Page 32 of The Whispering Night
Winnie wants to nod, but yet again, she cannot—and yet again, the wasps screech louder in her ears. “Cahoots is a funny word,” she offers instead. Then, “Can we go inside? It’s cold out here.”
She aims for the doors, feeling weird—uncomfortable even—that she was just here yesterday with her square of friends. They laughed, they shopped, and the seesaw of Winnie’s world seemed so bright. Now here she is, verbally hogtied by a Dianacornix.
At the store’s entrance, Erica stops long enough to toss the now-empty takeout box into a trash bin. “Are we being watched?”
Probably,Winnie wishes she could say. Instead, she spits out: “Though seemingly small, no wider than a cobra, the basilisk can in fact stretch up to forty feet long.”
“Right.” Erica dusts salt and grease off her hands. She has more animation than Winnie has seen in…years,actually. And Winnie doesn’t think it’s because of all those fries. “We’ll figure this out, Win. Every spell has limitations—even the ones I’ve never heard of.”
Winnie tries to smile, and is delighted when her lips can actually obey. But before she can offer a sentimental reply, Erica grabs the door and shoves it wide. Perfume scents and pop tunes river over them.
“Come on. Let’s get you some more clothes because while I look great in a pantsuit, you do not. Also, the mustard, Winnie. The mustard.”
Once upon a time, when Winnie was nine years old, she and her best friend Erica Thursday pretended to be Dianas.
They wore navy bedsheets draped over their bodies in imitation of the navy cloaks Dianas had supposedly worn in their secret meetings centuries ago, and they each picked out what their source would be. Winnie’s was a simple rock she found in the garden that looked vaguely like a human metacarpal bone. Erica, meanwhile, wentall in.She stole a spherical piece of obsidian that sat in her family’s cold, modern living room on a side table beside the grand piano—and that her mom really loved and was super pissed to later discover had been removed.
That was part of the fun, though. Pissing off Marcia, waiting for her to notice when her younger daughter misbehaved. Erica had an incredible ability to weasel out of punishments. It was 25 percent manipulation mixed with 75 percent airtight logic.
You can’t just take things, Erica! That crystal costs hundreds of dollars. You get no allowance for a month.
Ah, but Mother, if I don’t have an allowance, my friends will notice—and what if they tell their parents?
Winnie, who was even worse at verbal manipulation than she was at lying, would always observe her friend with wide-eyed awe and high-grade envy. Becausewow,Erica would articulate an argument so impenetrable, even a jury would stand up to applaud—and Erica did so without ever breaking a sweat. Winnie, meanwhile, fumbled over her words and usually abandoned all hope at first sign of resistance from whomever had scolded her.
Not that Winnie got scolded often in those days. She liked rules and she liked following them—and any activities to the contrary happened pretty muchexclusivelyon Thursday grounds where no Wednesday bears dared to tread.
On this particular night seven years ago, there were no Fridays treading either since it was actually a Friday and Jay was at clan dinner. Looking back, those Friday nights were often Winnie’s favorite of the week. Notthat she didn’t love Jay—she did, and in quite a different way than she loved Erica—but having it be justherand her bestgirlfriend…
Those really were the best times.
And there they were, wrapped in bedsheets in the old cabin on a hot midsummer night holding their sources and pretending to cast spells.
Eye of newt and blood of stone,Winnie improvised.
Tongue of harpy whispering home,came Erica.
Then together, they sang the one line theydidknow went in a Diana’s spell—or at least, that was what Katie Tuesday had told them the week before (and she would know because her cousin was in Lambda training).Sumus unus in somno et somniis.
We are one in sleep and dreams.
When they uttered those words, they felt a charge brush over them, like static cling after going down a plastic slide. It prickled and crawled and made their hairs rise until they both reached out to touch each other…
Andspark!A little burst discharged between them.
At the time, they decided it had to be magic. Realmagic, and they would swear to Jay the very next morning that they had cast an actual spell. Later though, as the years would pass, Winnie would decide it was nothing more than the sudden flow of a current between two charged objects brought in contact. In other words, electrostatic buildup.
But there would still be a little part of her that wondered…
Until the day when Winnie learned Erica reallyisa Diana who can cast magic. That Erica reallydoeshave a source, and it is hidden where no one will ever find it. Or at least where Winnie hopes no one will ever find it, since the Tuesdays are a constant threat—and that threat is only growing after what happened a week ago in the forest.
Two witches burned alive.
A third witch who got away.
It sounds like the beginning of a nursery rhyme:This little witchy went to market. This little witchy stayed to play. These little witchies got burned alive, while this little witchy got away. And this little Luminary screamed “wee, wee, wee” while the forest chased her as prey.
Sumus unus in somno et somniis.
