Winterwood

I kick my legs but they don’t move. I close my eyes and chase the moth down through the trees, I run after it, and when I catch it I will pluck its wings clean from its body. But it spins high up toward a strange purple sky where three moons sit on the horizon, and it laughs at me. Foolish girl, it hisses. Hiss hiss hiss.

I flash my eyes open and look up at the ceiling, at cobwebs draped woefully from the beams down toward the corner of a window. “I saw the hole,” I say, but it sounds like nonsense. “I saw where he drowned,” I try, but my lips are too frozen, and Oliver presses his hand to my forehead. He rubs a warm cloth across my skin.

“Nora,” he says again. Always my name, like there is nothing else to say. He wants me to wake, to open my eyes, to prove I’m not a witch. I shake my head. I’m hearing things that aren’t real. Imagining words that never leave his lips.

I try to bend my fingers into fists, but they won’t move. So I give up.

My eyelids lower, a velvet curtain at the end of the show—a macabre ballet about witches and cruel boys and lakes that swallow people up—and I fall asleep listening to the roar of the fire and Oliver saying my name and the crackling pain of warmth returning to my bones.

Men never stay long in our lives, Grandma would say.

We drive them away. We sneak potions into their coffee to make them crave the smell of the sea, so they will leave these mountains and never come back. We refuse proposals and leave love letters unopened and don’t come to windows when boys toss pebbles against the glass at sunrise. We prefer to be alone.

But it doesn’t mean our hearts don’t unravel. It doesn’t mean we can’t love deeply and painfully and chase after boys who refuse to love us back. But in the end, always in the end, we find a way to shatter whatever hint of love had grown inside us.

I wake on the couch thinking of this.

I wake recalling Oliver pulling me from the lake and carrying me home. I recall his hands on my skin, wiping the sweat from my brow. And I think that maybe, possibly, he cares about me. But I’m also certain I’ll find a way to ruin it.

Just give me time.

I press my palms into the couch, my arms shaking as I prop myself up. Outside, the sky is dark. But I have a memory of the sun shining through the windows, reflecting off the walls, a hollow orb that felt too bright. How many days have passed? How many nights?

I flex my fingers and the numbness is gone—a dull warmth returned to my skin.

I untangle myself from the blankets, grip the edge of the couch for balance, and pull myself up to my feet. My joints crack and my head sways a little, as though water is still trapped in the hollows of my ears.

Fin is lying at my feet, and I reach down to run my fingers through his thick fur, his tail swishing once against the floor. “I’m all right,” I assure him, and he blows out a soft breath of air and lowers his head, like he can finally sleep now that he knows I’m awake.

On wobbly feet, I walk into the kitchen and drink a glass of water, then two more—my body desperate for it. Sandpaper in my throat. I hold on to the edge of the counter and listen for Oliver. “Hello?” I call into the house, but my voice comes out as a croak. Barely audible.

Maybe he’s gone back to the camp. Or is out gathering more firewood. Or maybe he grew desperate when I didn’t wake, and he went to get one of the counselors who is trained in basic first aid. Wherever he is, I’m alone in the house.

I consider shuffling back across the living room and collapsing onto the couch, letting sleep tug me under once again. But I’m wearing the same T-shirt as when I went out onto the lake. The sweatshirt and jeans I had on are now gone—Oliver must have removed them when he brought me back to the house. All of my clothes soaked through.

I walk to the stairs, knuckles tightening around the railing, and I drag myself slowly up each step to the loft.

But once inside the loft, the room feels different, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The bed is crisscrossed in shadows, no candles lit, and a cold breeze slides over my skin. The window is open, pushed up in the frame, and the thin embroidered curtains sway out from the wall then settle back again, like they’re underwater.

On the floor, a dusting of snow has gathered.

And through the window I see him standing out on the roof.

He didn’t go back to the camp—he’s still here.

I pull on my heaviest sweater from the closet, thick wool socks, my slippers with the rubber soles, and step out onto the roof—into the snow.

My muscles are weak, and the cold almost knocks me over. I feel hollow boned like a bird—a soft wind could surely carry me away.

Oliver hears me and turns. “What are you doing?” he asks urgently, crossing the space that separates us. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s too cold.”