Page 41 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“Is it in the mountains?”
“No.”
“Are we going skinny-dipping in a lake?”
That grin flashes again as he shakes the black wings of his hair from his eyes and my stomach swoops, remembering that mouth on mine the other night. There’s something about making Matthieu smile. I love the way his smile lights up his whole being, how his angles smooth and the shadows under his eyes vanish.
“Do you want to go skinny-dipping?”
I laugh and he shakes his head, taking a turn off the main road onto a track that tails off, toward the mountains. I scrutinize the track, my heart thrumming in my chest. I can’t remember the last time someone surprised me like this, staking out a whole day of their time to hand over as a gift. Matthieu is the kind of person who makes you feel like he has all the time in the world, just for you. The kind of person who leans in intently, listening to every syllable you utter. I snuggle back into my warm coat as sparks fill my veins for the hundredth time in the last few days.
“So not skinny-dipping, and not in the mountains... are we cross-country skiing? Husky riding?”
He barks out a laugh. “Keep guessing, I love it. How many huskies have you seen around Woodsmoke?”
I chuckle and shrug, trying to guess again where we’re heading. We’ve barely been apart as we take our time with the last handful of fixes to the cottage. It feels like we’re squeezing out more time, so that we can linger in the bubble that has suddenly formed around us. He leaves only to sleep at his cabin each night.
I don’t want to ask Matthieu about his future plans. About what he intends to do after he has to give up the cabin. But I hold on to a hope that this bubble of time is like a promise, a binding promise. That Matthieu will linger on after the renovations, andthe frost, and that somehow we will find a new routine in a summer in Woodsmoke together. I haven’t voiced any of this. I don’t want to upset the delicate newness of the “us” that might be. But it’s on my mind, it’s filling my thoughts in a smoky haze, and for the first time in a decade I feel like I’m home.
“Penny for them,” he says, glancing at me. “You’re lost again. You do that.”
“I—well, I’m just... thinking about Woodsmoke. About the cottage and... us.”
“Us?”
I smile and suddenly I want to gauge his reaction, to see what he might be thinking. “I don’t know, I’m thinking about my roots here. About... staying.”
“Staying.”
I nod, looking over at him. “Staying.”
“Well...” he begins, then his face clears as he pulls over onto a narrower track. “We’re nearly there.”
I sit up, taking in our surroundings, trying to place it in my memories. It’s not long before we pull up into a tiny car park and Matthieu cuts the engine.
I get out of the car and scan the horizon, then start grinning as I realize where we are, what this place is. “Ice-skating?”
Matthieu nods, assessing my reaction. I gaze over the lake, now frozen over for another month at least, and breathe out a sigh of vast contentment. “We don’t have to, if you’d rather not,” he says. “We can walk, and watch the skaters—”
“It’s perfect,” I say and tentatively hold my hand out to him. When he grasps it, another knot inside me loosens and heat washes through me, right to my core. “Let’s go.”
At the lake’s edge, another couple sits on a bench outside a gift shop, lacing up their shoes. A few people are already out on theice—a man skating in smooth swoops, a tartan scarf tied around his throat, and a woman holding the hand of a child, coaxing her slowly across the ice. We go over to the gift shop to rent skates, and I tell the shop assistant my size. She hands me a pair of skates a size too big.
“Thick socks,” Matthieu whispers, winking at me. “They never have exact sizes. It’s potluck what you get.”
I leave my boots behind the counter and sit on the bench outside beside him, lacing up my skates, my breath forming puffs of cloud. “How have I never heard of this place?”
“It’s a secret?”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’m a Morgan. Secrets are what we do.”
“It’s fairly new, I think. So maybe they weren’t doing this when you were last home.”
I love how Matthieu has surprised me, shown me a different side to the mountains. A playful side, a side not closely guarded and full of tricks, like those in Cora’s book. I feel like the mountains are mine again, that seeing this side of them is reclaiming a piece of the home I wasn’t sure would be mine to come back to.
When I step out on the ice, Matthieu’s hand is there to guide me. We glide slowly at first, my heart beating in my ears at the thrill of trying to stay upright, trying to find my center. Then, after a while, after our slow spinning, I gradually find it. I let go of his hand, trusting myself to find my own way across the ice, the smooth mirror beneath me reflecting back the sky.
I laugh, breathlessly, moving a little faster, getting as close as I ever will get on the ground to flying. Matthieu circles me, laughing as well, and we move farther out, where it’s just the two of us. I slow, almost to a stop, breathing in the cold air, tasting the scent of the mountains on my tongue. I turn slowly, taking in the mountains, the vastness of them. The hulking shapes ruling this corner of the earth. And I know in that moment that somehowthey have given Matthieu to me. That somehow they knew. That the mountains, my home, justknew.
