Each month, when the swollen moon rises in the sky, I enter the Wicker Woods in search of lost things hidden among the greening branches and tucked at the base of trees. Lost sunglasses, rubber flip-flops, cheap plastic earrings in the shape of watermelons and unicorns and crescent moons. Toe rings and promise rings given to girls by lovesick boys. The things that are lost at Jackjaw Lake in summers past are once again found in the woods. Appearing as if the forest is giving them back.

But sometimes, under a particularly lucky full moon, I find items much older—long forgotten things, whose owners fled these mountains a century ago. Silver lockets and silver buttons and silver sewing notions. Toothbrushes made of bone, medicine bottles with labels long since worn away, cowboy boots and tin cans once filled with powdered milk and black coffee grounds. Watch fobs and doorknobs. And from time to time, I even find gold itself: crude coins hammered into a disc, gold nuggets tangled in moss, flakes that catch in my hair.

Lost things found.

By magic or maleficence, these things appear in the woods. Returned.

Fin sniffs the air, hesitant. And I draw in a breath, spinning the thin gold ring around my index finger. A habit. A way to summon the courage of my grandmother, who gave me the ring the night she died.

“I am Nora Walker,” I whisper.

Let the forest know your name. It had seemed stupid once—to speak aloud to the trees. But after you step into the dark and feel the cold pass through you—the trees swallowing all memory of light—you’ll tell the Wicker Woods all manner of secrets. Stories you’ve kept hidden inside the cage of your chest. Anything to lull the forest—to keep it in slumber.

I pinch my eyes closed and step over the threshold, through the line of tall soldier trees standing guard, into the dark of the forest.

Into the Wicker Woods.

Nothing good lives here.

The air is cold and damp, and the dark makes it hard to see anything beyond your toes. But it always feels this way—each time colder and darker than the last. I breathe slowly and move forward, stepping carefully, deliberately, over fallen logs and dewdrop flowers frozen in place. In winter, these woods feel like a fairy tale suspended in time—the princess forgotten, the hero eaten whole by a noble fir goblin. The story ended, but no one remembered to burn the haunted forest to the ground.

I duck beneath an archway of thorny twigs and dead cypress vines. Keeping my gaze at my feet, I’m careful to never linger long on a single shadow, a thing skittering just beyond my vision—my mind will only make it worse. Twist it into something with horns and fangs and copper eyes.

The dead stir inside this ancient wood.