Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  But Max hates me for it all the same. Blames me for him having to sleep in a one-room hut near the counselors and the mess hall.

  And now, standing on the shore, I know he won’t let me get out of this initiation. He wants me to suffer. To a pay a price for his eviction.

  “If he knows how to swim, he won’t drown,” Max adds. In his hand, he holds something—a small silver pocket watch—turning it over between his fingers, the chain swinging like a pendulum. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s had the watch, always fidgeting with it. His dad gave it to him, the others told me. It was a birthday gift before he was sent here—so he could track the hours he was stuck in this shithole, they had joked. It seemed like a cruel gift, in a way. A reminder that time would continue on without him in the outside world. That he was losing time. We all were—trapped in these mountains.

  Jasper laughs, a hearty, side-splitting laugh, and takes another long gulp from the bottle.

  Still, I stand at the shore, refusing to move.

  Then Max crosses the space between us, before I can brace myself, and he shoves me toward the lake. I take several steps back, then I spin around—my hands balled at my sides. Max and I stand only a foot from each other, both of us ready to make something of it—to not let it go. Bloody knuckles and broken jawbones and bruised flesh.

  But then Lin says, “Come on, man, just walk out on the ice and get it over with.” My gaze flashes to him, and he shakes his head. “It’s fucking freezing out here. Do you guys really want to get in a fight and try to explain black eyes to the Brutes in the morning?”

  I feel my fists relax, but Max keeps staring at me, willing me to make a move toward him. I’ve only been at the camp a week, and Lin is right—I really don’t want to start something that might not end. Always checking over my shoulder to see if Max is following me through the trees. Never able to sleep. And I have no idea what sort of punishment we’ll face with the Brutes. A punishment that might follow me for the rest of my time here.

  So I turn away from Max, my arms rigid, snow blowing sideways in gusts now, and I take a step out onto the ice.

  It creaks and settles, but doesn’t give way.

  I move toward the center, each step a slow shuffle, until I feel the ice thinning beneath me—a layer of water soaking through my boots. I stop and look back at the shore.

  “Keep going!” Jasper shouts out at me.

  But I can’t; I know the ice will break. I shake my head.

  “That’s not the center!” Jasper calls.

  I turn and see that I still have several more yards to go. But I’ll never make it. The ice is way too thin. When I turn back to face them, Max has left the shore. He’s moving quickly out toward me—rage bottled up inside him, chest puffed, arms clenched.

  I brace myself for whatever is about to happen next.

  Max doesn’t speak when he reaches me, he just shoves me hard in the chest and pushes me backward on the ice. “We said you had to go to the center,” he spits, blood rushing into his face.

  The ice moans beneath our feet, but Max won’t stop—he wants to go to the middle of the lake, where the ice is thinnest. To prove a point. To prove I’m afraid but he isn’t. He forces me farther onto the lake and the others on shore laugh—shouting things I can’t make out. Voices echoing up into the trees. Urging Max on.

  But I know this won’t end well. For either of us.

  We’re near the center when I hear the sound: the cracking of ice.

  Max’s gaze swings up to mine and his shoulders drop. He looks frightened for the first time, and his head snaps back to shore, gauging how far away we are.

  Too far.

  “We have to run,” I say, out of breath. But Max seems frozen in place. The ice is too thin, and fractures weave along the surface, little spiderwebs expanding beneath Max’s boots. It pops and bends, starting to give way.

  His eyes dip to his feet, going wide, and there is a low vibrating shudder that rises up from the ice.

  I don’t know why I do it.

  Maybe it’s just a reflex. Or maybe it’s the burst of memories that flare through me: of my parents the last time they said goodbye, my mom smiling as they strode out the front door, and then the image of their car, destroyed a few miles from our house. The memory of that day, of death so close I could feel it.

  And it’s here again. Making fissures in the ice.

  I bolt forward and push Max away, knocking him hard to the surface of the ice. Something slides out from his pocket: the silver watch with the long chain. We both eye it for a second, only a foot away, and then the ice breaks beneath me.

