Clearly, something had happened in those woods.
Something had turned me intothis—a ghost, forced to remain among the living. I could not imagine a greater misery.
This world was dangerous, especially in the woods that surrounded Isstad. Everyone was always saying that, warning me not to wander off. Me and all the other children. I’d never listened.
And now it was too late.
The entire village searched for me, pressing through slicing wind and pelting snow. I was there alongside them, watching with stinging eyes, feeling their fear, their panic, their grief, continually speaking into their deaf ears.
My family and friends scoured every thatched-roof cottage, every shop, every building—as though I could be hidden somewhere beneath their noses, tucked behind some piece of furniture, stashed beneath a blanket like I wasn’t a person at all, but a child’s forgotten toy.
Naturally, the search stretched beyond the village. Residents of Isstad searched the snow-swathed landscape, winding through trees stripped bare of leaves, oaks strong and tall, withstanding and weathering the elements.
And yet with every hour, every moment that passed, I observed their resolve ebbing. I saw it fading from their eyes, read it in the droop of their shoulders, the dragging pace of their movements. The determination waned from their gazes right alongside my withering hope.
At some point the search shifted.
It was never spoken aloud, but it turned from a rescue mission to a recovery mission.
They thought me dead and they were looking for a body. A body they couldn’t find.
I searched alongside them as they pounded the snow, wondering how I would feel if they uncovered me, if they unearthed me and I spotted myself, face blue, eyes vacant and glassy with lifelessness. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that, to seemethat way, and yet I knew I couldn’t stop looking.
I followed them, drinking in their words. Henrik reminded everyone that there had only been light snowfall and a waxing moon since my disappearance. My body (or remains) should have been found.
Eventually, he waved a hand at the towering trees. “We’ve covered every inch of the woods. We should have recovered her.”
“Maybe she was dragged deeper into the forest, far past oursearch perimeter,” offered the grizzly faced shopkeeper who Meya suspected cheated customers by pressing his thumb on the scales when he measured out flour. “Wolves work fast. They could have carried her far from here to their den. She was a wee lass.”
“Or battle boars could have taken her,” someone else chimed in.
I felt sick, watching, listening to these scenarios. They were talking about me. Aboutmydeath. A brutal death caused by wolves or boars or who knew what. It was strange and unnerving to be discussed in such a way.
I stared into the trees, visualizing the hidden things no one could see—all the sharp fangs waiting to devour hapless, wandering souls. My corpse...out there somewhere, my body picked over, torn to bits by hungry teeth, scraps of me scattered by predators.
Perhaps in late spring the rains would come and wash my bones bare, wind and sun feasting and bleaching the hard remnants of my skeleton clean.
I shook my head slightly, willing my queasiness to subside. Frowning, I looked to each of the faces in the search party, lingering the longest on the grim lines of my brother’s features.
Henrik was right to think it wasn’t wolves. I would have remembered that. I would have remembered being stalked and attacked. They didn’t operate in stealth. I would have heard their howls, their circling hunt of me. When they pounced, there would have been warning. I would not have died quickly. That first bite, the first split of my flesh beneath teeth would have burned through me, impossible to forget. No, it wasn’t that.
I distinctly recalled falling to my knees, indifferent to the cold ground as I raged and spit out those terrible words, casting them like swirling embers into the wind.Thatwas what happened. My words.I wish I could just disappear.
Regrettable words I could not rescind. They were out there. Permanent. A brand on the skin.
And that was when I knew.
When the truth hit me like a stinging slap.
I remembered it so distinctly, a memory buried deep in bone:me, picking myself up and marching out of the woods and back to town with angry resolve, straight into my house, into the midst of my waiting family. The family that would wait forever.
I was no ghost. I was still alive.
I wasn’t dead.
I was something else.
There were other clues, too, as the days passed.
