Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  In the distance, I hear my name, carried up and away by the wind—almost not there at all. My head turns slowly, afraid to move, afraid to blink, and I see Oliver standing on the shore, snow whirling around him. He calls my name again, his voice swallowed by the cold.

  Fractures spread outward from the hole, little white veins, crisscrossing and separating. I lift one foot and place it behind me, careful and slow. The ice bends away, water bubbling up through the cracks. It’s too thin, my head screams. It’s too late.

  I suck in a deep breath, then let it slip out through my nose. My eyes feel huge, unblinking, and I glance at Oliver, a word resting beneath my tongue: Help. But I never get a chance to say it.

  In one violent crack, the ice breaks beneath me.

  Shatters into a hundred tiny fragments.

  And I plummet into the lake.

  Black black water. A million knives stabbing my skin, slicing me open. My lungs shrink in on themselves, my hands claw for the surface, already going numb, and I feel my grandmother’s ring—the moonstone she gave me—drift to the end of my finger. I reach for it, almost catch it, but it slips off—sinking, sinking, sinking. No, I want to yell. My eyes shiver open, staring through the dark water, the shock of cold.

  I watch the tiny gold band flit down beneath me, into the deep.

  My ribs crush my heart, my whole body caving in on itself. I’m in the lake. The cold too cold. My mind slowing…

  Above me, the surface of the lake and the moonless sky split open, revealing a palette of stars. So beautiful, I think. A stupid thought—my body, my mind, already going into shock. Heart rate battering against my chest.

  I need air, my body screams. Air.

  OLIVER

  Nora is gone.

  Daisy-printed sheets tossed back from her bed, pillow crinkled where her head lay, bits of yellow pollen scattered across the cotton—fallen from the dried flowers hanging over the headboard.

  They say she’s a witch, and maybe they’re right.

  She thinks I’m a murderer, and maybe she’s not wrong.

  I fell asleep when I promised I’d stay awake. And now, the wolf follows me down the stairs, my mind skipping back to earlier—to Nora’s rose-shaped lips pressed to mine, the smell of her hair on my neck, like jasmine and vanilla. I don’t think she knows how much she upends me. How for the briefest moment, the dark of the forest felt very far away. How her fingertips blotted out the cold of the trees that’s always writhing along my joints, twisting around my kneecaps and shoulder blades and down my spine. When she’s close, my memory of that place falls away.

  She keeps it at bay.

  She’s the only thing that makes me believe maybe I’m not the villain after all. But the hero. Or the one to be saved, rescued from the dark wood.

  My part in this tale may not be what I think. A character whose role has not yet been determined.

  Downstairs, I find the kitchen dark with no sign of Nora. The fire is out in the woodstove. And then I see it: the dead bolt on the front door slid open.

  I yank the door wide and spot the tracks in the snow, leading down to the lake. I run down to the shore and the trees moan and stir, as if sensing the urgency in my steps, the thunder of my lungs sucking in air.

  I know something’s wrong before I’ve even reached the lake, before I see Nora standing out on the ice. I call out to her and she looks back, her hair a firestorm—the wind churning up around her, making her look as if she is made of magic. A real witch. A girl with fury at her fingertips—who could command mountains and rivers and time itself.

  She turns, glancing over her shoulder, and I can see the look in her eyes—something isn’t right. She seems afraid—really afraid for the first time.

  And then the ice gives way beneath her. A shudder and a crack and she disappears into the lake.

  I run, my heart flattening against my ribs, my feet slipping on the ice.

  I drop to my knees at the edge of a vast hole, black water peering back. And beneath the surface, her hair swirls and eddies like reeds, like kelp in an ocean. A gentle, almost tranquil sight. She’s staring past me—eyes blurred over—as if she is looking lazily up at the midnight sky and the stars beyond. A quiet evening swim. But I plunge my arms into the ice-cold water, grabbing for her hand floating just above her head.

  And I pull her up, dragging her onto the ice and into my arms.

  NORA

  I feel weightless, drifting among dark stars.