  Whoosh. And the ground drops away.

  The cold stabs its talons into my skin like a thousand little cuts with a serrated blade. My head sinks below the surface at the sudden impact, and it sucks the air straight from my lungs. Panic surges up into my brain. My arms reach for the surface, lungs tightening, and I fight to pull myself back above the waterline, drawing in a quick, cold breath of air. I try to yell but can’t. No air left. No function beyond staying above the surface.

  I grab for the edge of the ice, but my hands slip off. Too cold. My arms too weighted. I look for Max and find him standing several feet away, staring down at me, like he is observing a creature in an aquarium. A curiosity in his eyes—but not panic, not shock or fear—only an eerie, calm resolve. He doesn’t drop to his knees and try to pull me out, he doesn’t yell for the others to come help, he just stares—his jaw set in place. His eyes pinholes of black.

  I claw at the ice, and my hand grabs something, something cold and smooth. I clutch it in my palm and then Max is suddenly there, reaching for me. But he doesn’t grab my arm to pull me out; he snatches at the thing I hold—the silver watch—and his fingers catch the chain, yanking it back. It snaps apart between us, the watch still in my hand.

  I blink up at him and suck in my final breath, knowing it’s the last one—the stormy night sky blurring around me—my vision going as the cold sucks all the warmth from my skin, my eyes, my lungs.

  I blink and try to grab for the ice one last time, but my arms barely move, and Max only watches. Cold, cold stare.

  I close my eyes and the dark pulls me under.

  One swift gulp, and everything goes numb.

  The lake is just as bottomless as the boys at camp said it would be. An immeasurable depth.

  I sink and there is no light. No quality of time. Of how much water can enter a person’s lungs.

  I sink until I open my eyes again.

  Until I reach the bottom of the lake that is not the lake at all.

  The cold still bores through me, my skin still feels the chill of the lake, but I shiver beneath a thick canopy of trees. Snow falling over me, breathing air into my lungs.

  Alive. Inside a winter forest.

  And a girl is there, kneeling in the snow and dark. A girl who bends over me with hair long and black.

  A girl. Who just might be a witch.

  NORA

  A soft pain forms in my chest, darkness running through me like a river.

  Max was to blame for what happened that night.

  He forced Oliver out onto the ice. And the others, Rhett and Jasper and Lin—they were there too. And when Suzy told them I had found Oliver—alive—they forced me into the Wicker Woods to see if it was true, if Oliver had somehow survived and had been hiding this whole time. If he was alive—if he didn’t drown—it would change everything.

  It would mean they weren’t responsible for his death.

  Max could come out of hiding, and they could all laugh about it: Remember the time we thought you were dead? A pat on the back and everything would be okay. No one goes to jail for murder. No one has to pretend they didn’t know what happened—he simply vanished from his bunk. No one has to carry the lie with them for the rest of their lives, knowing a boy died one night when they were away at camp.

  But I was wrong. I didn’t find Oliver alive.

  And everything that happened tha
t night couldn’t be wiped away or forgotten. A boy is still dead. And only I can see him. Only a Walker can see ghosts in the darkest kind of dark. Our eyes are different, strange, able to see what no one else can.

  “I’m sorry,” Oliver says, like it’s all his fault. Like he’s sorry he’s dead and sorry he let me believe he wasn’t. Sorry that now my skin craves his, that he kissed me in my room and slept in my bed and breathed real-boy breath and let me think it could always be like this.

  Bad things happen, I think.

  A missing boy is found in the woods. A dead boy.

  I lower the spellbook in my arms and watch the sky rain down in scattered bits of ash. I breathe and it feels like razors in my lungs. The fire too close, blazing down toward the shore. So close now. But my heart is caving in, and that hurts worse.

  “None of it matters,” I say. It’s too late now anyway. He broke my heart and the forest is breaking around me and there’s no time left.

