Winterwood

Their shrill laughter bounces among tree limbs and echoes over the lake, sharp and grating.

I move quickly through the forest, my feet punching through the snow, fury growing in my belly with each step. I don’t even have time to think this might be a bad idea when I reach the circle of trees and step into the ring of firelight. My arms are stiff at my sides, fingernails against my palms. But the boys don’t notice me, not at first—I am a blur against the backdrop of pines, no different from the shadows—but then one of them glances my way, his mouth falling open. “Shit,” he says, startled.

The boys all flinch in unison.

Eyes going wide.

Brains slow to react.

I can almost hear the clunk clank of gears grinding forward. The shock of seeing a girl appear from the forest.

I don’t recognize any of them—but I rarely do. They come and go so frequently to the camp. Temporary boys. I look for Oliver, his too-green eyes and wavy hair, but I don’t see him and my stomach tightens.

“Who the hell are you?” one of them asks—a boy wearing a thick winter hat, the kind with fuzzy flaps over the ears. Red plaid and lined with fake fur. He looks ridiculous—the hat too small, perched atop his head. And I wonder if he brought it with him or if he dug it out of the camp’s lost and found.

“You can’t have a fire this close to the trees,” I say, ignoring his question. I can hear the pines shivering strangely around us, the fire’s flames licking at the lower limbs, tasting the dull sap that has gone cold for the winter. “You have to put it out.”

I wait for the boys to react, to say something, but they stand like mute dolls. Eyes shuttering open. Eyes shuttering closed.

I think of my mother, how she will march down to our neighbors’ homes in summer when they have barbecues too close to sagging limbs, or when they set off fireworks in July near a cluster of dead aspens. You’ll burn the whole damn forest down, she’ll snap. She’s never cared about making enemies of our neighbors. This is our forest, she often tells me when she returns to the house, still fuming, her cheeks flushed with anger. They’re only summer tourists.

“You’re going to piss off the trees,” I continue, louder this time. In winter, a fire is less dangerous, the limbs and underbrush less flammable. But I can still hear the restlessness in the trees. The murmur of creaking branches. Fury roiling in the roots beneath our feet. I draw my shoulders back as if I might be able to make myself bigger, a beast from the forest—like the darkling crows rumored to roost at the farthest edge of the Wicker Woods—someone to fear.

But two of the boys laugh. Deep, obnoxious belly laughs, cheeks bright red like smeared thimbleberries.

I shake my head, irritated. They don’t believe me. “Trees have a long memory,” I warn, my voice like gravel. The forest remembers who carved names into their trunks, with little hearts dug in the wood; who dropped a cigarette into a clump of dry leaves and scorched their raw bark. They know who broke a limb and tore off leaves and pine needles by the handful just to start a bonfire.

They remember. And they hold grudges. Sharp branches can draw blood. Briars can snag a foot, causing a person to tumble forward and crack their head wide open.

“You a Girl Scout or something?” one of the boys asks, eyebrows raised severely, mockingly. I can tell he’s holding in another burst of laughter. Reddish-blond hair crowns his head, and a slight gap between his two front teeth stares back at me. He’s not even wearing a coat—only an ugly sweater with a giant reindeer’s face stitched onto the front. Although I suspect the bottle of dark booze he’s holding in his hand—the liquid nearly gone—is keeping him warm.

“She’s Nora Walker,” a voice answers behind me, and Suzy saunters into the circle of light cast by the bonfire.

Her cheeks are rosy from the cold. Her mouth curled up at one side, as if she’s just revealed a perfectly timed secret.

The boys’ faces turn sallow, mouths open, cheekbones slack. But they aren’t staring at Suzy. They’re looking at me.

I am a Walker.

A winter witch, a forest witch, a girl with madness in her veins who belongs in an institution, and all the other things the boys from camp have called me. Names that sting and hurt, but only a little.

“You’re the moon girl,” the boy wearing the ear-flap hat finally says.

But Suzy shoots him a look. “Don’t be an idiot, Rhett.”

He frowns at her—Rhett—the reason she snuck up to the camp in the first place. He’s why she’s here, why she’s trapped like the rest of us. And I eye him, trying to understand why he’s the boy she chose. He’s cute, obviously, with a roundish face and a dimple in one cheek, but his eyes are not soft and warm like the rest of him seems. There is something callous in them. Cruel even. A boy who usually gets what he wants.