Winterwood

We pass over a dried creek bed, and the wind changes direction from east to north. The temperature dips. An owl cries in the distance, and Fin stops beside me—nose twitching in the air. I touch his head gently, feeling the quick pace of his breathing.

He senses something.

I pause and listen for the snapping of branches underfoot, for the sounds of a wolf stalking through the trees, watching us. Hunting.

But a moth skims past my shoulder—white wings beating against the cold, flitting toward a sad, spiny-looking hemlock tree, leaving imprints of dust wherever it lands. It looks as if it’s just come through a storm, wings torn at the edges. Shredded.

A moth who’s faced death. Who’s seen it up close.

My heartbeat sinks into my toes and my eyelashes twitch, certain I’m not seeing it right. Just another trick of the woods.

But I know what it is—I’ve seen sketches of them before. I’ve even seen one pressed against the window while my grandmother coughed from her room down the hall, hands clasping the bedsheets. Blood in her throat.

A bone moth.

The worst kind. The bringer of portents and warnings, of omens that should never be ignored. Of death.

My fingers again touch the gold moonstone ring weighted heavy on my finger.

Every part of me that had felt brave, had felt the courage of my grandmother pulsing through me, vanishes. I squeeze my eyes closed, then open them again, but the moth is still there. Zigzagging among the trees. “We shouldn’t be here,” I whisper to Fin. We need to run.

I release my hand from Fin’s head, and my heart scrapes against my ribs. I glance over my shoulder, down the narrow path we followed in. Run, run, run! my heart screams. I take a careful step back, away from the moth, not wanting to make a sound. But the moth circles overhead, bobbing quickly out over the trees—called forth by something. Back into the dark.

Relief settles through me—my heart sinking back into my chest—but then Fin breaks away from my side. He darts around a dead tree stump and into the brush, chasing after the moth. “No!” I shout—too loud, my voice echoing over the layer of snow and bouncing through the treetops. But Fin doesn’t stop. He tears around a cluster of spiny aspens and vanishes into the dark. Gone.

Shit, shit, shit.

If it were anything else, a different kind of moth, or another wolf he will chase deep into the snowy mountains only to return home in a day or two, I’d let him go.

But a bone moth means something else—something cruel and wicked and bad—so I run after him.

I sprint around the clot of trees and follow him into the deepest part of the forest, past elms that grow at odd angles, down steep, jagged terrain I don’t recognize—where my boots slip beneath me, where my hands press against tree trunks to propel me forward, and where each footstep sounds like thunder against the frozen ground. I’m making too much noise. Too loud. The woods will wake. But I don’t slow down; I don’t stop.

I lose sight of him beyond two fallen trees, and little stabs of pain cut through me. “Fin, please!” I call in a near hush, trying to keep my voice low while the sting of tears presses against my eyes, blurring my vision. Panic leaps into my throat and I want to scream, shout Fin’s name louder, but I bite back the urge. No matter what, I can’t wake the woods, or neither Fin nor I will make it out of here.

And then I see him: tail wagging, stopped a few yards away between a grove of hemlocks. My heart presses against my ribs.

He’s led us farther into the Wicker Woods than I’ve ever been before. And the moth—frayed body, white wings with holes torn along the edges—flutters among the falling snowflakes, slow and mercurial, as if it were in no great hurry. It moves upward toward the sky, a speck of white among the black canopy of trees, and then vanishes into the dark forest to the north.

I step carefully toward Fin and touch his ear to keep him from running after it again. But he bares his teeth, growling. “Shhh,” I say softly.

His ears shift forward, his breathing quick as he sucks in bursts of air, and a low guttural growl rises up from deep within his chest.

Something’s out there.

A beast or shadow with hooked claws and grim pinhole eyes. A thing the forest keeps, a thing it hides—something I don’t want to see.

My fingers twitch, and dread rises up at the base of my throat. It tastes like ash. I hate this feeling building inside me. This awful fear. I am a Walker. I am the thing whispered about, the thing that conjures goose bumps and nightmares.

I swallow and stiffen my jaw into place, taking a step forward. The moth led us here. To something just beyond my vision. I scan the dark, looking for eyes—something blinking out from the trees.

But there’s nothing.

I shake my head and let out a breath, about to turn back to Fin, when my left foot thuds against something on the ground. Something hard.