The Whispering Night (Luminaries #3)

Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

In theory, Winnie knows what she will find at the Big Lake is not actually going to be a single spirit eye opening while the words Gone Fishing hover in mist nearby. But now that the thought is in Winnie’s head, it’s basically all she can imagine.

Pure Heart. Trust the Pure Heart.

I love you. I’m sorry.

What Winnie actually finds when she bursts through the tree line is the end of the world. Ms. Morgan wasn’t overblowing her panic; the Incantamentum Purum Cor really is destroying everything. There’s a hurricane spinning over the Big Lake made of green clouds and lightning. The forest behind Winnie burns, flames spread by this wind—and not at all tamped down by the rain. And all along the shore, in droves beyond imagining, are nightmares.

There are Luminaries in there too, although they are vastly, pitifully outnumbered. Through her near-ruined glasses, Winnie spots familiar faces battling against more nightmares than she ever knew the forest could contain. It’s as if the Xeroxed Compendium at the bottom of her closet just started vomiting out every page. There’s Chad Wednesday against an arassas with a cat head and lizard body. There’s a hidebehind, long and thin and laughing as it attacks Isaac. There’s a hellion pack, a banshee, a kelpie.

And oh god—there’s Aunt Rachel against countless swarming manticore hatchlings.

With Bretta and Fatima beside her.

Winnie wants to plow right to them, knives slashing through carapace and antennae. She even bursts out of the trees, ready to rampage over… until wind freight-trains into her, cackling like a combine harvester eating an eclipse. It hurls the full force of the acid rain onto Winnie’s face; her nose hairs singe on a stench like a chemistry lab that’s gone up in flames.

It is the Whisperer unleashed.

And it is Jay, still singing: I miss you more now. Now that it’s been so long .

T minus nineteen minutes.

Nearby, the melusine emerges from the trees. It stays tucked in the same shadows as Winnie—a shadow that stretches longer once the dryad joins them.

Which, wow, is weird enough to jolt Winnie fully back to the task at hand: to the Crow, to Erica, to Jay. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, she thinks as she searches for any sign of where Martedì might be.

Except… as soon as those words flicker across Winnie’s brain, they get punted back out again. Rejected like faulty code. Because there’s something that doesn’t feel quite right about them. Something she can’t pinpoint at this exact moment while the apocalypse rages before her… But something.

“Focus,” she hisses to herself. Hot rain sears her lips. “If you were a Diana casting a spell, where would you go?”

Okay, that answer is easy: She would go somewhere all these fighting nightmares and Luminaries couldn’t reach… But also somewhere near enough to the lake that the Pure Heart spell in Jenna’s source could finish casting. Because as the final lines of the spell read:

Dawn will rise, casting light

No more Lyrids falling bright

Where waters fed will wake the night

And mist inside the Pure Heart

Winnie wishes she had binoculars. She wishes she had harpy-sharp vision. She wishes her left lens wasn’t shattered and her right lens all crooked, turning this epic collapse into an epically collapsing kaleidoscope.

And she wishes that she hadn’t seen two corners of her Wednesday square—and her aunt too—fighting only a tenth of a mile away. Near enough for her to help, near enough for her to save.

She searches for them once more… but rather than spot Wednesday forms fighting off hatchlings, she instead spots the sadhuzag bucking down the beach. Its seventy-four prongs stab anything in its path. Its razor hooves slice up shoreline.

Though not flesh eaters, they will kill any who enter their territory, including other nightmares. Addendum: Some evidence suggests the sadhuzag is drawn to residual magic, such as areas where Diana spells have been cast.

“Oh,” Winnie says on a sigh, watching as the stag-like beast thunders this way. When Jenna cast the first portion of the Incantamentum four years ago, that residual magic attracted the sadhuzag to a bloodied pit in the forest.

Now the spell is finishing, so maybe the sadhuzag will be drawn to all that magic again.

“I have to follow the sadhuzag,” Winnie tells the melusine, who is five feet to her right and curled in on itself, as if it craves the end of this cataclysm and the return of a comforting night. “Will you come with me?”

Somehow, talking to the melusine is even weirder than simply standing with it. But the melusine does oblige—and the dryad too, lumbering onto the shore while sand digs beneath its root legs. Its branches corkscrew outward. Wood groans, loud enough to puncture the storm’s subatomic thunder.

Then branches stretch around Winnie, around the melusine.

And the sadhuzag scuds right past them, massive and majestic. It doesn’t see them. It just careers ahead, while the sand beneath its razor hooves gets punched up… then sucked into the vortex of the waking spirit.

