Page 52 of The Hunting Moon
And she is saddest of all thinking about the will-o’-wisp she should never have wanted to save.Why can’t you be a proper Luminary anymore, Winnie? Why can’t you be a bear?
Jay checks his watch often, the old glass face glinting in the near dark. He has rewound it so even if the time is wrong, he can at least gauge their speed. And it’s not as if the actual time matters now anyway. The answer is: late. And the anticipated reaction from Mom if she notices Winnie is gone is: terror and fury.
Best not to think about that part of the evening. Focus instead on all the other leaping, racing thoughts.
Whisperer: This nightmare is a new creature native to the American forest. No one believes it is real except for Winnie Winona Wednesday, despite ample evidence that the monster exists. See also: burning plastic, cosmic microwave background.
“Did you… hear it?” she asks. “Back at the granite pit, did you smell it?”
“The stag?” Jay adjusts his grip against Winnie. His fingers dig into her side, and she is deeply vexed that in the back of her brain, a silly little part of her hopes he likes what he feels. “It was hard to miss—hey, hey, Winnie, are you okay?” He pauses his forward stride to peer into her face.
But Winnie only wags her head. Of course she isn’t okay. It’s why they have to keep moving. It’s why they can’t just stand here as they do right now with Jay cupping her jaw and studying her while she clutches at his hoodie and strains to stay upright.
“The… Whisperer,” she says, pushing at Jay to keep walking. He doesn’t move. “Did you hear it at the granite pit?”
Jay’s brows cinch. “No, Win. I didn’t hear—or see—anything but the stag.”
“Sadhuzag,” she corrects. “That was a sadhuzag. Though I’ve never read of one… with… venom.” She shoves against Jay, a pathetic movement meant to propel him forward.
He still doesn’t obey. Instead, as her attempt to push him turns into a near collapse against his chest, he gathers her to him in an awkward, unwieldy embrace.What is happening to me?
“Talk to me,” he says, voice sharp. “What else did you see? Hey, Winnie. Hey.” He snaps his fingers in her face. “Talk to me.”
So she does. “It was coming, Jay. I could hear it coming. And I could smell it too. The burning plastic. It always smells like burning plastic. Like…” She swallows down a throat gone rusty. “Like a key chain droppedinto a toaster. Like… a… like…” She can’t conjure another example, so instead she asks, “You really… didn’t smell anything?”
He grunts, a sound that might be anoor might just as easily be a symptom of his exertion. Either way, it vibrates inside Winnie, sidling into her abdomen and up to the base of her skull. The same place the Whisperer always seems to find.
At that thought—half coherent, half amorphous—the nonsensical phrase from her dream emerges once more like a lantern in the light.Pure Heart. Trust the Pure Heart.She has no idea what it means or why she has thought it twice tonight, but it is the splash of cold she needs.
Water to the face. Lightning in a storm.
The pain, the haziness briefly scatter.
“Was it there on Friday night?” She lifts her head so she can stare at Jay’s jawline. “When Grayson died… was it there, Jay?”
His hold on her tightens. Before it was a steadying embrace. Now it is a vise grip. “No,” he rasps. “I didn’t see anything like the Whisperer.”
“It has to have been there, though.” Winnie shakes her head against him. “I saw the blood. I saw the arrows on the log in the stream—Jay, itwasthere. It killed Grayson—”
“Winnie, it didn’t.” Jay’s voice lashes out, harder than she expects from him. Harder than she can ever remember hearing before. Then the vise grip releases, and when he pulls away, there is no missing the hurt in his eyes. The gray irises glow almost as the sadhuzag’s had. “Itwasthe werewolf,” he tells her. “I promise you, it was the werewolf that killed Grayson. Just like that will-o’-wisp and that sadhuzag, killing is all that a werewolf lives for. Nightmares… they can’t help it, Winnie. It’s what the spirit created them to do.”
No,she wants to argue.Not all of them live to kill, Jay.She might have been sensitive to his grief on Saturday night at the party, but now she just needs to know what he really saw.Blood streaked on birch trees. Blood staining a granite hole.
The answers to all of her questions—they’re so close. Hovering little keys to a hundred little padlocks for the compartment Jay keeps bolted up inside him.
But Winnie’s brain can’t fight the venom in her blood. Her body can’tfight the venom rushing to her heart. So the only word that comes from her mouth is a soft “Oh,” before she falls once more against Jay’s chest.
She feels him scoop his arms beneath her and lift her, and she feels her own arms slide around his neck. “Hang on, Winnie,” Jay murmurs, and he starts to run. She bounces like a sack of bones. Like the skeleton that hangs in Professor Il-Hwa’s lab at the Sunday estate.
Oh dear,she thinks, bouncing and bouncing and bouncing,this is not a good development.
Jay can’t maintain a constant run, so he alternates jogging and walking. Steady, relentless. “Hang on,” he repeats often. “Please, Winnie, hang on.”
“Good… thing,” she summons at one point, “you didn’t leave me behind. This venom is… strong.”
Jay doesn’t answer. Only huffs, a sound that reveals how labored his breaths are, how parched his throat. Until at last, the forest around them looks familiar. They are at the Friday estate.
“Hospital?” Winnie murmurs, her head resting on the groove between Jay’s head and his shoulder. He is damp with sweat; her sweat has frozen to ice against her skin. A sharp contrast to the fire that burns inside her leg—a conflagration spreading through her body.
