Winterwood

Mr. Perkins tipped his head at me, a grave gesture, a certainty that this was going to be another tough winter, before continuing up the edge of the lake toward the marina. Toward the boathouse and his home.

I stood listening to the shouts of boys fanning out into the trees, the sky growing dark again, another storm settling over the lake. I knew how ruthless the forest could be, how unforgiving.

If a boy was lost out there, he likely wouldn’t survive the night.

It’s still dark—the deepest kind of dark. Winter dark.

The boy, Oliver Huntsman, follows me through the trees, stumbling over roots, coughing—gasping for air. He might not make it out of the Wicker Woods; he might drop dead in the snow behind me. He stops to lean against a tree, his body trembling, and I walk back to his side and wrap an arm around him. He is taller than I am and broad in the shoulders, but together we continue through the dark. He smells like the forest, like green. And when we reach the border of the Wicker Woods, we step over the threshold and back out into the open.

I release my hold on him, and he bends forward, gripping his knees and gasping for air. His lungs make a strange rasp sound with each breath. He’s spent too many nights alone out here, in the forest, in the cold. Where the creeping, crawling sounds of unknowable things rest just out of sight, and fear becomes a voice in the back of his mind—nagging and threading along sleepless thoughts. A person can go mad in these trees. Hatter mad.

Beside us, the sound of rushing water beneath the frozen surface of the Black River is both palliative and eerie. Oliver glances up at the night sky, his expression slack, in awe, as if he hasn’t seen the stars in weeks.

“We need to keep moving,” I say.

His body shakes, skin pale and muted. I need to get him inside, out of this snow and wind. Or the cold could still kill him.

I fold my arm around him again, hand against his ribs where I can feel the rise and fall of each breath, and we march downriver until Jackjaw Lake yawns open ahead of us—frozen solid out to its center.

“Where are we?” he asks, his voice thin, a crisp edge to each word.

“We’re almost to my house,” I tell him. And then because I think maybe he means something more—his memory blotted over—I add, “We’re back at Jackjaw Lake.”

He doesn’t nod and his eyes don’t shimmer with recognition. He has no memory of this place, no idea where he is.

“My house is close,” I add. “I’ll take you back to camp in the morning. Right now, we just need to get you warm.” I’m not sure he’d make it another mile around the lake to the boys’ camp. And the nearest hospital is an hour down a road that’s snowed in. I have no other option but to take him home.

His hands tremble, his eyes skipping warily through the trees—as if he sees something in the dark. A trick of shadow and moonlight. But the woods surrounding Jackjaw Lake are safe and docile, not nearly as ancient as the Wicker Woods where I found him. These trees are young, harvested over the years for lumber, and the pines that loom over my home were saplings not long ago—still soft and green at their core. They have limbs that sway with the wind instead of moan and crack; they aren’t old enough to hold grudges or memories. To grow hexes at their roots. Not like inside the Wicker Woods.

We reach the row of log cabins that dot the shore, and Fin trots ahead through the snow. “My house is just there,” I say, nodding up through the trees. Most of the cabins along the shore are summer homes, owned by people who only visit Jackjaw Lake when the weather warms and the lake thaws. But Mom and I have always been year-rounders, just like our ancestors before us. We remain at the lake through all the seasons, even the brutal ones—especially the brutal ones. Mom dislikes the tourists who come in summer, with their thumping music and fishing poles and beach towels. It grates on her. But the quiet of winter pacifies her—calms her racing, fidgety mind.

Our house is at the end of the row, closest to the mountains and the wilds of the forest beyond—tucked back in the woods. Hidden. And tonight, it sits dark, no lights humming inside, no sputtering of electricity through the walls—the power still out since the storm.

I stomp the snow from my boots and push open the heavy log door, letting the cold air rush inside. Fin brushes past my legs into the living room, where he plops down on the rug beside the stove and begins chewing the snow from his paws. I drop my pack onto the faded olive-green sofa, its cushions sagging and slumped as if it were sinking into the wood floor.

“I’ll start a fire,” I say to Oliver, who still stands shivering in the entryway. Looking like a boy who’s near death. Whose eyes have the hollow stare of someone who can already see the other side, only inches away.