Winterwood

He tries to grab my hand, but I slip away, stepping out onto the ice. It’s my only option now—the only place where the fire won’t burn.

On the lake.

“Nora, no,” he calls, his voice broken, crumbling beneath his tongue. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Only for me,” I answer back. I’m the only one who can die, who still has something to lose. I know there’s no time left. No escape. I’ll suffocate from the smoke or burn from the flames if I stay here.

I move quickly, before he can pull me back. I sprint out onto the ice, through the low layer of smoke, slipping once and dropping to my knees, but I push myself up and keep going. The ice is thinner than before—than the night I fell through the surface and the water was needles on my skin.

The lake snaps and creaks like old wood, like ice not as thick as it once was. The heat from the fire is melting it, turning it back to water. I shuffle and slip, but I keep moving forward until I reach the center—where the shore is nearly the same distance away on all sides. I press my hands to my knees and try to breathe, but the smoke is too thick. My eyes burn, my lungs rasp with each inhale. And I feel a sudden certainty that I’m going to die out here. That this is really the end.

This is how I will be remembered inside the spellbook: Nora Walker died on the lake, her body never recovered. The long line of Walkers ended with her.

I cover a hand over my mouth to keep out the smoke and I lift my head, standing up straight. The view across Jackjaw Lake is of a forest in flames. A forest burning. Started by a boy named Jasper who is now buried in the ground. Swallowed whole.

At the boys’ camp, several structures are already gone—torched to their bones. And I can’t tell if anyone is still there, trapped in their cabins. The wilderness is on fire and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I look to the sky, the shade of gunpowder, and I remember the feeling when I fell into the lake, when my skin felt like it was peeling open, when my grandmother’s ring slipped free from my finger—sinking down into the dark. To the bottom of a lake without an end.

But Jasper found it inside the Wicker Woods. The ring returned.

Just like when I found Oliver.

Both sank into the lake.

I breathe, chasing down the memories as quickly as they skitter away.

Mr. Perkins said that miners used to drop things into the lake—they were offerings to the forest, to calm the Wicker Woods. Because they believed the lake was the beating heart of this place.

The pieces begin to settle in the back of my mind. Dust falling through rays of sunlight—finally visible.

I never knew why things appeared inside the Wicker Woods. What foul form of witchery or mischief was at work. But now I see: If it falls into the lake, it will return again inside the Wicker Woods.

A notation I will make inside the spellbook, if I ever get the chance.

And on one fateful night, during a bad winter storm, a boy fell into the lake—he sank to the bottom and was spit back out inside the Wicker Woods. An offering made the night of the storm.

And then I found him under a full moon. Mine to keep. Finders keepers.

Now I understand, now I see. But it doesn’t change a thing. He’s still dead. The forest brought him back, but it didn’t bring him back whole.

The cold from the frozen lake rises up through my boots, and I begin to shiver. I think I hear Oliver calling for me, searching, but the smoke is too thick now, swirling in strange gusts across the lake, and he can’t find me.

Fire spits up into the sky from the tops of trees along the shore. Devouring, angry, hungry. It sounds like a monster, sucking up all the oxygen. And I know my home is gone. Nothing left but a scar across the ground. Only piles of soot and brick.

Tears break over my eyelids and fall to the ice, becoming a part of the lake.

I was born in that house—where every Walker before me has lived—and now it’s gone, only ash.

And it’s my fault.

I was wrong about so many things. I was wrong when I thought Oliver had killed Max. I was wrong when I thought my death was near. Or maybe I wasn’t—maybe death will still find me. Out here on this lake. In this burning forest.

Is it better to burn alive or to drown? Which will hurt less? The ice shifts beneath me, bending away from my weight. An inch of water now at the surface. I squeeze my eyes shut and push away the cold, pushing away the sound of trees cracking and falling to the ground in the distance. The sound of flames roaring along the edge of the lake. Ash in my hair, embers falling at my feet, melting the ice.

I waited too long, I think again. I should have left with Suzy and Mr. Perkins.

Eventually the ice will crack and give out beneath me. Eventually I will sink into the lake and drown just like Oliver.

Another offering to the lake.