Winterwood

The four of us exchange a quick look, but no one speaks. Even Rhett looks as mute as a tomb.

Jasper is dead—a death none of us will be able to explain.

“The fire’s moving too fast,” Lin says. He pushes back the hood of his coat and I see his full head, his shorn hair, for the first time. The air finally hot enough that he doesn’t need his hood. Ahead of us, the trees are already beginning to burn on all sides of the lake. There’s no time. Lin looks to me and then Suzy, his breathing ragged, and says, “Good luck.”

I nod to him, understanding what he means: We’re each on our own now. We’ve reached the lake, and now we each make our own path. So run.

Rhett breaks away first, turning west toward the boys’ camp. And shortly after, Lin follows, two figures sprinting around the lake as the trees catch flame only a few yards away, closing in.

Suzy looks unsure, like she doesn’t know where to go. Who to follow. Which fate she will choose—with me, or the boys back at camp.

“Come on,” I say, when her eyes start to water, when she looks like she might sink down into the snow and give up. I grab her hand and she looks relieved.

Together, we hurry toward my house.

The fire hasn’t reached the row of summer homes yet, but it’s growing closer, devouring the forest along the shore. It’s only a matter of time.

We sprint through the pines, and before I’ve even climbed the porch steps, I see that the door has swung open, slapping back against the wall. It was never fully shut when Jasper closed it—the knob and hinges broken. And now Fin is gone.

I yell into the trees, calling out for him—my heart beating too fast, my throat gone dry—but he doesn’t come. He’ll be okay, I tell myself, my eyes starting to sting with the threat of tears. He knows the forest. He’ll outrun the fire, he’ll escape these woods long before we do.

I glance back into my home—my thoughts swimming and colliding like honeybees when they’re drunk on their own nectar. Unable to focus. What should I grab? What should I take?

“Let’s go,” Suzy urges behind me, tugging on my sleeve. “There’s no time.”

Across the lake, I can just see the boys beginning to flee their cabins, running around the shore, heading for the road. Behind my house, the flames have started moving down the hillside—the fire got here faster than I thought.

“Wait,” I say, and I bolt through the front door. I take the stairs two at a time, I stumble at the top but push myself up. Beneath the bed I find the spellbook, I reach for it and tuck it under my arm, scrambling back downstairs and out through the door.

Suzy glances at the book but doesn’t ask.

“Okay,” I say, giving her a nod, and we rush down through the trees, running along the shore.

“Here it comes,” Suzy says.

I swivel around to see the fire making its way down the slope behind the row of summer homes, tearing through the trees. It sounds like a train roaring down tracks. The flames are so hot now that the snow is beginning to melt all around us, dripping off the eaves of roofs, forming puddles at our feet.

The fire won’t stop until everything is gone.

I should have grabbed more, I think. Some of my mother’s things. Photographs. Her jewelry. Her favorite seafoam-green sweater hanging in her closet.

But now there’s no time.

The stars overhead slink into the background, no longer visible through the smoke and ash and embers swirling all around us. We run through the trees, back to the shore, until we reach the marina.

“What are you doing?” Suzy shouts when I dart toward the boathouse.

“Keep going!” I yell back. “I have to warn someone.”

She shakes her head and stops in the snow, refusing to go without me. I rush up the porch steps and pound my fist against Mr. Perkins’s door. I hear him cursing on the other side, ambling to the front door. A second later it swings open, and for a moment, the breath is caught in my lungs as I gasp for air. “A forest fire,” I manage, pointing out at the lake where the trees are burning on all sides.

Mr. Perkins steps out onto the porch, holding a hand over his eyes. “What the hell?” he asks in disbelief.

“You have to get out—now.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he answers, lowering his hand and shuffling back toward the door.

“It’s going to burn everything,” I say.

He nods, wrinkles pinching around his mouth. “And if I’m lucky, it’ll burn me right along with it.”

“Please,” I say. My lungs rasp with each inhale, smoke in my throat, suffocating me with every breath. “You have to go.”

He lifts his gaze and stares out over the water—the place he’s lived his whole life—then he points a long bony finger up into tree line. “Why don’t you go warn whoever’s been holed up in the old Harrison place?”