Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  We sit this way, wiping away tears, giggling the last of our pent-up laughter. And when silence finally sinks over us, the house feels too quiet. The air too still. I realize how absurd it is to be laughing, to find anything funny when we’re snowed in and trapped and Oliver is missing and a boy is dead. I feel embarrassed and stand up from the couch, rubbing my hands down my pant legs.

  We forgot where we were, we forgot there are still things to fear.

  The pot of water on the stove begins to boil, and I carry it into the kitchen to make us oatmeal and a cup of tea. Suzy lowers her chin on her knees, and I see that her smile is gone—her thoughts have strayed back to this room, this house in the woods, the cold always looking for a way in. This place where a boy has died. It all floods back through her, and I think I see the fear that blinks out at me behind her fawn-colored eyes, Paris now impossibly far away.

  We are quiet the rest of the day. Afraid to speak—afraid we’ll lose ourselves to foolish, imaginary daydreams. Instead, I sit beside the front window and watch for a figure moving through the trees outside, for any sign of Oliver. But he never appears. Only a deer that picks its way through the snow just as evening sets over the forest. It walks down to the shore and paws at the surface of the frozen lake, trying to break through the ice, but something startles it—a bird maybe—and it darts back into the forest.

  I look to Suzy, curled up beside the fire like a child’s doll, carefully placed with her hands in her lap, and for a moment I can’t be sure how much time has passed, how many hours—how many days and months—since she first came to stay with me. Since the storm hit and the road became blocked. I feel like I’m losing track of the minutes. Time playing tricks on me ever since I found Oliver in the woods, ever since my eyes met his.

  Tick, tick, thud.

  I stand up from the chair to shake away the feeling, to root my feet against the floor. The clock above the kitchen sink ticks, ticks, weaving itself along the fibers of my mind, pushing the seconds forward, too fast.

  Tick, tick, thud.

  I squeeze my eyes closed and hear the clock waver, like time is stuck between seconds. A trembling sound leaves my lips. A wheezing gasp of air.

  “You okay?” Suzy asks.

  My eyelids peel open and I nod. “Fine,” I breathe.

  “You were shaking.”

  I clench my hands together so she won’t see, and I pull them into my sleeves. “I’m just cold,” I lie.

  But I know it’s something else. Déjà vu or slipping time—something is happening that I’ve never felt before. Grandma would tell me I need rest, she’d place her hands on my forehead and make me drink tea with chamomile root and vanilla leaf. Then, while I slept, she’d creep into my dreams to see what was really wrong with me. She’d use her nightshade to fix me.

  I walk to the stove and hold my hands over the heat. “Maybe we should sleep down here tonight,” I say. “It’ll be warmer beside the fire.”

  She nods, but her skin has gone pale, like she’s barely listening to me. Her eyes no longer glimmer with laughter, and she chews on the side of a fingernail, staring down at the floor.

  We are safe in here, I want to tell her. But that would imply we aren’t safe out there, in the forest, in the mountains, in the dark.

  But the truth is:

  I don’t know anymore.

  A bone moth is following me. A boy is dead. And my mind is clattering between my ears—threatening to crack.

  And maybe… the worst hasn’t even happened yet.

  * * *

  “Nora! Nora!” a voice is repeating. “Wake up.”

  “What?”

  “Get up.”

  My eyes whip open, white spots flashing across my vision. I’m lying at one end of the couch, facing the fire, knees pulled up to my chest—Suzy had taken up the rest of the couch.

  But now she’s standing over me, eyes like saucers.

  “What’s wrong?” I push myself up to my elbows. “What time is it?”

  “Almost midnight,” she answers.

  I clear my throat and rub at my eyes, glancing around the dark living room where everything looks just as it did when we fell asleep.

  “There’s a fire,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “Down by the lake.”

  “What?” I stand up from the couch, letting the blanket that had been draped over me fall to the floor.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she adds, like she needs to explain herself. “I was standing beside the stove, trying to get warm, when I saw the light outside.”

