Page 26 of The Hunting Moon
God, how has it only been an hour since she left Finn and corpse duty? It feels like a lifetime, and she hopes Mom is still in bed so she can hide this dampener in peace before the day begins.
When at last Winnie reaches the gloomy Friday estate, part of her wants to tear into the mansion and wait for Jay to return. He was so calm, so steady back in the forest. He can give her a ride homeandadd an extra layer of authenticity to her tale.
But the Friday estate is not a welcoming place in the mornings. Or ever really, and it seems especially forbidding in the weak light of a coldA.M., with its burned-out tower and gruesome gargoyles lurking on the rooftop, with its chipped paint and sad attempt at landscaping.
It is a house built for grief, and now it is filled fresh with it.
So Winnie does not go to the mudroom door and she does not wait for Jay to come back from his brutal interrogation with the Tuesdays. Instead, she continues strolling at a painful snail’s pace toward her neighborhood. Her jeans are dry enough now that there’s at least no recognizing she was knee-deep in stream water. And by the time she gets to her house, ten minutes later, her heart hasfinallycalmed its frantic beating.
Winnie slomps inside via the kitchen door and dumps all her corpse-duty clothes into the washing machine, grateful to hear no signs of Momrousing out of bed yet. She removes most of her clothes, a ritual she has done after corpse duty for the past three years, and for a brief flicker of a moment, as Winnie scoops up detergent and the scent of powdery lavender washes away the stench of dead things, she considers the fact that Jay is going to want an explanation from her. Like, a full one that goes intoallthe Dad-shaped mess from the past two weeks.
And Winnie is going to have to give it to him. She can’t lie; Jay will only see right through whatever tale she might try to spin. Plus, he helped her evade the Tuesdays. Helether leave with that cookie tin filled with wet moss, even though his Friday sparrow heart must have been shrieking,Mayday, Mayday! This is not what you’re supposed to do! Where is the integrity?Hell, her own Wednesday bear heart has been screaming the same thing ever since she found Dad’s birthday cards in the attic…
And it’s not feeling too pleased right now about thismother-effing dampenereither.
Winnie’s stomach spins like the washing machine is about to. She hits start on Heavy Load; the appliance groans noisily to life. Then Winnie continues her slomping pace upstairs—this time, half naked—and into her bedroom. Mom is only just stirring in her room across the hall, so Winnie still has some privacy to finish what needs finishing.
Namely hiding this dampener.
She trades Jay’s now-wet flannel for a grocery bag at the bottom of her backpack that held Friday’s lunch, and after wrapping the dampener in it tightly—it smells like cold creek water and wet moss—she slides it far, far beneath her bed. All the way to the wall and behind her box of summer clothes.
Winnie now has time for a quick shower before training. Her teeth click while she waits for the water to warm up, and she assembles a running list of what she can safely claim she knows right now.
1) I know someone put a dampener in the stream.
2) I know there was a source in it at one point.
3) I know Dad wanted me to find it. Probably.
4) I know it somehow connects to the possibility Dad was framed.
That is the entirety of what Winnie knows for certain. Meanwhile, the list of what she doesn’t know is longer.
1) I don’t know where the source is.
2) I don’t know when it was removed. It looks really recent, but I can’t be sure.
3) I don’t know who put the dampener in the stream. Was it Dad or someone else?
4) I don’t know why they put it in the stream.
5) I don’t really know what a dampener is because I spent the last four years actively avoiding anything that had to do with Dianas.
6) I don’t know what I’m going to tell Jay.
The pipes in the house click and expand as the water warms them with aching slowness. Mom calls out from the hall, “Morning, kiddo!” And Winnie forces herself to shout back, “Morning!” Then the back of Winnie’s brain resumes its shouting of the fake Compendium… although now it’s got the real Compendium all jumbled in there too.
Clusterfuck: An occurrence not confined to the forest in which everything goes very badly all at once.
Were-creatures: When in their animal form, these nightmares are almost unkillable. However, like the non legends, they are hurt by silver—and, in some rare cases, by gold.
See also: Winnie Wednesday, birch trees, blood.
Meanwhile, the front of Winnie’s brain runs back through her list of unknowns. Six things she can’t answer right now—six things she doesn’t even knowhowto answer and cannot deal with because right now, she needs to go through her day exactly like the model Luminary she has always strived to be.
The model Luminary she nowgetsto be because she passed her trials and finally undid all the mess Dad made… that maybe hedidn’tmake because he was in fact framed, and the person who framed him is now walking around Hemlock Falls scot-free.
Winnie’s heartbeat instantly ramps up again at that thought. It is one more thing for her Do Not Know list:7) I don’t know if Dad was actually framed.
