“Awful early to be out in the cold,” Mr. Perkins says, ambling across the living room and settling into one of the old rocking chairs beside the fireplace. “Only those looking for trouble or trying to escape it are out this early.”

I glance around his cabin, a perfect square. Barely enough space to fit a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom at the back. There is no light glowing from the tall metal floor lamps in the corners; only the fireplace casts an eerie flicking glow across the walls and ceiling. Mr. Perkins built the home when he was still young and had a strong back, after he found gold in the Black River. Unlike most miners who fled the mountains when the gold ran out or their fear of the woods grew too deep—the cold whisper of the trees always against their necks—Floyd Perkins stayed. I suppose he belongs here just as much as Walkers do.

“Is your phone working?” I ask hastily, even though I’m certain that if mine isn’t working, neither is his.

He eyes me and I know I must look panicked, my jaw clenched so tightly that a headache stabs at my temples. “Still nothing,” he answers.

I scratch my fingers up my arms and watch the flames chew apart the logs inside the stove. A soothing sight. Familiar. If you have a fire, then you have something, Grandma would say.

“Why do you need a phone? Did something happen?” Mr. Perkins’s gray eyebrows flatten.

I’ve come because I don’t know where else to go. But with Mr. Perkins looking at me with concern in his eyes, waiting for me to explain why I’m here, the reasons feel too jumbled up. My thoughts too scattered.

“I found a boy in the woods,” I say, rubbing my palms together over the flames even though sweat gathers along my spine.

His gaze narrows and he leans forward in his chair. “Which wood?”

The air feels too thick, the scent of woodsmoke sticking to the walls and in my hair. I let my gaze sway around the room, to a row of handmade picture frames along one wall—each filled with a different species of fern or wildflower or insect, the scientific name for each handwritten at the bottom. “The Wicker Woods,” I tell him.

“You found him alive?” he asks, tapping his slippered foot against the floor. Mr. Perkins has never been inside the Wicker Woods—he knows better.

“He was hypothermic,” I say, “but alive.”

He stops tapping his foot. “How long was he out there?”

“A couple weeks, I think.”