Page 22 of The Hunting Moon
He is also friends with Winnie’s cousin Marcus, and that fact automatically makes him unbearable.
Though Winnie has no desire to call attention to herself this morning (or ever), when Finn ends the huddle without giving instructions, she can’t stay silent. After all, they’ve got three four-wheelers, and people need to know exactly where they’re going. Worse, Finn has missed pointing out not two, butthreecorpses near the southwestern shore of the Big Lake, and if you leave a corpse in the forest, you’re going to end up with a revenant.
That’s just science.
So Winnie finally barks, “Oh my god, give me that.” She snatches the tablet from him, and to his credit, he doesn’t look upset so much as relieved—as do the three other Sundays, two Tuesdays, and three Thursdays with them.
“Elaine, take your crew to the northern side of the lake,” Winnie declares. “Hector, you’re staying on the western side. And then Finn, we’re circling over to the east. You all have your coordinates?” Now it’s Winnie’s face that glows in the screen—as do Hector’s and Elaine’s, since they each have a tablet too.
It’s fancy, and Winnie almost wonders why the Wednesdays don’t use tablets too… until she gets her answer a few moments later. The instant the screen is off, she can see all the smears and streaks from dead nightmare guts. Gross.
And also peak Sunday to have tech that’s great for a classroom but crap in the field.
“I’m driving,” Winnie says as everyone heads for their four-wheelers. These, at least, are just like the Wednesday clan’s.
It takes a solid fifteen minutes to get north past the Monday and Tuesday estates, and the full light of morning brightens around them, shifting the world from colorless night to fledgling spring green. It is well and truly dawn, the sun a promise lightening the eastern sky.
The four-wheeler bumps and bounces through the trees, a crude path Winnie has taken many times. Then the red sensors of the forest’s edgeappear; Winnie swerves around them… and the world transforms. Green erases. Birdsong silences.
Strangely, Winnie feels more at ease as soon as they’re over that line. It is the opposite of the funeral; the forest settles her, welcomes her. As if within the dawn shadows, she no longer has to pretend to be someone she’s not. The forest, after all, never pretends.I am dangerous and I will eat you. Do you dare come inside?
Winnie’s fellow Luminaries rarely speak, not even when gathering the corpses, which takes a full hour. And where Winnie had expected to see signs of the Whisperer—especially after what happened with Grayson—she doesn’t. All the nightmare remains they retrieve were clearly killed by Sunday hunters: one sylphid, three manticore hatchlings, and a hellion.
The most interesting thing they find is a droll arm, enormous and meaty and almost as large as Winnie’s whole body.
Drolls: These humanoid nightmares can grow as large and as heavy as a tractor-trailer cab. Known for hoarding treasures, drolls are particularly drawn to shiny objects and anything gold or silver.
Actually, Winnie doesn’t understand why they have to retrieve the arm. It isn’t as if the single body part will reanimate as a revenant… will it? Winnie chews her lip as she imagines the possibilities. As her mind scrolls through the Compendium, a search engine hunting for some line or reference she might have missed.
When she can’t think of anything, she makes a mental note to ask Mario when she drops off the arm…Wait,her brain snaps out.You’re not delivering these bodies. You’re not here for actual corpse duty. Remember the map? Remember the volcanic box labeled “Dad”?
Her breath hisses out. Somehow, even with this stupid tablet that is now grimy with nightmare viscera, her mind was sucked completely into the cold air against her cheeks. Into the mutilated corpses slumped across the four-wheeler’s flatbed, smelling of earth and blood and rot.
She almost doesn’t want to leave it all. Actually, shedefinitelydoesn’t want to leave it all to finish a task she should never have had to start in the first place.
“Okay,” she says, once the droll arm is strapped down—they have to bungee-cord it because it doesn’t want to lie nicely atop the other bodies. “You’re driving now, Finn, and I’m leaving.”
“What?” This is from Lucille Thursday, who looks appalled that Winnie would abandon them to Finn’s poor leadership. Or maybe it’s just horror that Winnie plans to strut off into the forest by herself.
Which is fair.
“I’m, uh, going that way.” Winnie points vaguely southeast. “My house isn’t far.” This is a line she practiced last night in the mirror. It’s not a lie—shedoeslive in that direction… eventually—so it comes out with a decent heft of confidence behind it. Hopefully no one will question why she is going home from this location and not at least riding in the four-wheeler to the street.
But then Finn comes up with an explanation all on his own: “Oh, right. You and Jay Friday are hooking up, right?”
“What?”Winnie blurts this so loudly that Lucille and a boy named Elliot flinch. And her follow-up “No!” is even louder.
Which only causes everyone to exchange smirks. As if somehow her emphatic rejection has proven Finn right.
“Have fun,” Finn says with a dramatic wink that earns a few laughs.
Winnie’s eyes screw shut. She sucks in a long, crisp breath that stinks of dead things. “Yep,” she makes herself reply—because this is better, isn’t it? If they all think she’s going over to the Friday estate to see Jay, then the town is way less likely to guess what she’sactuallyabout to do. Better to endure the snickering than have someone give her a second thought—or worse, tell a Sunday in charge that she stayed behind in the forest.
“Bye,” Winnie forces out before veering away.
“Have fun, Girl Who Jumped!” Finn calls at her back. “Don’t get bitten again!”
Don’t get bitten again.Like it’s all a grand joke. Like this jagged scar on Winnie’s right arm is just a wee paper cut, and she really should be more careful when handling werewolves!
