“Told you that you’d anger the trees. You can’t build a fire this close to the forest.”
Rhett takes a step toward me, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Stupid witch,” he spits under his breath.
But Suzy reaches out and grabs his arm, and he looks back at her. “Leave her alone,” she says.
Rhett’s eyebrows pull together, but his arm relaxes—as though just her touch is enough to calm his temper.
“I don’t like it out here anyway,” Lin admits, stepping back from the group and moving toward the trees, toward the lake.
Jasper glances down at the empty liquor bottle lying in the snow. “And I need more booze,” he slurs, before crawling to his feet.
“Fine,” Rhett says, his tone blunt-edged and irritated, eyes watching me a second more before turning back to Suzy. “We can go back to the cabin.” He slings an arm over Suzy’s shoulder. “You coming?”
She tilts her head up at him, giving up a coy little shrug, like she’s considering her other options for the night. Other plans. She glances at me and slips free of Rhett’s arm, saying softly so only I can hear, “You should come too.”
I shake my head. “No thanks.” I have zero interest in spending a single minute more with these boys.
Rhett slaps Jasper on the shoulder as he stumbles to his feet, laughing, but Jasper shrugs him off. Like he’s embarrassed.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go with them either,” I whisper to Suzy, keeping my voice low.
Her eyes sag a little, like she’s tired, or maybe it’s pity I see—she feels bad for me. Nora Walker who has no real friends. “I’ll be back before the sun comes up,” she says, like she wants to reassure me.
But I don’t nod; I feel only a twinge of unease. “I don’t think you should trust them.” Maybe I’m being paranoid, or maybe it’s only because Oliver said he doesn’t trust them. But I don’t want her to go with Rhett, with any of them.
She smiles, lifting an eyebrow conspiratorially. “They’re idiots, I know. But they’re fun and I’m bored.” She gives me a wink and reaches forward to squeeze my hand.
I open my mouth to tell her not to go, but I snap it shut again. She won’t listen to me anyway. And she can do what she wants. She can leave and sleep in Rhett’s cabin and she doesn’t owe me a thing. But it doesn’t stop the gnawing worry that presses at my temples. The hurt at the back of my skull.
I watch them all march off through the snow, down toward the lake, Jasper staggering behind with the empty bottle in his hand. The fire pit smolders—the air tinged with the scent of ash—and I listen carefully to the trees settling back into slumber. Their roots sinking beneath the soil, limbs swaying softly.
And I wonder if maybe it’s only the sounds of the trees that have frightened the boys. If that’s what they hear at night when everything is too quiet—the voices they think haunt them at camp. Or if it’s something else. Something worse.
Something they won’t talk about.
I feel the sinking weight of the cold, of too many questions, and I suddenly don’t want to be out here in the dark—alone. I turn and start for the house, snow blowing in drifts of white.
I’m only a few yards into the tree line when I feel the shiver of someone watching.
My pulse crackles in my ears—like little pops of warning. Someone is out there. I stop short and peer up the slope, through the pines, ready to run. Back toward the lake. To the boys’ camp if I have to.
But then I see.
Oliver.
Spellbook of Moonlight & Forest Medicine
CEECEE WALKER was born during the winter of a pale alpine moon.
Maybe it was the soft layer of snowfall muting all sound; maybe it was that her mother never wailed or wept during delivery. Maybe it was that the midwife was deaf in one ear.
But when CeeCee opened her infant eyes for the first time, she never let out a single cry. Not a whimper or a coo.
Not once did CeeCee wail for a bottle or for a diaper to be changed. It would be seven years before she spoke her first word: abacus. Much to her mother’s confusion.
She never uttered another word of English again. When she was nine, she spoke only German, muttering things her mother and sisters could not decipher or understand. When she was eleven, she switched to French and then Russian. By twelve, she spoke Arabic and Spanish and Hindi. From age thirteen to the winter of her seventeenth birthday, she uttered only Portuguese.
Her mother once refused to hem a dress for CeeCee unless she asked for it in English. The girl would not, and she spent the remainder of that year in dresses that were too long, the skirts tearing wherever she walked.
CeeCee fell in love with a hero in a book instead of a real boy, and she dreamed of sailing the globe with him in his ship made of glass and pearls. Her nightshade allowed her to speak any language she liked, yet she remained in the forest, surrounded by those who spoke only one language. The one she disliked the most.
Later in life, she preferred the way Chinese vowels curled off her tongue, and she spoke it while walking through the autumn aspen trees reading from her favorite book.
But in her final moments, she stared up at the loft ceiling, her younger sister at her side, and whispered one last word: abacus. For reasons, still, no one understood.
How to Conjure a Language:
Cut a wild onion into thirds, then hold below the eyes until they water.
Shake tulip pollen onto a white cotton cloth, then place beneath your pillow on the last night of Lammas.
Before you sleep, speak three words in the language you wish to know while holding your tongue with your index finger and thumb.
Eat only oats and radishes for one week.
By the next quarter moon, the language will reside beneath your tongue.
OLIVER
You scared me,” Nora says, striding into the house, then turning on her heels to face me. Her hair is coming away from its braid, black strands trailing over her neck, and her skin is flushed from the cold—strawberry cheeks and bone-white eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows at me, like she needs more of an explanation, like the softness she felt for me the night she first found me is now gone. Replaced by something else: doubt. And maybe even fear.
Perhaps I am becoming the villain after all.
“What were you doing out there?” she asks.
My hands shiver, and I curl them into fists so she won’t see. “I saw Rhett and the others sneak away from camp,” I tell her. The truth. Only the truth. “I followed them.”
“Why?” she asks, the space between her eyes punctuated by tiny lines.
“I don’t trust them.” I repeat what I told her last night. A puddle of melted snow collects at my feet, but I don’t remove my boots. I don’t know if she’ll let me stay. If she wants me here at all. If she trusts me. “I saw the bonfire, and you, and I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I admit.
Her eyes narrow, and she looks stricken by something, a pain I can’t quite see. “You don’t need to follow me,” she says. “Or protect me.”
“I know.” And I do know. She’s not weak, she’s not frail or breakable or scared of much. She is the storm that tears away roofs and knocks over trees. Yet, I needed to be sure she was safe. I needed to be nearer to her. She is the only thing that dampens the feeling of the cold, the memory of the forest always at the nape of my neck. She mutes the darkness always looking for a way in.