“Do not promise something that may be out of your grasp, Winter. It will make a liar of you. Instead, promise you will work hard to help me find my parents, or promise you will not send me back until we have exhausted our resources here. Those are promises you could keep.”
I don’t say anything. I lie in the dark, turning his words over as I watch the shadows of tree branches rattle in the moonlight.
“Henry?”
“Yes?”
“We’ll find your parents.”
XXIX
I wake with a buzzing beneath my skin. A million bees nesting in my muscles, boring their way through flesh. The sun is a low orange ball in the corner of my window, painting the trees copper on one side, black on the other. I feel the pull from deep behind my belly button, the string connecting me to my threshold. It tugs, loosens, tugs again. Harder this time. More insistent.
There’s a traveler in my wood.
Henry’s still asleep on the floor, his arms crossed under his head. The bruise looks worse today, and small traces of blood have seeped through the bandage on his hand. I make a mental note to get him some aspirin for the pain when he wakes.
I shield myself behind the open closet door and pull on a pair of jeans and a black sweater. There’s frost on the window—the heat wave has officially broken—so I grab a black knit hat and gloves from the winter box in the linen closet.
Mom is in the kitchen making herself an egg-white omelet with green peppers and low-fat cheese when I come down the stairs. “Hi, honey. I didn’t expect to see you up so early. Want some breakfast?”
“Can’t.” I power walk into the mudroom, stomping my feet into my boots and lacing them up the front as quickly as my sleep-addled fingers will allow. The laces miss a couple loops, but it’s good enough to keep them on my feet and that’s all that matters.
Mom appears in the doorway with a mug of coffee. “Should I ask why Meredith is sleeping on our couch?”
I wince. I completely forgot about Mer. “She got dumped by her boyfriend last night and didn’t want to go home.”
“Do her parents know she’s here?”
“Yep.” Because that’s where she told them she would be all along. But Mom doesn’t need to know that.
“Here.” Mom hands me the coffee as I stand. “At least wake yourself up a little before you go in.”
I take the mug. The coffee is lukewarm, and I tip it back like a college student downing a shot.
The buzzing under my skin feels like a jackhammer now, though I don’t know if it’s because there’s more than one traveler or if it’s from the caffeine. I lean my head against the wall and hand back the mug. “Thanks.”
“Be careful out there.”
I throw on my jacket, placing my hand on the door to the back porch before I remember.
“Mom?”
She turns.
“Let me take care of the laundry today, okay?”
Her brow arches. “Why the sudden need to be domestic? Is there something hidden in your laundry you don’t want me to find?”
Just Dad’s old clothes splattered with mud. Oh, and a boy in my room who’ll have nowhere to hide if you barge in there looking for dirty socks.
“I wish. I just know you have all those papers to grade and I thought I’d help out.”
She smiles. “Well, I’d be a dummy to turn down an offer like that.”
It’s not enough to feel safe, but it’s all I can do. I say a silent prayer that Mom won’t find Henry while I’m gone, then I turn the knob and head out into the cool morning air.
Frosted grass glitters in the sunlight like snow. I watch my breath curl out in front of me and dissipate. The windows in the houses across the street are dark, their owners sleeping in like normal people should on a Saturday morning. I rub my gloved hands across my eyes and step through my threshold.
In the light of day, there is no evidence that Henry and I nearly died in here last night. The path is solid again, and no creepy guys in black cloaks stalk the trees. Still, I’m extra vigilant as I start forward, constantly scanning the wood for signs of Varo or his supporters. The invisible string pulls me a tenth of a mile before the main walkway from my threshold forks into six different, log-lined paths, all weaving their way through skinny, twisted trees and fat sturdy ones. The leaves block out the sky in a blanket of bright fire-truck red, pumpkin orange, highlighter yellow. The sun reaches higher in the sky, its light bouncing off the leaves as if they’re coated in lacquer.
I step onto the third branched-off path to my right, and the wood changes.
The leaves are wilted black tar. The trunks are gray, long strips of bark peeling off, revealing yellow-green sores that pucker and ooze. Even the ground is infected with the sickness, damp and spongy, like walking through a pile of raked leaves instead of packed earth. I crouch down and place my hand against the dirt. It’s warm. A weak pulse flickers against my palm, and the wind whispers through the trees in a voice only I can hear.
Help us, Winter. Save us—
I pull my hand back with a gasp, tears pricking my eyes. “You’re dying.”
The wind knifes through my jacket. An affirmation.
I walk on, leaving my handprint behind me. I move through the wood, taking a bend in the path, following my instinct as I always do. It is such a familiar feeling that I don’t even have to think about it; my feet practically move of their own accord. I can think about other things during this time—homework that’s due, the boy currently sleeping in my room—without losing focus of where I need to go.
Or, at least, I usually can. I’m not sure when the buzzing starts to subside, when the thread of instinct leading me to the traveler begins to fade. I only know that now it feels weak and feathery, like a heart struggling to beat. I come to another fork in the path and, for the first time in almost two years, I’m not sure which way to go.
I close my eyes and try to focus on the tugging sensation behind my belly button and the itch on the soles of my feet.
Left. I think.
I take the path to the left, but it doesn’t help. I’m running blind.
My pulse pounds in my ears. I close my eyes again, but there’s nothing. I focus on my breathing, just like Dad taught me to do—So you won’t lose your head, he used to say, a guardian without a head won’t do anyone much good—and I keep moving forward. The temperature continues to drop the farther I go, and the diffused light is only growing dimmer, as if a storm cloud is blocking out the sun.
“Where are you?” I shout. I say it again and again. My words echo back to me off the trees. And then, finally, something screams back. I’m not sure what it says, but the sound turns the blood in my veins to sludge.