Winterwood

by Shea Ernshaw

  The boys fall silent for the first time, each staring into the dark, opening through the trees—the boundary of the Wicker Woods.

  “I don’t like it,” Lin says, standing back, away from the border. “It’s fucking creepy. Doesn’t feel right.”

  A cold wind slides out from the entrance, smelling like the darkest dark, like wet rocks and soil that have never felt sunlight, like the place where monsters sleep. Not imaginary ones, but ones that hunt and slink and creep. Ones that stare out at us, hoping we’ll step inside. Hoping we’re dumb enough. “That’s because we shouldn’t be here,” I say, a shudder sliding along my voice. “This is the only way in,” I tell them, “and it’s the only way out.”

  Suzy swallows, an audible gulp. “Maybe we should wait until it’s light,” she suggests. “When we can see.” The fear is evident in her voice. Gone is the girl I remember from school, who buzzed down the halls of Fir Haven High laughing loudly so everyone could hear, kissing as many boys as she could on Valentine’s Day. Keeping count. Now she looks deflated, a girl who’s lost all her air.

  Rhett ignores her. “You go in first,” he says to me, pushing a hand against my shoulder. I bite back the urge to turn around and shove him in the chest, to scratch and claw at his face, to make him bleed. But I still feel weak, my muscles tensing against the cold, and so far they haven’t hurt me—I’m not going to give them a reason to.

  “It’s not a full moon,” I repeat. “We can’t go in there.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Rhett replies. He shoves me again and I stagger forward, one foot at the very edge of the entrance into the woods. I glance back at Suzy, who is biting her lower lip, watching me like I’m about to be swallowed up by the trees. Like she has never felt more terrified in her life. And in her eyes, I think I see her urging me to run—to turn and dart back down the mountain. But she doesn’t know how weak I am, that I’m having a hard time even standing.

  “You don’t have to hurt her,” Suzy pleads, but Rhett has stopped listening to her.

  Knots bind together inside my stomach, and I crane my head up to the night sky—clouds sailing away, the moon a deflated half circle. Not full. Not safe to venture into these dark, vengeful woods.

  I blow out a breath and whisper the words I’ve said so many times before, hoping they will protect me, hoping the woods will remember me and let me pass unharmed. “I am Nora Walker,” I say softly so the boys won’t hear. And then I repeat it twice more, for good measure, for luck.

  But I sense it might be too late for that.

  Walker or not, perhaps none us will survive the night.

  So I stiffen my arms at my sides and take a step past the threshold, into the Wicker Woods.

  Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

  IONA WALKER was born under a black harvest moon—the darkest night of the year.

  Even as a baby, she cast no shadow across the ground. Even on the brightest afternoon, even when the sun burned at her neck.

  But a girl without a shadow can see in the dark. A rather useful nightshade for sneaking and spying.

  Iona often wandered through the house while her mother slept, never flicking on a single light, never stubbing her toe on a rocking chair she couldn’t see. Her vision was even better than that of her cat, Oyster, who learned to follow Iona through the dark.

  When she was twenty-three, she met a boy who gathered night phlox and coal berries and ninebark leaves after the sun had set. On a cool October night, she kissed him under a full moon, and he swore he’d never leave her side.

  Until the night Iona lost sight of him somewhere among the shadowed trees. He wandered too near the Wicker Woods, slipped beyond the forest boundary, where no one but a Walker should enter, and he was never seen again.

  Iona banished the dark after that, and never again went into the woods once the sun had dipped below the treeline. She died on a late August morning, sitting on the front porch of the old house overlooking the lake. And as her eyes slipped closed, her shadow stretched out long in front of her.

  It had been there all along, coiled up inside her, too afraid to step into the light.

  How to Find Your Shadow:

  Hang foxglove from the back door by a black, knotted rope.

  Only step outside during moonlight (no direct sun) for five nights in a row. Your shadow will reveal itself on the sixth.

  NORA

  I feel the weight of the trees as soon as I enter, the bony edges of the forest lunging out at strange angles.

