I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

—C. S. Lewis

PROLOGUE

A boy went missing the night of the storm.

The night snow sailed down from the mountains and howled against the eaves of the old house as if through gritted teeth—cruel and baleful and full of bad omens not to be ignored.

The electricity flickered like Morse code. The temperature dropped so fast that trees cracked down their centers, sweet-smelling sap oozing to the surface like honey, before it too crystalized and froze. Snow spiraled down the chimney and gathered on the roof, until it was so deep it buried the mailbox at the end of the driveway, until I could no longer see Jackjaw Lake beyond my bedroom window.

Winter arrived in a single night.

By morning, Barrel Creek Road—the only road down the mountain—was snowed in. Blocked by an impassable wall of white.

The few of us who lived this deep in the woods, and those who were housed at the Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys on the far side of the lake, were trapped. Stuck in the rugged heart of the wilderness.

We just didn’t know for how long.

Or that we wouldn’t all make it out alive.

NORA

Never waste a full moon, Nora, even in winter, my grandmother used to say.

We’d wander up the Black River under a midnight sky, following the constellations above us like a map I could trace with my fingertips—imprints of stardust on my skin. She would hum a melody from deep within her belly, gliding sure-footed across the frozen river to the other side.

Can you hear it? she’d ask. The moon is whispering your secrets. It knows your darkest thoughts. My grandmother was like that—strange and beautiful, with stories resting just behind her eyelids. Stories about moonlight and riddles and catastrophes. Dreadful tales. But bright, cheery ones too. Walking beside her, I mirrored each step she took into the wilderness, in awe of how swiftly she avoided stinging nettles and poison buckthorns. How her hands traced the bark of every tree we passed, knowing its age just by touch. She was a wonder—her chin always tilted to the sky, craving the anemic glow of moonlight against her olive skin, a storm always brewing along her edges.

But tonight, I walk without her, chasing that same moon up the same dark, frozen river—hunting for lost things inside the cold, mournful forest.

Tree limbs sag and drip overhead. An owl hoots from a nearby spruce. And Fin and I slog deeper into the mountains, his wolf tail slashing above him, nose to the air, tracking some unknown scent to the far side of the riverbank.