Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  Silently, I descend the stairs to the kitchen.

  The ingredients are easy to find. One whole cupboard is lined with glass jars filled with dried herbs and powdered roots and fragrant liquids with descriptions handwritten on the lids. There is even a jar labeled lake water, in case a recipe needed to be made in haste and there was no time to walk the few yards down to the lake itself.

  Mom has kept the cupboard stocked, never throwing anything out, even though she doesn’t use the herbs—not like Grandma did.

  I pour the few ingredients into the same copper bowl my grandmother once used: ground cloves and powdered cardamom, a dash of fawn lily and burdock root, and a pinch of a reddish-rose tincture labeled bero.

  I sift the mixture into a small cotton pouch, then cross the living room to Oliver. His hair is now dry, dark and wavy, and he doesn’t stir when I slide the cotton pouch beneath the blankets beside his bare ribs. His chest rises, the slow measured weight of his lungs expanding. A shudder runs through him and his eyelids flicker, his body tensing briefly—spurred by some dream I can’t see. He reminds me of an animal near death. Fighting it, struggling. I could crawl beneath the blankets and wrap my arms over his chest, I could feel the beat of his heart against my palm, I could wait for the heat to return to his skin before I went back to my own bed.

  But he is a boy I don’t know. A boy who smells of the forest now. Who reminds me of the winter trees, tall and lean with bark that is rough and raw and could tear open flesh. No soft edges.

  I catch my own breath and turn away. He is a boy I don’t know, I repeat to myself again. He is a boy with his own secrets. A boy unlike all the others—in ways I don’t understand. I can’t pinpoint.

  The recipe instructs that the herbs should be kept close to the body while you sleep for three nights in a row, and then the chill will be banished from the bones.

  It’s all I can offer him, all I know how to do—I am a Walker without real magic. Without a nightshade. It will have to be enough.

  Back in the loft, I close the book and bury myself beneath the sheets, trying not to think of the boy. A stranger asleep downstairs.

  The sunrise is close, the light through my bedroom window turning a carmine shade of pink.

  I pull the blankets up to my chin, begging sleep to find me. To draw me down and give me at least an hour’s rest. But my heart drums against my ribs, a nagging that won’t go away. It’s not just the boy downstairs. It’s something else.

  The moth I saw in the woods. White shredded wings and black pebble eyes. The moth is a warning.

  And I know what it means. I know what’s coming.

  My eyes flick to the wall above my bed, where a collection of items gathered from the forest are tacked to the wood. Bits of moss and dried maple leaves, a raven feather and a broken magpie egg, Juneberry seeds and other things found along the forest floor. A dozen dried wildflowers hang with stems to the ceiling, dusty pollen drifting down to my pillow. It’s good luck to bring the forest indoors, to let it watch over you while you sleep. These things protect me. They bring me good dreams.

  But not tonight.

  Even with the open window, with the snow gathering on the floor in drifts, I sweat through the sheets, my cheek sticking to the pillow.

  And in my fever dreams, I have the strange sense that by morning, Oliver will be gone. Melted into the floor like a boy made of snow.

  A trick of the woods.

  As if he were never here at all.

  Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

  FLORENCE WALKER was born in 1871 under a green Litha moon.

  Crows gathered on the windowsill when she drew in her first infant breath, and they kept watch at her crib, wings folded, every night as she slept.

  On Florence’s wedding day, a white-crowned sparrow in a nearby birch tree sang a tune that sent chills down the spines of those in attendance. She’s a bird witch, they said. They do her bidding.

  But it was merely her nightshade that drew the birds to her.

  She kept sunflower seeds in her pockets, and she left piles of them on rocks and along the shore of the lake. And when she wore her yellow-apricot dress, seeds spilled out through the hole in her pocket and made little trails wherever she went. She whispered omens to the birds, and in return, they told her the secrets of her enemies.

  Later in Florence’s life, the Walker home built in the trees was always filled with the chitter-chatter of house finches and spotted towhees. They flew among the rafters and slept crowded around the bathroom sink.

