Page 103 of The Whispering Night
Where waters fed will wake the night
And mist inside the Pure Heart
Pure Heart
Trust the Pure Heart
For we are one in sleep and dreams
For we are one in waking.
THE SISTER
On the final night of the Lyrids, the girl goes into the forest. She has pretended she wants to be a hunter, and she passed the first trial without difficulty. It’s easy to kill a nightmare when you have magic. When all you have to do is whisper the right words and watch as a golden arrow hits its target without error. It’s even easier if you’ve had your source buried in the forest for months, weakening the nearby nightmares.
She killed a siren. Her stepfather was so proud.
The girl feels only shame over that death. It wasn’t right to kill that creature—as a hunter or as a witch. But it was what she had to do if she wanted to get out of the Dianas. To finish the agreement she was bound to years ago thathasto be fulfilled or everyone she loves will die.
She understands—loosely—why it must be her to cast the spell. It’s a long spell, longer than any other she has been taught, and the words are slippery. Her tongue doesn’t want to hold on to them, her brain doesn’t want to memorize them. It has taken her almost two years of practice and it’s only when she writes a song to go with the Latin that it all finally sticks.
She liked the melody so much, she ended up writing innocent words to go along with it. She sang it last month at an open mic night; her little sister told her it was the best song she’s ever composed.
The hills at the northern edge of the forest are sharp crests of granite. They break from the earth like fins. The girl climbs and dips, climbs and dips. Her heart pounds. Her fingers imagine strumming a guitar that isn’t there.
Light quivers through trees. A nest of will-o’-wisps. They watch her pass. They do not flee. The girl’s heart tightens. This is the last time she’ll ever see them.
Soon she reaches the granite hole in the ground, a dark gash in these shadows. It is a special place.One of a kind,said the Dianacornixwho first recruited her, and who first tasked her with this spell.Centuries ago, we Dianas interpreted thePurum Corfrom the spirits’ magic, and we have waited ever since to find the necessary pieces. Now we have them: the granite walls, the Lyrids, the half human, half nightmare—and you, Jenna, with your pretty voice and pretty music, able to control it all.
Thelegatumhas told the girl, of course, what the spell will actually do.Incantamentum Purum Cor.The Pure Heart spell. He knows its power. And the girl knows that if shereallycasts it, she will be sucked into the spell and die. Because it’s not her pretty voice that most appeals to thecornix; it’s her expendability.
But that is why thelegatumis helping her.
Now here he is, stepping out from between a rowan and an elm. He is dressed in all black, with a cap pulled over his head. He’s usually so well-dressed and polished—even when knee-deep in compost—but tonight he looks disheveled. Disastrous. And she fears for half a second that heisn’tgoing to help her. That he has come to tell her he has changed his mind.
He hugs his hand to him, and even in the shadows, it’s clear the skin is burned raw. It has sloughed off to leave glistening flesh exposed to the frozen night.
That’s what magic does. Alotof magic.
“Your hand—what happened?”
He shakes his head. “I… had to cast averba circumvolens.”
“On who?” Circling-word spells are complicated—and magically intensive, requiring strict boundaries on what and who a person can speak to. Still, they should not leave scars like that behind.
Thelegatumignores her question. “Is Grayson ready?”
“Yes, he’s ready. When the spell is finished, he has a ride for us. That way.” The girl points north, to the forest border where her boyfriend waits.
“Good. You’ll need to be fast when this finishes—run like you’ve never run before, Jenna. And I will handle thecornix.”
Yes, right. The reason the girl is here. She nods obediently, even as herthroat is closing up while she settles on the edge of the granite pit. She has always been struck by the strangeness of this place. In a forest made ofweird,somehow this rectangle in the ground is even weirder. And she has never been quite clear if it was made by natural geology or spirit dreams or something else entirely. It’s so perfectly carved into the earth.
She has also never been quite clear how a half human, half nightmare came to live in Hemlock Falls. Whoever they are, were they naturally born? Or were they somehow created?
Jenna slips inside the pit. Her feet crunch on decaying leaves, compressed and rotted by winter. They are a soft, damp carpet of a tree’s shed memories.That’s a good line for a song,she thinks.Maybe I’ll write it once Grayson and I reach California.That’s where her birth dad lives. He’s a composer like Jenna wants to be.
On the higher ground nearby, thelegatumpaces. Whatever just happened to him, it was bad. But they both know that theIncantamentum Purum Coris so much worse.
