But Oliver doesn’t know these tales: the legends I know to be true. He only knows what the boys have said—and most of their stories are lies. Born from fear and spite, not from history.
He doesn’t know that Walkers can enter the Wicker Woods because our family is as old as the trees. That we are made of the same fiber and dust, of roots and dandelion seeds.
Yet somehow, this boy entered the dark of the Wicker Woods and came out unharmed. He came out alive. As if some strange form of magic were at work.
“How did you survive in there?” I urge him again, watching his face for any flicker of a lie. For something he’s trying to hide.
He chews on the question, mashes it around in his skull, and when he shakes his head, I wonder if he truly doesn’t know. Perhaps his mind has scrubbed away what needs to be forgotten. The unpleasant things. Better to not remember the woods. Or how dark the dark can be.
I swallow hard: frustrated, tired. Something happened to him out there—but he won’t say. Or he honestly doesn’t remember. And my mind skips strangely back to the moth, its white wings in the dark air. The memory of it flit flit flitting through the trees, leading me to Oliver, where he lay slumped in the snow. I wince and cross my arms, willing the memory away. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a bone moth but only a common forest moth, oversized and snowy white. A moth that wasn’t a warning at all.
Maybe.
Maybe.
“We should get you back to the camp,” I say, letting out a breath.
His shoulders sink and his jaw sets in place. I can tell he doesn’t want to go back there, to the camp, but I also can’t keep him. Finders keepers. He is a lost item that belongs at the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys. Not mine to keep—to place on a windowsill, to dust and admire.
Even if I want to.
He nods—a solemn gesture.
“And we should go before this storm gets worse,” I add. The sky has turned the color of a broken bruise before it’s begun to heal, and the wind lashes through the trees, blowing snow up off the lake.
Oliver’s eyes lift, and there is a disquiet in them that betrays something else. Fear perhaps. Restlessness. Or just lack of sleep. “Okay,” he relents.
Fin whimpers from the front porch, eyes big and watery.
He doesn’t want to be left behind—but it’s safer if he stays. In summer, the tourists often think Fin is a full-blooded wolf. Dangerous and wild—and they might be right. When he appeared on our doorstep two years ago, scratching at the wood to be let in, he looked to be part wolf, part collie, part savage glint in his eyes. Like he might bolt back into the woods at any moment, returning to where he belongs.
Even the boys at camp who’ve seen him from afar will shout that a wolf is stalking through the woods. Or throw stones at him.
They fear him—and fear can make people do stupid things.
“Stay,” I say, patting Fin on the head, and Oliver and I cut a path through the trees, following the shoreline. To our left, the frozen surface of the lake is a web of fractures crisscrossing out toward the center. In warmer months, the water is a soft blue, glittery and mild. But now, the lake has fallen dormant. Black and grim and bone cold.
“The others at camp say it’s bottomless,” Oliver says behind me, our feet punching through the snow, our breath forming little white clouds with each exhale.
“No one’s ever seen the bottom,” I answer. “Or touched it.” Sometimes I will stand at the shore and imagine falling down down down into that dark pool, and I feel both terrified and the strange thrill of curiosity. What waits down there, where no sunlight has ever shone? What lurks at the deepest point? What monsters hide where no one can see?
“So you think it’s true?” he asks, stopping to face the lake. His voice sounds strong, a deepness to it that wasn’t there last night. Maybe the herbs are working.
I bite the side of my lip and lift a shoulder. “You live here long enough, you start to believe in things you might not in the outside world,” I tell him, certain he won’t understand what I mean.
I feel him looking at me, his green eyes too green, and then his hand lifts, reaching toward me. His fingers just barely graze my hair, tickling the soft place behind my ear. “A leaf,” he says, pulling it away and holding it out for me to see. A yellow three-pointed leaf with golden edges rests in his hand. “It was tangled in your hair.”
The closeness of him makes me uneasy, and I brush my fingers quickly through the strands of my hair. “It happens a lot,” I answer softly, looking away from him and feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “The forest sticks to me.”
His smile is full and wide, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it—the slight curve of his lips, the crooked slant to one side, the wink of his eyes like he might laugh.
I don’t let him see my own smile trying to break across my lips. I know he thinks me strange. A girl who makes potions and whose hair is tangled with leaves. Surely a witch. Couldn’t possibly be anything else.
I turn away from him and we continue on. A half mile around the north end of the lake, we reach the camp.
The first outpost ever built in these mountains.
The first structures to rise up among the trees.
The Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys was founded fifty years ago, built from the remains of the early gold-mining settlement. In the early 1900s, rugged men and woman made their fortunes in these mountains, panning gold along the banks of the Black River. And even the lake itself gave up grains of gold dust in the early years.
But not anymore—the gold is long gone.
Now two dozen cabins sit nestled back in the snow-covered trees, with several smaller, odd-shaped buildings scattered along the shoreline, including a maintenance shed and a pump house that were all once part of the deserted gold-mining town.
The snow at the camp is worn with tracks: the boots of four dozen boys meandering this way and that, from cabin to cabin and back again. In summer, the beach is a chaos of boys playing Frisbee and soccer and wading out into the water with canoes and sailboats they built themselves—most barely seaworthy.
Icicles hang from the eaves of the mess hall, and we clomp up the steps to the two massive wooden doors. From the other side, we can hear the low cacophony of voices—breakfast at the camp is underway.
I glance back at Oliver, his shoulders raised against the cold. I have the distinct thought that maybe I should take him back to my house, hide him in the loft, keep him safe. But again, I know: He’s not mine to keep.
“You coming?” I ask, a waver in my voice, crackling along each word.
Maybe he’s preparing himself for whatever punishment he will face once the camp counselors see that he’s returned. Maybe he wishes he was still out in the woods, flat on his back in the snow. Lost.
But I can’t take him back to the woods.
A thing found cannot be unfound.
He nods, so I push open one of the heavy wooden doors, and we step inside.
The strange clamor of voices and the thick, smoky air barrel into us as soon as we enter. Like stepping from a quiet, snow-muted dream world into a loud, buzzing, awake one. And it takes a moment for my eyes and ears to adjust.
The room is expansive, stately, and looks like it could withstand a thousand years of heavy snow and wind before it ever started to decay. A fire roars from a huge stone fireplace against the far left wall, and the air smells of blackened toast and has a dusky, dim quality, as if the mournful winter air were trying to creep inside.