The shutters were cracked wide enough for the girl to look outside with a single eye at Mat and Gran milling about something on the ground she could not see under a darkling sky.

She ducked when Mat turned back toward the house, then scrambled to the bedroom and picked up the book she'd been reading: Hansel and Gretel. She'd read it before, and while the ending made her squirm, she enjoyed the detailed descriptions of all the sweets. But when she tried to concentrate, the words swam on the page and her hands shook. Feeling feverish, a small part of her thought she knew what was coming; the rest of her prayed she was wrong.

The front door opened and she clutched the book, creasing the pages, trying to focus with all her might on the word gumdrops, but her hands continued to betray her.

Mat came into the doorway with a mumbled greeting.

She bit her tongue until it bled, refusing to look up.

He came close, the way he often did, as if her silence meant she was simple or prone to distraction, that she was never listening. He squatted before her.

"We've found something—someone, in the yard."

A scream bubbled up in the tender folds of her psyche as her eyes snapped up to his like magnets. All that he said after that fell on deaf ears. Her eyes bore into him until he left, and then, she stared at the space where he had been. Her throat threatened to close as she longed for the seconds before she'd thought to go to the window, when her mind knew only sugarplums, gingerbread, and a witch about to meet a fitting end. Now the pretty painting of the edible house soured her stomach as the uncertainty of a terrible thing, the absolute worst thing plagued her imagination.

Keep your emotions inside where they can't betray you, Mother used to say.

A clangor of pots and pans compounded the panic bouncing around her skull as Mat started to putter around the kitchen. A tiny pain blossomed on her finger. She looked down to see she'd torn the page, which had nicked her in retaliation. Her blood seeped down its jagged edge. Her heart trying to punch a hole through her chest, she got up and peeked around the corner, unable to see Mat, meaning he was at the counter. She darted back to the front window, her stocking snagging to a tear on a splinter in the floorboards as she went.

The sun hadn't quite dipped below the horizon, and she felt an unexplainable longing for it to stay, to not suck all the light out of the world and leave her alone in this place.

Gran was hauling a tarp and tool that looked like a long metal stick with a tapered end toward the spot where the girl had seen them standing. Her toes cramped as she strained to see, but she was too far away, it was too dark, and the slush too tall.

She ran to the door but Mat was already there, hand against it as she tried to yank it open.

"No. You don't need to see."

"I do," she said, voice rusty from disuse as she pushed against him.

He wrestled her arms to her sides as she screamed.

"You must have read that book twice over today," Mat said from the kitchen, snapping the girl out of her trance. "Why don't you help me with the dishes, so there's no work for us when Gran returns."

Eyes bent toward the floor, she complied, her feet not feeling like her own as she shuffled to the kitchen.

All the while, she itched to return to the window. She got her chance once they had set the table and Mat excused himself to use the washroom. Her eyes roved over the dark yard. It was empty, the only movement a faint glow gamboling at the Burnt Forest's tree line.

She saw the washroom door swing wide by Mat's lantern. She stalked back to the table, took a seat, and shoved her hands between her thighs to still the twitch that refused to quit.

Mat returned and sat kitty-corner from her while they waited for venison to crisp on the cookfire. He rambled on about the warm weather.

Dry eyes trained on the grain of the table, she imagined using a fork to pluck out his eye—then, maybe one of them could scream.

Their heads spun as Gran came in smelling of a foul smoke. Mat paled, scrunching up his nose.

"I should wash," Gran said belatedly. Judging by her sopping wet hair, she already had.

She excused herself and finally Mat was quiet. He didn't remember the venison until it started to burn. He leapt up with a curse.

Once the old woman returned, they ate. The girl didn't touch her plate, instead pushing the charred bits around with a fork. They still hadn't noticed she didn't like meat.

Gran and Mat seemed to not have much of an appetite either, chewing as if it were an absurd delicacy, something with legs and a crispy exoskeleton.

Not one looked at anyone else.

The last time the girl had seen her brother replayed in her mind's eye with sickening repetition as she felt her insides flake and shrivel, giving way to a sucking black hole.

