Winterwood

My grandmother would know the right herbs, the right words to whisper against his skin to warm the chill deep in his bones. To keep him rooted to this world before he slips into the next. But she’s not here, and I only know the tiniest of remedies, the barest of spells. Not enough to conjure real magic. I clench my jaw, feeling an old familiar ache: the burden of uselessness I carry inside my chest. I can’t help him, and I wish I could. I am a Walker whose grandmother died too soon and whose mother would rather forget what we really are.

I am as helpless as a girl by any other name.

I stoke the few embers that still glow among the ash, coaxing the fire back to life inside the old stove, while Oliver’s jade-green eyes sweep slowly over the house: the log walls, the rotted wood beams that sag overhead, the faded floral curtains that have the rich scent of sage that’s been burned thousands of times within the house to clear out the old stubborn spirits.

But Oliver’s eyes aren’t caught on the curtains or the thick walls. Instead, they flicker over the odd collection of items crowding every shelf and cobwebbed corner of the aged house. Old pocket watches and wire-rimmed glasses, hundreds of silver buttons in glass jars, delicately carved silver spoons, and silver candlesticks with wax still hardened at the base. An ornate gold-rimmed jewelry box with only dust kept safely inside.

All the things that we’ve found inside the Wicker Woods over the years, the things we didn’t sell down in Fir Haven to a man named Leon who owns a rare antique shop. These are the things that mean something—that I can’t part with. The ones that hide memories inside them, the stories they tell when you hold them in your palm.

Just like most of the Walker women before me, I am a finder of lost things.

And standing in the entryway is a boy named Oliver Huntsman.

My latest found item.

OLIVER

Her hair is long and dark and braided down her back, like a river woven into knots.

I’ve heard about her, the girl who lives across the lake. The boys at camp say she can’t be trusted. They say her shadow can be seen on the roof of her house during a full moon, casting dark magic into the ice-flecked sky. They say she is descended from these woods—that she is a Walker. And all Walkers are witches.

Her home sits hidden in the trees, a small gingerbread structure that smells of earth and sod and wood. A place that could easily lure Hansel and Gretel in with the promise of sweets, where they would likely meet their end inside these walls. Just like I might.

She moves through the living room with the ease of a bird, her footsteps hardly making a sound on the old wood floor, little puffs of dust rising up around her feet.

I’m standing inside the home of a witch.

“What happened?” I ask, trying to bend my fingers, but they’re frozen in place—the cold running through me like tap water from a winter faucet, ice crystals forming at every joint. My thoughts keep skipping back and forth, rattled loose. Every memory is the color of snow, too icy-white, too blinding and painful to see.

“I found you in the snow,” she answers, kneeling beside the woodstove. She moves swiftly, deftly, using her bare hands to add more logs to the flames. Never wincing away from the sparks that lick at her skin.

I move partway into the living room, my boots sliding across the floor, closer to the heat of the fire, and my eyes sway to the window, where snow is eddying against the glass, willing my mind to remember. I woke in the woods. The shadow of a girl knelt over me. Her soft fingers touching my skin. But it feels like days ago, the hours slow and dripping, thawing like the snow settled in my bones.

“What day is it?” I ask.

Flames ignite suddenly over the dry logs, sending out a burst of heat, and she gestures for me to sit on a small chair facing the fire. I do as she says, removing my hands from my coat pockets and holding them out toward the stove.

“Wednesday,” she answers, brown eyes flicking to mine only briefly. Like she’s afraid of what she’ll see in my gaze. Or she’s afraid of what I’ll see in hers.

My hands ache when I close them into fists, circulation returning to my skin in painful jolts. Wednesday, I think. But it means nothing. I should have asked the week, the month, the year even. My thoughts sputter slowly across synapses. I can’t recall the moments that led me here, that led me into that forest, lying on my back, snow falling in a slow, endless rhythm—burying me alive.

The girl walks into the kitchen and hums something under her breath, like she doesn’t think I can hear: a soft melody—a lullaby maybe, slow and tragic. But then her eyes snap up to mine and she stops.