I release my hand from Fin’s head, and my heart scrapes against my ribs. I glance over my shoulder, down the narrow path we followed in. Run, run, run! my heart screams. I take a careful step back, away from the moth, not wanting to make a sound. But the moth circles overhead, bobbing quickly out over the trees—called forth by something. Back into the dark.
Relief settles through me—my heart sinking back into my chest—but then Fin breaks away from my side. He darts around a dead tree stump and into the brush, chasing after the moth. “No!” I shout—too loud, my voice echoing over the layer of snow and bouncing through the treetops. But Fin doesn’t stop. He tears around a cluster of spiny aspens and vanishes into the dark. Gone.
Shit, shit, shit.
If it were anything else, a different kind of moth, or another wolf he will chase deep into the snowy mountains only to return home in a day or two, I’d let him go.
But a bone moth means something else—something cruel and wicked and bad—so I run after him.
I sprint around the clot of trees and follow him into the deepest part of the forest, past elms that grow at odd angles, down steep, jagged terrain I don’t recognize—where my boots slip beneath me, where my hands press against tree trunks to propel me forward, and where each footstep sounds like thunder against the frozen ground. I’m making too much noise. Too loud. The woods will wake. But I don’t slow down; I don’t stop.
I lose sight of him beyond two fallen trees, and little stabs of pain cut through me. “Fin, please!” I call in a near hush, trying to keep my voice low while the sting of tears presses against my eyes, blurring my vision. Panic leaps into my throat and I want to scream, shout Fin’s name louder, but I bite back the urge. No matter what, I can’t wake the woods, or neither Fin nor I will make it out of here.
And then I see him: tail wagging, stopped a few yards away between a grove of hemlocks. My heart presses against my ribs.
He’s led us farther into the Wicker Woods than I’ve ever been before. And the moth—frayed body, white wings with holes torn along the edges—flutters among the falling snowflakes, slow and mercurial, as if it were in no great hurry. It moves upward toward the sky, a speck of white among the black canopy of trees, and then vanishes into the dark forest to the north.
I step carefully toward Fin and touch his ear to keep him from running after it again. But he bares his teeth, growling. “Shhh,” I say softly.
His ears shift forward, his breathing quick as he sucks in bursts of air, and a low guttural growl rises up from deep within his chest.
Something’s out there.
A beast or shadow with hooked claws and grim pinhole eyes. A thing the forest keeps, a thing it hides—something I don’t want to see.
My fingers twitch, and dread rises up at the base of my throat. It tastes like ash. I hate this feeling building inside me. This awful fear. I am a Walker. I am the thing whispered about, the thing that conjures goose bumps and nightmares.
I swallow and stiffen my jaw into place, taking a step forward. The moth led us here. To something just beyond my vision. I scan the dark, looking for eyes—something blinking out from the trees.
But there’s nothing.
I shake my head and let out a breath, about to turn back to Fin, when my left foot thuds against something on the ground. Something hard.
I squint down at my feet, trying to focus in the dark.
A mound of snow. A coat sleeve, I think. The tip of a boot. A thing that doesn’t belong.
And then I see. See.
Hands.
There, lying beneath a dusting of snowfall, in the middle of the Wicker Woods, is a body.
Snowflakes have gathered on stiff eyelashes.
Eyes shuttered closed like two crescent moons. Pale lips parted open, waiting for the crows.
Even the air between the trees has gone still, a tomb, as if the body is an offering that shouldn’t be disturbed.
I blink down at the corpse and a second passes, followed by another, my heart clawing silently upward into my windpipe. But no sound escapes my lips, no cry for help. I stare in stupefied inaction. My mind slows, my ears buzz—an odd crackle crack crack, as if a radio were pressed to my skull. I inch closer and the trees quiver overhead. For a second I wonder if the entire forest might snap at the roots and upend itself—trunks to the sky and treetops to the ground.
I’ve seen dead birds in the woods before, even a dead deer with the antlers still attached to the hollowed-out skull. But never anything like this. Never a human body.
Fin makes a low whine behind me. But I don’t look back. I don’t take my eyes off the corpse, like it might vanish if I look away.
I swallow and crouch down, my knees pressing into the snow. Eyes watering from the cold. But I need to know.
Is it him? The boy who went missing from the camp?
His face is covered by a dusting of snow, dark hair frozen in place. There are no injuries that I can see. No trauma, no blood. And he hasn’t been here long, or he wouldn’t be here at all. The dead don’t last in the mountains, especially in winter. Birds pick apart what they can before the wolves close in, scattering the bones across miles of terrain, leaving barely an imprint of what once had been. The forest is efficient at death, a swift wiping away. No remains to bury or burn or mourn.
A soft wind stirs through the trees, blowing away the snow from his forehead, his cheekbones, his pale lips. And the hairs along the base of my neck prick on end.
I lift my hand from the snow, my fingers hovering over his open palm, trembling, curious. I shouldn’t touch him—but I lower my hand anyway. I want to feel the icy skin, the heaviness of death in his limbs.
My skin meets his.
But his hand isn’t rigid or still. It twitches against my fingertips.
Not dead.
Still alive.
The boy’s eyes flinch open—forest green, gray green, alive-green. He coughs at the same moment his fingers close around mine, gripping tightly.
I scream—a strangled sound, swallowed by the trees—but Fin immediately springs up next to me, tail raised, nose absorbing the boy’s newly alive scent. I yank my arm away and try to stand, to scramble back, but my legs stumble beneath me and I fall backward onto the snow. Run! my spiking heartbeat yells. But before I can push myself up, the boy is rolling onto his side, coughing again, touching his face with his hands. Trying to breathe.
Alive. Not dead. Gasping for air, warm skin, grabbing my hand, kind-of-alive. My throat goes dry and my eyes refuse to blink. I’m certain he’s not real. But he draws in deep, measured breaths between each cough, as if his lungs were full of water.
I sling my backpack off one shoulder and reach inside for the canteen of hot juniper tea. It will save your life if you ever get lost, my grandmother would say. You can live off juniper tea for weeks.
I hold the canteen out to him, and he lowers his hand from his face, his eyes meeting mine. Dark sleepy eyes, deep heavy inhales making his chest rise and fall as if it’s never known air before this moment.