“Follow it!” Winnie hollers, and the dryad’s limbs creak apart to let Winnie and the melusine hurry onto a path Winnie has taken before. On her third trial, she came this way, trying to cross the lake where water flowed shallowest toward the waterfall. Trying to outrun the Whisperer as it chased her.

This time, she is the one doing the chasing.

The sadhuzag leaps into the lake, clattering onto the same submerged rock that Winnie used a month ago. Its hooves seethe up water, and Winnie is shocked to see sparks of green winking with each splash. It’s like the Wednesday fireworks exploding in every wave. Bioluminescence, she thinks.

She lurches into the water after the sadhuzag. Her feet also froth up microscopic lights. And oh goodness, how the scientist part of her wishes she could take a sample. Wishes she could stop and observe this never-before-seen galactic light forming in every splash her boots disturb.

The melusine does not run beside Winnie. It dives into darker, choppier depths and vanishes. The dryad, meanwhile, follows much more slowly. Its root legs can’t gain purchase on the slick, underwater rock. The winds want to tug its branches the wrong way.

So Winnie leaves it behind. The sadhuzag is already to the other shore, and if she loses sight of it, she’ll lose her only chance at finding the Crow and Erica.

And Jay, and Jay, and Jay.

To kiss across shadows into a bright fever

The dawn mist rises inside me like a wildfire

Yes, it really is a wildfire now because the salamander’s flames have reached the shoreline in some spots, choking out smoke and sparks.

The water is to Winnie’s knees, warm and feral like a hot tub with all the jets on. The current pries at her, wanting her to go toward the waterfall.

You either trust the forest or you don’t, Winnie. You have to make up your mind.

She trusts it. She trusts it to the very purest heart of her. But to follow the current—to let it tow her over… That is not the way she’s meant to go today. The forest is going to have to trust her instead.

Green continues to burst around Winnie’s legs. Even the waking spirit and its hot, hot rain and merciless winds cannot stop these lights from shining. Honest lights. True lights.

Ahead, the sadhuzag has been forced to slow because more nightmares infest the western shore. More Compendium entries spewing out willy-nilly. There are Tuesday scorpions here too, and as Winnie drags onto the shore, shedding water like a sodden bear, she thinks she spies a graying redhead fighting against a manticore hatchling.

Well done, J.T. Winnie smiles grimly as she pushes into a walk. Then a canter. Then a run. You finally picked the right team.

Except… no. There it is again. That burst of faulty code that says, You’re missing a semicolon. Try again, Winnie.

She rushes on. The TV static volume is turned so high now, it’s a disharmonic overtone to an unshackled superstorm. Her hair is wet from the rain, wet from sweat. Hemlock Falls never gets this hot; the forest won’t let it. But the forest, she thinks, isn’t in charge anymore.

And it seems to have realized this. Because as Winnie and the melusine rush down the sandier western shore, the nightmares they encounter stop fighting. They leap back from their Tuesday targets or from each other. Whatever match they are locked in, they cease entirely. They fix gazes onto Winnie—some beady-eyed, some eight-eyed, and some with no eyes at all but simply cold sentience. Then one by one, they scuttle or paw or lope after her.

Some Tuesdays take advantage of this, shooting or stabbing at a back that flees. But most gape, just as the nightmares did, at Winnie while she cannons past. She tries to smile at Mason, whose knife she has… well, not stolen, but borrowed. She doesn’t think he sees the grin.

It is right as the sadhuzag flings itself into the stretch of forest that dips all the way down to the shore—the place where Winnie came with Mario only two nights ago for the safari—that she has a sudden vivid memory of a rowan tree with leaves bursting fresh along its spindly branches.

Some Dianas will craft small coins from rowan wood that has been harvested in a spirit forest, believing such amulets can protect against nightmares.

Winnie could almost smack herself for not remembering this sooner. There was a rowan tree beside the granite pit, as if planted there to protect while a spell was cast. So of course, the rowan tree by the shore might also have been strategically grown. Which means that is where the Crow—and Erica and Jay—must be.

Winnie glances behind her. She has hundreds— hundreds —of nightmares following her. She hopes the rowan tree doesn’t harm them. She hopes the Crow doesn’t either.

T minus thirteen minutes.

The forest here looks like it did on Monday night. The light is that same awful gloaming that Winnie’s eyes hate, and the shapes in the trees might as well be her fellow science nerds. She can almost pretend that wulver over there is Mario.

Wulver: These creatures are often mistaken for werewolves, but in fact are full nightmares with no daywalking abilities. With furred, humanoid bodies and lupine heads, they are not aggressive unless provoked.

Ripped-up earth and roots mark the sadhuzag’s passage—and Winnie follows it. The green light feels weaker here, and now that Winnie is paying attention, the wind is softer too. She thought it was just a result of entering the trees. That these aspens and silver firs were protecting her. But no, there is actually less wind.

