A noise from somewhere outside, in the trees, in the snowy dark.
The music was not in my dreams.
It was real.
Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine
EMELINE WALKER was born a month late under a ghost moon—instead of the dwarf clover moon, as was intended. Her eyes were alabaster white, and when she opened her mouth to cry, only air slipped out.
She was a quiet child, who spoke to herself and played cat’s cradle alone in her room and dug her toes into the mud to feel the worms wriggling beneath.
But at seventeen, during an unusually windy autumn when wild dandelion fluff blew over the lake like tiny parasols, Emeline went into the Wicker Woods and lost her mind.
Yet, it was not her fault.
She had lost the silver locket her true love had given to her, so she went into the woods where all lost things are found. She roamed the forest, kicking away rotted leaves and smooth black stones, in search of it. She slept in the trunks of trees. She wove stonecrop flowers around her wrists. A year later, when she finally emerged, strands of her long raven hair had turned bone white and dirt was clotted under her nails, but there was no locket clutched in her hand.
For the remainder of her life, Emeline continued to search the old house—inside teacups, behind books, and under the floorboards. Each night she shook out her bedsheets, in case the locket had slipped between the cotton.
She lived to be an old woman, long white hair to her ankles, trailing her through the garden where she dug up marigolds and vanilla leaf and wild ginger, certain the locket would be found among the roots. Emeline never knew her shadow side, her Walker magic, her nightshade—it eluded her, just like the locket.
On her deathbed, Emeline Walker clasped the hand of her little sister, Lilly, and said, “Ah, there it is.” And went still.
How to Unravel a Knotted Mind:
Toss heated salt water out an upstairs window.
Clasp hands around a circle of freshly tilled spring soil and spit over your left shoulder.
Don’t bathe for three nights in a row. On the fourth night, drink a glass of golden turmeric milk, braid your hair tightly down your back, and sleep with no socks.
NORA
Music vibrates through the trees—tinny and muffled.
I follow the sound, the bass thumping through the hard, frozen ground, voices rising in laughter. I’m nearly halfway down the string of boarded-up summer homes, almost to the marina, when I reach the origin: the old Wilkinson place, with its large wraparound porch, thick log walls, and two peaked bay windows overlooking the lake. It’s one of nicest log homes on Jackjaw Lake, and the Wilkinsons only visit twice every summer. They bring their three dogs and five kids and too-loud friends. They have barbecues and parties late into the night, and the adults get drunk on dark red wine and laugh at the same jokes they tell year after year.
Now, under a cocoon of snow, the house is buzzing again.
My feet carry me up to the front porch—as if still in a dream—my hands push open the front door that’s been left slightly ajar, and my eyes absorb the sway of boys crowded inside.I shouldn’t be here.But my heart betrays my mind.
Oliver might be inside.
And if he is, I don’t know what I’ll say. Maybe I’ll scream and thump my fists against his chest. I’ll tell him he lied; I’ll tell him hekilled someone that night and kept a pocket watch hidden in his coat. Or maybe I’ll turn and leave, unable to find the right words. But I need to see his face, the gentle curve of each eye, the kindness I once saw in them, and maybe I’ll know. I’llreallysee. A monster. A villain. Or the boy I remember from the trees.
I clench my hands at my sides and step through the doorway.
Nearly the whole camp is here. Boys hold wineglasses and champagne flutes filled with dark liquor. To my right, several boys play a game of flip-cup on the dining room table, shouting loudly. Drunk. A fire burns brightly from the massive fireplace to my left, logs haphazardly tossed onto the flames, too close to the salmon-colored living room rug—the edges already singed.
I slip past a group of boys, and no one seems to notice me. Already too intoxicated. Standing atop the coffee table is a boy wearing a green wool blanket as a cape, shouting about how his dad swore he’d only have to stay at the camp for two months but it’s been six. His eyes glaze over me, but he doesn’t seem to register the girl among an ocean of boys. My feet knock into empty beer cans littered across the floor, and a portable stereo sits on a long table beneath a window, blaring country music from some distant radio station—powered by batteries or maybe a windup crank at the back.
The boys have broken into the Wilkinsons’ summer home.
And they’re going to destroy this place.
The air buzzes against my ears with heat and laughter, and the scent of spilled beer is nauseating. The flickering candlelight throughout the room creates the illusion of human ghosts climbing up the walls. Long spiny arms and legs. Insect people.
I scan the faces but don’t see Oliver. And maybe he wouldn’tcome here, with all these boys from camp, if they really aren’t his friends. Unless he lied about that, too. About everything. A lump lodges itself in my throat and I feel sick, standing among all these strange faces. Boys I don’t know.
