Page 17 of The Luminaries
It’s far from the heart of the forest, so there will be fewer nightmares there than where the other hunter applicants go. But theoretically, Winnie could complete the trial in there. A nightmare is a nightmare, after all. It doesn’t matter where she slays it.
All Winnie has to do is go inside the bounds of the forest, wait for the mist to rise, kill the first monster she sees, and leave again.
Is it riskier? Sure, since there won’t be any hunters nearby to rescue her if she needs it. But she has armor to protect her and rage as fuel. She is Grandma Winona in that old photograph, and nightmares don’t stand a chance.
Aunt Rachel is about to see that. Darian and Andrew are about to see that, and stupid Dante with his stupid birthday song is about to see that. Then stupid Casey with his stupid comment calling her bait and stupid Marcus with his smug smile and squeaky voice—they’ll all see it.
Stupid Jay and stupid Erica too. Even stupid Ms. Morgan with her art programs and printed applications. Winnie doesn’t need them; she never needed them; and soon all the Luminaries are going to see that she, Winnie Wednesday, is meant to be a Luminary still.
She can run an eight-minute mile and cut it down to six and a half minutes if she adds in sprints. She has practiced falling and jumping and spinning so many times in her empty house that there are hard calluses on her elbows and shins. She knowsevery entryin the Nightmare Compendium,every entryin the Addendum, and she can draw an accurate manticore with her eyes closed.
All of that counts for something. Ithasto count for something.
It feels like only minutes before Winnie spots the first stake marking the forest: yellow and with a reflector that glints in the nearest streetlight.It means that if she heads inward, she will find the forest’s edge. A natural fog whispers at this hour, but all is silent. No cars have passed, and the nocturnal creatures of the forest—the raccoons and foxes and nightjars and bats that would thrive in other spaces—know better than to live this close to where the spirit’s dreams come into being.
Any moment now the thicker, gnarly mist that carries the nightmares each night will rise up from the soil. Winnie has never seen it up close, and for that matter, she has never seen a living nightmare. She isn’t frightened, though. Instead, as she veers off the road’s shoulder and away from the streetlamp’s bright embrace, she feels only excitement.
The world is sharper behind her new glasses. Her muscles sparkle and stretch. And her mind runs through the pages of the Nightmare Compendium as if it were right before her. Page after xeroxed page that she has slowly memorized every night when Mom thought she was sleeping. All the anatomical diagrams she has copied with her own pens, then drawn again from memory, then improved upon once her stint with corpse duty began.
Changelings: These daywalkers can perfectly mimic any human they see. Long claws give them away, and they cannot speak.
Werewolves, were-cats, were-stags: Human by day and monster by night, these rare daywalkers blend in easily and are unrecognizable from other humans in their daytime form.
Melusine: These beautiful, mermaid-like creatures inhabit the rivers and lakes of the forest. They are not aggressive but will attack if humans get near.
Revenants, banshees, drolls, manticores—Winnie’s mind buzzes through them all. How to recognize them, how to fight them, what they eat, and how they move. She is absolutely ready for this moment.
Which is why she shoves her glasses up her nose one last time, pats at her new locket for luck, and steps into the trees.
CHAPTER11
It is dark. Darker than Winnie has ever experienced before. Darker than a windowless room with no lights even though a waning gibbous moon flickers down. It’s as if the forest canopy presses around her, squeezes in. An iron maiden of shadows and shapes and noises unlike any Winnie has ever heard before.
It is also cold.
She stands for a time at the edge of the red stakes. A hemlock stretches skyward beside her, twice as wide as she and with grooves in the bark that glow like old scars. Two hops and she will be outside of the forest boundary again. Not safe, but at least safer, since if any nightmares chase her, the sensors will be tripped. The Thursday-night hunters will come this way.
They must be out there now, preparing for the mist that coils up from the soil. Searching for the nightmares that will form tonight or reappear from last night. There is no consistency to it, no pattern. No guessing where specific creatures will arrive or which ones might wreak death. There is only entering the forest and killing any that try to leave.
Underbrush rustles nearby. Winnie goes cold. Not the outer cold that was already numbing her fingers and toes, but an inner cold. Like the north wind has pushed beneath her skin and found all her organs.
Then she spots it: the mist. It is white, thick, and hungry. Moment by moment it slithers over the forest, erasing the trees from sight. In seconds, Winnie sees nothing. Not the nearby oak or balsam fir. Not even her feet, and soon, not even the hemlock.
She clutches a poison trap to her chest and watches the mist tendril upward. Strangely, the mist warms her. She knew, in theory, that this would happen—just as she knew the mist would erase her sight. But learning facts from the Compendium is nothing like experiencing it.
Plus, the mist isn’t something Winnie could draw, so she never quite focused on it like she did with all the nightmares.
At first the heat is welcome, melting away the numbness and caressing her muscles like a bath. Then it is hot. Cloying. Claustrophobic. She cannot see a thing. Panic heaves up her throat along with the night’s lasagna.You’re fine,she shouts at herself.You’re fine!The mist is only temporary, and all she has to do is stand here and remember how to breathe.
If she were still training with the others, she would have practiced breathing, moving, and hunting through this in an obstacle course on the Sunday estate called the “hot room.” As if in some massive spa, steam is pumped into the sprawling underground chamber. But Winnie only ever saw the entrance when she trained under the Sundays. She never got to go inside.
Spirit mist,she mouths to herself,is both the origin of and end of the nightmares each night. It rises once the sun is fully set and dissipates once it rises again.
She wants to take off the jacket. She wants to rip off the Kevlar and sprint back out of the forest boundary. But she doesn’t. She just sucks in clotted heat and continues to recite the Compendium.
Though initially thick and hot, it quickly fades into a more typical post-rain fog. The mist acts like a stage curtain. First it cloaks, then it reveals. Hunters are at their most vulnerable during the mist rise.
Winnie definitely feels vulnerable, and though the mist is already starting to diffuse, she still cannot see her hands or the trap clutched within. She palms the device carefully. There was a button—she’dseenthe button—but now she can’t find it, and the last thing she needs is to have the trap explode in her face.
