Winterwood

In summer, tourists converge on this side of the lake, children sprinting down the docks to fling themselves into the water, orange and cherry and watermelon Popsicles dripping onto toes and down sunburnt arms. Normal kids with normal lives—a thing I never knew. The air always smelling of sunblock and campfire smoke, the afternoons burning so brightly that nothing dark and shadowy can possibly survive.

But now, the boathouse store sits boarded up for the winter, a CLOSED sign hanging crooked above the turquoise-blue door—the wind thumping it against the wood, a thwap thwap thwap that reminds me of a woodpecker searching for bugs in the trunks of spruce trees.

“Hello!” someone calls, and I whip around to face the lake.

Old Mr. Perkins is out on one of the docks, his green rain boots kicking through a layer of snow, the hood of his yellow slicker pulled up over his head—as if it were spring, as if the air were mild and drizzling.

“Morning,” I call back to him.

When Grandma was still alive, she and Mr. Perkins would often sit on the docks at sunset, chatting about the years that lay behind them—back before the tourists came, when you’d find gold on the bottom of your boots just walking around the shore, and fish swam in the lake as thick as mud. Now, from time to time, Mom and I will make the walk down to the marina to check on Mr. Perkins, especially in winter. We’ll bring along a thermos of hot cinnamon-apple tea, a sweet pumpkin cobbler straight from the oven, and jars of freshly sealed honey.

But this time, I haven’t brought pie.

Mr. Perkins tips his head to me, and in front of him is a broom he had been sweeping side to side, brushing the dock clean of the snow. An odd thing to be doing in winter. But Floyd Perkins has never been ordinary.

“Docks were starting to sink,” he says, as explanation. “And my snow shovel broke.” He waves a hand at the broom, as if the solution were obvious, then squints up at the sky. “This damn snow won’t let up. It’s nearly as bad as the year your great-aunt Helena started tossing ice cubes out her window.” Mr. Perkins knows most of the Walker tales. He was here the winter Helena Walker lobbed ice cubes out the loft window each morning—a peculiar spell for conjuring snow. A spell only Helena could perform. Winter lasted eight months that year, and after that, Helena’s mother, Isolde, forbade her from summoning the snow again—placing a lock on the icebox. The thought of it still makes me smile: Helena’s wild red hair spiraling up around her as flakes seethed down from the sky.

“The forest seems angry,” I say, nodding up at the mountains, where clouds gather against the jagged slopes to the north. It isn’t Helena Walker who’s responsible for this winter’s storms; it’s something else. A darkness over the lake—a forecast of something to come. I shiver and tamp my feet in the snow to keep the circulation moving through my limbs.

“These woods have a temper,” he agrees, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Best not to anger it.”

A tree all alone may grow hatred in its bark and moth-eaten leaves, a note handwritten in the margins of the spellbook reads. But an entire forest can weave malice so deep and well-rooted that no safe passage can be made through such a place. The entry was written as if it was an afterthought, but it’s always stuck with me. The severity of it. The warning that a forest cannot be trusted. The trees conspire. They watch. They’re awake.

I turn away from the mountains and ask, “Did you see someone walk around the lake this morning?”

Mr. Perkins wipes at his forehead, then holds his hand over his eyes, as though he is looking out across an endless blue sea, in search of land. “Who you out looking for?”

I’m not sure I want to say, to explain about Oliver. About all of it. So I just say, “A boy from camp.”

Mr. Perkins leans heavily against the handle of the old wiry broom, like a crutch or a cane. “Are those boys bothering you?” he asks. His face hardens into a protective look. The worried arch of his gray eyebrows, the downturn of his upper lip. He’s the closet thing I’ve ever had to a grandfather, and sometimes I think he worries about me more than my own mom does. “If those boys ever say anything to you that is less than chivalrous, you let me know.”

He worries they’ll call me a witch to my face. That they’ll throw stones at me like locals used to when they saw a Walker roaming around the lake. He worries I might be as fragile as ice—easily shattered with a harsh word.

But I have more of my grandma in me than he thinks. “The boys haven’t done anything,” I assure him, offering a tiny smile.