Winterwood

“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.

But I can’t take him back to the woods.

A thing found cannot be unfound.

He nods, so I push open one of the heavy wooden doors, and we step inside.

The strange clamor of voices and the thick, smoky air barrel into us as soon as we enter. Like stepping from a quiet, snow-muted dream world into a loud, buzzing, awake one. And it takes a moment for my eyes and ears to adjust.

The room is expansive, stately, and looks like it could withstand a thousand years of heavy snow and wind before it ever started to decay. A fire roars from a huge stone fireplace against the far left wall, and the air smells of blackened toast and has a dusky, dim quality, as if the mournful winter air were trying to creep inside.

Two long wooden tables are set with candles that illuminate the faces of the boys seated along either side, and the racket of their voices echoes off the high timber ceiling. Most are eating breakfast, forks scraping against plates and orange juice sloshing onto the tables, but a few are at the far end of the room playing Ping-Pong near the fireplace.

I’ve been in here before, a handful of times.