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.
A wilderness covered in snow shouldn’t burn. But fury can fuel strange things—tonight, it fueled a forest fire. If my grandmother was here, she could fix it, she would wave her finger in the air and the trees would listen. She would make this right.
Through the smoke, I glimpse the boys’ camp across the lake and see several boys running from their cabins. They haven’t all fled yet. Some of them are still there. “The forest wants to burn,” I think, I say aloud to no one. And it wants us all to burn with it. Maybe the forest deserves it. Maybe it’s lived too long. I squeeze the spellbook against my chest and think about all the Walkers who sprouted up from these woods. All the stories that live in the soil, live inside these pages. And now it will all burn.
My head begins to buzz, and a familiar sensation skims through me: I’ve been here before. I’ve stood on this ice and thought all these thoughts and felt the ash in my lungs. The feeling of déjà vu rattles over me again so quickly that my head tilts back to the red-stained sky.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, thud.
I blink and refocus. I squeeze the spellbook tighter.
The ice shifts beneath me, so thin I can see the deep black below my feet. I hear Oliver somewhere in the smoke, calling my name. He’s close now.
I grew up in these woods, I think. Every Walker has. It belongs to me, and I to it.
The forest heaves and whines and screams along the shore, flames spurred on by spite and revenge. The ice snaps below me. Fear claws up into my throat.
Oliver shouts again from the smoke, but I don’t listen. I don’t shout back and tell him where I am. Instead, I peer up at the awful sky, at the tips of trees I can just see above the smoke. And I sense the forest watching, listening. It knows who I am.
“I am Nora Walker,” I say softly, just as I have each time I’ve entered the Wicker Woods, but now my words seem tiny. No magic in them at all. No meaning. I think of my grandmother—how sturdy she was. An anchor that could not be moved against her will. Many feared her, the strong tenor of her voice, her wild dark hair—I never saw her take a brush to it and it often caught in the wind and tangled into knots, but moments later it was silk down her back. She was a marvel. And I wish I was her right now, I wish I knew what she knew. How to command the trees around her.
I grip the spellbook tighter, knowing the power inside its pages, the weight of so many words handwritten by all the Walkers before me. I know the meaning in them. That they once commanded these trees, these dark skies. The woods and Walkers are bound to one another. We cannot be divided, stripped clean of the other.
I swallow and say, “My mother is Tala Walker.” An invocation, a reminder to the trees of the blood that courses through me. “My grandmother was Ida Walker.” I breathe her name, let it linger on my tongue. “I am a Walker.” Magic once poured through our veins, real magic. We breathed and the forest listened. We shed tears and the forest wept sap down its bark. Many of the old ways have been forgotten, slipped through cracks, but our blood is still the same. Still a fire inside us.
I feel Oliver is close now, nearly to me, but I don’t look back. “I belong to this forest,” I say aloud, willing the trees to listen. To calm their fury. To stop the flames from burning, from devouring whatever is left. “I am a Walker,” I say again. “You know my name. You know who I am.” It sounds like a spell, like a remnant of real magic rising up inside me, burning my fingertips.
I breathe and lift my chin. Certainty pulsing through me. “I am a Walker!” I scream, commanding my voice to grow louder than the raging fire pummeling around the lake.
I am not afraid.
I hear Oliver only a few yards away. “Nora!” he shouts, more urgent this time. And then there is another sound. A change in the air. A crack and a whoosh.