  We shouldn’t be here.

  “Keep going,” Rhett urges from behind me, and I wave a hand out in front of me, feeling my way. My senses dulled, cotton in my ears. Usually I can traverse these woods with some sense of direction. But now the forest is too dark and colorless.

  Thorns cut sharply across my hands, moss catches in my hair, and I can feel the trees inching closer, death creaking along each limb, the wind cold and severe.

  The trees are awake.

  “I can’t see shit,” Jasper remarks behind me. A line of us stumbling through the woods. And then I hear the click of something. A light sparking sudden and bright from Jasper’s hand.

  He’s holding a lighter out in front of him, and the trees react instantly.

  The woods hiss—like air escaping a basement that’s never known daylight—limbs moan and weave together, suffocating the moon above.

  “Put the fire out!” I bark back at him.

  The trees respond to my voice, the ground swelling and turning beneath us, roots seething. The forest is awake. It knows we’re here.

  In the last bit of light before the small flame blinks out, I see the faces of the boys, of Suzy, and the strange panic in their eyes. The whites too white. Their teeth clenched. Mouths zippered shut. They weren’t expecting this—for the forest to move around us. For their hearts to tighten so quickly in their chests.

  “Maybe we should head back?” I hear Lin say.

  “We just got here,” Jasper says, the lighter gone dark in his hand.

  “We’re not going until we find Oliver,” Rhett declares, but his voice is hoarse, like he’s trying to hide the nagging unease he feels. The cold that’s found him and won’t let go.

  “Rhett, please,” Suzy tries. “I don’t like it in here. It feels like the trees are moving.”

  The trees are moving, uprooting themselves to shift closer. Awake, awake, awake.

  “If we find him, then he’ll prove we didn’t do anything wrong,” Rhett says, his voice sounding desperate now. They need this. As if he thinks Oliver will somehow make it right, that Oliver is the key. “He can tell the counselors, and we won’t be in trouble.”

  “He’s not here,” I insist, keeping my voice low, trying not to anger the woods. “We need to leave.” But when I swivel around, I have no idea where we are. We’ve gone too far, I think. But it’s not that—we’ve only been walking for a few minutes. The forest has changed around us, blocked the path back out.

  The trees are awake. And they are moving.

  “Look!” Jasper says too loudly, and I hear the quick shuffle of his feet. His silhouette drops to the ground, kneeling over something. I think maybe he’s hurt, but then he holds up his hand. “Gold,” he says.

  I take a step closer, barely able to make out the object in his hand.

  “What is it?” Rhett asks, moving toward Jasper.

  “A belt buckle, I think.” He brushes away the dirt and snow from the thing in his palm. “And there’s more.” He fans his hands across the ground then picks up something else. Suzy and Lin step closer, trying to see what he’s found. “Buttons,” he says. “Made of bone.” He holds one up for us to see, but it’s too tiny. “And some look like silver.”

  Lin drops to the ground as well, digging through the snow at the base of a tree, down to the soil. “There’s a spoon over here,” he says.

  Rhett wheels around to face me. “This is where she finds all that stuff in her house.” He’s close enough that I ca
n see him raise an eyebrow. “And this is why she didn’t want us coming in here—she thinks it all belongs to her.”

  Even Suzy crouches down and starts searching the ground with her outstretched palms.

  “You can’t keep any of these things,” I say, meeting Rhett’s gaze, my jaw grinding against my back teeth. “You can’t leave the woods with any of it.”

  “Yeah, right.” Rhett says with an upturned smirk—no longer afraid. He doesn’t believe me. And suddenly, none of them seem to care about finding Oliver, about the trees inching closer. They only care about the items scattered across the forest floor.

  “If you leave with any of these things tonight, the woods will see. They will know what you’ve stolen.”

  “So what?” Rhett says, his eyes swaying away from me and then back, still intoxicated.

  “You have a whole house filled with this stuff,” Jasper interjects, sitting forward on his knees. “And nothing’s happened to you.”