Static scrapes over her skin. A whispery keen that means magic happens nearby. And Jay’s song grows louder. But it’s like he’s singing through a wind farm; like she can hear that he’s right there, but everything is distorted by the waking spirit.

I’m coming, Jay. Wait for me.

Then Winnie sees it: the sadhuzag. It has stopped fifty feet ahead, more silhouette than vibrant beast, its proud body at attention, head and antlers upright.

Two hellions charge by on Winnie’s left, spraying tendrils of flame and tearing up underbrush. Next, a banshee on her right in a streak of silver and green.

Grief wells in Winnie. Unbidden, burning. Jay, Erica, Dad. But it dissolves as soon as the banshee is past.

The hidebehind leaps from tree trunk to tree trunk—laughing and laughing. Then come three vampira on their stilt legs with mandibles wide. Even two ghost-raccoons smear by like glowing exhales.

What is happening? Winnie thinks. Her brain accepted that the melusine and the dryad were helping her. It accepted that all the nightmares of the forest were following her. But now it has decided to revolt and go, THIS IS WEIRD. MAYBE YOU SHOULD WORRY.

Winnie unstraps her second knife. Nightmares are still marching or crawling or zipping by her, and one by one, they’re stopping behind or around the sadhuzag. Assembling like soldiers in a row…

No, like flies on sticky paper.

Now that Winnie really squints, she can make out a faint mist curling and coiling around each nightmare. Vines, Winnie thinks. Like the ones that held Erica. And the nightmares are leaping right into that trap, getting glued into place one by one.

Well, no one ever said nightmares were smart. To judge a nightmare with human emotion, the Compendium states, or to anthropomorphize them in any way is to fundamentally misunderstand their inner motivations and decision-making. They do not operate according to Maslow’s pyramid of needs, but rather to an arrangement of needs that is entirely their own.

Winnie hastens forward. She at least knows there is a trap there, and that means she can avoid it. She cuts left, circling deeper into the trees, away from the lake. The wind and rain have all but stopped now.

And oh yes, now she feels her locket. It’s buzzing like a wasp inside a bottle, and it’s definitely getting hot.

T minus seven minutes.

Nightmares continue to get snared by the fly trap. Tens of them pinioned between trees or under hedges or on top of branches. Each immobile while mist swerves around them. But actually, the farther Winnie treks, the more grateful she is that the nightmares are there. Because thanks to their arrangement, she can see exactly where the trap’s boundaries are—and avoid the boundaries in turn.

“I take it back,” she murmurs to the caught hidebehind as she shimmies around a red cedar. “You nightmares are really stinking smart. Please forgive me and every other Luminary who ever thought otherwise.”

Winnie gets all the way to the overly cheerful stream that will lead down to the shore, its waters burbling a bit higher now thanks to the rain. The nightmares don’t cross, of course, but neither, Winnie notes, does the mist.

This is a crack in the witch’s trap. This is how Winnie is going to get close to the Crow.

She fights the urge to check the Timex as she stalks forward. She doesn’t need a second-by-second countdown anymore. The time is basically panic o’clock. The heat cast from her locket tells her that. As does the total stillness that has draped the forest. No rain, no wind, no movement or noise or distant chaos. Just…

Quiet.

It’s like the silencing spell the Crow cast in the maze. Everything has suddenly become muffled. Even her boots splashing in the stream stop creating enough sound.

Mist continues to writhe over the shore, holding nightmares in its clutches like an entomologist with new bugs. Winnie’s Compendium can’t stop cataloguing them. Basilisk, changeling larvae, urus, vampira, ghost-deer, velue, earth sylphid, manticore hatchling. She even thinks she sees the fiery wings of a phoenix.

Then suddenly, Winnie is back at the shore. At that half-moon stretch of beach where the safari went. Where Grayson’s funeral was and Jay was forced to hear congratulations and condolences at the same time. Youngest Lead Hunter! You must be so proud!

To think, that was the least of the problems rolling down the pipeline toward Jay.

The Big Lake is visible again—and there’s no winking eye. Nor any hurricane. Nor any waves . The whole thing is placid as glass, except for a rhythmic ripple each time the ground quivers with the spirit’s geologic heartbeat.

Ba-doom.

Ripple.

Ba-doom.

The Crow stands at the water’s edge, her hands on her hips and her attention on the lake. She is dressed as she was in the maze with armor and mask—but she isn’t the only Diana now. Winnie hastily counts twelve other figures: four hounds, two more crows (although their masks have black beaks instead of gold), and then figures like she has never seen before.

