Page 34 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“We don’t have to stay here, you know,” I remember saying to them both.
Tom kept quiet, but Jess frowned, a furrow appearing between her brows. “Why wouldn’t we want to?” she asked.
“Look how big it is, Jess. Look how much we still have to explore.”
I told Jess then that Tom and I planned to travel. That she couldcome with us, that this new future, this one without Woodsmoke at the center of it, was a possibility opening up to her too. Something new and wondrous and wholly attainable. She grew quiet, then mentioned university, the holidays, her summer job at the library. I dropped the subject after that, wondering why Jess didn’t get it, and why Tom was so quiet.
I think I told Cora that same night, cheeks still flushed like roses from the glow that Tom and Jess gave me just from being nearby, just from being alive. My fiancé and my best friend, the people I was going to conquer the world with. Cora grew still for a moment, then snapped on a smile. She offered Ivy the first plate of pasta she was serving up at the table, and Ivy muttered her thanks in return.
That certainty of belonging with the two of them, with Jess and Tom, is a ghost that haunts me now as I walk to find Matthieu’s cabin. After I left Woodsmoke, I chased that ghost, that deep sense of belonging I craved elsewhere. I searched for it down the many steps of Positano and in the cramped streets of the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona. I sought it out in tiny flats, in a two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Manchester, even in a rented cottage by the harbor in St. Ives.
But I didn’t belong in any of these places, or with anyone else.
No one else I met while I was gone gave me that glow, that certainty, that feeling like I was exactly where I was supposed to be—the feeling I’d had with Tom and Jess. I mourned the loss of us for too long. Always wondering if I should have stayed in Woodsmoke, if that sense of belonging was still there. Maybe it hadn’t died between us, maybe I only imagined it had. Maybe if I had stayed, Jess and I would still be best friends now. But then Ivy told me—in a call I took on a tinny landline in a bar in Crete—that Jess and Tom had gotten together. Seeing him the other night, with his shoulder pressed against the car window asif he couldn’t stand to be in the same car with me, just confirmed that the connection was long gone. I wasn’t wrong. It did die between us, and it was never meant to continue. I didn’t belong to him just as he didn’t belong to me, and I did the right thing to keep searching all those years.
I stop on the trail and take a minute to breathe. It hasn’t leveled out for a while, and the air in my lungs is burning. I place my hands on my hips as I feel the burn in my chest cooling, inch by inch. My legs are beginning to shake with each step, and I can feel my body slowing, needing rest. I drink more water and mentally measure the distance I’ve come and the distance up the winding path to the cabin. It’s not a lot farther. But I hope there are no more memories laying snares for me on the way.
Thirty minutes later, my chest is burning hard, a furnace I can no longer cool. Just as I am sure I will need to sit and take a break, the path stops. A clearing opens, flat and wide, with trees looming over it in an oval. In the middle, as though sprouted from a Grimms’ fairy tale, is the cabin.
It’s a single-story building built of wood and granite, wearing a chimney on top like a too-small hat. The windows are dark and seem to watch me as I hesitate on the edge of the clearing. There are raised beds, but whatever thrived in the spring and summer has been cleared away. Now the beds are barren and cold. I walk between them, weaving my way to the front door of the cabin, and let my knuckles rest on the wooden door. Cora and her superstitions nudge at me, beckoning me away from the cabin. I inhale sharply, pushing those thoughts away, and rap my knuckles against the door.
Silence greets me.
Silence yawning so loud it’s deafening. I knock again, louder this time, my mind a scatter of questions and answers:
He might not have heard—
Maybe he’s out—
Maybe he’s really sick—
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I close my eyes, leaning my forehead on the door, wishing for once my head was a quiet place. Then I hear it, a gentle click. And the door opens.
“Matthieu, I’m so sorry, I didn’t meant to disturb you, but—” My words seize up in my throat as I look up. There’s no Matthieu. No towering man with kind eyes, capable hands, and an instant smile. There is only a doorway, open now, and darkness beyond. “Matthieu?”
When he doesn’t answer, when no one answers, I plant my boots on the threshold. Then, pushing aside every warning, every discordant alarm bell, I step inside the cabin.
Chapter 28
Carrie
The darkness rearranges itself. As my eyes adjust to the strangled light, I see a shamble of kitchen cupboards, a fireplace, an old chair. The wood floor has no rugs to cover it. No comfort to offer bare feet. I decide to keep my boots on and the door open wide to the outside. When I step farther in, I hear no movement from anyone inside. Matthieu doesn’t appear in a doorway. I suddenly long for his voice, to break the curse that seems to linger inside these walls.
“Hello?” I call, louder this time, as though that would banish this feeling of being watched. But no one answers. Instead of retreating back outside, I throw off my fear, stride forward, and thrust the bedroom door open. It holds a bed, some covers in a heap, and half-drawn curtains that have peeled away from the pole. “Matthieu?”
He’s clearly not here. And from the smell of damp and loam, he might not have been here for some time. I step toward the window at the back, brushing my hand over the curtain. Dust motes dance through the thin shafts of sunlight, the only movement in this place. I turn with a sigh, wrapping my arms around my body. I know one thing for certain. I am not welcome here.
As I move back to the front door, to the outside world that I can make sense of, something nags at me. Calls to me. I look over to the far wall of the living room and see something huge and rectangular covering the wall. I frown, trying to make out the shape of it, tracing the drawn lines with my eyes. Finally, I see that it’s a map.Plastered the whole width of the wall, marked with gold pushpins connected with twine tied to each one. As I study the map, the cabin seems to grow colder, as though wanting to push me out. But I can’t move. I stare, transfixed by the map, by the seemingly haphazard trails and tracks marked across it with lengths of twine.
It’s the mountains. The entire range, all three peaks, every clearing, every marked trail. And all the trails that are unmarked. Trails that most visitors will never find, never stumble across. Visitors come back year after year to hike new sections of the range, and hikers participate in challenges to conquer all three peaks.
To try to cover it all,seeit all, in just one winter... I don’t know how that would be possible. It would take days to reach the other side of the range, and it’s all too easy to step the wrong way. The trees are dense, navigation is tough, and the old trails are not clearly marked, like those for amateur hikers. Those old ways, the older trails... I shiver. What is he looking for?
“Matthieu, where are you?” I murmur. I break away a few moments later and walk back out into daylight. I turn in a circle outside the cabin, searching the clearing, searching the looming trees crouched around like sentries. “You could be anywhere.”
I brush my hair back from my face, trying to think. If he’s stuck somewhere, will he be able to call someone? I bite my lip, my thoughts growing frantic, leaping from outcome to outcome. That map was old. Faded. What if it was an old map, something that was already there when he arrived for the winter? There is very little sign of anyone living there, though. The cabin holds an air of neglect, of hibernation. What if this isn’t the cabin Matthieu is staying in? I hug my arms around myself again, the chill of the place still permeating my bones.
