Page 45 of The Hunting Moon
She hopes the guy didn’t know what hit him. She hopes he didn’t feel any pain.
And she hopes his family isn’t out there wondering where he disappeared to.
The trees become sparser, less secondary growth and more sprawling canopy. It means Winnie can spot the extra sensors herself now—as well as two of Lizzy’s cameras, crudely assembled but seemingly active with blinking red lights that say,I see you.
Jay is forced to move more slowly, occasionally clambering up rock faces before leaning back to help Winnie. He is panting, she is panting, and they never speak. Not even when she loses her footing on one ridge and takes a brutal tumble ten feet down.
Even then, Jay merely helps her stand, then gives her a stern once-over in the gathering shadows, and they resume their forward charge. Until finally, finally—when Winnie’s lungs and heart and stomach are once more raising the banner of revolt—they reach the second X on Dad’s map.
It is in a pocket of damp lowland surrounded by elms just earning their first buds of spring. The sun is completely set now, and with the hills risingup on all sides like walls, there is little light to trickle in. It’s not yet dark enough for Jay’s flashlight, but it will be soon.
Strangely, a square pit sits in the middle of the lowland. Ten feet by ten feet, no more than five feet deep, it looks as if the spirit used a cookie cutter to pluck granite right out of the earth.
Winnie approaches the edge of one of the granite sides of the pit and peers in. It’s like a rough-hewn pool that got abandoned mid-construction and then filled up with last year’s fallen leaves. At the center, rainwater has gathered in a murky puddle the size of a bathtub.
Oh yes, thishasto be where the little X on the map was leading.
“Come on,” Jay murmurs, and after an easy leap down the edge into the hole, he reaches up to help Winnie descend. She isn’t entirely sure why she would need his assistance—the pit isn’t that deep…
But looking down at him, his hood fallen back and his cheeks flushed with exertion, a faint glow of sweat across his brow, Winnie finds that her brain has deposited itself somewhere outside of her body so her body is now acting without proper supervision.
Which is perhaps why she lets him grab her waist and ease her gently down. Lets his hands linger on her hips as if he needs to steady her when they both know she is absolutely solid on this mostly flat ground.
Then he releases her as if whatever just happened between them was totally normal and probably never happened at all. Just like when they held hands on top of the old museum.
Winnie swallows. Jay coughs, and they both stride for the puddle and take up sentry on either side. Winnie gazes toward the southern and eastern walls of granite, he to the north and the west. They each take a full circle before finding each other’s faces again.
“Well,” Winnie begins quietly. “I have no idea what to look for.”
Jay grunts, a sound that is part agreement and part laugh. “We should’ve brought a shovel.”
“Agreed. It couldn’t have slowed us any more than I did.”
Jay’s lips pinch. “You’re not as bad as you think you are.”
“But I’m not as good as you.”
“No one is as good as me.”
Winnie blinks. This is such a startlingly arrogant thing to say, yetnothing in Jay’s demeanor is braggadocious. If anything, he just murmured the statement with all the absentminded detachment of a comment on the weather. He certainly doesn’t notice how the words might be perceived to a casual listener.
Youngest Lead Hunter in Hemlock Falls! You must be so proud!
Pride is definitely not what Jay feels. Instead, he is all focused competence and meticulous control. With careful movements, he fans away from Winnie, kicking up last year’s leaves and beaming his small flashlight over the ground. Winnie wants to imitate him and help, but she is actually worried she might disrupt whatever primed hunter skills he currently wields.
So she turns her attention to the strange assemblage of walls that make up this granite pit. Mist must collect here when it rises, hot and choking like the worst hot tub ever. It grows darker by the second, Winnie’s eyes adjusting in time to twilight.
Her dad was here at some point. Right here, either before he fled or after. Hehadto have come here, just as hehadto have gone to that stream beside Stone Hollow. For once the Pompeii rage of the previous days doesn’t rise in Winnie as she considers this. Instead, she just feels… confused.
A breeze rustles through elm trees. A crow caws in the distance. It makes Winnie think of thecorniceswho lead the Dianas. Who are they? Where do they live? Andhowdo they become theses “crows in charge,” or for that matter, how do they become Dianas? Winnie still has half of Theodosia Monday’s book to read, and traitorous as it feels, she can’t wait to get back to it.
A splash sounds behind her. She whirls around, to find Jay pushing into the puddle, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and flashlight chomped in his teeth. He wades to the middle—it reaches his mid-calves—then bends over and shoves his hands in.
Winnie watches him, unsure what he’s looking for and afraid to break the silence they’ve maintained for most of their journey. Her teeth click together. It is getting cold fast, and she wishes she’d worn a watch. The mist must be rising soon.
She watches Jay dig around for several seconds as one particular passage from Theodosia’s book rises to the surface of her brain, just like these loosened leaves and silt rise around Jay’s feet.
Much as animal evolution frequently diverges from a single ancestral species into unrecognizably different beasts—e.g., the cichlids of Lake Victoria—the Dianas and the Luminaries are two societies rooted in a common ancestor yet totally unrecognizable.
