Winterwood

He sticks out his chin and says, “Good, good,” before shifting his shoulders back, fighting a tired, crooked spine. His left hand begins to tremble—as it often has in recent years—and he grips it with his right, to stop the shaking. “Haven’t seen anyone out walking this morning, boy or deer or lost soul.”

“It could have been earlier.” My lips come together, feeling foolish for even asking. For following Oliver’s tracks in the snow. “Maybe before the sun was up.” I try to imagine Oliver sneaking out from the house in the dark, without saying goodbye, and wandering down through the trees as if he were hiding something. As if he didn’t want to be followed.

He left, and a thin edge of hurt works its way under my skin. A feeling I don’t want to feel. A pain I won’t allow to dig any deeper into my flesh. I won’t let this boy unsettle every part of me.

Mr. Perkins shakes his head. “Sorry, not so much as a jackrabbit came by this way.” His eyes skip out over the lake, like he’s remembering something, and he scratches at his wool cap revealing the tufts of gray hair underneath. “It can be hard to find someone in these woods,” he adds, his jaw clenching, shifting side to side, “if they don’t want to be found.”

Fin trots off ahead through the snow past the dock—back on Oliver’s trail again.

Maybe Mr. Perkins is right. If Oliver doesn’t want to be found, maybe I should leave it alone. Go back to the house. I glance to the mountains where a dark wall of clouds is descending over the lake. “Another storm will probably hit within the hour,” I tell Mr. Perkins. “Maybe you should head back inside.”

A chuckle escapes his throat—as if the sound began in his toes and had time to gain momentum. “Just like your grandmother,” he says, clucking his tongue. “Always worrying over me.” He waves me off and begins shuffling back down the dock. “At my age, an hour feels like an eternity.” He sweeps the snow from the edge of the dock onto the frozen ice. “Plenty of time.” Instead of saying goodbye, he hums a familiar tune under his breath, a tune my grandma used to sing. Something about lost finches flying too far east, poison berries held in their talons, seeking the weary and brokenhearted. A fable song—about time being cut short, slipping through fingertips. Hearing it makes my chest ache. A strange sadness that I will never be rid of.

It makes me feel impossibly alone.

Fin heads around the shore, and I think again that maybe I shouldn’t follow. But curiosity is a nagging thump inside my skull. Urging me on.

I push through the deep snow, beneath the stormy sky, until we reach a place where Oliver’s tracks veer away from the lake. Where they lead up into the trees—to a place I rarely visit.

A place where the gloom of darkness never lifts. Where I’ve often seen human shadows wandering at twilight—specters who don’t yet know they’re dead. Where Walkers prefer to avoid.

The Jackjaw Cemetery.

The graveyard sits between the rocky shore and the forest—visible from all sides of the lake. A hundred years ago when the first settler died, the mourners walked a few yards down the shore and decided this was as good a place as any. They dug a hole where they stood, and this became the spot where the dead were lowered into the earth.

Fin trots into the graveyard, then stops at a row of old stones, digging his nose into the snow, pawing at the ground briefly. I don’t want to be here, among the dead, but I follow Oliver’s tracks to where they end.

My skin shivers. My temples itch like bugs crawling across my flesh. I kneel down beside the grave where Oliver’s prints came to a stop and run my palm over the face of it, wiping away the layer of snow. I know this grave—I know most of the ones that belong to my family.

Willa Walker lies here, beneath several feet of hard-packed earth and clay.

Boys from camp often come here to the graves of Walkers. They drink beers and howl at the moon and rub their palms over the stones, making wishes. It’s a place to gather, to try to frighten one another. On Halloween night, kids drive up from Fir Haven and camp out among the graves, telling stories about Walkers, casting their own made-up spells, and hexing one another.

But why did Oliver come here now, to Willa Walker’s resting place—a Walker who wept into the lake and made it bottomless? Who cried more than any Walker who ever lived. Whose tears were said to be as salty as the sea. Whose nightshade could drown the world.

I hold my palm against the gravestone, as if I could feel the past within the worn surface. As if I could see Oliver standing over the grave and recall what he felt, conjure up the thoughts that clattered around inside his skull. If only that was my nightshade, to draw forth memories from objects. Then I’d always know the truth.