Page 81 of The Luminaries
But no. The Whisperer is right there. She sees it now, a wavering of the world that hurts her eyes. That distorts the shape of manticores and kelpies warring on the beach. Worse, she is out of space. There is nowhere left to run, because the Whisperer isn’t just behind her—it’s all around, encroaching on her from all sides.
This is the end for Winnie. There is only the lake dumping into frothy, misty darkness. There is no escape. She survived the banshee and the vampira, the basilisk and the manticores and the kelpies and the werewolf. But the Whisperer will get her in the end. The creature no one else believes in.
She looks over the waterfall. There is nothing to see except moonlit death clutched by shadows. But at least that death will leave a mark—an intact body for the kids on corpse duty to find tomorrow.
You either trust the forest or you don’t, Winnie.
She jumps.
CHAPTER39
Winnie falls faster than the water. She plummets through wet air toward what she hopes will not be pain. She hopes it will be a fast death. She hopes she might not die at all.
It is eternal. She passes the overlook. She passes trees. She passes rocks where water catches like meat upon a claw. Then she sees the white, white churn that she is going to fall into.
You either trust the forest or you don’t, Winnie.In that moment, right before her feet—one with a shoe, one without—hit the river, she decides she trusts it. Fully and completely. After all, it has gotten her this far, still alive.
She folds her arms to her chest, points her toes, and closes her eyes.
The impact is brutal. Like a sledgehammer to her legs, it beats up through her. Then over her, carrying with it a blanket of cold. She pierces deep into a basin she hadn’t known was there while the river grabs and pulls and rips at her like a harpy eating scavenged carrion. She loses all breath, because in cold this complete there is no space for it. It saps every molecule away and then saps everything inside her that keeps her warm.
She is still alive, though—sheknowsshe is still alive, because when she starts kicking and grappling, her body moves. The water is a spiderand she is in its net; the more she fights, the deeper she seems to sink. She can’t see anything. She hears only the constant roar of a waterfall. And each movement grows weaker than the last.
She is so cold. She is sluggish with it, freezing cell by cell into a sculpture that cannot move.Hypothermia,she thinks, a frantic almost laugh bubbling from her mouth. Because she survived even the Whisperer, but nowhypothermiais going to claim her.
And there’s nothing she can do about it. Every second she is under water is one more second for her organs to frost over and her blood to Popsicle in her veins. She thinks her lungs might hurt and that she also might need air, but it’s the cold that grasps her the strongest.
Until it finally lets go. A beautiful feeling replaced by warmth, warmth, like the mist when it first rises. Her lips part. She lets water into her lungs, too lost to notice because the cold is gone and she is happy.
The world disappears.
Winnie doesn’t die. Later she will marvel at it, but in the moment, she is unconscious and has no idea she still lives. All she knows are the three times she briefly resurfaces into awareness.
First, it is to find teeth on her arm and white billowing around her. She glimpses red mixed within silken fur before she fades away again.
Second, she awakens to a song. It is under the water with her, haunting and pure and familiar.Jenna,Winnie thinks.This is Jenna’s song.She is elated to realize this, her heart surging through her—because Jenna is still alive and she is singing. Erica will be so happy.
Winnie wishes there were a way to hold on to this feeling, to sketch out the way Jenna’s face must look right now.
The ghost song fades; consciousness does too.
And finally, Winnie stumbles back into awareness to find she is on cold silty ground, breathing air, while an old, damp blanket rests over her.
It smells faintly of bergamot and lime.
CHAPTER40
Winnie does not come to again for what she will later learn is several hours, and when she finally does, she is in the Monday hospital. The walls are beige with a blue stripe, just like the morgue. Blackout blinds cover a single window to her left. Something beeps—several somethings—and before she can even orient herself in this space, Mom is right there.
She is crying, but it’s happy tears, and when Winnie tries to understand what Mom is saying, she finds she can’t focus on a single word. Then a warmth spreads through—false warmth, she knows, that is not like the warmth of death’s embrace—and she loses all grasp on reality.
For a full day, she drifts in and out like that. Until at last, they let the drugs fully leave her system and clarity sparkle in.
The first thing Winnie says to Darian, who stands beside her, is, “Emma?” Her voice is rusted. Unrecognizable even, and almost inaudible.
But Darian hears. “She’s alive.” He smiles, and Winnie realizes from the red around his eyes and on his nose that he has been crying too. “Thanks to you, she’s alive and healing fast.”
No,Winnie wants to say.Not thanks to me. I almost killed her.“Can I see her?”
