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“Why?” Lily asked, confused. “There’s a grocery store right up the street.”
“It was Juliet’s idea that I needed to relax. And hunting relaxes me,” he replied with a shrug. “Took me forever to find this bird, too. Not many left out here. Had to walk through the woods to this little stead called Hop-king-ton to find one,” he said, sitting down and tucking into his meal.
Juliet’s jaw dropped. “Please don’t tell me you went to the bird sanctuary out there? Right on the border of Hopkinton and Ashland?”
“What do you mean, bird sanctuary?” Rowan asked, alarmed. “Is turkey sacred in this world?”
Juliet shook her head, and Lily made a mental note to explain to Rowan later about endangered species and the shrinking wild—something he’d never encountered before.
“No, they aren’t,” Juliet said, and Rowan relaxed. “Go on with your story.”
“It was a long hunt, but that small area was strangely plentiful,” he continued. Juliet nodded resignedly. A bird sanctuary would seem strangely plentiful to a hunter like Rowan. “After I moved to Salem my dad and I would hunt turkey on the weekends and I grew to love the taste. We s
pent summers out west where I was born, though, on the Ocean of Grass. No turkey out there.”
“What did you hunt when you were out west?” Juliet asked carefully, hoping it wasn’t another protected animal.
“Buffalo, of course,” Rowan answered. His face suddenly darkened. “When we weren’t overrun by Woven. Western Woven are much smarter.”
“So how far west did you get?” Lily asked, trying not to think of huge Woven chasing her across the open land of the Great Plains.
“Into the flatlands, past the Misi-Ziibi, but not much farther,” Rowan answered.
Juliet and Lily exchanged a confused look. “Do you mean the Mississippi River?” Lily asked.
Rowan laughed out loud. “In Algonquin, Misi-Ziibi means ‘Great River.’ So it’s like you’re saying Great River-River. Forget it.” He waved it off. “I’m not making fun of you. Your accent is actually kind of adorable, Lily,” he said, taking her hand under the table and squeezing it. “My tribe spent a lot of time hunting on the edge of the Ocean of Grass, but no one’s made it across to the far river, the Pekistanoui, since before the Woven Outbreak.”
“I think the Pekistan-whatever-he-said has to be either the Missouri or the Colorado River,” Juliet said in an aside to Lily.
“He means the Missouri,” Samantha answered, and went back to her squash.
“Thanks, Ma,” Juliet said with a quizzical smile. Lily shrugged. She had no idea how her mother knew that, either, but the sisters supposed they’d have to get used to their mother knowing random details about other worlds. Juliet turned to Rowan. “So the whole west is lost in your world because of the Woven?”
“It is,” he replied. “And the farther west you go, the bigger and more intelligent the Woven get, and we call them by different names, too. Almost like they’ve earned titles. The two worst are the Pack and the Hive, although the Pride can be dangerous, too. But the Pride never leaves the mountains and you can usually slip past them.”
“The Pack—is that like a wolf pack?” Juliet asked.
Rowan nodded. “The Pack is usually what stops Outlanders from going farther west than the Great River. And the Hive may as well be a brick wall. More like a legend, really—” He broke off, his brow furrowed.
“Hasn’t anyone tried to study them and maybe find out how to get past them?” Lily asked.
“The Pack doesn’t let you sit quietly and observe them, Lily. If they catch your scent, they track you. Then they come to kill you.”
“What about the Hive, then? They’re like bees, I’m guessing.”
Rowan shrugged in a noncommittal way. “Sort of.”
“Bees leave you alone if you leave them alone. I’m sure there’s a way to study them quietly while they … gather nectar or whatever.”
Rowan looked at her like she was insane. “Most people who encounter the Hive are never heard from again. There are two kinds that we know of—Workers and Warrior Sisters. I’ve seen a few of the Workers. They just look like large bees, but the Sisters are different. I think I saw one from a distance once, but I didn’t stick around to study her, Lily. No one does. If you see any member of the Pack or the Hive, your best bet is to run.”
“So, no one knows anything about them?”
“We know that the Pack and the Hive are more organized—but no one knows why, exactly. The theory is the Pack adapted so they can coordinate to hunt buffalo. The Hive is just…” He trailed off and swallowed hard. “You just run.”
Lily could tell Rowan didn’t want to talk about the Woven anymore. She leaned closer to him with a warm smile to coax him out of his dark thoughts. “About that. You hunted bison on the Great Plains? On horseback?”
Rowan shrugged. “How else are you going to do it? Buffalo are fast.”
