She turns, glancing over her shoulder, and I can see the look in her eyes—something isn’t right. She seems afraid—really afraid for the first time.
And then the ice gives way beneath her. A shudder and a crack and she disappears into the lake.
I run, my heart flattening against my ribs, my feet slipping on the ice.
I drop to my knees at the edge of a vast hole, black water peering back. And beneath the surface, her hair swirls and eddies like reeds, like kelp in an ocean. A gentle, almost tranquil sight. She’s staring past me—eyes blurred over—as if she is looking lazily up at the midnight sky and the stars beyond. A quiet evening swim. But I plunge my arms into the ice-cold water, grabbing for her hand floating just above her head.
And I pull her up, dragging her onto the ice and into my arms.
NORA
I feel weightless, drifting among dark stars.
Arms fold around me, and I press my face against the hard warmth of a shoulder. His neck smells like the forest, like a winter that goes on and on and on. Endless like the bottom of the lake.
I hear the water dripping from my hair, or maybe I only imagine it. Drops that turn to ice before they hit the ground.
The trees bob and shiver above me, and I peer up at deep-green limbs—at stars that look like silver coins dropped into a black pool. My head spins, the circulation gone from my skin, but I don’t mind. I like the weightlessness and the scent of Oliver and the forest revolving above me. We reach the house, and Oliver kicks the door closed behind us, then releases me gently onto the couch.
He’s saying something, words that slip and slide together. Maybe he’s saying my name. Nora, Nora, Nora. But I can’t be sure. I like the way his voice sounds, bouncing along the walls of the house.
Fin pushes his nose against my palm, warm and wet, a lick to the ear. I try to speak, to open my eyes, but they are too heavy. I squint and at the end of the couch, Oliver is shoving more logs into the woodstove, filling it quickly. He cusses, slams his hand in the door maybe, then stands up and crosses the room again. Waves of heat surge into the cabin. But I don’t sweat—I shiver.
“Nora!” he says again, I’m certain of it this time. “Stay awake,” he tells me. I nod, or I think I do. My mouth opens to tell him I’m fine, but I feel my jaw hang there, no words escaping past my lips. My mouth too numb, my tongue worthless.
He drapes blankets over me—heavy, heavy blankets made of wool—so heavy they push me into sleep. They push me down into the fibers of the old dusty couch, between the cushions. Where lost paper clips and rose petals and M&M’s hide.
But I’m convulsing now, the cold shot through my lungs, severing my skin down to bone, and everything starts to blur over. Water pressing against my eyes, sinking, everything turning not black but white. Bone white. Moon white. Ash white.
“Why did you go out there?” Oliver’s voice says from somewhere far away, from up in the rafters of the house. I feel his hands against my feet, rubbing them, sending spikes of pain up my calves. It hurts! I want to tell him, to scream. But my mouth still won’t move, or he just doesn’t listen. My blood is too hot, scalding, as it surges back through cold veins.
I kick my legs but they don’t move. I close my eyes and chase the moth down through the trees, I run after it, and when I catch it I will pluck its wings clean from its body. But it spins high up toward a strange purple sky where three moons sit on the horizon, and it laughs at me. Foolish girl, it hisses. Hiss hiss hiss.
I flash my eyes open and look up at the ceiling, at cobwebs draped woefully from the beams down toward the corner of a window. “I saw the hole,” I say, but it sounds like nonsense. “I saw where he drowned,” I try, but my lips are too frozen, and Oliver presses his hand to my forehead. He rubs a warm cloth across my skin.
“Nora,” he says again. Always my name, like there is nothing else to say. He wants me to wake, to open my eyes, to prove I’m not a witch. I shake my head. I’m hearing things that aren’t real. Imagining words that never leave his lips.
I try to bend my fingers into fists, but they won’t move. So I give up.
My eyelids lower, a velvet curtain at the end of the show—a macabre ballet about witches and cruel boys and lakes that swallow people up—and I fall asleep listening to the roar of the fire and Oliver saying my name and the crackling pain of warmth returning to my bones.
Men never stay long in our lives, Grandma would say.
We drive them away. We sneak potions into their coffee to make them crave the smell of the sea, so they will leave these mountains and never come back. We refuse proposals and leave love letters unopened and don’t come to windows when boys toss pebbles against the glass at sunrise. We prefer to be alone.
But it doesn’t mean our hearts don’t unravel. It doesn’t mean we can’t love deeply and painfully and chase after boys who refuse to love us back. But in the end, always in the end, we find a way to shatter whatever hint of love had grown inside us.
I wake on the couch thinking of this.
I wake recalling Oliver pulling me from the lake and carrying me home. I recall his hands on my skin, wiping the sweat from my brow. And I think that maybe, possibly, he cares about me. But I’m also certain I’ll find a way to ruin it.
Just give me time.
I press my palms into the couch, my arms shaking as I prop myself up. Outside, the sky is dark. But I have a memory of the sun shining through the windows, reflecting off the walls, a hollow orb that felt too bright. How many days have passed? How many nights?
I flex my fingers and the numbness is gone—a dull warmth returned to my skin.
I untangle myself from the blankets, grip the edge of the couch for balance, and pull myself up to my feet. My joints crack and my head sways a little, as though water is still trapped in the hollows of my ears.
Fin is lying at my feet, and I reach down to run my fingers through his thick fur, his tail swishing once against the floor. “I’m all right,” I assure him, and he blows out a soft breath of air and lowers his head, like he can finally sleep now that he knows I’m awake.
On wobbly feet, I walk into the kitchen and drink a glass of water, then two more—my body desperate for it. Sandpaper in my throat. I hold on to the edge of the counter and listen for Oliver. “Hello?” I call into the house, but my voice comes out as a croak. Barely audible.
Maybe he’s gone back to the camp. Or is out gathering more firewood. Or maybe he grew desperate when I didn’t wake, and he went to get one of the counselors who is trained in basic first aid. Wherever he is, I’m alone in the house.
I consider shuffling back across the living room and collapsing onto the couch, letting sleep tug me under once again. But I’m wearing the same T-shirt as when I went out onto the lake. The sweatshirt and jeans I had on are now gone—Oliver must have removed them when he brought me back to the house. All of my clothes soaked through.
I walk to the stairs, knuckles tightening around the railing, and I drag myself slowly up each step to the loft.
But once inside the loft, the room feels different, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The bed is crisscrossed in shadows, no candles lit, and a cold breeze slides over my skin. The window is open, pushed up in the frame, and the thin embroidered curtains sway out from the wall then settle back again, like they’re underwater.