  “I took those things when it was a full moon,” I say, trying to keep my voice low, trying to make them understand: This isn’t an ordinary forest. “I took them when the forest was asleep.” But none of them are listening. Even Rhett begins to scan the ground too, searching.

  Misfortune will follow you. Words from the spellbook scroll across my mind. If you take something from the Wicker Woods when it isn’t a full moon, misery and catastrophe will trail you home.

  The trees moan around us, and I turn in a circle, trying to orient myself—to see which direction will lead us back to the entrance of the woods. But none of it’s familiar. The landscape has changed, the woods playing tricks. The path we took from the edge of the forest is no longer there. It’s been wiped away or hidden, or a tree has re-rooted in its place.

  If Fin were here, he would know the way out, sense it, his nose to the soil would lead us home. My head begins to thrum and the forest grows darker—any speck of light through the treetops squeezed out.

  A low, wailing hiss sails through the lower limbs, like the forest is baring its teeth, snarling.

  Suzy hears it too, and she stops scanning the ground. She looks at me, then stands. “What’s happening?” she asks, inching closer to me.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say softly. “Or we might not get out at all.”

  Lin makes a sudden noise to our left. “Shit!” he says, scrambling toward us, dropping a collection of silver trinkets that hit the ground with a clank. “Something grabbed me.” He jumps up and down and wipes at his foot, like he’s still trying to shake it off. “A fucking tree root or something.” He moves into the center of the group, twitching, slapping at his legs.

  “Maybe we should head back,” Jasper suggests finally—the first smart thing he’s said.

  Rhett nods. “We can come back during the day, when we can see. Oliver won’t be able to hide as easily.”

  “I told you we should wait until morning,” Suzy mutters, shifting closer to me, the hiss around us growing louder. Trees lumbering near, crowding over us—closer, closer, closer. We’re running out of time. “I don’t like it in here,” Suzy whispers, and she reaches out and takes my hand. Squeezing. A branch brushes against her hair and she swats it away. “We need to go!” she shouts to the boys, to Rhett.

  “Lead the way, witch girl,” Rhett says, waving a hand at me.

  But I stare back at him blankly. I don’t know the way.

  For the first time, I don’t know how to get out of here. “I don’t—” My voice breaks off. “I don’t know where we are,” I admit.

  Jasper pushes a handful of found things into his coat pocket. “This place can’t be that big,” he says. “Just pick a direction.” And without waiting for anyone to answer, he starts off into the trees, shoving limbs aside.

  “We don’t know if that’s the right way,” Suzy points out, eyebrows sloped down, worry etched into every line of her face.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Rhett says, stepping behind Suzy and me, waving a hand forward. “Can’t let you go off to warn Oliver that we’re looking for him. So you’re coming with us.”

  Suzy squeezes my hand tighter, and we fall into step behind Lin. Rhett behind us.

  “We should stay together, anyway,” Suzy whispers.

  But I’m not sure that will help. We’re louder as a group—the boys crash through the forest, snapping limbs beneath their feet, easily tracked. The forest doesn’t want us here. And the boys make it impossible to pass through unnoticed.

  We might be forging deeper into the dark woods: a place I’ve never been, farther than I’ve ever trekked. Or maybe we will get lucky and find our way back out, emerging at the entrance. But luck doesn’t live inside these woods.

  Whichever path we take, the forest knows we’re here.

  Claws open wide, ready to pull us in.

  * * *

  “We’re lost,” Rhett barks at Jasper.

  “I never said I knew the way out,” Jasper bemoans, swiveling to face Rhett.

  We stop where a shallow channel carves through the terrain, a creek bed long ago dried up. There is hardly any snow here, the woods too dense.

  “We never should have come in here,” Lin says, his voice sounding far off, as if the words came from the trees themselves, not his throat.

  Suzy leans in close to me. Suddenly she wants nothing to do with Rhett. He led us out here, and now we’re deeper into the Wicker Woods than I’ve ever been, surrounded by land I’ve never seen, trees so wide they are like the swaying pillars of a catacomb. The Wicker Woods cultivate fear, the spellbook warns. They are architects of misfortune and mischief.

