Page 43 of The Hunting Moon
Winnie grabs the back door’s knob—unlocked because her family never locks their doors—and turns a slightly serious, slightly uncomfortable face on Mom. “Thanks, Mom. That sounds awesome right about now.”
“Of course.” Mom flushes. “Anything for my Winnebago. Now open the door please, before that crow on the roof poops on us.”
While Mom heads off to the grocery store, Winnie locks her bedroom door and retrieves the dampener. Much as she did yesterday, she disassembles it on her desk—the moss is drier, but still slimy. And still stinky. This time, though, rather than study the rotting contents alone, she retrieves Theodosia Monday’s book and adds it to the mix.
Understanding Sources: A Brief History and Guide.“Show me what you’ve got, Theodosia.” Winnie opens to the first page. The spine offers the satisfying crack of a book that has rarely been opened before. The pages are pristine, the print minuscule.
Briefthis book is not. And the reading is excruciatingly slow thanks to a million new terms Winnie has never seen before—many of them in Latin, most of them for spells.
Effusio: A spell that can be cast outside the forest using power stored in a source.
Silva: A spell that can only be cast within the forest, relying on immediately absorbed spirit power.
Mundanus: A spell cast to accomplish small tasks, such as lighting fires or muffling sight. These require little magic and are the first spells Dianas learn.
Incubo: A spell modeled after a nightmare. For example, a banshee incubo mimics the grief and paralysis caused by a banshee. Such spells require power taken directly from the corresponding nightmare.
Sagitta aurea: These spells are used to kill or maim a target. Just as the Dianas are named for the Roman goddess of the hunt, these spells are modeled after Diana’s preferred weapon of golden arrows.
It is, to Winnie’s dismay (and a rather large dose of magmatic heat), interesting to read.Reallyinteresting. If not for Dad ruining her family’s lives, she might have checked this book out years ago and added it to her brain-bank of forest knowledge. Though it’s also a challenge not to think back to her time on the Tuesday estate. To Jeremiah Tuesday with his red hair and redder mustache, asking questions that now have some context.
Were there burn marks on your dad’s fingers?Winnie now knows the blisters left behind from spell-casting have a distinctive pucker around the edges.
Did you ever smell strange things in the house?Apparently magic stolen from the spirit has a chemical, unnatural smell when it is expelled via spells.
Did he have any small wooden coins in his possession?Dianas believe (without empirical evidence) that rowan wood protects against nightmares.
There’s even a whole section in Theodosia’s books devoted to the hierarchy of Dianas, which Winnie never realized was so complex… or so pretentious. As with the spells, it’s a lot of Latin terminology that would nodoubt be easier foreveryoneif it were just modernized. At least they now call the Dianas who specialize in hunting nightmares “hounds” instead of the Latin word “canes.” Or call the elected witches in leadership “crows” instead of “cornices”?
Although—to be fair—at least Dianas aren’t separated into fourteen branches like the Luminaries. They are one, diffuse beast with thorny tendrils rooted into any spirit corner the Tuesday Lambdas aren’t looking. Not to mention, the Diana order split off from the Luminaries during the Roman Empire, shortly after the society formed, so maybe all the Latindoesmake sense in the end.
Mom eventually gets home, and Winnie hears the clanking of pots and clacking of utensils. A mixer whirs. The fridge door repeatedly thumps. It is a nice sound made by a nice mom whose excitement over being a Luminary again has transformed her as much as being in the forest transforms Winnie—except that this is long-term.Thishas restored Mom’s color, and if all goes well tomorrow, then that color will be permanent.
While the macaroni and cheese gets assembled downstairs, Winnie reads and reads and reads, and she learns four important things that seem relevant to her dampener.
First: the moss inside is a peat moss, which is best used for sources made from metal because the acidity of the moss neutralizes the alkalinity of the oxidized metal. The peat moss alsoreeks,and Winnie is going to have to throw this away soon.
Second: the tin itself is stainless steel, which is both the best for hiding sources from Luminary detection (because steel isn’t very conductive) and the most effective at containing power.
A lot of power.
Third: the size of the fishhook—large—and the arrangement of the “vent” in the top left corner also suggests that the source this dampener once held was strong. Like, really strong. It needed frequent venting to prevent the absorbed power from detonating within and blowing a giant crater into the forest.
Fourth: the running water this dampener was in should have nullified the source’s power. This particular fact, found on page 123, really throws Winnie, since it turns out that just as running water deters a nightmare, the best way toremovea source’s power over time is to leave it in a stream.
Either someone put the source in the water four years ago to nullify it—and Dad figured that out…
Or else Dad put it there himself.
Either way, this is good news, right? If the source is powerless, then a Diana can’t be running amok about to kill everyone with aneffusiospell. As for why the source itself is missing from the dampener… that remains an open question, and Winnie has to pause her reading on page 147 when Mom hollers, “I’m leaving! I’ve set a timer on the oven!Make good choices!”
Winnie scrabbles to her bedroom door and unlocks it just in time to shout back, “Thank you, Mom!”
“Loveyoubye!” The front door shuts; the house rattles.
And Winnie ducks back into her room to put away the dampener and the book before her dinner goesbzzzzzz!in the oven. Jay will be here soon; they will return once more to the forest—this time in pursuit of a second X.
Illogical as it is, Winnie can’t wait.