  He reaches out and tries to touch me, to run his fingers down my cheek, but I flinch away. He’s dead, and even though it’s not his fault, he’s still dead. Dead dead dead. And nothing can undo that. No Walker spell inside the book can bring him back, return real air into his dead-boy lungs.

  Nothing can change what’s been done.

  I glance up the shore, where the trees between us and the road are already engulfed, flames winding up into the skyline, catching on treetops, cyclones of heat and ash. Even the path back to my house is blocked. There’s no way out now. We waited too long. I waited too long.

  The snow has melted away along the beach, revealing black pebbles and ash-coated sand.

  “Nora,” he says. But I won’t look at him because nothing is okay. Because everything is burning. Because the fire is too close, surrounding me now. And he is dead. Tears spill down my cheeks.

  “I never wanted to hurt you,” he says, reaching out to wipe away the tears with his dead-boy palms. A boy I can touch and feel but no one else can. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I wish I could make this right.”

  “But you can’t,” I say, bitter words from bitter lips.

  He’s so close he could kiss me. He could blot out everything with his mouth on mine. But I don’t want him to. Flesh and bone. I don’t want to feel the heat of his skin knowing it’s not real. None of this will last.

  He was never mine to keep.

  I shrug away from his touch. My heart seizing in my chest, my lungs burning so bad it feels like they’re on fire, encircled by flames. And I am surrounded by flames—the fire too close, the heat unbearable. Singeing my flesh, my hair swirling up into the cyclone of ash. I can’t stay here. I won’t survive.

  “Where are you going?” Oliver shouts.

  “Out there,” I answer.

  He tries to grab my hand, but I slip away, stepping out onto the ice. It’s my only option now—the only place where the fire won’t burn.

  On the lake.

  “Nora, no,” he calls, his voice broken, crumbling beneath his tongue. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Only for me,” I answer back. I’m the only one who can die, who still has something to lose. I know there’s no time left. No escape. I’ll suffocate from the smoke or burn from the flames if I stay here.

  I move quickly, before he can pull me back. I sprint out onto the ice, through the low layer of smoke, slipping once and dropping to my knees, but I push myself up and keep going. The ice is thinner than before—than the night I fell through the surface and the water was needles on my skin.

  The lake snaps and creaks like old wood, like ice not as thick as it once was. The heat from the fire is melting it, turning it back to water. I shuffle and slip, but I keep moving forward until I reach the center—where the shore is nearly the same distance away on all sides. I press my hands to my knees and try to breathe, but the smoke is too thick. My eyes burn, my lungs rasp with each inhale. And I feel a sudden certainty that I’m going to die out here. That this is really the end.

  This is how I will be remembered inside the spellbook: Nora Walker died on the lake, her body never recovered. The long line of Walkers ended with her.

  I cover a hand over my mouth to keep out the smoke and I lift my head, standing up straight. The view across Jackjaw Lake is of a forest in flames. A forest burning. Started by a boy named Jasper who is now buried in the ground. Swallowed whole.

  At the boys’ camp, several structures are already gone—torched to their bones. And I can’t tell if anyone is still there, trapped in their cabins. The wilderness is on fire and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  I look to the sky, the shade of gunpowder, and I remember the feeling when I fell into the lake, when my skin felt like it was peeling open, when my grandmother’s ring slipped free from my finger—sinking down into the dark. To the bottom of a lake without an end.

  But Jasper found it inside the Wicker Woods. The ring returned.

  Just like when I found Oliver.

  Both sank into the lake.

  I breathe, chasing down the memories as quickly as they skitter away.

  Mr. Perkins said that miners used to drop things into the lake—they were offerings to the forest, to calm the Wicker Woods. Because they believed the lake was the beating heart of this place.

  The pieces begin to settle in the back of my mind. Dust falling through rays of sunlight—finally visible.

  I never knew why things appeared inside the Wicker Woods. What foul form of witchery or mischief was at work. But now I see: If it falls into the lake, it will return again inside the Wicker Woods.

  A notation I will make inside the spellbook, if I ever get the chance.

