“I don’t trust anyone there,” he answers.
“Why not?”
His eyes hook on mine before slipping away. And after a long, muted pause, he says simply, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
I think I hear movement upstairs, Suzy waking up, or maybe just turning over in bed. The sound fades.A boy died, I think again. The words on loop, echo, echo,echo. I swallow and look back at Oliver, saying aloud the thing I can’t escape. “A boy died the night you went missing,” I say, words tumbling out, causing a strange pain inside my ribs—like being snagged by a fishing hook.
Oliver’s brow stiffens. “What?”
I feel my jaw contract, my eyes afraid to look away from him, afraid I’ll miss a flutter of an eyelash that might mean something. Reveal some clue Oliver is trying to hide. “A boy is dead,” I say, firmer this time.
But Oliver’s expression tightens, like he doesn’t understand.
“You didn’t know?” I ask.
“No. I don’t…” He trails off, swaying a little on his feet, and I see how pale he is—the cold hasn’t left him completely yet. “I don’t remember anything. I can’t…” Again his voice breaks.
I want to touch him, to steady him, but I keep my hands at my sides, examining every line of his face, the slope of his cheekbones. I’m looking for a lie, for something he’s hiding. But there is only muted confusion.
“I can’t go back to the camp,” he says finally. “If the road wasn’t snowed in, I’d leave, but”—he exhales deeply—“I’m stuck here.”
Oliver breathes and I swear the wind calms, he closes his eyes and the forest trembles against the house.
My lost item found in the woods. Who is now more forest than boy.
I say the next thing before I can stop myself, before I can tell myself it’s a bad idea. “Okay.” A prick of unease cuts through me. “You can stay here tonight.”
One night, I tell myself. One more night, I’ll let him sleep here, this boy who speaks as if a soft wind stirs inside him, who can’t remember what happened to him the night another boy died. Whose eyes make me feel slightly unmoored in ways that make me want to scream. Walkers cannot trust our own hearts—our slippy, sloppy bleeding hearts. They are reckless, stupid things. Muscles that beattoo fast, that cave inward when they break. Too fragile to be trusted. Yet, I let him stay.
I lock the front door and add more logs to the stove. And when Oliver settles onto the couch, I see he still has the bag of herbs I gave him, clutched in his hand. I was certain he wouldn’t keep it—but he did.
“Thank you,” he says to me, and I stall at the bottom of the stairs, chewing on the side of my lip, twirling the moonstone ring around my finger.
“Can I trust you?” I ask.Too late now, I think. I’ve already let him stay. I’ve already let my heart slip two degrees off-center, let myself believe he might be different. That he isn’t like the others. That he might have the same hole inside him that I do. And if he says no, will I force him to leave?Probably not.
He watches me with his moon-deep eyes, and my head feels fizzy and light, filled with feathers and dust, no rational thoughts skipping around up there. Only seasick thoughts. No compass or stars to steer me back to shore.
“I don’t know,” he answers finally, and my throat feels too dry.
A boy is dead. Dead, dead, dead.The words have now lodged themselves stiffly in my skull—planted there, where they will grow roots and thorns and venomous flowers, burrowing into my thoughts, becoming true.
There is a storm growing inside me, inside this house, and it darkens the doorways—the dark spreading out from corners and from beneath old, creaky bed frames.
Back in my room, I feel alone, out of place in my own bedsheets. The loft ceiling too steep and jagged, like brittle bones that mightsnap at the knees and shatter. I force my eyes closed, but I see only the moth, the memory of ash-white wings moving toward me in the dark. Hunting me.
Oliver has returned from the woods.
And something happened the night of the storm.Something bad.
When you see a pale moth, my grandmother told me time and again, her eyes like black moons,death isn’t far behind.
Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine
WILLA WALKER wailed and wailed and wailed.
She was born in 1894 during the winter of an ox moon. A restless baby, she cried even when the summer stars reconfigured themselves in the sky, dancing across her hand-carved crib. Her mother, Adaline Walker, believed something to be wrong with the small child—an omen of illness or bad luck.
When Willa was sixteen, she stood on the shore of Jackjaw Lake and wept into the shallow water. Her tears filled the lake until it overflowed—muddying the banks and turning the lake bottomless.