  Florence died at age eighty-seven. A nasty bout of tuberculosis. An owl cried from the footboard of her bed frame all night, until Florence finally let out a little chirp and went still.

  In the garden, a crow can still be seen hopping between rows of garlic and geraniums, searching for earthworms. Its eyes are that of a girl.

  How to Lure the Crow from the Garden:

  One handful birdseed

  A wisp of sapphire smoke

  Two clovers picked beside the garden gate

  Click your tongue andspeak Florence Walker’s name three times. Wear a sun hat.

  NORA

  Sweat beads from my forehead and I kick back the blankets. Hot and disoriented.

  The morning sun is a diffused orb of light through my bedroom window, and Fin is panting beside the stairs, tongue lolling in the heat of the loft. A tiny pulsing spurs at my temples from not enough sleep, and then I remember the boy. Full lips and too-deep eyes.

  I climb free from the bed, light-headed, on edge, and Fin follows me down the stairs—both of us needing the cool relief of fresh air. Something to wipe away the fevered dreams still clacking through me. The ones I can’t shake.

  But when I reach the bottom step, I stop short.

  In the living room, the fire burns low, barely a flicker from inside the stove.

  On the couch is a heap of blankets, a pillow rumpled and wrinkled and slept on.

  But no Oliver Huntsman.

  I yank open the front door and hurry out into the snow—the cold air pouring into my lungs, stinging the tips of my ears. A thin edge of panic worms itself between my shoulder blades. Not because I’m worried about him—but because I can’t be certain he was ever here at all. That I didn’t imagine him: a boy made of snow and dark stars. And once the sun rose in the sky, he turned back into dust and disappeared.

  I stand on the deck and scan the trees, looking for footprints in the snow, for some hint that he snuck away in the night. Returned to the Wicker Woods.

  And then I see.

  An outline appears among the trees, between the house and the frozen lake, and the breath catches in my lungs—a defiant itch crawling up the back of my neck.

  It’s him.

  He’s wearing his clothes from yesterday, now dry, and perhaps it’s just the morning light—all swimmy and strange and beautiful—but he looks oddly valiant, like a boy about to set off on a journey. Some perilous adventure he surely won’t return from.

  Snow skitters down frm the charcoal sky, and he spins around, sensing me watching him. His lean emerald eyes stare back at me—a starkness in them I can’t decipher. And in his hand I see the cotton sack of herbs I placed beside him while he slept.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, moving to the edge of the deck, but the words feel useless, sucked dry by the cold air as soon as they leave my lips.

  “I needed the fresh air,” he says, shifting his weight in the snow. “I was hoping the sun might be out.” His gaze skips up to the sky, where the dark clouds have snuffed out the blue beyond. And I wonder if he thought the sunlight would warm him, heal him—a balm on his weary mind. That it might return his memories to him in one swift inhale.

  His knuckles close around the pouch of herbs and he glances down at it, eyebrows drawn together, like he doesn’t remember holding it.

  “I made it for you last night,” I explain, a twinge of embarrassment slicing through me. Witchy herbs gathered by a witchy girl. I am a Walker
who has never wanted to be anything else, but I also don’t want him to look at me like the kids at school do, like the other boys at the camp do. Like I am a monster, strange and eerie with wickedness in my heart. I want him to see only a girl. “It will help to warm you,” I add, as if this makes it less odd. As if a sack of herbs were as common as a spoonful of strawberry cold syrup before bed.

  But his eyes soften, unafraid, unfettered.

  “You need to sleep with it for the next two nights,” I say, although I don’t expect him to really keep it—a strange bag of sharp-smelling herbs.

  He nods, and when he speaks, his voice is raw and shredded by the cold. “Thank you.”