  Arms fold around me, and I press my face against the hard warmth of a shoulder. His neck smells like the forest, like a winter that goes on and on and on. Endless like the bottom of the lake.

  I hear the water dripping from my hair, or maybe I only imagine it. Drops that turn to ice before they hit the ground.

  The trees bob and shiver above me, and I peer up at deep-green limbs—at stars that look like silver coins dropped into a black pool. My head spins, the circulation gone from my skin, but I don’t mind. I like the weightlessness and the scent of Oliver and the forest revolving above me. We reach the house, and Oliver kicks the door closed behind us, then releases me gently onto the couch.

  He’s saying something, words that slip and slide together. Maybe he’s saying my name. Nora, Nora, Nora. But I can’t be sure. I like the way his voice sounds, bouncing along the walls of the house.

  Fin pushes his nose against my palm, warm and wet, a lick to the ear. I try to speak, to open my eyes, but they are too heavy. I squint and at the end of the couch, Oliver is shoving more logs into the woodstove, filling it quickly. He cusses, slams his hand in the door maybe, then stands up and crosses the room again. Waves of heat surge into the cabin. But I don’t sweat—I shiver.

  “Nora!” he says again, I’m certain of it this time. “Stay awake,” he tells me. I nod, or I think I do. My mouth opens to tell him I’m fine, but I feel my jaw hang there, no words escaping past my lips. My mouth too numb, my tongue worthless.

  He drapes blankets over me—heavy, heavy blankets made of wool—so heavy they push me into sleep. They push me down into the fibers of the old dusty couch, between the cushions. Where lost paper clips and rose petals and M&M’s hide.

  But I’m convulsing now, the cold shot through my lungs, severing my skin down to bone, and everything starts to blur over. Water pressing against my eyes, sinking, everything turning not black but white. Bone white. Moon white. Ash white.

  “Why did you go out there?” Oliver’s voice says from somewhere far away, from up in the rafters of the house. I feel his hands against my feet, rubbing them, sending spikes of pain up my calves. It hurts! I want to tell him, to scream. But my mouth still won’t move, or he just doesn’t listen. My blood is too hot, scalding, as it surges back through cold veins.

  I kick my legs but they don’t move. I close my eyes and chase the moth down through the trees, I run after it, and when I catch it I will pluck its wings clean from its body. But it spins high up toward a strange purple sky where three moons sit on the horizon, and it laughs at me. Foolish girl, it hisses. Hiss hiss hiss.

  I flash my eyes open and look up at the ceiling, at cobwebs draped woefully from the beams down toward the corner of a window. “I saw the hole,” I say, but it sounds like nonsense. “I saw where he drowned,” I try, but my lips are too frozen, and Oliver presses his hand to my forehead. He rubs a warm cloth across my skin.

  “Nora,” he says again. Always my name, like there is nothing else to say. He wants me to wake, to open my eyes, to prove I’m not a witch. I shake my head. I’m hearing things that aren’t real. Imagining words that never leave his lips.

  I try to bend my fingers into fists, but they won’t move. So I give up.

  My eyelids lower, a velvet curtain at the end of the show—a macabre ballet about witches and cruel boys and lakes that swallow people up—and I fall asleep listening to the roar of the fire and Oliver saying my name and the crackling pain of warmth returning to my bones.

  * * *

  Men never st
ay long in our lives, Grandma would say.

  We drive them away. We sneak potions into their coffee to make them crave the smell of the sea, so they will leave these mountains and never come back. We refuse proposals and leave love letters unopened and don’t come to windows when boys toss pebbles against the glass at sunrise. We prefer to be alone.

  But it doesn’t mean our hearts don’t unravel. It doesn’t mean we can’t love deeply and painfully and chase after boys who refuse to love us back. But in the end, always in the end, we find a way to shatter whatever hint of love had grown inside us.

  I wake on the couch thinking of this.

  I wake recalling Oliver pulling me from the lake and carrying me home. I recall his hands on my skin, wiping the sweat from my brow. And I think that maybe, possibly, he cares about me. But I’m also certain I’ll find a way to ruin it.

