Page 50 of The Hunting Moon
They hunt by drawing prey to their nest, where hundreds will attack at once with syringe-like beaks. Hunters should avoid any lights that flash witha rhythmic quality; some subspecies of will-o’-wisp can also use their flames to hypnotize.
The pathetic chirp comes again, and Jay tenses harder beside Winnie. “Come on.” He sets off toward it, and Winnie limps after. Her calf shrieks; her nostrils flare and she stomps against the pain.
They round a shadowy oak tree and reach the creature. It flickers with a pale, smokeless fire that is weaker than a phone on its lowest brightness setting. Winnie is spellbound as she creeps closer—although not because the creature has hypnotized her with its flames, but because her scientist’s mind is utterly enthralled.
As is the human part of her too, for this will-o’-wisp is not hunting. This will-o’-wisp is dying.
Winnie gapes down at it, a sharp sadness burrowing into her heart. She has seen these nightmares countless times on corpse duty. Sheknowswhat this hollow skeleton looks like on a diagram, and she can draw every individual bone in its tiny wings and even tinier feet. Yet as is always the case, the Compendium illustration of a will-o’-wisp has failed to capture even a fraction of its true beauty.
“Look away,” Jay commands. Then he lifts his leg, power rising through him. He’s going to stomp it to death.
“No.”Winnie shoves him, a startled movement that is weakened by a surge of pain in her calf. But a frantic attempt is all she needs to throw Jay off course. To keep his boot from slamming down and crushing the last of this nightmare’s life from its fragile body. “What are you doing, Jay?”
“What are you doing?” he counters, and the will-o’-wisp briefly flares anew, a kiss of silvery flame into the night.
“You can’t just kill it like that!”
“I can, and I need to.” He stares at her with horrified eyes. “Weneed to, Winnie, because that is what hunters do.”
Winnie gnaws her lip. Jay is right. Of course he’s right. It’s one of the first things a Luminary learns:Any nightmares outside the forest boundary must be killed on sight.Yet the thought of killing this insubstantial, glittering creature…
Winnie sinks to the earth beside it. Ancient leaves from last year’s autumn crunch beneath her knees. The pain in her calf prods deeper; she can feel her heartbeat directly in her muscles now. “Can we help it?” she asks,leaning closer to the will-o’-wisp. “If we bring it back into the forest, can we help it? Won’t the dawn mist heal it?”
“Are you serious right now?” Jay drops to a much more fluid crouch beside Winnie. The will-o’-wisp flares. It is a cold fire that stretches outward, reaching like an infant for its mother.
It hurts Winnie’s heart to see.
“If this nightmare lives long enough for the mist to heal it at dawn, Winnie, do you know what it will do tomorrow night? It will hunt us down and kill us. Because that is what nightmares do. That’s the only thing nightmarescando.”
Something about the way Jay says this gives Winnie pause. It makes her lift her eyes from the dying will-o’-wisp and fasten them on the Friday before her. Jay’s cheeks are flushed to gray in this darkness; his hair is flecked with pine needles; and his midnight eyes hold an urgency that says,Trust me, I know exactly what I am talking about.
“Winnie,” he murmurs, and he lifts his hands—almost pleading. Though whether he is pleading with her to agree that nightmares are irredeemable or whether he is begging her to argue that they are not, Winnie can’t say. “There’s nothing we can do for this will-o’-wisp. It won’t survive until the dawn mist, and even if it did, there’s no guarantee the mist will stitch it back together again. All we can do is end its suffering as quickly as possible. Trust me, Winnie. Please.”
Her teeth click softly together. She knows Jay is right; she knows this is how the forest operates. It can break almost anything—including your heart.
“Okay,” she says after several seconds, and when Jay offers a hand to help her rise, she takes it. His fingers are cold. So are Winnie’s.
The pain in her calf roars anew once she is on her feet. Still, she forces herself to gaze down at the dying will-o’-wisp. And she forces herself to hold its hollow eye sockets and murmur, “I’m sorry you’re hurt, little one. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”
Jay swallows audibly at those words, and there is no denying the pain on his hunter face when he once more lifts his boot—faint moonlight glinting on the leather—then stamps the nightmare away.
Bones crack. Silver light fades.
And Winnie turns around to yank off her glasses. She scrubs at eyes that suddenly sting.
It is when she moves to replace her lenses that she spies another light. Twenty paces to the right—just as silvery, but so much brighter. Then another flares on her left. Then another straight ahead, until tens of them are sparkling through the trees around her.
An entire nest of will-o’-wisps, all right there, watching as one of their own dies.
Winnie lifts her arms, bracing for an attack. But the will-o’-wisps never move, never take flight off the branches they perch upon. They simply glitter and flare as Jay’s boot crunches down a second time. Then a third.
By the time Jay twists around to join Winnie and resume his march beside her, all the lights have disappeared. It was a display for only Winnie to see. A display she should probably report to the Tuesday hunters…
But one she knows she never will.
The rest of the journey is an aching, hobbling affair in which Winnie tries to ignore the pain in her leg and justmove.She leans on Jay and jogs as much as she can, and when that becomes too miserable, she walks.
Until at last Winnie can’t walk anymore. Sheneedsto stop, sheneedsto look at her leg, and sheneedsjust a few seconds to process what happened—first with the sadhuzag, then with the will-o’-wisps.
