Winterwood

I let the candle burn down to nothing, wax dripping onto the wood floor beside my feet until the flame fizzes and blinks out. I let the glass jar roll away from my fingertips and thud against the bedpost. I draw my knees to my chest and curl my toes under the rug. But I leave the window open—I want to feel the cold—and I listen to the wind bite against the eaves of the house.

A soft pain forms inside my ribs, a hurt that won’t go away. Empty and hollow, like my gooey insides have been carved out with a blade. Jack-o’-lantern slop.

Eventually my eyelids sink closed and I drift into an awful sort of sleep.

My dreams are strange and green, and I feel myself being pulled under by moss and golden leaves. Rich, dark soil blots out my vision, it clots my ears and mouth, it suffocates, it buries me alive. I can taste the earth, the cold frozen ground caving in on top of me.

But then there is music, metallic and thin and far away, vibrating through the soil of my dreams. I wake, choking and grabbing at my face as if to pull the roots away, to claw my way back aboveground. But I’m still on the floor of the loft. Not buried—not dead.

The night sky fills my room, the sun long set. How long have I been asleep?

Snow blows in through the open window, along with something else.

A noise from somewhere outside, in the trees, in the snowy dark.

The music was not in my dreams.

It was real.

Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

EMELINE WALKER was born a month late under a ghost moon—instead of the dwarf clover moon, as was intended. Her eyes were alabaster white, and when she opened her mouth to cry, only air slipped out.

She was a quiet child, who spoke to herself and played cat’s cradle alone in her room and dug her toes into the mud to feel the worms wriggling beneath.

But at seventeen, during an unusually windy autumn when wild dandelion fluff blew over the lake like tiny parasols, Emeline went into the Wicker Woods and lost her mind.

Yet, it was not her fault.

She had lost the silver locket her true love had given to her, so she went into the woods where all lost things are found. She roamed the forest, kicking away rotted leaves and smooth black stones, in search of it. She slept in the trunks of trees. She wove stonecrop flowers around her wrists. A year later, when she finally emerged, strands of her long raven hair had turned bone white and dirt was clotted under her nails, but there was no locket clutched in her hand.

For the remainder of her life, Emeline continued to search the old house—inside teacups, behind books, and under the floorboards. Each night she shook out her bedsheets, in case the locket had slipped between the cotton.

She lived to be an old woman, long white hair to her ankles, trailing her through the garden where she dug up marigolds and vanilla leaf and wild ginger, certain the locket would be found among the roots. Emeline never knew her shadow side, her Walker magic, her nightshade—it eluded her, just like the locket.

On her deathbed, Emeline Walker clasped the hand of her little sister, Lilly, and said, “Ah, there it is.” And went still.

How to Unravel a Knotted Mind:

Toss heated salt water out an upstairs window.

Clasp hands around a circle of freshly tilled spring soil and spit over your left shoulder.

Don’t bathe for three nights in a row. On the fourth night, drink a glass of golden turmeric milk, braid your hair tightly down your back, and sleep with no socks.

NORA

Music vibrates through the trees—tinny and muffled.

I follow the sound, the bass thumping through the hard, frozen ground, voices rising in laughter. I’m nearly halfway down the string of boarded-up summer homes, almost to the marina, when I reach the origin: the old Wilkinson place, with its large wraparound porch, thick log walls, and two peaked bay windows overlooking the lake. It’s one of nicest log homes on Jackjaw Lake, and the Wilkinsons only visit twice every summer. They bring their three dogs and five kids and too-loud friends. They have barbecues and parties late into the night, and the adults get drunk on dark red wine and laugh at the same jokes they tell year after year.

Now, under a cocoon of snow, the house is buzzing again.

My feet carry me up to the front porch—as if still in a dream—my hands push open the front door that’s been left slightly ajar, and my eyes absorb the sway of boys crowded inside. I shouldn’t be here. But my heart betrays my mind.

Oliver might be inside.