No one said a thing as she went straight from the table to bed--first, a hasty glance out the window confirmed the world was black, the glow in the woods extinguished. But every time she closed her eyes, the fire reignited.

Oh, how it danced.

The next two days were a blur. She spent them in bed, curled up around a gnawing emotion for which she had no name. It felt as if her soul had gone bad and was rotting her from the inside out. Her thoughts were runny and curdled, never fully formed.

Mat and Gran were mere shadows at her bedside. Their words floated around her head like dead leaves on an autumn breeze.

A cold finger touched her wrist.

Her chest's moving.

Well, something's wrong with her. It's like she doesn't even know we're here.

I think she's in distress. Can't we give her something, a soothing agent--
Prob'ly has a tired heart, that's all. How'd she take the news about—you know?

She looked surprised, I think. It can be hard to tell.

A blustery sigh. We'll be stuck with her 'til the end of time now—

On the third day, the girl woke with a sharpened sense of clarity, the hole in her gut fully molted.

She heard Mat through the cracked door: "I'm going to shut up the stable."

The front door opened and closed.

The girl got up but didn't make it a full stride before her legs gave out, wobbly from her protracted torpid state. She pulled herself up, dizzy as she went, and put her ear against the door to hear Gran bustling about the kitchen. The girl snuck out and without so much as a glance toward the kitchen, pulled her boots and cloak into the room and got dressed with her heart beating like it was remembering how.

She climbed out the window to a setting sun, shadows gathering like an expectant crowd. The day was uncharacteristically warm. Any remaining ice clumps had melted into cold mud. It felt like spring, and it mocked her; a breath of new life for all, an exhale on a festering wound for her.

The ground sucked at her oversized, hand-me-down boots, threatening to rip them off as she went to stand in the place where Gran had dragged the tarp. A depression in the earth slunk toward the tree line. She followed it and stared into the forest's dank depths, fearing she might spot a white limb or familiar face, eyes marbled with decay.

How much heat does it take to cremate a body? Maybe Gran wasn't thorough.

The Burnt Forest never wants for a spark—a common adage in her parents' household. Rub a stick against the blackened bark and the air would singe. The way her father's father told it, the humans tried to burn down the rest of the forest after the Great War. The fires burned bright but did not spread, as if the faeries' ancient magic had left a trace that protected the trees even now. And cutting them down was out of the question; even in death, their hides dulled blades.

The girl went rigid, pressing closer to the tree line as Mat returned from the stable. But he did not look her way. He had no reason to. Instead, he found a patch of dry grass and laid down with his arms behind his head.

Holding her breath, the girl stepped into the forest. The temperature dipped and she exhaled a wil-o'-the-wisp that pushed against the dark. She continued following the downtrodden earth, taking one careful step after another, so as to not lose the depression in the dark. When the toes of her boots found a fresh heap of loose dirt—no, ash, the length of a body, with bits of tarp peeking out here and there, she stopped.

The sight brought her to her knees. Just when she thought a pained sound might punch up her throat, a quick sensation, like a soft kiss on her forehead, brought her head up, but of course, she was alone. Her chest tight and her eyes gritty, she trailed her pale fingers through the ash until they hit a tiny lump of resistance. Brushing the soot away, she rolled it around between her fingers. A tooth. The thought echoed, clear as a bell. It might not be his—

You know it is. Her mind was the skeptic but her heart knew. So did Mat, that's why he had come to her. In all the moons she had spent at the cottage, there hadn't been a single visitor.

Her eyes pined for the familiar but every tree, every gulping swath of darkness looked the same. Even if she wanted to make the trek back to the house she and her family had once shared alone, surely she'd get lost in the dark. Say she did find it, then what? She'd be nothing but a ghost in an old haunt, keeping house, waiting for no one.

The girl curled up into the fetal position and balled her hand around the molar, her nails digging into her palm as she willed herself to cry, to shed a single tear. None came. Something was wrong with her, Mother had always said so.

She must have drifted off, because next she knew, the Burnt Forest was much darker and all was quiet, except for the mangy grey wolf sniffing at her boots. She gave a reflexive jerk, bringing the beast's attention to her face. Its lips pulled back into a predatory grin and it snarled.