Strigēs, she thinks, remembering back to Understanding Sources. These Dianas are ranked just below cornīcēs and wear owl masks. Since spells are not created so much as interpreted from the forest’s own magic, these witches specialize in translating magic into spoken words.

Aprēs: These Dianas wear boar masks and are colloquially referred to as “sniffers.” They are tasked with finding new types of magic in the forest that owls can then translate into spells. Hierarchically, they are one level below strigēs.

Lyncēs: These Dianas wear lynx masks and frequently command hosts of hounds. Like a Diana version of a Tuesday scorpion, they are meant to guard witch society from Luminaries.

Well, so much for Winnie’s attempts to uncover all the Dianas in Hemlock Falls. She has no idea who any of these people are. They could be friends, they could be relatives, they could be strangers from a thousand miles away. She has no idea, and dressed as they all are in this nondescript armor, there’s nothing at all for Winnie to latch onto for recognition.

Other than the chattering stream and throbbing lake, the one lynx and four hounds are the only movement on the beach. Mist oozes from their left hands to serpentine into the trees. And now that Winnie squints, she can see second ropes of mist connect each witch with the rowan tree. Silva, Winnie recalls. A spell that can only be cast within the forest, relying on immediately absorbed spirit power.

If Winnie can stop those witches from drawing that power, then she can probably stop the fly-trap spell that’s imprisoning all the nightmares. And then she could give all these Dianas something else to fixate on.

Winnie’s front teeth tap together silently as she tries to make the math of two knives against five targets work. Presumably the lynx is in charge, so maybe she can take them down first—

A splash shatters the stillness. Erica bursts from the water, towed onto the shore by mist vines. She gasps and chokes, as if she was just anchored underwater to the point of drowning. Her body reaches the shore. The vines tow her to the Crow’s feet, sand shoveling out from beneath her. A scar to mark the otherwise untouched beach.

“Let’s try this again,” Martedì declares, her voice unmodified by her mask. “Finish it, Erica. Finish what Jenna started now, or join her at the bottom of the lake. We had an agreement, remember? And you should know by now that there is no escaping a Diana bargain.

“So do as you promised, or next time, I’m not towing you out again.”

Winnie’s teeth don’t move now. Her breath is held tight. Erica hasn’t finished the Incantamentum . There is still time to keep the spirit from awakening.

“Finish the spell, Erica. You’ve done so well up until now. All that’s left are the final words. We’ll say them with you, won’t we?” Martedì opens her arms to the other Dianas, like a maestro ordering her choir to perform. As one, they all sing—except the hounds and the lynx: Sumus ūnus in somnō et somniīs.

A wave of power rocks outward, knocking Winnie onto her heels. It makes her locket sear so hot, she grabs for it. So hot she rips it out from under her armor without conscious thought. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Get it off me!

She makes noise. Way too much of it. But no one hears her because at that same moment, Erica makes noise too. A giddy, croaking howl. “You won’t hurt me. I’m the only one who can use Jenna’s source, I’m the only one who can finish—”

The vines rip Erica back underwater. In less than a second, she is submerged with only bubbles to show where she went down.

Winnie’s locket continues burning. It glows orange now—and she can smell the exo-scales under the gold melting. Heat claws upward, drawing more sweat from her face. The locket is going to roast through her armor. It’s going to brand her skin.

She bites her fist to keep from crying out, but as each second passes, the locket glows brighter. So even if she can keep her voice contained, she can’t hide this glow.

It’s like a beacon. Like a lantern. Or like fireworks.

Winnie’s lungs and spine soften at that thought, and suddenly, she sees a way to make her math add up: before she left the pontoon boat, she grabbed—on sheer instinct—a single capsule of fireworks plastered with Danger! labels.

Well, danger is exactly what Winnie wants right now.

She digs into a side pocket of her armor until she finds the paper filled with gunpowder and stars. It’s slightly damp from her run through the lake, but not soaked. As long as she can get the fuse hot enough…

Except no. When she tugs out her matches, they are fully sodden. Fully useless. Think, Winnie. You’re a scientist. You’re a problem solver. All you need is…

Heat.

She fights off the desire to laugh—a giddy, croaking howl just like Erica’s. Then she cants forward, her eyes never leaving the shoreline or the Dianas. Erica is still plunged underwater, and the words Sumus ūnus in somnō et somniīs still shiver through the air, lapping in time to the heartbeat waves against the beach.

The locket cooks Winnie’s face, heat rising off it like a candle. She lifts the fuse to the locket. The gold dangles and sways. But after sixteen Mississippis, the laws of thermodynamics finally take hold.

Fire sparks. The fuse catches. The fuse burns.

Winnie chucks the firework at the rowan tree.