Page 22 of The Luminaries
Winnie’s night is a continued roller-coaster blur. Everything happenstoher instead ofbyher, and each new smile or pat on the back or word of congratulations leaves her less and less able to speak up. Until finally, it is almost dawn and Mom is coming to pick her up because Rachel called and told her everything.
“Everything” in quotes because the reality is that no one actually knows what happened. The reality is that Winnie didn’t kill this banshee and something else did—something that is nowoutsidethe red stakes and forest boundary. Maybe it was the werewolf… or maybe it was that unidentified thing she saw. The one nobody else noticed or seemed interested in hearing about.
Werewolves, however, are a known quantity, and while the hunter applicants speak excitedly about such a monster, the adults are very clearly on edge. Winnie hears Aunt Rachel say, “I’ll notify the Council first thing tomorrow.”
Mom is in her robe and pajamas when she arrives in the old Volvo, the Beatles keening rhythmically, audible before the car headlights come into view. Then she is parked and stumbling out with a combination of fury, relief, and pride on her face. Mostly just fury, though she doesn’t let any of it loose until Winnie is in the front seat and the Thursday estate is shrinking in the rearview mirror.
Then she lays into Winnie with a rage that Winnie hasn’t seen since Mom caught Dad and he fled. It starts off seething and whispered, her grip white-knuckled on the steering wheel, but it has reached “inside voice” by the time they hit the main road. Then “outside voice” by the time they turn onto their street. And finally “concert shrieking voice” by the time they park on the curb in front of their house.
The actual words circle around three main themes:How could you beso reckless?Followed byWhat if you had died?And lastly,Why didn’t you tell me?Once Mom reaches the end of those subjects, she loops back to the start.
As she has done most of the night, Winnie holds her silence. There is an ache in her chest that feels like the banshee is crying again and her heart is going to split in two. She can’t stop cleaning her glasses the entire drive home. Like if she pauses for even one second with her furious scrubbing, she will burst into tears and confess everything. And though she knows she needs to eventually tell someone the truth, she can’t bring herself to do it now. Not while three sips of whiskey are still hot in her throat and all those Luminary cheers are still fresh in her ears.
Once they’re parked, Mom marches around to the passenger side and yanks Winnie out. She’s not yelling anymore. Instead, her eyes are wet and she pulls Winnie in for a hug. The Kevlar and leather jacket are in the back seat, and Winnie melts into her mom’s arms. She can’t remember the last time they hugged like this. Not since Dad left.
Somehow, Winnie doesn’t cry. Somehow, her mom’s pajamas (blue stripes) and familiar soap scent (verbena) give her more warmth than the whiskey and more calm than even the banshee tears.
At least until Mom whispers into her hair, “I’m really proud of you, Winnebago. I’m so,soproud of you.” Mom pulls back then. The sun is rising behind her, just a faint kiss of pink to glow around her like a halo. “Furious, but proud.” She cups Winnie’s face, and her nose scrunches playfully. “My wittle baby is all gwown up. And did Rachel tell you? Thanks to you, we’re invited to clan dinner next week. It’s just a… a trial visit, but it’s something.”
Winnie’s insides go cold. “She invited us already?”
“Yep.” Mom grins, and the wrinkles that Winnie thought were permanently creased between her eyebrows slough away. “Andyou’re allowed to return to afternoon training at the Sunday estate.”
“Oh,” Winnie rasps. Something as sharp as banshee claws is spiking in her stomach. Something hot as the mist when it rises. This is all she has ever wanted and all she has dreamed about for the past four years. She should be happy, but instead she wants to vomit.
Worse, Mom wears an expression that takes ten years off her face andmakes her shoulders seem higher, broader, stronger. Winnie doesn’t want that to go away. She doesn’t want this smile around Mom’s eyes to disappear or their world to return to forest gray.
“Darian is going to be so excited.” Mom slings her arm around Winnie’s shoulders.
And it is the final nail in Winnie’s coffin. Winnie can’t tell Mom the truth now. She can’t tellanyonethe truth now.
“How do pancakes sound for breakfast, Winnebago?” Mom hauls her toward their front porch with its peeling paint and the dangling chains where a bench used to swing. “There’s a second trial to prep for, and a hunter needs her carbs.Lotsof them, with as much syrup as we can squeeze on top.”
CHAPTER14
Winnie doesn’t think she can possibly sleep, yet after pancakes and a hot shower, she crashes the instant her head hits the pillow. She doesn’t hear Mom get ready for work (a long running argument between them is that Mom makes coffeeway too loudly), doesn’t hear the Volvo’s engine rumble to life, and doesn’t notice the light change outside.
When she finally wakes up, it’s 3:00P.M.She doesn’t know if she was supposed to go to school—it’s a Friday, after all—or the Sunday estate after, but considering the time, she decides it can wait until tomorrow. Especially because she has no interest in ever leaving bed again.
Instead, she lies under her old sunflower covers and stares with weak eyesight at the dust motes and a forgotten spiderweb beside the ceiling light. Her tiny desk, with the napkins stuffed under one leg to keep it stable, is littered with sketchbooks and pens that Darian always begs to organize.At least let me label them,he says.And dates—don’t you want to know when you drew all these nightmares?
She doesn’t. In fact, she wants to rip down the sketch of a hellion she’d made, all doglike and drooling, taped to her wall beside a shadowy kelpie sketch, its underwater horse form murky and vague.
How naive she’d been to think she could ever capture the forest ona page, that a pen couldevertransfer the three-dimensional reality of spiderweb hair against her face or green, velvety skin bearing down.
“No,” she mutters, shooting up in bed. Her comforter falls off and cold air swirls in. Rain has started to patter against her window, and the sunlight diffusing through the curtain is turning grayer by the second. Eventually, thunder rumbles—unusual for spring in other places. Not unusual for Hemlock Falls.
She flings her gaze to a banner that hangs over the back of her bedroom door: the Wednesday bear. It’s faded. A piece of pine-green felt that stretches two feet and is gifted to every Wednesday when they first start training at the Sunday estate at age five.
Darian threw his away after Dad. Winnie just put hers where she could never stop seeing it.
“The cause above all else,” she says, swinging her legs from bed. The floor groans beneath her feet; the ancient beige carpet is cold. “Loyalty through and through.” Yes, she sucked at hunting.Reallysucked at hunting. But she isn’t going to let that stop her.
So what if last night didn’t go according to plan? So what if everyone was right and she hadn’t been ready for the forest? She still got what she wanted and what her familyneeded.There’s no reason not to keep going. She has been gifted with a second chance. Her dream could still become a reality. All she has to do is stay this course and take the second trial.
To pass the first trial,the Rulebook says,an applicant must track and slay a nightmare without any interference from an adult. To pass the second trial, the applicant must spend a night in the forest alone; no adult hunters are allowed to interfere except in emergency situations. Lastly, the applicant must pass the family trial. These trials are unique to each clan and subject to change at any time.
Spending a night in the forest alone. That is what Winnie has to do next, and four years ago when she’d decided to take these steps, it had seemed so easy. After all, Francesca Wednesday was her mom, Winona Wednesday was her grandmother, Maria Mercoledì was her great-grandmother. She’d thought that had to count for something.
