Winterwood

Max backs away from me and even Jasper stands up from the grave where he had been slouched. They give me room to summon this old dead witch. I exhale through my nose and say the name three times. “Willa Walker Willa Walker Willa Walker.”

A hush settles over the graveyard, and for a moment, it feels as if the wind stops blowing. As if time falls still. My eyes skim the cemetery, the old dead trees and the snow falling between the markers, and for the briefest moment I think maybe they’re right. Willa Walker has been summoned from her grave. But then Jasper breaks into laugher, followed by Rhett, and it echoes over the gravestones.

“Dude, you should see your face,” Jasper says, slapping me hard on the shoulder. “You look like you actually believe a hand is going to rise up from the dirt.”

Rhett shoves the bottle of whiskey at me, as if it were my prize for doing what they said. I take a slug, then hand it back.

I think we’re done, that we’ll head back now. The snow is falling in thick sheets, and I follow them out through the cemetery gate. When we reach the shore, I turn left. But Jasper calls out to me. “Where you going?” he asks. “Did you think that was it? All you had to do was say some dead lady’s name three times?”

Rhett laughs beside him, but Max looks just as serious as ever.

This next part is why we really came out here.

This is what they’ve been waiting for.

I walk to the edge of the lake where they stand, snow blowing sideways through the trees. A storm is coming. The counselors warned us at dinner to add more logs to our woodstoves, to shut our doors tightly so the wind wouldn’t blow them inward.

But now we stand out in it, the mountains to the north obscured by black clouds.

“You have to walk out on the frozen lake,” Rhett says, his voice buoyant and light, enjoying this. The main event for the night. “All the way out to the center.”

“And then you have to twirl in a circle like a ballerina,” Jasper explains, grinning so wide the gap in his teeth seems broader than usual.

I don’t look at them—I stare out at the frozen surface of the lake. At the dark water still visible beneath.

“You’re getting off easy,” Rhett says. “We could make you sleep outside in the cold.”

I shake my head slowly. “The ice won’t hold me,” I say. I can see that it’s still too thin—not frozen solid. Only a month or so ago, I’m sure there was water splashing onto the pebbled shoreline.

“You don’t have a choice, newbie,” Rhett answers, his voice cold now, his mouth grinning with self-satisfaction. He enjoys this part of initiations—he enjoys the brief sense of power.

“I’m not doing it,” I say, refusing to look away from Rhett. I want him to know that I’m serious. Saying the name of a long-dead witch three times is one thing. But this is something else completely. I’d rather sleep out in the cold all night—I’d rather fight all of them—than risk walking out there.

“He could drown,” Lin offers—the only one who seems to recognize how dangerous it is. That someone could actually die. “No one’s ever had to go out on the ice before,” he argues. “We usually make them swim in the lake in the summer, and see if Willa Walker pulls them under.”

“He’s not going to drown,” Jasper interjects, scoffing and brushing a hand through his shaggy hair. “The ice will hold.”

“And if he does, it’s his own fault,” Max says, his eyes like two black orbs, as if something is boiling beneath the surface. The others might still be unsure whether they’re going to let me into their little group. But Max knows that he hates me. I stole his bunk when I first arrived. I didn’t want to, I would have preferred to go unnoticed, to be the boy whose parents died, who arrived late in the season but kept to himself and hardly took up any space at all.

But Max hates me for it all the same. Blames me for him having to sleep in a one-room hut near the counselors and the mess hall.

And now, standing on the shore, I know he won’t let me get out of this initiation. He wants me to suffer. To a pay a price for his eviction.

“If he knows how to swim, he won’t drown,” Max adds. In his hand, he holds something—a small silver pocket watch—turning it over between his fingers, the chain swinging like a pendulum. Each time I’ve seen him, he’s had the watch, always fidgeting with it. His dad gave it to him, the others told me. It was a birthday gift before he was sent here—so he could track the hours he was stuck in this shithole, they had joked. It seemed like a cruel gift, in a way. A reminder that time would continue on without him in the outside world. That he was losing time. We all were—trapped in these mountains.

Jasper laughs, a hearty, side-splitting laugh, and takes another long gulp from the bottle.

Still, I stand at the shore, refusing to move.