  Fin plods down the steps and pushes his nose into the snow, trailing some scent through the low morning fog, past Oliver’s legs. “Another storm is coming,” I say just as an icy wind churns up off the lake, nasty and mean. It blows through the trees, stinging my face, and a feeling of déjà vu ripples through me so quickly I almost miss it. As if I’ve been here before, looking out at Oliver standing in the trees, his mouth pinched flat. Or maybe I will again—time slipping just barely forward and then back. I count the seconds, I blink, and when I open my eyes, the feeling is gone.

  Oliver lowers his gaze, and I wish I could pull words from his throat—I wish I knew what he was thinking. But he’s as mute as the jackrabbits who sit on the porch in autumn, peering in through the windows, thinking their docile, unknowable thoughts.

  When he still doesn’t reply, I clear my throat, preparing myself for the question I need to ask. The one that has simmered inside me all night, burning holes of doubt through my skin. “How did you end up in the Wicker Woods?”

  How did you survive in that dark, awful forest for two weeks?

  In the cold?

  His eyes slide back over me, but this time his mouth is turned down, a puzzled expression forming along his brow. “The Wicker Woods?” he asks.

  “That’s where I found you.”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t know,” he answers first, and then, “I don’t remember what happened.”

  The prick of something tiptoes up my spine—mistrust maybe.

  “It’s dangerous in there,” I say. “You could have died. Or gotten lost and never found your way out again.”

  “But you went into the Wicker Woods,” he points out.

  His expression is calm. While my thoughts turn in circles, round and round without end.

  “It was a full moon last night,” I say quickly. “And I’m a Walker.” Everything you’ve heard about me is true, I think but don’t say. All the stories. The rumors passed through the boys’ camp, the word whispered in a hush: witch.

  If he had grown up here, he would know the lore of my family. All the tales told about Walkers: of Scarlett Walker, who found her pet pig in the Wicker Woods, where it had turned an ashen shade of white after eating a patch of rare white huckleberries. Of Oona Walker, who could boil water by tapping a spoon against a pan. Or Madeline Walker, who would catch toads in jars to silence people from telling her secrets.

  But Oliver doesn’t know these tales: the legends I know to be true. He only knows what the boys have said—and most of their stories are lies. Born from fear and spite, not from history.

  He doesn’t know that Walkers can enter the Wicker Woods because our family is as old as the trees. That we are made of the same fiber and dust, of roots and dandelion seeds.

  Yet somehow, this boy entered the dark of the Wicker Woods and came out unharmed. He came out alive. As if some strange form of magic were at work.

  “How did you survive in there?” I urge him again, watching his face for any flicker of a lie. For something he’s trying to hide.

  He chews on the question, mashes it around in his skull, and when he shakes his head, I wonder if he truly doesn’t know. Perhaps his mind has scrubbed away what needs to be forgotten. The unpleasant things. Better to not remember the woods. Or how dark the dark can be.

  I swallow hard: frustrated, tired. Something happened to him out there—but he won’t say. Or he honestly doesn’t remember. And my mind skips strangely back to the moth, its white wings in the dark air. The memory of it flit flit flitting through the trees, leading me to Oliver, where he lay slumped in the snow. I wince and cross my arms, willing the memory away. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a bone moth but only a common forest moth, oversized and snowy white. A moth that wasn’t a warning at all.

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  “We should get you back to the camp,” I say, letting out a breath.

  His shoulders sink and his jaw sets in place. I can tell he doesn’t want to go back there, to the camp, but I also can’t keep him. Finders keepers. He is a lost item that belongs at the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys. Not mine to keep—to place on a windowsill, to dust and admire.

  Even if I want to.

  He nods—a solemn gesture.

  “And we should go before this storm gets worse,” I add. The sky has turned the color of a broken bruise before it’s begun to heal, and the wind lashes through the trees, blowing snow up off the lake.

  Oliver’s eyes lift, and there is a disquiet in them that betrays something else. Fear perhaps. Restlessness. Or just lack of sleep. “Okay,” he relents.

  * * *

  Fin whimpers from the front porch, eyes big and watery.

