Part I
Prior’s End
1 
Nova, if you weren’t so good at keeping secrets, you wouldn’t be in the dark maw of the forest now.
Certainly not on the heels of dusk, hugging myself against the biting cold and the prickling unease. Definitely not after I’d been forbidden by my last remaining parent. Not once, not twice, but as long as memory. And considering these are the same woods that stole my father from us seven years ago, Mom has good reason.
But she’s given up hope, and I never will.
I try to make it out here once a week, try to push myself to go an extra step, then fifty feet, then half a mile. Today I’m the farthest I’ve ever been, but compared to the impossible vastness of Longing Woods, that’s not saying much. Between school, home, volunteering, and friends, I don’t get to spend much time here. It’s not nothing, but at this rate, I’ll never find Dad.
And after this long, I’m the only one still looking.
If anyone knew I was doing this, they’d say it was a fool’s hope. A desperate daughter plunging headfirst into danger to find a man everyone else believes to be long dead. Maybe they’re right, but my heart tells me my dad is alive. And if he is…I’m his last hope.
He’s been missing exactly seven years to the day. The day of our town’s Fall Festival. Today is scarred into us like my parents’ initials carved into the bark of the trees I passed a mile back. Losing him isn’t something we’ve gotten over or moved past, as though such a thing should even be possible. One of the people who loved me the most in the world is gone. Nothing about that will ever be okay.
Mom and I have never acknowledged the anniversary of his disappearance, not even once. It hurt and confused me when I was a child, but I get it now. It already tortures Mom enough every other day of the year. The last thing I want is to compound it, but here I am, doing just that.
Is it worth risking Mom’s wrath and being grounded for the rest of my junior year?
Without question.
There are thousands of living things merrily going about their business, completely unconcerned with the fading day and the teenage girl in their midst and the fear nipping at her heart. I’m the furthest thing from alone out here, but that’s not as comforting as it sounds. Strange noises always follow me wherever I go. Something more than the wind rustling dry leaves or crickets calling to each other.
There! There it is again.
Soft crunches surround me. Whisper soft, like careful footfalls trying not to give themselves away. My breath catches. I rub away the prickles on the back of my neck, the insides of my wrists. Steady my breathing the way Dad and, later, my therapist taught me.
It could be anything: Gray squirrels scrambling across brittle September leaves, collecting nuts. The huffs and grunts of antlered elk.
Plump wild turkeys with their dark plumage foraging for seeds and insects, stalking the odd small reptile, too. I don’t mind the frogs and lizards, but the last thing I want is to run across a snake.
Dad’s stomach wouldn’t be tense with sick dread, but mine definitely is. I might have been raised by a fearless outdoorsman for the first ten years of my life, but I spent the next seven living in the shadow of his disappearance.
I whip around, wild eyes darting.
Nothing there.
And even though I strain my eyes and ears, I can’t hear anything except my own shallow breathing, and even that’s drummed out by the violent ticking in my ears. Blood rushes to the tips of my fingers, and just like that, I’m not cold anymore.
Somehow, I always expect coming here to be easier, but it still takes all my courage to step beyond the tree line that stands as the gateway between the Tennessee mountain town of Prior’s End and the Longing Woods. I’m about two miles in today, according to the last trail marker I passed. The way has been uneven in parts but nowhere near as rocky and rambling as it will get if I go deeper.
As much as I want to, I don’t have the gear to keep going. Hiking and camping equipment is expensive, and besides, I have nowhere to hide it at home.
Can’t ask my friends to hang on to it for me, either. Austin and Caroline would rightfully flip out if they knew what I was doing; they wouldn’t find it easy to keep my stuff…or my secret. And my forays into the woods have to be a secret, which means I have to be back before sunset. Before Mom wonders where I am or what I’m doing.
So tonight, this is as far as I go.
Guilt surges in my belly. I was wrong. Two miles is nothing. If Dad was this close to civilization, he would have made it back to us. He would have come across other hikers who could have helped him. Wherever he is, it’s nowhere close.
And on my own, I’m no closer to finding him.
because that’s one thing I will never do. I will love and miss him forever. But I do need to reshape myself around his absence. And I can’t do that if I don’t know what happened out there.
My father, Jules Marwood, was a wilderness survival specialist. He took groups out for overnight excursions, long weekends, even tailored weeklong corporate training designed to promote team building, problem-solving, and leadership. He and Shane, Austin’s dad, practically spent their childhood in the woods. The two best friends knew every stump, stone, and stem. They were the ones who went looking for unprepared folks, not the ones who got lost.
