Page 58 of The Hunting Moon
She shoves from her desk and hurries to her closet. She has to fling aside some dirty shirts, including the latest flannel from Jay, but soon Winnie finds a lime-green three-ring binder that says in very straightforward handwriting,Nightmare Compendium, the Complete International Edition.Winnie wantedto draw a moon pattern on the front, like the one on the actual Compendium, but at age twelve, she lacked the confidence.
She squats on the floor beside her closet, not even bothering to rise and heft the Compendium to her desk. It’s heavy; she is accustomed to this goblin-like crouch. Plus, she is soon so lost in the pages, her body becomes a forgotten vessel. A mere tool that allows her brain to do what needs doing.
With the practiced ease of someone who has handled these pages more than any other book in the house—or really, in the world—Winnie opens the binder. The pages within are worn, their edges curled until what was once only three inches thick is now closer to four. They’re also crammed full of Winnie’s sketches and notes, little scraps from school notebooks or sometimes thicker sheets from her sketch pad.
She thumbs to theS’s.
And the faint scent of rotting moss tickles her nose from beneath the bed.
Sadhuzag,she finds. A drawing of a stag appears before her. She can tell right away that the artist was lazy and did not include all seventy-four antler prongs. She can also tell right away that—like the illustration of the werewolf in the Sunday Encyclopedia—the artist has captured none of the sadhuzag’s actual menace.
What follows is a short entry, given that sadhuzags aren’t common nightmares globally. But at the end of the definition is the reference Winnie was searching for: it’s a citation for the Addendum.
Winnie flips to the back of her Compendium, to where more Xeroxed pages wait behind a divider with a torn red tab. Again in very simple lettering, Winnie had written,Addendum to the Nightmare Compendium: New Research, New Theories.
Her legs burn from holding her crude squat. The light bulb in the closet flickers a warning that its sixty watts will soon die. She even gets a paper cut on a page discussing ghost-raccoon research in countries where raccoons aren’t native.
Then Winnie finds it: the tiny addition to the sadhuzag.Some evidence suggests the sadhuzag is drawn to residual magic, such as areas where Diana spells have been cast. Further research is needed.
And that’s it. That one sentence has everything Winnie needs.
Because thathasto be the connection. A spell was cast in a granite crater in the forest, and that’s why the mist created a sadhuzag there.
Winnie drops the Compendium’s binder with a thud worthy of a droll’s footstep and half falls, half crawls back to her desk. All those spells described by Theodosia Monday—mundanus, silva, effusio—could any of them have left enough magical residue to attract a sadhuzag?
Winnie returns to her desk and cracks openUnderstanding Sourcesto find out. It takes a few moments to find the pages that describe the various spells… and then a few more moments to realize Theodora’s list won’t be terribly helpful. It’s all so vague, so simplistic. There’s no way to possibly guess which of these many,manyoptions would leave enough residual magic to attract a sadhuzag.
If only Winnie could get her hands on a book of spells. Theodosia refers to such volumes often, describing how Luminaries have managed to nab these rare, heavily guarded tomes throughout history. In fact, it became such a problem for the Dianas—the Luminary spies stealing their written spells—that they stopped scribing their spells onto paper a century ago and instead shifted to an oral tradition.
Still, therearebooks out there.
And god, if only Winnie had one right now. Not merely to solve her mystery and follow Dad’s clues… but becausethe knowledgethat such a book would contain! It would be like dissecting a manticore hatchling in nightmare anatomy, but better. She’d be getting an up-close look at the inner workings of her sworn enemy—an enemy that is just as human as she is.
Winnie grabs her pen once more. Draw, draw, think, think. The ideas are all right there, so close. Raw crude oil ready to be refined. Coal ready to be compressed into a diamond.
Sources. Spells. Sadhuzag.No moreW’s for her list, butS’s instead. “What,” Winnie mutters, “do I know?” She adds a sixth item to her list:Sadhuzags are attracted to spell sites.
Below that, Winnie draws the granite walls of the perfectly square pit. She has never been good at landscapes, but this place had a life of its own.Residual power,she thinks, sketching her view as she watched Jay kick up detritus from stagnant rainwater.Residual power from what? Residual power from when?
Her pen rolls over the paper, feeling almost as good as that night on her second trial when she cut down vampira and her heart sang with the hunt. Almost as good as the melusine blood in her veins.
When at last she finishes her sketch, she stares at the blood streaks. Here, captured in black-and-white, it really does look identical to the birch trees. Is that mere coincidence, or could it mean that the Whisperer is also attracted to residual Diana magic?
Winnie slides the paper aside and grabs a fresh sheet.
What I Don’t Know:
1) I don’t know where the dampener’s source is.
2) I don’t know when it was removed or who removed it.
3) I don’t know who put the dampener in the stream. Was it Dad or someone else?
4) I don’t knowwhythey put it in the stream→Though I do know that water neutralizes power.
5) I don’t know what residual power drew the sadhuzag to the second X→though I can assume it was a Diana spell.
6) Does the Whisperer connect to it all? Or is it total coincidence that it once killed there and that I sensed it last night?
