Page 44 of The Hunting Moon
CHAPTER25
True to his word, Jay arrives for Winnie at eight in Mathilda. Since Mom is out for dinner, Winnie ducks out the front door with no fear of nosy questions. She wears her training gear, just as Jay suggested, although underneath her black joggers and hoodie, she has also donned purple jogging shorts and a white tank top. These are her backup plan in case she doesn’t get home before Mom does.
I was just out for an evening jog, see?
Jay is deep in his head the instant Winnie plops into the Wagoneer’s front seat. And his head, meanwhile, seems to be deep in the forest. Other than offering Winnie a thermos of fresh coffee—which Winnie does not accept because it iswaytoo late in the day for caffeine—Jay says nothing on the drive back to the Friday estate.
In fact, Winnie counts on one hand how many sentences he utters between her entering the Wagoneer and him parking them just outside the Friday garage. First:Coffee?Second:Watch your step.This is in reference to a divot of mud beside the garage. Third:Wait.Because he is tipping back another swig of coffee before depositing the thermos on the stoop beside the garage. And fourth:Okay, let’s go.
Admittedly, Winnie also says next to nothing save for some targeted replies:It’s way too late for coffee, I see the mud, Okay, I’ll wait,and then a yawn so fierce it almost knocks her over because she ate too much macaroni and cheese and now she really just wants a nap. She wonders once ortwice if maybe she should talk to Jay about what she read inUnderstanding Sources: A Brief History and Guide—namely that the stream likely nullified the missing source…
But there will be time for that later. For now, Jay is quiet and Winnie wants quiet too.
When they reach the edge of the forest, they both utter slightly more—though only slightly. They have traced along their usual path into the trees, except this time, they are not going to their training spot with the fallen sugar maple and red pine.
“Are you ready?” Jay asks.
“Yes,” Winnie answers. Her dinner is not fully digested, but it will have to do.
“We’ve got to move fast,” he continues. “There’s only one hour before the patrol shift changes and the mist rises. Plus, there are a lot of new sensors between here and that X on the map, so we’ll need to stay as close together as we can.” He rolls his shoulders, and there is a bounce to his movements like a racer about to shoot off from the starting line. He too wears all black and his hood is pulled over his head.
“Okay.” Winnie sucks in a bracing breath. Then adjusts her glasses, which now have a neoprene strap attached in the back because she learned her lesson about glasses in the forest: too easy to lose, too easy to break.
But also, invaluable when facing a basilisk.
Thanks,she wants to tell Jay, but just like at the library, the word never comes. She can’t seem to force it when there is still this big looming question mark stuck between them.
Winnie might now be standing on the tectonic plate labeledTonightin which he will help her, but it doesn’t negate the one labeledFour Years Agoin which he wouldn’t. The plates still crunch and grind and burn so hot they could melt her all over again.
Jay quickly tests a small flashlight—wink, wink—before depositing it into a pocket. “Let’s go,” he orders. Then he sets off into the trees, and Winnie darts after him. He moves fast—so fast—which Winnie is accustomed to from their training sessions together…
But this is next level. This is “straight to maximum sustainable pace” without any sort of warm-up. Winnie’s lungs and heart are happy for all of forty-five seconds before they start to rebel.Girl, you can’t just steal allour blood for your muscles yet! We need time to acclimate!There is no time to acclimate. There is no time to slow down. And her stomach is the least happy of all.Why did you fill me with bacon bits? Please, can we stop now? Please, I do not like all this bouncing.
Winnie forces herself to focus on Jay’s back—on mimicking his movements around trees and over roots, through ditches and up mounds. The terrain of the forest is never even; Winnie’s ankles and feet, despite the intense two weeks of training with Jay, are still woefully weak against it.
Soon, though, her heart and lungs have warmed up enough and her stomach has adjusted. Oxygen gets where it needs to be in her organs; her breathing steadies; she finally starts to feel alive again—andoh,how she missed it. No clusterfuck, no light. Only darkness, darkness, darkness.
Existence is so much simpler in the forest. Especially with Jay beside her.
It’s strange to think, but sometimes Winnie cannot separate the two: Jay and the forest. Where the hazy hemlocks and pines end, Jay seems to begin. And tonight, where the hazy hemlocks and pines end, Winnie begins too.
She loses all track of time once her body settles into the rhythm of Jay’s body. He moves with such grace that if she does not focus directly on him, she will lose him in a heartbeat.
She never notices any sensors or cameras or Tuesdays, but she can tell from Jay’s sudden sharp turns or abrupt stops that they must be skirting close. She strains to see what he sees, to hear what he hears, but he has so much more experience in the forest, not to mention proper Luminary training.
Winnie wants that too. She wants to duck and dive and hop and hurdle without ever losing her bearings or her feet. She wants to fade and melt and blend so deeply into the gray of the forest, she forgets who she is.
Jay circles them around Stone Hollow; Winnie imagines she can see orange tape rattling far across the meadow. She can’t, though, not really. Already, light is draining fast—which means time is draining fast too. The sun has almost escaped beyond the horizon.
At the top of Stone Hollow, Jay swerves north, following an empty streambed that trails sharply downward into a stagnant pool filled with dead leaves and detritus. The water glitters black, rippling as Jay and then Winnie sprint around it before charging up a fresh hill. Here, on thenorthern edges of the forest, the altitude rises more sharply. Not mountains by any stretch, but certainly proper hills with crude ridges and plenty of boulders.
Winnie has collected so many nons over the years who came here for good climbing… then never made it out again.Death is a part of life. Get used to it, Little Win-Win, or you won’t last a week inside the forest.
Winnie swallows past a knot in her throat. For all that Chad Wednesday shamed her four years ago, she isn’t any better. After all, she and Bretta made fun of Marcus only two weeks ago for getting sick at the sight of a dead non.
It doesn’t feel good to remember that.
And it feels even worse when Winnie makes herself actuallythinkabout that non corpse she and Bretta collected. He was a halfer—no torso, no feet. Just a pair of legs in shredded jeans. And while the Luminaries of Hemlock Falls might think a werewolf did it, Winnie knows it was the Whisperer.