  At the windows, I press my palm to the glass, where ice has formed on the thin pane. Intricate and spiny. Beyond the wall of pine trees, down near the lakeshore, a bonfire tosses sparks up into the night sky like confetti. And I can just make out the silhouette of boys backlit by the flames.

  “It might be Rhett and the others,” she says. “They probably snuck out of their cabin.” She smirks a little and walks to my side. “We should go down there,” she adds, nodding to herself, looking at me like she hopes I’ll agree.

  But I shake my head, the buzzing inside my ears growing louder. “They can’t have a bonfire that close to the trees,” I say.

  Her expression drops. “Why not?”

  But I’m already moving past her to the door, my pulse thudding down every vein, a drum in my chest pulled tight. Fin lifts his head from his place beside the woodstove, ears forward, gaze expectant. “Stay,” I tell him and he lowers his head.

  “Where are you going?” Suzy asks, trailing me with her eyes.

  “Trees don’t like fire,” I say. “I’m going to put it out.”

  * * *

  Their shrill laughter bounces among tree limbs and echoes over the lake, sharp and grating.

  I move quickly through the forest, my feet punching through the snow, fury growing in my belly with each step. I don’t even have time to think this might be a bad idea when I reach the circle of trees and step into the ring of firelight. My arms are stiff at my sides, fingernails against my palms. But the boys don’t notice me, not at first—I am a blur against the backdrop of pines, no different from the shadows—but then one of them glances my way, his mouth falling open. “Shit,” he says, startled.

  The boys all flinch in unison.

  Eyes going wide.

  Brains slow to react.

  I can almost hear the clunk clank of gears grinding forward. The shock of seeing a girl appear from the forest.

  I don’t recognize any of them—but I rarely do. They come and go so frequently to the camp. Temporary boys. I look for Oliver, his too-green eyes and wavy hair, but I don’t see him and my stomach tightens.

  “Who the hell are you?” one of them asks—a boy wearing a thick winter hat, the kind with fuzzy flaps over the ears. Red plaid and lined with fake fur. He looks ridiculous—the hat too small, perched atop his head. And I wonder if he brought it with him or if he dug it out of the camp’s lost and found.

  “You can’t have a fire this close to the trees,” I say, ignoring his question. I can hear the pines shivering strangely around us, the fire’s flames licking at the lower limbs, tasting the dull sap that has gone cold for the winter. “You have to put it out.”

  I wait for the boys to react, to say something, but they stand like mute dolls. Eyes shuttering open. Eyes shuttering closed.

  I think of my mother, how she will march down to our neighbors’ homes in summer when they have barbecues too close to sagging limbs, or when they set off fireworks in July near a cluster of dead aspens. You’ll burn the whole damn forest down, she’ll snap. She’s never cared about making enemies of our neighbors. This is our forest, she often tells me when she returns to the house, still fuming, her cheeks flushed with anger. They’re only summer tourists.

  “You’re going to piss off the trees,” I continue, louder this time. In winter, a fire is less dangerous, the limbs and underbrush less flammable. But I can still hear the restlessness in the trees. The murmur of creaking branches. Fury roiling
in the roots beneath our feet. I draw my shoulders back as if I might be able to make myself bigger, a beast from the forest—like the darkling crows rumored to roost at the farthest edge of the Wicker Woods—someone to fear.

  But two of the boys laugh. Deep, obnoxious belly laughs, cheeks bright red like smeared thimbleberries.

  I shake my head, irritated. They don’t believe me. “Trees have a long memory,” I warn, my voice like gravel. The forest remembers who carved names into their trunks, with little hearts dug in the wood; who dropped a cigarette into a clump of dry leaves and scorched their raw bark. They know who broke a limb and tore off leaves and pine needles by the handful just to start a bonfire.

  They remember. And they hold grudges. Sharp branches can draw blood. Briars can snag a foot, causing a person to tumble forward and crack their head wide open.

  “You a Girl Scout or something?” one of the boys asks, eyebrows raised severely, mockingly. I can tell he’s holding in another burst of laughter. Reddish-blond hair crowns his head, and a slight gap between his two front teeth stares back at me. He’s not even wearing a coat—only an ugly sweater with a giant reindeer’s face stitched onto the front. Although I suspect the bottle of dark booze he’s holding in his hand—the liquid nearly gone—is keeping him warm.

