Page 48 of The Luminaries
“Come on.” Jay twists away from the falls and heads back into the forest, leaving her to scamper after him. Though they move deeper into the trees again, she senses that they are circling the Big Lake. Every now and then, she glimpses dark water through the trees. Wide, long, still, and treacherous. She once had to lug a kelpie corpse out of the lake, and she’d felt something almost sentient in there. She knows the spirit that dwells in the forest technically resides undereverything,but only in the lake does she truly feel like it’s alive. As if even in daylight, it might start spewing out nightmares.
Fortunately, Jay doesn’t lead her there. Instead, he cuts west until they reach a stream. Winnie doesn’t hear it at all—the forest is too dense here, its grip too tight—until they are upon it. It’s small, clearly fed by mostly rainfall, and Winnie realizes with dawning horror, as Jay hops easily over the burbling waters, thatthisis the running water he referred to.
“That isn’t going to stop a nightmare.” She stares down at the little trickle of clear water that fills a ditch no more than three feet across. “This is walking water, at best.”
Jay has the decency to look ashamed. “The stream gets bigger in the summer. But,” he adds quickly before Winnie can commence a full freak-out, “it still stops most nightmares. The mist doesn’t even rise on this patch of land.” He leans across the ditch and offers her a hand.
She doesn’t take it. The stream is literallyso smallthat even with her sore muscles she easily jumps over. Her boots sink into soft soil and she stalks past Jay. A single hemlock owns this island—and itisan island. The stream splits about twenty steps to the left, encasing the earth in a pathetic trickle that looks like it might peter out at any moment. It then reconnects another twenty paces to the right.
“If you can get here before the mist rises,” Jay says, “and climb that tree, you should be safe for the rest of the night. No nightmares will form here, and the moving water is enough to keep them from stepping over.”
Winnie tears off her glasses, reaching for a sleeve to frantically clean them… only to then realize the scales on her armor aren’t any good for that. Jay realizes too, and in an easy shrug, he slips off his hoodie and offers it to her. She yanks it from him and starts scrubbing away.
She also starts pacing. “How far are we from the drop-off point?”
“Close to a mile?”
“Close to a mileunder? Or close to a mileover?” She glares at him as she strides past. “Every second will count for me.”
He winces. “Close to a mile over.”
“Crap.” She increases her pace, her glasses cleaned but her fingers unable to stop scrubbing.I’m going to die,she thinks.What the hell was I thinking?“So I have to run over a mile in the dark knowing that the mist will rise at any moment, so I can… can…” She stomps to the hemlock and squints up. Its lowest branches are well over her head. “So I can stand under a tree for an entire night?” Her voice is getting high-pitched with a mixture of panic and fury.
It’s not fury at Jay—although he clearly thinks it is—but rather at herself. Because really: What thehellwas she thinking? She might have real armor now and a satchel full of knives, but she still has no idea what she’s doing when it comes to facing the forest.
I’m going to die.
Her breaths start coming in faster. Weaker. She is squeezing Jay’s hoodie around her glasses, and she can feel the frames resisting.I’m going to die. I’m going to die.At some point, she bends forward, the needle-strewn floor wavering in close.
Jay drops to a kneel before her. “Hey.” He wraps a gentle hand around her glasses-crushing fist. “We’re going to practice, okay? We’ll run from the drop-off point to here, and then I’ll show you how to climb the tree. It’s easier than it looks, and there’s a branch sturdy enough to hold you all night.” He pulls the hoodie and the glasses from her grip. For some reason, his eyes no longer look gray. Instead, they are the color of the hemlock creaking behind him. Of the stream rollicking by. Of the falls’ roaring crash when they hit the hard earth below.
“You’re not as bad as you think you are, Win,” he continues. “All those morning jogs over the dam made a difference.” He tries for asmile, and even though Winnie knows he’s pumping her full of hot, useless air, she finds herself surprised he’d ever noticed her out jogging.
“Don’t coddle me, Jay.” Her lungs are still weak and her body still doubled over. “I know how bad I am at this.”
“No.” His smile vanishes. His eyes turn back to gray. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
She wishes she could believe him. Or rather, she wishes she couldagreewith him. She knows he’d never lie; the problem is that he seems to have a lot more faith in her than she does.
She straightens. The forest wavers beneath a head rush; Jay’s face scopes upward to track her. He is slightly blurry without glasses to shape him; and he seems to melt into the forest, the color of his eyes bleeding outward. “Thanks for helping me,” she says softly.
Jay sucks in a breath, his chest expanding beneath his white T-shirt, and vaguely Winnie realizes he must be freezing without his hoodie on. Then he rises to his feet like a knight who has just been anointed. The hoodie and her glasses dangle from his right hand. His left hand flexes and fists against his side.
Winnie has the odd sensation that he wants to touch her—but the odd sensation that he also wants to run away.
He does neither. He just stares at her with that gray intensity only he can have, and says, “You either trust the forest or you don’t, Winnie. You have to make up your mind.”
CHAPTER26
The Sunday estate is lit up, much like the Thursday estate had been three nights before. This time, though, Winnie has a ride. Mom grips the steering wheel with ice-white knuckles. She has also said the same thing four times in a row: “If you think you’re in real danger, call the hunters. I’d rather have a living daughter thananythingelse, okay? Do you promise?”
For the fourth time, Winnie promises. When they reach the front curb, where the same hunter hopefuls from Thursday cluster (minus Katie Tuesday, who apparently failed to catch anything last week), Winnie can see her mom forcibly resist the urge to get out and hug Winnie. Instead, she wishes her daughter good luck, asks her please not to die, and says she’ll be here waiting at dawn. Then she drives away.
Other parents have gone inside the Sunday estate to ride out the night like it’s a sporting event and their kids aren’t potentially going to die. Mom is going to spend it with Darian.
“Oh my god,” Emma says, skipping over to Winnie with her dimples on full display in her cheeks. “You’ve got the new exo-scales.” She pinches at Winnie’s sleeve. “Hey, Bretta! Come feel this. We have last year’s exo-frame”—she knocks a hand against the hard casing on her chest—“which is great. But yours…”
“Ooooh,” Bretta croons, grabbing at a separate fistful of Winnie’s shirt. “How did you get this?”
