I shake my head, confusion and fear suddenly clattering down every joint, and I step away from Oliver, holding a palm in the air.
I don’t know what’s happening.
“Weird little witch girl has lost her mind,” Max jeers, laughing now. He says something else, but I can’t hear. He laughs and moresparks skitter through the doorway, smoke filling the house. The fire is close now. But I don’t care.
Max can’t see Oliver.He’s standing right beside me, but Max doesn’t see him.
I was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
I take another step away from Oliver, trying to swallow, trying to find the right words, but they never form.
I thought the boys were worried I would find Max’s body. But they were worried I’d find him in here,alive. They were worried I’d turn him in, tell the counselors where he was hiding—a boy who drowned another boy.
One boy missing, one boy dead—a girl who couldn’t see the truth.
“You drowned,” I say aloud, staring up at Oliver, not caring if Max hears, if he thinks I’ve lost my mind. The thoughts are spiraling fast now, too many moments, too many things I missed. All this time.I didn’t see. I didn’t know.
Oliver’s jaw tightens. “Nora,” he pleads.
But I shake my head. I don’t want to hear my name on his lips. I don’t want to hear anything.
“Nora,” he repeats. “Nora, please.”
I move past him in the doorway before he can stop me, before he can touch my skin with his. The air is humming around me, sparks whirling through the trees. The fire is close now.
I waited too long.
Oliver says my name again, but I’m scrambling down the steps into the snow, into the chaos of cinders.
I’m running down toward the lake, away from the flames, away from Max Caulfield who isn’t dead at all.
From Oliver,who might be.
I know that moths bring omens not to be ignored and that brooms should never be kept on the second floor of your home. I know windows opened to the east can bring bad dreams, but windows to the west can bring fated love and good fortune. Carry an acorn in your pocket to stay young forever, plant chicory root beside your kitchen window to keep the flies away. Throw salt over your left shoulder. And eat dandelion honey on toast before bed to help you sleep.
I know these things because my grandmother knew them too. And her grandmother before her. These things are as true as the North Star, as sure as a beesting will hurt and then itch.
But what of the things I don’t know?
The riddles I can’t decipher.
The strange conjuring that made a boy appear inside the Wicker Woods? A boy who shouldn’t have returned at all. A boy like Oliver Huntsman.
The trees sag and drip.
Snow melts from limbs—a winter forest set ablaze—and the air whirls with sparks. The fire is all around me, burning the wilds and the woods and everything green. Tearing down the row of summer homes.
I reach the lake, and my breath is a wheeze, sparks singeing the sleeves of my coat, my hair. One even lands on the tip of my nose and I swat it away. Everything is burning and I waited too long toleave. The night has come alive—bursting—a carnival of firelight, of soot and sparks and heat.
And then I see it, bobbing through the smoke, weaving between the embers like a needle stitching through fabric.
The bone moth.
Death is a winged creature who won’t leave you alone—not until it gets what it wants,a passage from the spellbook reads, one I’ve recalled over and over in my mind.
It’s beautiful, I realize for the first time: a rare white moth from some deep part of the forest.
