Page 20 of The Luminaries
And underneath that sound, she hears something else. Something whispery. It susurrates like wind through branches and bites like winter gray. It’s different from the banshee’s crying, and Winnie doesn’t recognize it. This isn’t something she remembers from the Compendium, isn’t something she rememberseverhearing about or studying or sketching from an anatomy book.
Winnie slings on her backpack and swoops up the trap, still her onlyweapon. She will trigger it manually if she has to. Better to risk the poison than get eaten alive by the forest. The banshee is now on her feet and racing into the trees, her silver hair a vanishing moonset.
Not far ahead, a white shape streaks through the trees. It is the wolf, and it is not in fact running toward Winnie. It is zooming away and yipping with alarm.
Behind it, the forest seems to change. At first, Winnie thinks it just a trick of her eyes, the result of filthy glasses. But no, the longer she stares, the more the forest really doeschange.It warps and bends, it shivers and quakes. Trees undulate and shadows stretch long—all in time to that frozen whisper that seems to bleed out from every pore and surface in the forest.
Then the wolf is past. The kaleidoscoping thing behind it disappears. And the forest falls silent as a grave.
Winnie shoves at her glasses and runs.
CHAPTER12
Winnie doesn’t know how she reaches the red stakes. Maybe it’s luck, maybe it’s the forest’s will, but she isn’t foolish enough to question it. Somehow, she gets to the boundary, and somehow, she sprints past. She has twisted her ankle three times in unseen holes or hidden roots. She has fallen once and scratched up her palms, muddied her knees, and almost lost the trap. But every time, she has scrabbled back upright and sprinted onward.
She trips a fourth time and flies forward, toward a splintered spruce with low branches. She catches herself. Glances back to make sure she has left nothing behind, that the trap is still clutched in one hand with metal spines retracted.
That’s when Winnie spots what she tripped over: the banshee’s head.
No body—just the head, silver hair now gray, and green velvety skin now pasty. Its eyes are vacant, and for the first time, Winnie sees those vertical pupils the Compendium describes. The creature has no teeth, only gums, and it has no life, only the memories of it coiling upward like steam off hot coffee.
Whatever killed the halfer is what killed this banshee. The shreddedpieces of the neck and spine look exactly like the body from this morning.
Winnie draws in her legs, heart pounding while she gapes at the banshee head. It wasjustalive, and unlike the halfer’s feet, it could not have been thrown out of the boundary. She’s closer to the road now than the edge of the forest mist.
This head wascarried,and only a daywalker could have done so without tripping the boundary alarm.
Or maybe the alarmwastripped,she thinks. Maybe she’s just too far away from the Thursday estate to hear the blaring alarm. Maybe hunters will swarm this area at any moment.Or maybe they won’t and I am the only person who knows this banshee was dropped here.
“Dropped by what?” Winnie croaks, rising stiffly and flinging a cautious glance around. She sees nothing, hears nothing. Her ankle throbs. “Crap.” She grabs for the banshee’s hair before she can think too hard or look too closely.
The hair feels like spiderwebs against her fingers, and the head is lighter than she would have guessed. Human heads, she knows from experience, are heavier. She takes a few steps to make sure her ankle is okay (it hurts; she’ll manage) and that the head won’t fall. Then she picks up her sprint right where she’d left off.
The forest and its nightmares recede behind her.
Winnie doesn’t know how long it takes her to reach the road. She is so focused on just propelling herself onward and not dropping the banshee head or her trap that it could be anywhere between midnight and dawn—and once she does reach the street, the sky offers no answers. Clouds have swept in to hide the moon.
Her stomach hurts. Her ankle hurts. Her fingers hurt from holding the silver hair so tightly. The last thing she wants to do right now is walk back to the Thursday estate. But loyalty demands it; the cause demands it.
Not only is this banshee head useful for science and resources—after all, banshee tears and venom have multiple uses—butsomeoneneeds to know about what killed it.Someoneneeds to know about a nightmare that distorts the forest, can walk outside it, and frightens even a werewolf. They’ll be able to, at the very least, ID it and then determine a threat level for Hemlock Falls.
After shoving her glasses with her forearm, Winnie aims south. She skips from streetlight to streetlight like a melusine hopping streams. The night is quiet. No alarms sound from the Thursday estate. No cars vroom past. She hears only her footsteps and the occasionaldrip-dripof banshee blood on pavement or theclick-click-clickof her teeth as she replays what just happened in the forest.
What had the werewolf been running from? What had killed the banshee?
Winnie wishes she’d checked her email from Mario now. She also wishes she’d brought a weapon into the forest or else gone home entirely. This isn’t going to end well for her, showing up at the Thursday estate and explaining what she saw and how badly she failed.
She can just imagine Aunt Rachel’s face, eyes ablaze and lips pressed into a furious line. Or Dante’s laughter and the new songs he’ll compose in homeroom tomorrow. Or worst of all, the almost certain pity and secondhand embarrassment in Emma’s and Bretta’s eyes.Whathad Winnie been thinking? She should be dead right now. She really should be dead.
Her heart feels like it’s breaking all over again, her soul awash in banshee tears. This had been her only dream: to become a hunter. Now she has failed the first trial. She will never get another chance. The only path left for her is art school, assuming she can even get in—but then, all she’s ever really drawn are nightmares. She probably can’t even qualify for that summer program, no matter how many strings Ms. Morgan might try to pull.
This must have been how Darian felt when he saw his Council dreams shatter. No going back. No rewriting history. Just… broken glass.
Andgod,Winnie has probably made things a lot worse for Darian now, hasn’t she? And for Mom. What the hell was she thinking, going into the forest like that?
Winnie stops her forward march beneath a streetlight. The river glimmers nearby, slow and wide as it curves. Birch trees peel as if sunburned. Waters lap and laze. It should be soothing, but it isn’t. Winnieused to swim here with Erica and Jay. She can just imagine their expressions. Cold disgust from Erica. Bored disapproval from Jay.
It is as she stares at the river with unseeing eyes that an engine revs into her hearing. It is moving fast, and she knows with a sickening lurch that there can be no avoiding it. This road is too long, too straight. The fact that she can now see headlights means that they can also see her.
