Chapter 3: The Wild Woman and Her Wild Daughter

*Brynn*

Two days after that first night, the hunting party still had naught to show for their efforts. Trevor had set a multitude of snares for rabbits and other small game, but none had so far been touched. Cormac, Trevor, and Vesta had surveyed the area looking for animal signs, but they had come back to camp no wiser than they left it.

Maeve and Brynn, however, were largely left to ‘guard the camp’ – an order that made Brynn roll her eyes in frustration. What they were meant to do was stay out of the way and out of trouble.

It didn’t take long for this realization to dawn on Brynn about the truth of their station here. It was no wonder that Cormac resented the fact they had been included. She had thought he was frustrated by having two younger, less experienced hunters in the mix.

Instead, he saw the situation as having lost two members of his party altogether and gaining two very large bits of unruly baggage instead. Cormac’s idea of making the best of the situation was to tuck that baggage aside for safekeeping in a place where no one would trip over it.

Maeve didn’t seem to mind so much. She was happy enough just being out in the forest with the others. Brynn would have been infuriated by the situation, and when she was able to relax enough to think about it, she was. She was truly grateful to be there in any capacity, but she wanted to explore. Much of her mental energy, though, was spent torn between two feelings she couldn’t quite explain.

The first was that inexplicable pull she had always felt. The sensation had grown and changed over the course of their journey into something less metaphorical and more physically tangible. There was a sense of longing deep in her bones that left her whole body feeling tense. She felt like a spring coiled tight, ready at any moment for a sweet release that would launch her into true form.

And then there was the other feeling. That those eyes were upon her again. She had told the others what she saw that night, but no one took her seriously. Cormac had looked at her with disdain, and Trevor had laughed.

“Glowing eyes in the dark, eh? Was it the boogeyman?” he’d sneered. “If there were a predator the size you say as close as you say, you’d be dead. Simple as that. And don’t you think one of us would have seen it, too? You shouldn’t be out here if you’re afraid of the dark, Girly.”

Once he finally stalked back to camp, the enormous scowl Garan wore completely distorted his handsome features.

“Your imagination is charming but childish,” Garan had said coolly with a chuckle. “Best get a hold of that.”

Nothing soothed the sting of hurt confidence like damaging that of another. Especially of the one who wounded you in the first place. Brynn tried not to take his words to heart, but she found them resonating in her head all the same.

Since then, she’d sensed it. That creature with the glowing eyes. She hadn’t seen it, again, but she felt it. Or maybe it was in her head – a mere fantasy of a monster in the dark. Maybe she was childish. She was constantly battling between contradicting feelings on the matter; shifting back and forth between anger at being brushed aside and treated like a fool, and shame that she was, in fact, a fool.

There were times that she felt so sure it was there, lurking somewhere just beyond her range of sight, that it took a great deal of restraint not to walk out into the forest to find it. It came and went like summer thunderstorms – there one minute and gone the next. It made no sense. So she tried to ignore it.

On that third night in their main camp, they all sat around the fire trying not to think about the food they weren’t eating. Having added nothing to their food stores, they were rationing the food they brought with them rather severely. The firelight danced across their faces as they sat on fallen logs arranged around the fire ring. They sipped pine needle tea, something they had an abundance of, as their clay mugs steamed in the brisk night air.

Brynn was annoyed when Garan sat next to her, but she was not willing to make a scene by asking him to move. If the group had already written her off as a child, she was not about to draw more attention to herself and add words like belligerent, dramatic, or emotional to their descriptions of her. Instead, she shifted her body closer to Maeve on her left and completely ignored his presence.

“Do you think the other groups have had more success?” Maeve asked the group at large.

After a long, thoughtful pause Cormac said, “I think that out of all the groups sent out, ours had either the best chance or the worst.”

“True enough,” Trevor said, tipping his mug in agreement. With his other hand, he toyed a small silver sun hanging from a chain around his neck – an ornament meant to ward off evil. “But we had to see, didn’t we? Ingram hasn’t seen the guts of Dagrun Forest in far too long. There could have been a treasure trove of meats and pelts out here.”

“There could have been, but there isn’t,” Garan scoffed. “Just trees and more trees. I haven’t seen so much as a squirrel, let alone real game. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, big buck.”

“I sort of had it in mind that it would be different out here. Otherworldly,” Trevor went on. “Magical, maybe.”

“It is,” Brynn breathed, tipping her head upward to look at the night sky, exposing her neck to the wintry breeze. “Don’t you feel it?” It didn’t occur to her until later to be annoyed by what Trevor had said. She’d been treated like an imbecile for seeing something in the dark, but here he was, wishing for magic and other worlds and no one batted an eye.