  And now we’re moving deeper into the belly of the woods, a place we won’t return from. This is how people vanish. How five teenagers slip into a forest at night and are never seen again.

  “Maybe we should stop here and wait until morning,” Jasper suggests, resting his shoulder against the broad trunk of a tree. “Then we’ll be able to see.”

  “It’s too cold,” Suzy answers, voice breaking like she might cry. “We won’t make it that long.”

  I should know the way out, I should sense the path that will lead us to the edge of the woods. But I can’t tell north from south or light from dark, the stars and the sky smeared out by the trees. If I was as clever as my grandmother, as sharp as most of the Walkers in my family, I could squeeze my eyes closed and feel the direction of the wind, the hiss of the river in the distance. But instead I feel dull and muted. The forest is hiding the way free, shifting around us—it doesn’t want us to leave.

  Lin starts pacing along the old creek bed, his shadow bent at the shoulders. “We never should have come in here,” he repeats. “It was a dumb idea.”

  “If Oliver was really hiding in here, we had to find him,” Rhett reminds the others. “We had to be sure.” I can tell they’ve all sobered up. Whatever stupid plan they made back at camp when they were drinking, whatever they thought they’d find by trekking into the Wicker Woods, is all starting to fall apart.

  “She probably never found Oliver in these woods anyway,” Jasper says. “She made it all up.”

  I shoot Jasper a look but he doesn’t notice. “I didn’t make it up.”

  “Did you ever see him?” Rhett asks, peering at Suzy.

  But Suzy shakes her head. “No.”

  I turn to her, standing only a foot away from me, and I feel the corners of my mouth turn down. “When you came back to my house, drunk, after the bonfire, he was there in the living room with me.”

  She lifts one shoulder. “I don’t really remember that night,” she admits. “I don’t remember coming back to your house, just waking up on the couch.”

  I shake my head at her. I didn’t make him up! I want to scream.

  “Walkers can’t be trusted,” Jasper points out. “You’re all liars.”

  I lift my gaze to him and take a step closer. I’m going to wrap my hands around his throat. I’m going to push all the air from his lungs to make him shut up.
I can’t stand the sound of his voice. I can’t stand any of them.

  But Suzy touches my arm, and when I look at her, she shakes her head. “Leave it,” she whispers.

  I pull my arm away from her. She’s lying about Oliver—about not seeing him. To protect herself maybe. But I don’t know why.

  Lin has stopped pacing, but he knits his hands together nervously, his skin gone pale. “We’re going to die out here.”

  Rhett barks at Lin. “Don’t be an idiot. We’re not going to die.”

  Lin says something back, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m walking away from them, toward the trees, where I can see movement in the shadows—limbs writhing, coiling. Something isn’t right.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say aloud. But no one is listening.

  Rhett and Jasper and Lin are arguing. About the woods, about being lost, about whose idea it was to come in here in the first place.

  “I’m not going to fucking die in here!” Jasper shouts.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so wasted, you wouldn’t have led us deeper into this screwed-up forest,” Rhett says.

  “It was your idea to come looking for Oliver,” Jasper barks back, shoving Rhett in the chest.

  “Stop it!” Suzy yells.

  But Rhett shoves Jasper back and their faces are twisted in anger, hands curled into fists.

  “Cut it out,” Lin says, and he ducks between them, pushing them apart. “You guys can bloody yourselves up when we get out of here.”

  “If we ever get out here,” Rhett snaps.

  Jasper’s face twists into an odd shape—eyebrows peaked sharply into his forehead—like he’s thinking something wicked and dark. Something we couldn’t possibly imagine. “I’ll fucking get us out of here,” he says suddenly, lip curling upward.

  The next few motions happen quickly.

  Jasper pushes his hand into his pocket, reaching for something—the lighter. “We’ll burn our way out,” he says defiantly, chin raised, eyes so huge he looks half-crazed. “We’ll burn this whole fucking forest to the ground.”