Winterwood

The wind blows up through the trees, and the sky is full of snow. The storm is getting worse.

“Told you she’s dangerous,” Jasper remarks, just loud enough that I can hear. I take another step back, and another, keeping my eyes on Oliver. I want him to say something, to yell at the boys to stop, to leave me alone. I want him to come after me. But he stands mute. Everything he ever felt for me, everything he ever said, now lost. Slipped away into the darkest corners of his mind.

The Oliver I knew is gone.

Rhett follows my movements, and for a moment he looks like he might come after me, grab my arm and pull me back into the cemetery. Like I am just the thing he needs to occupy his buzzed mind.

So I hurry through the snow, around the lake, until I can no longer see them through the blowing wind, and I swear I can hear my heart break—the fizz and crack of it.

I stop when I’m almost to the marina and press my hands to my eyes to keep the tears from coming. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.

This isn’t how the story ends.

A deep scar is branding itself inside me—a place that will scab over but never heal. I hold in a breath, I hold it until my chest aches, until my lungs burn for a fresh gulp of air. The storm thrashes overhead and I exhale, long and deep, a chill shuttling down my spine, tucking itself firmly between each rib bone. I’ve always been afraid I wasn’t a real Walker. Afraid I would end up like my mom, cynical and scared of what she is. I always thought I wanted to be alone, alone in these woods. Where I can’t get hurt, where no one can call me moon girl and winter witch and wild.

But I was wrong. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want sleep in my room in the dark and never feel Oliver’s hands on my skin again. I don’t want a life without people in it. Without Oliver. Without my heart rapping wildly inside my chest and knowing someone else’s is doing the same thing.

My life feels spare and thin without it.

I am a Walker who found her nightshade. I am a Walker who wants to be called more than a witch. More than a girl who is feared. I want to be a Walker who can trust her heart, who will chase down this feeling welling up inside me every chance I get. I want to be loved.

Loved.

Loved.

Loved.

Recklessly, foolishly. Without reason or caution or always looking for ways to ruin it.

I want him.

I drop my hands from my eyes and take a step back toward the cemetery, back through the storm. Because I don’t have a choice. Because I have to drag him away and keep him safe and not let him drown. Whether he remembers me or not, I won’t give up on him. Because I am a Walker. And my story doesn’t end like this.

But I only make it a few steps, I only blink once, when I see someone moving up the shore, through the blizzard—an illusion. A boy.

I blink again.

Him.

I stop and a humming begins in my skull.

Doubt and fear make nests beneath my skin. I want to cry.

He reaches me and time slows. He lifts his head and my heart climbs back up into my chest, braiding itself together—thin fibers of thread to make it whole.

His eyes rove the ground at first, then click to mine. We stare at each other, and I see him searching my face for memories. For moments in time he won’t find. Because when I peer into his eyes, I know he doesn’t remember me. The girl who pulled him from the Wicker Woods and let him sleep beside her. He lifts his hand and I hold in a breath; I watch him without blinking. I think he’s going to touch my neck, my face, my collarbone, but his fingers graze my hair, so gently I hardly feel it. My eyes flutter closed, and his hand draws back again.

When I open my eyes, I see he’s holding something between his fingers—a small twig, a green spiny leaf clinging to one end, as if it were awaiting spring.

“The forest sticks to you,” he says. Without knowing it, he repeats what I told him the first time he pulled a bit of the forest from my hair. The morning after I found him and we walked back to the boys’ camp.

A sob catches in my throat and a smile splits across my face.

He holds the leaf in his hand, a remnant from when I woke in the trees, my hair lying across the ground, and maybe, maybe he remembers some small part of me. Something that nags at him.

His eyes narrow, and for a moment he looks pained, like he’s trying to pick apart the bits of shadows from forgotten memory. The things that haven’t happened yet.

“Maybe we met once before?” he asks, his eyebrows sloped down, his hair curling just behind his ears as the snow falls around us.

My fingers want to touch him again, but I only let myself nod, afraid he’ll slip away. “I think we did.”

“I think I liked you then,” he says.

Tears begin spilling down my cheeks, unstoppable, heavy tears. Salt and sweet. “I think I liked you too.”

He holds out his arm, and with the tips of his fingers, he wipes away the tears from my chin. He smiles just a little, and I feel like my legs might give out.