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Winterwood
Author: Shea Ernshaw

PROLOGUE

 


A boy went missing the night of the storm.

The night snow sailed down from the mountains and howled against the eaves of the old house as if through gritted teeth—cruel and baleful and full of bad omens not to be ignored.

The electricity flickered like Morse code. The temperature dropped so fast that trees cracked down their centers, sweet-smelling sap oozing to the surface like honey, before it too crystalized and froze. Snow spiraled down the chimney and gathered on the roof, until it was so deep it buried the mailbox at the end of the driveway, until I could no longer see Jackjaw Lake beyond my bedroom window.

Winter arrived in a single night.

By morning, Barrel Creek Road—the only road down the mountain—was snowed in. Blocked by an impassable wall of white.

The few of us who lived this deep in the woods, and those who were housed at the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys on the far side of the lake, were trapped. Stuck in the rugged heart of the wilderness.

We just didn’t know for how long.

Or that we wouldn’t all make it out alive.

 

 

NORA

 


Never waste a full moon, Nora, even in winter, my grandmother used to say.

We’d wander up the Black River under a midnight sky, following the constellations above us like a map I could trace with my fingertips—imprints of stardust on my skin. She would hum a melody from deep within her belly, gliding sure-footed across the frozen river to the other side.

Can you hear it? she’d ask. The moon is whispering your secrets. It knows your darkest thoughts. My grandmother was like that—strange and beautiful, with stories resting just behind her eyelids. Stories about moonlight and riddles and catastrophes. Dreadful tales. But bright, cheery ones too. Walking beside her, I mirrored each step she took into the wilderness, in awe of how swiftly she avoided stinging nettles and poison buckthorns. How her hands traced the bark of every tree we passed, knowing its age just by touch. She was a wonder—her chin always tilted to the sky, craving the anemic glow of moonlight against her olive skin, a storm always brewing along her edges.

But tonight, I walk without her, chasing that same moon up the same dark, frozen river—hunting for lost things inside the cold, mournful forest.

Tree limbs sag and drip overhead. An owl hoots from a nearby spruce. And Fin and I slog deeper into the mountains, his wolf tail slashing above him, nose to the air, tracking some unknown scent to the far side of the riverbank.

Two weeks have passed since the storm blew over Jackjaw Lake. Two weeks since the snow fell and blocked the only road out of the mountains. Two weeks since the electricity popped and died.

And two weeks since a boy from the camp across the lake went missing.

A boy whose name I don’t even know.

A boy who ran away or got lost or simply vanished like the low morning fog that rises up from the lake during autumn rainstorms. Who crept from his bunk inside one of the camp cabins and never returned. A victim of the winter cold. Of madness or desperation. Of these mountains that have a way of getting inside your head—playing tricks on those who dare to walk among the pines long after the sun has set.

These woods are wild and rugged and unkind.

They cannot be trusted.

Yet, this is where I walk: deep into the mountains. Where no others dare to go.

Because I am more darkness than girl. More winter shadows than August sunlight. We are the daughters of the wood, my grandmother would whisper.

So I push farther up the shore of the Black River, following the map made by the stars, just like she taught me. Just like all Walkers before me.

Until I reach the place.

The place where the line of trees breaks open to my right, where two steep ridges come together to form a narrow passage into a strange, dark forest to the east—a forest that is much older than the pines along the Black River. Trees that are bound in and closed off and separate from the rest.

The Wicker Woods.

A mound of rocks stands guard ahead of me: flat stones pulled up from the riverbed and stacked four feet high beside the entrance to the wood. It’s a warning. A sign to turn back. Only the foolish enter here. Miners who panned for gold along the riverbank built the cairn to steer away those who would come later, those who might wander into this swath of land, unaware of the cruel dark that awaited them.

The rocks that mark the entrance have never toppled, never collapsed under the weight of snow or rain or autumn winds.

This is the border.

Only enter under a full moon, Grandma cautioned, eyes like watery pools dewing at the edges. Inside this hallowed wood, I will find lost items, but only beneath a full moon—when the forest sleeps, when the pale glow of moonlight lulls it into slumber—can I slip through unnoticed. Unharmed. A sleeping forest will allow safe passage. But if it wakes, be prepared to run.

Each month, when the swollen moon rises in the sky, I enter the Wicker Woods in search of lost things hidden among the greening branches and tucked at the base of trees. Lost sunglasses, rubber flip-flops, cheap plastic earrings in the shape of watermelons and unicorns and crescent moons. Toe rings and promise rings given to girls by lovesick boys. The things that are lost at Jackjaw Lake in summers past are once again found in the woods. Appearing as if the forest is giving them back.

But sometimes, under a particularly lucky full moon, I find items much older—long forgotten things, whose owners fled these mountains a century ago. Silver lockets and silver buttons and silver sewing notions. Toothbrushes made of bone, medicine bottles with labels long since worn away, cowboy boots and tin cans once filled with powdered milk and black coffee grounds. Watch fobs and doorknobs. And from time to time, I even find gold itself: crude coins hammered into a disc, gold nuggets tangled in moss, flakes that catch in my hair.

Lost things found.

By magic or maleficence, these things appear in the woods. Returned.

Fin sniffs the air, hesitant. And I draw in a breath, spinning the thin gold ring around my index finger. A habit. A way to summon the courage of my grandmother, who gave me the ring the night she died.

“I am Nora Walker,” I whisper.

Let the forest know your name. It had seemed stupid once—to speak aloud to the trees. But after you step into the dark and feel the cold pass through you—the trees swallowing all memory of light—you’ll tell the Wicker Woods all manner of secrets. Stories you’ve kept hidden inside the cage of your chest. Anything to lull the forest—to keep it in slumber.

I pinch my eyes closed and step over the threshold, through the line of tall soldier trees standing guard, into the dark of the forest.

Into the Wicker Woods.

 

* * *

 

Nothing good lives here.

The air is cold and damp, and the dark makes it hard to see anything beyond your toes. But it always feels this way—each time colder and darker than the last. I breathe slowly and move forward, stepping carefully, deliberately, over fallen logs and dewdrop flowers frozen in place. In winter, these woods feel like a fairy tale suspended in time—the princess forgotten, the hero eaten whole by a noble fir goblin. The story ended, but no one remembered to burn the haunted forest to the ground.

I duck beneath an archway of thorny twigs and dead cypress vines. Keeping my gaze at my feet, I’m careful to never linger long on a single shadow, a thing skittering just beyond my vision—my mind will only make it worse. Twist it into something with horns and fangs and copper eyes.

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