When the Woods Call Her Name

There are predators in the woods—skulking, baying, and clawing through the frozen soil. It’s the time of year when we barely leave our hovel outside Boundary Wood, the last true refuge for uncharmed mortals who do not want to pay tribute to the Winterking’s court.

My sister Aida sits by the fire each night, knitting little socks for babes unborn. It’s an old charm leftover from the days when children still rooted in women’s bellies, away from frost and dirt and magic as old as the trees thriving while everything else dies.

If you want a babe, you go into the woods. Leave an offering at the base of the tallest tree. Then wait and see if by winter’s end a child is left swaddled on your doorstep.

“Witchling babes,” the whispers go, for they always bear a mark—like a brand or a scar—that tells that these children will always and forever belong to the Wood. My little brother Kaiser has a snowflake-like mark just brushing his left cheekbone. He was the first of the babes to arrive between the shadows of midnight and sunrise. There is nothing odd about him except the way he stares into the Wood, as if there is something talking to him, something none of the rest of us will ever know.

But Aida, sweet Aida, is yearning for normal wants that are not uncommon in the little village that has known us all our girlhood. The way she looks at the Wood sometimes—I wonder if she would jump into the Winterking’s sleigh if it appeared outside our home, its silver bells tinkling to welcome her as if it were a piece of the life she had always been fated to know. The Winterking, who is said to be more beast than man, would hold out his pale hand and hide his fangs behind his blue-black lips. Aida would be so lost in the vision that she would not register his claws, his curved horns, or even the crown of thistles settled atop his midnight-black hair. To her, even being a monster’s bride would mean more than just a courtship with a blacksmith or the vicar’s son.

“You need to live in the real world,” I say this one night when it is just us two by the fire, no Mama or Papa to oversee—or overhear—our every interaction. Kaiser is already fast asleep, his straw rabbit tucked into the crook of his arm as he lays against one of the furs Papa brought home after his last visit to the market in the city. “What good of a husband would the Winterking be if he couldn’t even keep you warm at night?”

The village elder’s daughter Jaina and I always play this game of blustering over the Winterking’s faults even though all the tales we’ve heard of him say he was a golden prince before the Queen of Night cursed him to be the harbinger of the cold season. Every single tale ends with his marrying a peasant girl who could withstand the chill of his kiss.

“Raisa, you don’t have a dreaming bone in your body,” Aida says with a sigh of longing following her words. The way she stares out the window, I know she is only just making her heartsickness worse. She is looking for a way out of a life that is doomed to fall short. Even though the women no longer give birth as they once did—their bellies as barren as a scorched harvest—we still do not live long, given the harsh climates. Three men became widowers just in the past moon cycle.

“Better to have a full belly and a warm fire to come home to than dreams,” I say, stoking the fire and wishing I could scare away my sister’s idealistic pallor. The wanting alone makes her frail because every single hope is a tiny candle flame ready to be sputtered out by one harsh wind.

“He would protect me,” she whispers, even as a cough rattles in her chest, her eyelids beginning to drowse. “I would live forever in his kingdom.”

“A kingdom of bones and nightmares,” I whisper, but the words do little to stir my sister as she falls into a sleep, her knitting still in her lap. If I was a kind sister, I would finish the socks and bury them in the snow outside our door. Supposedly the charm will still work to curry favor with the Winterking and his court of spirits.

But I do not want to push my sister with her chase after this life that will lead to only heartbreak. If I were cruel, I would just throw the half-knit socks into the fire and wait for the screams in the morning. Instead, I take the bundle of yarn and set it aside to draw a fur over my sister, whose dreams probably brim with enchantments and the soft medley of bells.

My sister may say I don’t dream, but I do. I dream of a life just like the one I have now, with the love of my family and the steadiness of a waiting home. No fortune or wishes could give me better than what I already have.

It is with this thought that I begin my nightly ritual and step outside, my bare feet caressing the newly fallen snow. I circle our home three times and wave a holly branch as I take each turn. Jaina said it was a protection charm she had read about a long time ago—and, even though I am not usually superstitious, I am more careful because I know this is the Winterking’s time. And if he will choose anyone who calls him, it will be my sister Aida, whose wishing is probably a beacon to one so cold and alone as he is.

When I have circled back to the front door, I whisper, as if in prayer, “Protect my family from all ills.”

There is no magical glow or sense of power—nothing that true witches would feel upon casting a charm—but I smile anyway because I am doing what I can to see that this winter will be just the same as any other.

As I walked back into my warm home, I did not think there was a thing I could ever want from the Winterking, nothing that could make me bow before him and beg. But I was foolish.

The next morning, Aida would not wake up.