Once, the whole area north and east of the house and barn had been open farmland, but now it was grown over with poplars, maples, and a stand of white pine. Over the years, the woods had been encroaching on the house and yard, moving closer bit by bit, threatening to overtake their little white farmhouse. The trees were too close together, it was harder to navigate here, the path a tangle of roots and saplings and large rocks poking through the snow to catch her snowshoes. Their land was covered in rocks; it never ceased to amaze Ruthie, the way they would surface each spring in their yard and garden, countless wheelbarrowfuls that they dumped out in the woods, or piled up on the stone wall that ran along the eastern edge of the yard.
Ruthie had always hated being in the woods and had rarely come out this way, even as a young child. Back then she had been sure that the hillside was full of witches and monsters—an evil enchanted forest straight out of a fairy tale.
It didn’t help that her own parents encouraged her fears, telling her stories of wolves and bears, of bad things that could happen to little girls who got lost in the woods.
“Could I get eaten up?” Ruthie had asked.
“Oh yes,” her mother had said. “There are things in the woods with terrible teeth. And do you know what they’re hungriest for?” she asked with a smile, taking Ruthie’s hand in hers. “Little girls,” she said, gently gobbling at Ruthie’s fingers.
This made Ruthie cry, and her mother pulled her tight.
“Stay in the yard and you’ll be okay,” her mother promised, wiping Ruthie’s tears away.
And hadn’t she gotten lost in the woods once, back when she was very little? She struggled to remember the details. She remembered being someplace dark and cold, seeing something so terrible that she had to look away. Hadn’t she lost something, too, or had something taken? The only thing she was certain of was that her father had found her, carried her home. She remembered being in his arms, her chin resting on the scratchy wool of his coat, as she looked back up at the hill and towering rocks they were moving rapidly away from.
“It was just a bad dream,” her father had said once they were back home, smoothing her hair. Her mother made her a cup of herbal tea that had a floral aroma but a strange medicinal undertaste. They were in her father’s office; it smelled of old books, leather, and damp wool. “It was just a bad dream,” her father repeated. “You’re safe now.”
Snowshoes gliding over the top of the snow, Ruthie crossed the overgrown field behind the barn and found the seldom-used path that led up the hill to the Devil’s Hand. She took a deep breath, stepped into the trees, and began following the narrow path. She was surprised by how easy the path had been to find—for some reason, the way had been kept clear. The brush and branches were recently trimmed. By whom, though? Surely not Ruthie’s mother.
She carefully scanned the woods on either side of the path for her mother’s orange parka, footprints, any clue at all. There was nothing.
Ruthie moved on, step by step. The path grew steeper. A squirrel chattered a warning from a nearby maple tree. Off in the distance, she heard the drumming of a woodpecker.
It felt crazy, coming out here so early in the morning, hungover, going on less than five hours of sleep. She wanted to turn back, and let herself imagine doing just that: she would go home and find her mother there, safe in their warm kitchen, waiting for Ruthie with a cup of coffee and cinnamon rolls in the oven.
But her mother was not waiting for her at home. She thought of Fawn, imagined her asking, “Did you find her?” and Ruthie knew she had to keep looking. She couldn’t return to Fawn until she’d looked everywhere, even up by the Devil’s Hand.
Ruthie followed the steep path for ten minutes, then came to the abandoned orchard, row after row of apple and pear trees bent and broken, branches tangled together, leaning like old people wearing shawls of snow. The neglected orchard had brambles and skinny poplar trees growing up between the rows where once there had been neat paths. Ruthie’s father had tried, for a time, to revive the orchard—carefully pruning each tree, spraying for bugs and blight, cutting back all the scrawny wild saplings—but the only fruit they ever got was malformed and too bitter to eat. It fell to the ground and lay rotting there, food for the deer or occasional bear who wandered through.
Ruthie stopped to catch her breath and had the sudden sense that she wasn’t alone.
“Mom?” she called, her voice high and strained.
She scanned the trees, looking for any sign of movement.