Winterwood

He smells like snow, and I fold myself into him—tiny like a shell. His arm drapes over my ribs, and his breath is at my neck. He could place his lips at the soft place behind my ear, he could run his fingers through my hair, but instead he only lies still. Warming my skin with his. Please, I want to say. Tell me what you did that night. Tell me what you saw out on that ice; tell me what you regret.

Tell me so I can build my own armor. A fortress in this tiny loft, a battlefield you cannot cross.

But I also know it’s too late for that now.

I turn, coiled in his arms, to face him. I take his hand and place it against my chest, over my heart. “I don’t know if I can trust this,” I say, I confess. “This thing inside my own heart.” I let myself bleed for him to see.

His mouth softens but he doesn’t speak, his eyes shivering.

“The women in my family always fall in love then find a way to ruin it.” I smirk, lips drawn up to one side. “I know you think I should be afraid of you. But you should be afraid of me.”

“Why?” he asks softly, carefully.

“Because I will end up hurting you.”

A smile forms in his eyes, and the space between us feels impossibly small. Only an exhale separating us. I don’t wait for him to speak—I don’t want to hear any more words—I cross the fathom between us and I lay my lips on his. And it’s not like before, not like when we kissed in my room to be certain we were both real. Now it’s a kiss to prove that we’re not. A certainty that this won’t last. That perhaps all we have left is here in this bed, lavender pollen against the pillows, air spilling from his lungs into mine. All we have left is this one, singular, fragile night. Snow on the roof and snow in our hearts and snow to bury us alive.

I kiss him and he kisses me back. And all at once, there is heat inside my veins, heat in the palm of his hand as he slides his fingers up inside my sweater, up along my spine. He wipes away the cold. And I feel my body shudder, pressing myself closer to him, touching his neck, his throat, his shoulders where they brace around me, drawing me to him. I exhale and kiss him harder. There is nothing but his hands on my bare skin. The weight of his kiss, of his chest breathing so deeply I can almost hear his lungs aching against his ribs.

Nothing but these slow seconds of time. Nothing but fingertips and swollen lips and hearts that will surely break when morning comes.

His kiss against my ribs, my fingers in his hair.

I close my eyes and pretend Oliver is just a boy from camp who never went missing. A boy I met on the shore of the lake. A boy with clear green eyes and no lost memories.

I pretend I never saw a bone moth in the trees the day I found him.

I pretend this room, with mountain moss and bleeding-heart acorns hung by string above my bed, is the only place there will ever be.

I pretend Oliver and I are in love. I pretend he will never leave—I pretend to make it true.

Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine

RUTH WALKER was born in late July of 1922 under a white deer moon. Her lips were the color of snow with eyes as green as the river in spring. But Ruth Walker never spoke.

Not once in her whole life.

Her mother, Vena, swore she heard Ruth whispering to the mice that lived in the attic and humming lullabies to the bees outside her window. But no one else ever heard such mutterings.

Ruth was short and beautiful with wavy crimson hair that never grew past her shoulders, and she clucked her tongue when she walked through the woods. When she was twelve, she began deciphering messages in the webs made by the peppercorn spiders.

The webs foretold the following year’s weather, and Ruth knew the dates of rainstorms and dry summer weeks and when the winds would blow away the laundry hanging on the line.

In return, Ruth fed the spiders bits of maidenhair mushrooms that she grew in a clay pot in the back of the loft closet. Much to her mother’s displeasure.

When Ruth was ninety-nine, she became tangled in a web while walking through the Wicker Woods. She died under the stars, as silent as the day she was born.

How to Read Peppercorn Spiderwebs:

Harvest maidenhair mushrooms (grown for nine months before picking).

Offer less than an ounce, more than a teaspoon, to peppercorn spider.

Sleep in soil beneath web for one night. Wait for dew to settle on silk strands.

Remain silent, careful not to tear web. Decipher forecast for following season.

OLIVER

It was different before. Before I remembered.

They weren’t lies then, but now they are.

Sprinting across the frozen lake, pulling her up from the water, I felt the sting of that other awful night. Like a brick sinking into my stomach, I remembered what happened.

The cemetery was only the beginning. What came later was the end. The lake and my hands around Max’s throat. The others shouting from shore.