  Just give me time.

  I press my palms into the couch, my arms shaking as I prop myself up. Outside, the sky is dark. But I have a memory of the sun shining through the windows, reflecting off the walls, a hollow orb that felt too bright. How many days have passed? How many nights?

  I flex my fingers and the numbness is gone—a dull warmth returned to my skin.

  I untangle myself from the blankets, grip the edge of the couch for balance, and pull myself up to my feet. My joints crack and my head sways a little, as though water is still trapped in the hollows of my ears.

  Fin is lying at my feet, and I reach down to run my fingers through his thick fur, his tail swishing once against the floor. “I’m all right,” I assure him, and he blows out a soft breath of air and lowers his head, like he can finally sleep now that he knows I’m awake.

  On wobbly feet, I walk into the kitchen and drink a glass of water, then two more—my body desperate for it. Sandpaper in my throat. I hold on to the edge of the counter and listen for Oliver. “Hello?” I call into the house, but my voice comes out as a croak. Barely audible.

  Maybe he’s gone back to the camp. Or is out gathering more firewood. Or maybe he grew desperate when I didn’t wake, and he went to get one of the counselors who is trained in basic first aid. Wherever he is, I’m alone in the house.

  I consider shuffling back across the living room and collapsing onto the couch, letting sleep tug me under once again. But I’m wearing the same T-shirt as when I went out onto the lake. The sweatshirt and jeans I had on are now gone—Oliver must have removed them when he brought me back to the house. All of my clothes soaked through.

  I walk to the stairs, knuckles tightening around the railing, and I drag myself slowly up each step to the loft.

  But once inside the loft, the room feels different, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The bed is crisscrossed in shadows, no candles lit, and a cold breeze slides over my skin. The window is open, pushed up in the frame, and the thin embroidered curtains sway out from the wall then settle back again, like they’re underwater.

  On the floor, a dusting of snow has gathered.

  And through the window I see him standing out on the roof.

  He didn’t go back to the camp—he’s still here.

  I pull on my heaviest sweater from the closet, thick wool socks, my slippers with the rubber soles, and step out onto the roof—into the snow.

  My muscles are weak, and the cold almost knocks me over. I feel hollow boned like a bird—a soft wind could surely carry me away.

  Oliver hears me and turns. “What are you doing?” he asks urgently, crossing the space that separates us. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s too cold.”

  “The air feels good,” I say, my eyes blinking closed, then open again. But he shakes his head. “Just for a little while,” I tell him. “I just want to stand outside.” I need to feel my legs beneath me, the air in my lungs. Alive.

  He folds my hand through his arm and helps me to the edge of the roof, where the view of the lake is the clearest, where a few stars even prick out from the dark, clouded skyline.

  “I used to come out here when I was little,” I say, my voice still shaky. “My mom hated it, said I would slip off the edge and break my neck. But I did it anyway.” I smile in spite of the cold. “It’s quiet up here,” I add. “The sky feels closer.”

  Oliver tilts his head up at the sky, but his mouth turns down, like he doesn’t see what I see. Like he sees only shadows. Only the grim, spiny outline of trees. “I was worried you might never wake up,” he says, his voice thinner than I’ve ever heard it. Like he can still see the image of me in the lake, hair like seaweed, my body limp as he drew me up from the water—and the memory haunts him still.

  Perhaps I am now his found thing. The girl he hauled up from the lake and brought home.

  “Walkers are hard to kill,” I answer, laughing a little, then instantly regret it—a strange thing to say. The wrong thing to say. I dig a toe into the snow, kicking some off the edge of the roof onto the ground below. “Why are you out here?” I ask, to divert my thoughts away from death. From drowning. So easily I could have sunk and never been found. If Oliver hadn’t woken when he did and pulled me from the lake, the bone moth’s omen would have come true. And I would be just another tale inside the Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine—a brief notation. Another Walker who met her end in these mountains. Died too young, it might say. Died before she ever fell in love. Or just as she was starting to.