  “She’s Nora Walker,” a voice answers behind me, and Suzy saunters into the circle of light cast by the bonfire.

  Her cheeks are rosy from the cold. Her mouth curled up at one side, as if she’s just revealed a perfectly timed secret.

  The boys’ faces turn sallow, mouths open, cheekbones slack. But they aren’t staring at Suzy. They’re looking at me.

  I am a Walker.

  A winter witch, a forest witch, a girl with madness in her veins who belongs in an institution, and all the other things the boys from camp have called me. Names that sting and hurt, but only a little.

  “You’re the moon girl,” the boy wearing the ear-flap hat finally says.

  But Suzy shoots him a look. “Don’t be an idiot, Rhett.”

  He frowns at her—Rhett—the reason she snuck up to the camp in the first place. He’s why she’s here, why she’s trapped like the rest of us. And I eye him, trying to understand why he’s the boy she chose. He’s cute, obviously, with a roundish face and a dimple in one cheek, but his eyes are not soft and warm like the rest of him seems. There is something callous in them. Cruel even. A boy who usually gets what he wants.

  “Ignore them,” Suzy says, flicking her hand in the air and brushing a bit of her long wavy hair over one shoulder. “They’re just pissed they have to live way out here in these miserable mountains.”

  But that’s not why they call me the moon girl, why they look at me with unease etched into the slopes of their brows. It’s because they’re afraid of me. They believe my blood is the color of the blackest night and my heart is woven with spikeweeds and vinegar. I should be feared. And most importantly, avoided.

  They don’t know that unlike my ancestors, unlike the Walkers of the past, there is no nightshade brimming along my edges.

  Suzy clears her throat and lifts her chin. “That’s Rhett.” She nods to dimple-boy, and he looks at me but doesn’t smile—a cool, calculating gaze. Like he’s trying to see if the rumors are true. If I could turn his blood cold with a flick of my outstretched finger. And right now, I wish I could.

  “That’s Lin,” she continues, glancing to the boy on my left, who nods but doesn’t speak. The oversized navy-blue puffy coat he’s wearing is like a cocoon—hood pulled up, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets. Like he doesn’t plan on taking it off until spring, like he’s never been so cold in his entire life. He must have been sent here from somewhere warm, like California or Florida. Somewhere where the sky is usually aqua blue and the air smells like coconut.

  “I’m Jasper,” reindeer-sweater boy interjects, smiling across the fire at me and holding out the bottle of dark liquid, wagging an eyebrow. “Whiskey,” he says, nodding for me to take it. But I ignore the bottle.

  I don’t care what their names are; I didn’t come down here to hang out. To drink booze, torch marshmallows, and tell childish ghost stories. “You have to put the fire out,” I say again, sharper this time, my thumb fidgeting with the moonstone ring on my finger, twirling it in a circle.

  Rhett sneers and picks up a stick, poking at the fire, sending more sparks up into the overhead limbs. Taunting the trees.

  “Maybe we should listen to her,” Lin says, lifting his shoulders in his too-big coat. “After everything that’s happened—”

  Rhett raises the stick in the air, a thin coil of smoke spiraling from the blackened tip. “Shut up, Lin,” he says, wrapping his free arm around Suzy, who has inched closer to him. “We’re not talking about that.”

  “Who’s she going to tell?” Lin fires back, eyes cutting over to me.

  Jasper waves the bottle in the air. “Anyone she wants.”

  “This is fucked,” Lin mutters, kicking at a mound of snow at his feet, digging a small trench down to the ruddy soil, mud sticking to his shoe.

  Things he wants to say, but can’t, stir behind his eyes.

  “The whole thing is fucked,” Rhett agrees, jabbing the smoldering stick into the snow at his feet. And his eyebrows spike upward beneath his fuzzy hat, like he’s giving Lin a warning to stop talking. “But it’s already done.”

