The Winter People(17)



Ruthie smiled. “Okay, then. Let’s find out where you’re not.”

Ruthie walked around to the back of the barn to check on the chickens. They were in a big wooden coop with an enclosed run of wire mesh. She unhitched the gate, walked through, and unlatched the coop.

“Hey, girls,” she whispered, voice low and soothing. “How was your night, huh?” The chickens gave anxious little coos and clucks. Ruthie tossed them cracked corn from the bucket outside, made sure their food and heated water dispensers were full.

“You didn’t happen to see where Mom went, did you?”

More clucking.

“Didn’t think so,” she said, backing out of the coop.

She left the barn and looked out across the yard, into the woods. It had snowed more in the night, covering the yard in a flat moonscape of white.

Ruthie mentally ticked off all the places her mother was not: the house, the yard, the barn, the chicken coop. And she didn’t take the truck.

“Mom!” she called as loud as she could. Ridiculous, really. The snowy landscape seemed to absorb all sound; it felt as if she were yelling into cotton batting.

Ruthie looked across the yard to where the woods began. The idea of her mother traipsing off into the woods in the dark of a winter’s night was absurd—as far as Ruthie knew, her mother never set foot in the woods. She had her set routes for chores—paths led to and from the woodpile, the barn, the chicken coop, the compost pile near the vegetable garden—from which she never deviated. Her mother believed in efficiency. Going off the path, exploring, aimless walks—these were wastes of time and energy that could be better spent on keeping warm, producing food.

But still, she might as well rule out all possibilities, however unlikely. She headed back into the barn, grabbed a pair of snowshoes, and strapped them on.

Slowly, reluctantly, she crossed the yard and headed for the woods. Like it or not, she was going to have to do it: pass by the place where she’d found her dad.


Once, the whole area north and east of the house and barn had been open farmland, but now it was grown over with poplars, maples, and a stand of white pine. Over the years, the woods had been encroaching on the house and yard, moving closer bit by bit, threatening to overtake their little white farmhouse. The trees were too close together, it was harder to navigate here, the path a tangle of roots and saplings and large rocks poking through the snow to catch her snowshoes. Their land was covered in rocks; it never ceased to amaze Ruthie, the way they would surface each spring in their yard and garden, countless wheelbarrowfuls that they dumped out in the woods, or piled up on the stone wall that ran along the eastern edge of the yard.

Ruthie had always hated being in the woods and had rarely come out this way, even as a young child. Back then she had been sure that the hillside was full of witches and monsters—an evil enchanted forest straight out of a fairy tale.

It didn’t help that her own parents encouraged her fears, telling her stories of wolves and bears, of bad things that could happen to little girls who got lost in the woods.

“Could I get eaten up?” Ruthie had asked.

“Oh yes,” her mother had said. “There are things in the woods with terrible teeth. And do you know what they’re hungriest for?” she asked with a smile, taking Ruthie’s hand in hers. “Little girls,” she said, gently gobbling at Ruthie’s fingers.

This made Ruthie cry, and her mother pulled her tight.

“Stay in the yard and you’ll be okay,” her mother promised, wiping Ruthie’s tears away.

And hadn’t she gotten lost in the woods once, back when she was very little? She struggled to remember the details. She remembered being someplace dark and cold, seeing something so terrible that she had to look away. Hadn’t she lost something, too, or had something taken? The only thing she was certain of was that her father had found her, carried her home. She remembered being in his arms, her chin resting on the scratchy wool of his coat, as she looked back up at the hill and towering rocks they were moving rapidly away from.

“It was just a bad dream,” her father had said once they were back home, smoothing her hair. Her mother made her a cup of herbal tea that had a floral aroma but a strange medicinal undertaste. They were in her father’s office; it smelled of old books, leather, and damp wool. “It was just a bad dream,” her father repeated. “You’re safe now.”

Snowshoes gliding over the top of the snow, Ruthie crossed the overgrown field behind the barn and found the seldom-used path that led up the hill to the Devil’s Hand. She took a deep breath, stepped into the trees, and began following the narrow path. She was surprised by how easy the path had been to find—for some reason, the way had been kept clear. The brush and branches were recently trimmed. By whom, though? Surely not Ruthie’s mother.

She carefully scanned the woods on either side of the path for her mother’s orange parka, footprints, any clue at all. There was nothing.

Ruthie moved on, step by step. The path grew steeper. A squirrel chattered a warning from a nearby maple tree. Off in the distance, she heard the drumming of a woodpecker.

It felt crazy, coming out here so early in the morning, hungover, going on less than five hours of sleep. She wanted to turn back, and let herself imagine doing just that: she would go home and find her mother there, safe in their warm kitchen, waiting for Ruthie with a cup of coffee and cinnamon rolls in the oven.

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