  Oliver’s gaze lifts, eye level with the branches—with the tangled nests made by birds who have flown south for the winter. Abandoned their homes. And when they return in spring, they will construct new nests, new lives—the old ones not worth hanging on to. “To watch for the others,” he says. “I’ve come up here every night.”

  He seems distracted, his shoulders rigid, his eyes straining out into the distance, watching for figures marching up through the pines, coming to take the witch and hang her from a tree, make sure she never talks. Just like locals once did to my ancestors. He’s up here to protect me.

  I draw my hands into the sleeves of my sweater to keep out the cold. I count the thuds of my heart. One, two, ten… I lose track. Time is not a measure of seconds, but of breaths in the lungs. “I dropped my grandmother’s ring in the lake when I fell in,” I finally say, my voice small. A thing that doesn’t belong to me anymore—the cold stripped it away.

  “I know,” he says, and he looks at me for the first time. “You were talking about it in your sleep.”

  What else did I say? What other feverish murmurings that I didn’t want him to hear?

  I clear my throat. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Three days.” He exhales deeply, as if recalling the hours, the nights that passed when he sat beside me, waiting for me to stir. “You woke up a few times, but you were pretty out of it.”

  “I was probably hypothermic,” I say, then chew on the corner of my lip, imagining him feeding me soup while I mumbled nonsensically. When I found him in the woods, he was near death, chilled to the bone, and I made him strip out of his clothes and sit beside the fire. Now we’re even. “Thank you,” I say. “For pulling me from the lake. For taking care of me.”

  His sleepy eyes settle on me, and his jaw contracts. “You could have died in that water.” I understand now why he looks at me like this, why the muscles in his arm tense when I speak.

  “I know,” I say flatly, feeling my heart rise and then fall, recalling the cold depth of the lake trying to swallow me up. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you go out there?” he asks pointedly, swiveling to face me, but still keeping my arm looped in his. So I won’t collapse.

  I shake my head because I don’t know what to say. Because my grandmother slipped into my dreams and whispered about the lake, about remembering. Because I thought I was brave. Because I thought the lake would give up its secrets to me. Because I’m a Walker. “I found a broken chain on the ice,” I say at last, as explanation. “The chain from the watch I found in your coat.”

  Oliver’s expression goes cold, as if his
heart darkens in his chest, turns as black as magpie wings. “You still think I killed him?”

  I don’t answer, and I pull my arm away from him—afraid to tell him what I think. Afraid to say that even if he doesn’t remember it, he might have killed a boy. And that this single thing might destroy everything.

  “I didn’t want to be there that night,” he tells me, his voice tiptoeing around each word.

  “But you were,” I say.

  He shakes his head and looks back at the sky, a waning moon peeking out from clouds, blurring the stars around it. Devouring them.

  Oliver bites down on the words before he says them, and they come out bitter and clenched. “And what happened can’t be taken back,” he says. The wind kicks up over the lake, sending spires of white rising into the air.

  “If it was an accident, like the others said, then it was no one’s fault,” I offer, trying to make everything okay. Not as bad as it seems.

  “You don’t understand, Nora,” he says, swallowing hard and turning to look at me. “It wasn’t an accident. They knew what they were doing.”

  A river of cold spikes down my center. “Who?” I ask.

  “All of them.”

  “They wanted Max dead?”

  Oliver is quiet—midnight quiet, tiptoe quiet—and I ask, “Do you remember what happened now?” Is this why he’s standing out here on the roof, watching for the boys? Because his memories have returned? Because he recalls each moment out on that lake, with Max and the others?

  He uncrosses his arms, slow and deliberate. “It’s too late now anyway. We can’t undo what’s been done.” His chest rises with each breath, his flat green eyes so wretchedly deep and dark that I feel drawn to him again. And even though there is disquiet in him—doubt and fear and fury, for the things he won’t say—I could also reach up on my tiptoes and press my lips against his. I could blot out his thoughts, the worry set deep in his eyes. I could blot out everything, take it from him and swallow it down and make it untrue. I am a Walker, and I should be able to do this one thing. A simple, singular thing: take a memory, take a death—and make it right.