  I realize now that this isn’t just a few boys who stole a bottle of booze and came down to the lake to get drunk. This is a meeting. They came to talk in secret, in private. About what happened.

  “The road will open eventually, and then we’ll have to deal with this,” says Lin, lifting his gaze.

  “The Brutes don’t know what happened,” Rhett answers coldly. I’ve heard this name before, the Brutes. It’s what they sometimes call the camp counselors.

  “The Brutes are idiots. It’s going to be a lot worse when a detective starts asking questions,” says Jasper, his jaw tensed, the bottle in his hand swaying at his side, spilling little drops onto the snow. “This was my last shot, getting sent here to this camp.” His eyebrows dip together, a weakness there—a flicker of doubt and fear and uncertainty. As if he’s truly afraid of what might happen to him. “If I screw it up,” he continues, “my parents probably won’t let me come home.”

  They all fall silent and the trees quiver, wind curling up off the lake and sailing into the surrounding forest, knocking snow from limbs. The wilds of this place dislike our midnight chatter, our rising voices, the flickering flame and the sparks wheeling up through the trees. We have woken it.

  “You’re talking about the boy who died?” I dare to ask.

  They all seem to wince in unison, recoiling from my words. I swallow hard—feeling too many eyes on me. Feeling suddenly outnumbered. This was a bad idea, coming down here. Even the trees lean in close, listening, stirring awake from their snowy slumber.

  My heart clatters. My stomach knots.

  But then Rhett looks to Suzy, anger in his eyes. “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing,” Suzy answers quickly, lifting her shoulders, lifting her hands, lifting both eyebrows in a show of innocence. “You never told me anything anyway. It’s only what I’ve overheard.”

  “Perfect,” Jasper remarks, his upper lip tugging into a sneer as he sways back slightly from the fire, his balance teetering, no longer sober. “We’re all so fucked.”

  I shake my head. “I only know that a boy is dead.”

  And that Oliver went into the woods that night. That I found him in the trees. And that he walked around the lake to the cemetery yesterday and stood over Willa Walker’s grave. That something bad happened the night of the storm.

  One boy survived. One boy died.

  “It was an accident,” Jasper insists, looking at me from across the fire, both eyebrows raised, but his head lolling a couple degrees to the left, like he wants me to believe him. Like he’s trying to convince me. Only an accident. Nothing to see here. Nothing to
report. Go about your business.

  But I don’t let it go. “How did he die?”

  Rhett tosses the half-burnt stick into the fire, letting it be devoured. “We said it was an accident,” he growls, releasing his arm from around Suzy. Fed up. Pissed. He doesn’t want me here, standing around their bonfire, asking questions.

  A hush cuts over the group, and I know I’ve pressed it too far. Rhett stares at me like he might step past Suzy and fold his hands around my throat to shut me up. To keep me quiet. For good. A wedge of unease folds itself beneath my skin, willing me to turn and leave. But I don’t move.

  Jasper clears his throat, staggering to the left, like he’s struggling to keep himself upright. “I vote we just keep drinking until the road clears, then we get the hell out of here.” He tilts his head back and takes another gulp of the booze, eyes swaying back into his skull. “I barely notice any of it when I’m drunk.”

  I catch Suzy rolling her eyes. It’s obvious Jasper has had too much to drink, and it’s irritating even her.

  Another brief quiet falls over the group, and I try to stop myself, to hold it in, but the question falls out anyway. “Notice what?”

  “The voices,” Lin answers quickly, in a near whisper, before Rhett can stop him. And the whites of Lin’s eyes peer at me like I should know what he’s talking about. Like the moon witch can surely read his thoughts. Understand the hint of something hidden behind his pursed lips.

  And maybe I do know what he means.

  I think about the howls I used to hear when I was little, echoing from the cemetery—weeping howls, madness howls, the howls of the dead. Just like all Walkers before me, we hear what others can’t. We see.

  My heart vibrates too quickly and a chill rolls down my back, one vertebra at a time. “What kinds of voices?” I ask. I need to know.

  Lin’s eyes blink in slow motion, chewing over the words in his mouth before he spits them out. “At night, in our cabin. We hear things.”