, with sun-freckled skin and long twists of scarlet hair.
Hanks of that hair now lay strewn around the field like coils of rope.
Bile rushed up into Greer’s throat with ferocity, burning everything in its path. She turned her head, coughing and sputtering, as another roil of disgust heaved at her middle.
Around her, the questions began to change.
“How”s shifted to “why”s.
The “why”s grew bolder, increasing from whispers of disbelief to noises of strangled horror.
As the panic swelled, Hessel Mackenzie stepped forward, ready to take charge. He held out his hands, attempting to quiet the clamor, to corral it into submission.
“My friends, a tragedy has occurred here tonight. The Calloways have been a vital part of our community. They were our neighbors, our friends, our family. The loss of…”
Here he paused, glancing about the carnage, ill at ease with his calculations.