  He doesn’t want to be left behind—but it’s safer if he stays. In summer, the tourists often think Fin is a full-blooded wolf. Dangerous and wild—and they might be right. When he appeared on our doorstep two years ago, scratching at the wood to be let in, he looked to be part wolf, part collie, part savage glint in his eyes. Like he might bolt back into the woods at any moment, returning to where he belongs.

  Even the boys at camp who’ve seen him from afar will shout that a wolf is stalking through the woods. Or throw stones at him.

  They fear him—and fear can make people do stupid things.

  “Stay,” I say, patting Fin on the head, and Oliver and I cut a path through the trees, following the shoreline. To our left, the frozen surface of the lake is a web of fractures crisscrossing out toward the center. In warmer months, the water is a soft blue, glittery and mild. But now, the lake has fallen dormant. Black and grim and bone cold.

  “The others at camp say it’s bottomless,” Oliver says behind me, our feet punching through the snow, our breath forming little white clouds with each exhale.

  “No one’s ever seen the bottom,” I answer. “Or touched it.” Sometimes I will stand at the shore and imagine falling down down down into that dark pool, and I feel both terrified and the strange thrill of curiosity. What waits down there, where no sunlight has ever shone? What lurks at the deepest point? What monsters hide where no one can see?

  “So you think it’s true?” he asks, stopping to face the lake. His voice sounds strong, a deepness to it that wasn’t there last night. Maybe the herbs are working.

  I bite the side of my lip and lift a shoulder. “You live here long enough, you start to believe in things you might not in the outside world,” I tell him, certain he won’t understand what I mean.

  I feel him looking at me, his green eyes too green, and then his hand lifts, reaching toward me. His fingers just barely graze my hair, tickling the soft place behind my ear. “A leaf,” he says, pulling it away and holding it out for me to see. A yellow three-pointed leaf with golden edges rests in his hand. “It was tangled in your hair.”

  The closeness of him makes me uneasy, and I brush my fingers quickly through the strands of my hair. “It happens a lot,” I answer softly, looking away from him and feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “The forest sticks to me.”

  His smile is full and wide, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it—the slight curve of his lips, the crooked slant to one side, the wink of his eyes like he might laugh.

  I don’t let him see my own smile trying to break across my lips. I know he thinks me strange. A girl who makes potions and whose
hair is tangled with leaves. Surely a witch. Couldn’t possibly be anything else.

  I turn away from him and we continue on. A half mile around the north end of the lake, we reach the camp.

  The first outpost ever built in these mountains.

  The first structures to rise up among the trees.

  The Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys was founded fifty years ago, built from the remains of the early gold-mining settlement. In the early 1900s, rugged men and woman made their fortunes in these mountains, panning gold along the banks of the Black River. And even the lake itself gave up grains of gold dust in the early years.

  But not anymore—the gold is long gone.

  Now two dozen cabins sit nestled back in the snow-covered trees, with several smaller, odd-shaped buildings scattered along the shoreline, including a maintenance shed and a pump house that were all once part of the deserted gold-mining town.

  The snow at the camp is worn with tracks: the boots of four dozen boys meandering this way and that, from cabin to cabin and back again. In summer, the beach is a chaos of boys playing Frisbee and soccer and wading out into the water with canoes and sailboats they built themselves—most barely seaworthy.

  Icicles hang from the eaves of the mess hall, and we clomp up the steps to the two massive wooden doors. From the other side, we can hear the low cacophony of voices—breakfast at the camp is underway.

  I glance back at Oliver, his shoulders raised against the cold. I have the distinct thought that maybe I should take him back to my house, hide him in the loft, keep him safe. But again, I know: He’s not mine to keep.

  “You coming?” I ask, a waver in my voice, crackling along each word.

  Maybe he’s preparing himself for whatever punishment he will face once the camp counselors see that he’s returned. Maybe he wishes he was still out in the woods, flat on his back in the snow. Lost.