Page 8 of The Hunting Moon
“It’s for Grayson Friday.” Emma looks both sheepish and defensive, scratching ferociously at her calf through a gap in the cast’s webbing. “We’ve always gone to the hunter parties before. And yes, I realize Casey and Peter suck”—she flashes Winnie a commiserating eye roll—“but I think this is the right thing to do. He died, and we should respect that.”
“Is this because of Jay?” Fatima asks suspiciously. “Because I’m pretty sure he and Winnie are a thing—”
“We arenota thing,” Winnie spurts. Heat sears onto her face and she dips over the aisle toward everyone. “I already told you that.”
“I know, but…” Fatima shrugs as if to say,I do not believe you, Winnie Winona Wednesday.And judging by the sideways smirks on Bretta’s and Emma’s faces, they don’t believe her either.
And Winnie finds her fists re-forming. Not because of the girls’ knowing grins or the substance of Fatima’s words, but because Winnie feels like she did at the funeral all over again. Like she’s back beside the thunderous falls while people fume about the wrong nightmare and congratulate a Lead Hunter who doesn’t want to be one.
Stop being weird,she shouts at herself.This isn’t the way a Luminary reacts!In fact, having a party for a dead hunter is peak Luminary. As is having a coffee named after her. It’s like Grandpa Frank once told her,That’s why we’re called the Luminaries, Winnie: we are lanterns the forest can never snuff out.
“Let’s go,” Emma begs as Professor Il-Hwa steps into the classroom. “Please? Like Casey said, it’s the right thing to do.”
Bretta nods as if this explanation is fully acceptable, and Fatima sighs in defeat. “Fine, but if my mom catches me sneaking out, I’m blaming the three of you.”
“Wait,” Winnie hisses—right as Professor Il-Hwa clears her throat at the front of the room. “We have to sneak out? What time is this party?”
“Oh, sweet Winnie.” Bretta pats her arm gently. “We’ll pick you up at midnight.”
Winnie finds it hard to focus on Professor Il-Hwa’s lecture. Not even a thorough breakdown of the circulatory systems of kelpies can hasten the two-hour period along.
Kelpie: A shaggy water creature, it is horselike in shape, but close examination reveals algal hair and a bulbous body best suited to high-pressure depths.
She takes occasional notes—similar to tuna, moves blood warmed by muscles to heart—but her pencil more often slides to the margins of her ruled paper. She draws droll hands first. Just the bones, so many, each perfectly in its place. Winnie has always found it soothing to sketch them.
It doesn’t soothe today.
So she shifts to the lesson’s subject. She saw a kelpie up close only ten days ago. She hacked right through its two bilateral tentacles. Its face, waterlogged and humanoid, had a single row of fangs glistening in the night.
Winnie will never forget that glisten.
She’ll also never forget how the kelpie bellowed, a sound that felt fathoms deep and centuries ancient.
Most of all, though, Winnie won’t forget how the Whisperer came out of the trees only a few hundred steps later. She’d been so preoccupied by the manticore also bearing down—and then the werewolf knocking her out of the way…
Winnie scratches through her drawing of the kelpie. A vicious silver line to hack away its agonized face. Then she scratches through the droll hand, and finally, she scratches through the date scribbled at the top of the page.
April 6.
Grayson’s funeral,she scrawls instead.RIP.
When the bell finally rings, the twins and Fatima confirm that they’ll see her at midnight—which,wow,seems so far away—before they all separate. Emma, Bretta, and Fatima all head for history class. Winnie, meanwhile, aims for the locker room. She is still four years behind; she still has to endure her cousin’s smug, entirely too punchable face every single day.
Like a watered-down Beetlejuice, simply thinking Marcus’s name three times seems to summon him. As soon as Winnie steps from the locker room in her black tracksuit, a cool spring breeze sweeps over her, carrying an arrangement of birdsong… and Marcus is right there.
“Hey, cuz.”
“Oh mygod,” Winnie replies, letting loose all her exasperation from the day. She won’t be rude to Casey or Peter—at least not before she, Mom, and Darian areofficiallyback in the Luminaries—but Marcus? He’s family. Horrible, obnoxious family.
“What do you want?” She picks up her pace down the stone path that leads to the elaborate obstacle course.
“I hear there’s a party tonight at the old museum. Can I come?”
“No.” Winnie glowers at him. It has no effect. “You’re fourteen. You cannot come to a party.”
“You’re only sixteen.”
“That’s a pretty big difference.” To demonstrate this, Winnie drags her hand from the top of her forehead down to the top of his. Her hand has to drop several inches. “Your voice hasn’t even changed yet.”
