Winterwood

Max can’t see Oliver. He’s standing right beside me, but Max doesn’t see him.

I was wrong.

So fucking wrong.

I take another step away from Oliver, trying to swallow, trying to find the right words, but they never form.

I thought the boys were worried I would find Max’s body. But they were worried I’d find him in here, alive. They were worried I’d turn him in, tell the counselors where he was hiding—a boy who drowned another boy.

One boy missing, one boy dead—a girl who couldn’t see the truth.

“You drowned,” I say aloud, staring up at Oliver, not caring if Max hears, if he thinks I’ve lost my mind. The thoughts are spiraling fast now, too many moments, too many things I missed. All this time. I didn’t see. I didn’t know.

Oliver’s jaw tightens. “Nora,” he pleads.

But I shake my head. I don’t want to hear my name on his lips. I don’t want to hear anything.

“Nora,” he repeats. “Nora, please.”

I move past him in the doorway before he can stop me, before he can touch my skin with his. The air is humming around me, sparks whirling through the trees. The fire is close now.

I waited too long.

Oliver says my name again, but I’m scrambling down the steps into the snow, into the chaos of cinders.

I’m running down toward the lake, away from the flames, away from Max Caulfield who isn’t dead at all.

From Oliver, who might be.

I know that moths bring omens not to be ignored and that brooms should never be kept on the second floor of your home. I know windows opened to the east can bring bad dreams, but windows to the west can bring fated love and good fortune. Carry an acorn in your pocket to stay young forever, plant chicory root beside your kitchen window to keep the flies away. Throw salt over your left shoulder. And eat dandelion honey on toast before bed to help you sleep.

I know these things because my grandmother knew them too. And her grandmother before her. These things are as true as the North Star, as sure as a beesting will hurt and then itch.

But what of the things I don’t know?

The riddles I can’t decipher.

The strange conjuring that made a boy appear inside the Wicker Woods? A boy who shouldn’t have returned at all. A boy like Oliver Huntsman.

The trees sag and drip.

Snow melts from limbs—a winter forest set ablaze—and the air whirls with sparks. The fire is all around me, burning the wilds and the woods and everything green. Tearing down the row of summer homes.

I reach the lake, and my breath is a wheeze, sparks singeing the sleeves of my coat, my hair. One even lands on the tip of my nose and I swat it away. Everything is burning and I waited too long to leave. The night has come alive—bursting—a carnival of firelight, of soot and sparks and heat.

And then I see it, bobbing through the smoke, weaving between the embers like a needle stitching through fabric.

The bone moth.

Death is a winged creature who won’t leave you alone—not until it gets what it wants, a passage from the spellbook reads, one I’ve recalled over and over in my mind.

It’s beautiful, I realize for the first time: a rare white moth from some deep part of the forest.

But it doesn’t flutter closer to me, it quivers just past my shoulder into the trees, where Oliver is moving quickly toward me. But he stops short when he sees me looking up at him.

“The bone moth,” I say aloud, finally understanding.

It draws closer to Oliver, hovering, meeting his gaze.

“The moth was following you,” I say. “Not me.”

Its wings flutter softly, paper-thin like fabric brushing together. Flammable. And then it lifts up, higher into the trees, and shivers out toward the center of the lake—escaping the flames, disappearing into the eerie golden light. It was never following me. Never a warning of my death. The moth had been a warning that death was in my home, death kissed me in my room, death slept beside me with his hands against my ribs. Death kept me warm.

I was wrong about the moth. And I was wrong about him.

Oliver moves closer to me, and maybe I should back away, sprint up the shore, but I let him come stand beside me, his shoulder just barely touching mine.

Another burst of déjà vu pours over me. He looks just like he did the morning after I found him inside the Wicker Woods. A boy about to set off on a journey—or perhaps he is a boy who has just returned from one. Weary and threadbare, with aching feet and sore shoulders, but with wild stories to tell. Of the places he’s been and the vast oceans he’s seen. Villains he narrowly escaped. A boy who left and then returned. Who came back.

Except now we might be at the end of the tale. Ash spilling down around us. The moon above stained a savage shade of red from the flames—a blood moon.