Face still tilted upward, she closed her eyes and lost herself to thought. It was true that, aside from the mysterious creature that may only exist in her head, they had seen little by way of wildlife, but the forest still felt very much alive around her. Her skin tingled where the air danced across it in soft waving currents. The trees hummed silently with ancient knowledge, the steady rhythm of it perceptible only deep in her ribcage keeping time with her heart.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a warm hand grasping hers. She jolted out of her mind and back to the present moment to find Garan staring at her with tentative affection. His hand was rough and callused but warm and strong. He didn’t say anything as he looked at her.

She considered snatching her hand away, tucking it underneath her legs, and closing herself off to him. But she thought there might be a husk of an apology somewhere within those eyes. She let him keep her hand for now.

The conversation continued around them, but neither Brynn nor Garan were a part of it any longer. Garan nodded his head toward the trees again, like he’d done before, beckoning her to yet another private moment. His eyes were dark and sparkling, his jaw set firm.

It was tempting. The warmth of his hand around hers was pleasing, and she imagined that heat on other parts of her. She almost stood. But then she remembered those eyes in the dark, bright and dangerous. She remembered the way the others had laughed. How Garan had laughed.

And she remembered why she had been coming back in the dark alone that night.

‘I do what I see fit with what is mine,’ he had said, and though he’d only tightened his grip on the back of her neck, she had still felt like she was choking.

Looking directly back into his eyes – confident, expectant – she shook her head once, almost imperceptibly. And then she took her hand back from him. The affection melted from his face, showing momentary confusion, then anger, and finally settled on disdain. He stood, turned from her, and without a word of parting, entered the men’s tent.

Brynn, fearing for a moment that unwelcome tears might betray her, looked around the fire to see that Trevor and Cormac were both standing already, clearly preparing to retire for the night themselves. Maeve gave Brynn a knowing look. She had been paying attention to the silent exchange with Garan.

“Goodnight,” she said. Brynn knew her friend would question her the second they were alone together. For this reason, Brynn stayed where she was. In a few moments, she was left outside with only Vesta.

The older woman was watching her closely from across the fire. Brynn had a lot of respect for Vesta. With no husband or children to care for, she spent her time much in the way men did. Hunting. Tending to the livestock. She belonged to no one, so she did as she pleased.

“You look just like her, you know,” Vesta said quietly. She didn’t speak often, but when she did, everyone listened. Brynn was no exception.

“My mother?” Brynn asked.

“No,” Vesta shook her head. “Well, I suppose you probably do. But I was talking about your grandmother.”

“You knew her?” People from Ingram rarely spoke of Brynn’s family. At one point, everyone in the village seemed to be staring or gossiping about them, but with her mother and grandmother both gone, it seemed like the entire world forgot the pair ever existed. Not Brynn, though. Or her father. They remembered.

“Aye, I did. Salvia and I were good friends.” She paused a while, thinking. “When she showed up in Ingram, she caused quite the commotion. This wild woman with her wild daughter and no explanation of where they’d come from. If she didn’t want people to know, she could have made up a lie easily enough, but she didn’t. She just acted as if she belonged there, and eventually, the people forgot she didn’t.”

“I don’t think they ever forgot,” Brynn said.

They sat in silence for a while, staring at the fire. A memory echoed in Brynn’s mind. Her mother and grandmother whispering together by the hearth of their small cabin. Angry whispers. Whispers she wasn’t meant to hear.

“She’s not like the other girls and you best start accepting it,” her grandmother had said.

“She could be if you let her.” Her mother had spoken so sharply that Brynn was shocked to hear it.

“She is what she is, Mina,” her grandmother had hissed back.

“It’s not just the black hair or the golden flecks in your eyes,” Vesta pulled her once again back to the present. “It’s the wild. The wild they brought with them from wherever they came. They tried to hide it, but it was always there. And it’s in you, too.”

That night, Brynn’s dreams were filled with harsh whispers calling her different and wild, stupid and childish. In her sleep, she crept into the room where her mother and grandmother had fought, but as she neared them, they both evaporated like steam from a mug, dissipating into the air.

And then everything switched, and she stared up at a large, swollen moon, bright and crisp, beckoning her. And then, it too evaporated, leaving behind two large, glowing eyes staring at her from the black. A low, dangerous growl washed across her skin, and she was both terrified and excited.

Brynn gasped and sputtered, shocked out of sleep as a hand pressed hard against her mouth. An arm pinned her down, and she could feel a face close to her own, breath against her ear.

“Shh,” Garan whispered. “We are being hunted.”