Decades before, a bad storm had blown into Mistaken. Winds had torn roofs off homes, pulled tree roots straight from the ground, and sent giant boulders down hillsides as though they were nothing more than a child’s marbles. Rain had poured so heavily it had turned the town into a muddy sluice that took weeks to dry out.
And the lightning…
Ailie had been little more than a girl when that storm had rolled through. A girl out picking blackberries, caught by surprise when the sky had opened up with its torrent of fury and fire.
The Redcap tree had been struck seven times. Ailie had watched in horrified awe as that heavenly fire burned up every bit of sap from the tree, leaving it a scorched shell.
Days after the storm, Ailie had returned to the tree, marveling at how well it looked, amazed how the lightning had carved out a hollow spot hidden straight down the center of the trunk, perfect for hiding.
When she’d run her fingers over the burnt bark, they’d come away clean. No burning sap, no stinging welts.
Ailie decided then and there that, when she took part in the Hunt, this was where she would hide.
Greer approached the jagged Redcap now and circled it to find the hidden entrance. The opening was high up the tree’s trunk, a nearly imperceptible slit in the blackened bark.
She grabbed at a branch and prayed the old tree would still support her weight. Bits of bark peeled away, and twice Greer nearly lost her grip. But then she was up, nearly ten feet off the ground, and peering into the dark shaft.
She shimmied into the hollowed space. With all her layers, it was a tight fit, but once she pulled her hood over her face, she would be completely undetectable from a Hunter’s eyes. She settled into the snug enclosure and willed her breathing to slow. She’d made it. She was here. She just needed to wait for Ellis.
Greer didn’t like it in the tree.
Though the space was large enough for her to hide in, it wasn’t comfortable. The wood was hard and unforgiving, and she could already feel a wave of numbing pins and needles consuming her left foot.
Sounds from inside were strangely muffled, and yet too close. Shelistened for the Hunters, wanting to find Ellis’s footsteps among them, but couldn’t hear anything past her racing heartbeat.
It was impossible to sense how much time had passed by.
A minute? Ten? An hour? Three?
Once her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Greer found her mother’s etchings, the constellations of stars and flowers she’d drawn while in the hollow, waiting for her Hunter to come. Greer traced her mittened fingers over the little calendulas, marveling at the detail and care Ailie had managed in such confined surroundings.
Greer leaned back as best as she could, trying to release the tension building between her shoulder blades.
How long had she been in this tree?
It seemed like hours.
She feared it was only minutes.
Greer started counting to herself, wanting to keep an accurate calculation of the minutes going by, but the numbers got too high, and she missed a second, then three. She tried again, only to be startled from her count when an enormous cormorant landed on the branches just above the tree’s opening.
It was a large bird, the biggest she’d ever seen, solid black save for its wickedly hooked golden beak. It turned its tufted head with rapid movements, surveying the clearing with eyes that looked nearly human. Greer stared with fascination, marveling that the creature didn’t seem aware of her presence.
Until it was.
With another shift of its head, the cormorant peered down into her hiding place, bright eyes meeting hers with a direct and uncomfortably frank stare.
The tilt of its head made it seem confused, as if it was trying to parse out what a human was doing up so high in its domain.
“Hello, little Starling,” it said—the bird’s beak moving as the voice in her head spoke. And then it dove, talons outstretched, and aimed directly at her face.
Greer came to with a gasp, choking back the shriek that wanted to burst from her chest.
It was a dream.
It had only been a dream.
How long had she been dozing?