  And on one fateful night, during a bad winter storm, a boy fell into the lake—he sank to the bottom and was spit back out inside the Wicker Woods. An offering made the night of the storm.

  And then I found him under a full moon. Mine to keep. Finders keepers.

  Now I understand, now I see. But it doesn’t change a thing. He’s still dead. The forest brought him back, but it didn’t bring him back whole.

  The cold from the frozen lake rises up through my boots, and I begin to shiver. I think I hear Oliver calling for me, searching, but the smoke is too thick now, swirling in strange gusts across the lake, and he can’t find me.

  Fire spits up into the sky from the tops of trees along the shore. Devouring, angry, hungry. It sounds like a monster, sucking up all the oxygen. And I know my home is gone. Nothing left but a scar across the ground. Only piles of soot and brick.

  Tears break over my eyelids and fall to the ice, becoming a part of the lake.

  I was born in that house—where every Walker before me has lived—and now it’s gone, only ash.

  And it’s my fault.

  I was wrong about so many things. I was wrong when I thought Oliver had killed Max. I was wrong when I thought my death was near. Or maybe I wasn’t—maybe death will still find me. Out here on this lake. In this burning forest.

  Is it better to burn alive or to drown? Which will hurt less? The ice shifts beneath me, bending away from my weight. An inch of water now at the surface. I squeeze my eyes shut and push away the cold, pushing away the sound of trees cracking and falling to the ground in the distance. The sound of flames roaring along the edge of the lake. Ash in my hair, embers falling at my feet, melting the ice.

  I waited too long, I think again. I should have left with Suzy and Mr. Perkins.

  Eventually the ice will crack and give out beneath me. Eventually I will sink into the lake and drown just like Oliver.

  Another offering to the lake.

  A wilderness covered in snow shouldn’t burn. But fury can fuel strange things—tonight, it fueled a forest fire. If my grandmother was here, she could fix it, she would wave her finger in the air and the trees would listen. She would make this right.

  Through the smoke, I glimpse the boys’ camp across the lake and see several boys running from their cabins. They haven’t all fled yet. Some of them ar
e still there. “The forest wants to burn,” I think, I say aloud to no one. And it wants us all to burn with it. Maybe the forest deserves it. Maybe it’s lived too long. I squeeze the spellbook against my chest and think about all the Walkers who sprouted up from these woods. All the stories that live in the soil, live inside these pages. And now it will all burn.

  My head begins to buzz, and a familiar sensation skims through me: I’ve been here before. I’ve stood on this ice and thought all these thoughts and felt the ash in my lungs. The feeling of déjà vu rattles over me again so quickly that my head tilts back to the red-stained sky.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick, thud.

  I blink and refocus. I squeeze the spellbook tighter.

  The ice shifts beneath me, so thin I can see the deep black below my feet. I hear Oliver somewhere in the smoke, calling my name. He’s close now.

  I grew up in these woods, I think. Every Walker has. It belongs to me, and I to it.

  The forest heaves and whines and screams along the shore, flames spurred on by spite and revenge. The ice snaps below me. Fear claws up into my throat.

  Oliver shouts again from the smoke, but I don’t listen. I don’t shout back and tell him where I am. Instead, I peer up at the awful sky, at the tips of trees I can just see above the smoke. And I sense the forest watching, listening. It knows who I am.

  “I am Nora Walker,” I say softly, just as I have each time I’ve entered the Wicker Woods, but now my words seem tiny. No magic in them at all. No meaning. I think of my grandmother—how sturdy she was. An anchor that could not be moved against her will. Many feared her, the strong tenor of her voice, her wild dark hair—I never saw her take a brush to it and it often caught in the wind and tangled into knots, but moments later it was silk down her back. She was a marvel. And I wish I was her right now, I wish I knew what she knew. How to command the trees around her.

  I grip the spellbook tighter, knowing the power inside its pages, the weight of so many words handwritten by all the Walkers before me. I know the meaning in them. That they once commanded these trees, these dark skies. The woods and Walkers are bound to one another. We cannot be divided, stripped clean of the other.