Which is why it’s never made sense to me how Austin’s dad got swallowed up in the Longing Woods, and so, too, did my dad when he went after him. My rational mind knows that park rangers and volunteer search parties made it deeper than I ever have before they gave up, but my wounded heart fights it like a wild thing in a trap, fierce and doomed.
As I turn back, for a half second, I think I see a dark silhouette moving between the trees.
I don’t dare blink, but it’s gone anyway. If it was ever there at all.
It doesn’t stop me from imagining a flash of a blue backpack, sleeping bag rolled tight and snug at the top. A man’s dimple sinking into his beard when he catches sight of me, kind eyes crinkling at the corners. His favorite olive-green belt that had lost so much color over the years. Socks pulled up high against tanned calves. The same weathered down jacket he’s had for years, a birthday present from Mom the year they began dating. He’s the way I remember him, early thirties and a little scruffy. His smile overtaking his whole face, like he can’t believe it’s really his little Nova, all grown up.
A Super Nova, he’d joke, or at least I think he would. The passage of time is unforgiving, and memory is dicey. Austin and I didn’t have our own phones when we were ten to record goofy videos with our dads, to immortalize the grins and good-natured protests when they’d catch us. Unlike our friend Caroline, all we have are the faded memories that crumble a little more with every year that passes.
What I can be absolutely sure of, however, is that I’m just a girl alone in the woods.
No backup, no true bushcraft supplies. The almost-empty water bottle and trail mix that’s more sugar than nutrition would earn me one of Dad’s expressive eye rolls, a bad habit I inherited along with, evidently, a penchant for bad ideas. I can almost hear his voice whisper on the wind, What’s the first lesson of wilderness survival that I always tell my students before we head out on the trail, Nova?
My answer is swift, instinctive:
Trust your team. Your partners are your best rescuers in case of any injury, misfortune, or calamity.
The anger is unexpected and immediate.
It was your lesson, Dad. Why did you ignore it?
Silence.
The thorny spikes in my chest snip away one by one. Being pissed at my dad and missing him are the same thing. I can never gauge which emotion will hit me first because it’s never considerate enough to face me head-on. It prefers to assault at all angles, burrowing into the soft parts of me that still hope, and stab that same hope right out of me. I can’t control it any more than I can control the wetness building behind my eyes. It’s nonsensical. It’s also normal, according to the grief therapist my mom insisted we go to after that first year of waiting and waiting and waiting.
I do my breathing exercises and wait it out. I’m good at that. After, I survey my surroundings, digging in my pocket for peanut M&M's
and dried fruit. It’s been long minutes since the last chirp or a squawk. It’s an eerie sort of quiet, broken only by the crinkly sounds of my rifling through a Ziploc bag.
Thirty minutes of brisk walking later, I can see a hint of the parking lot peeking through the gaps between tree trunks. The usual rush of relief is dampened by heavy steps crashing through the woods and some annoyed noises that suggest an argument. From the left, four hikers join up with the main trail and are about to overtake me, but then they slow instead. I note that their expressions are grim, lacking the usual triumphant exhilaration hikers wear when they make it out of the Longing Woods.
“Hey,” says a girl with flushed cheeks and blond Heidi braids. There’s a breathless note of relief in her voice. “Oh my god, you have no idea how good it is to see you.”
I don’t know her. Confused, I stand there awkwardly.
“You’re the first person we’ve come across,” explains the boy she’s with, the one holding the map. He’s wearing a hoodie with the mascot of our rival high school. No wonder I don’t know them.
“Today?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Since we set out.”
The other girl offers me a smile. “At least we didn’t miss the carnival. Right, Ahsan?”
She’s speaking to a boy who must be her brother. They share the same dark hair and soulful eyes. Where everyone else’s gear stands out with stiff newness, Ahsan’s is broken in. I glance at his footwear with approval; his hiking boots are rugged and beat up like Dad’s used to be. I subtly check him out, but he seems too sullen to even notice.
My gaze darts to his backpack. It, too, is the same kind as Dad’s.
Is this the flash of blue I thought I saw?
Ahsan scowls. “Our turnaround time wasn’t scheduled for days, Aaliyah. It wouldn’t surprise me if you did this on purpose so you wouldn't
miss the stupid carnival.”
Aaliyah’s face pinches. I get the feeling it isn’t the first time she’s heard that accusation.
Quickly, the other boy asks, “Are we close to the trailhead?”
“Yeah.” I point ahead of us, where light pokes through the trees. “Half a mile back to town.”
Ahsan stalks past, walking at such a rapid clip that the blond girl has to run after him. With a nod of thanks, the other boy takes off after them.
“Everything okay?” I ask Aaliyah. She’s lingering, adjusting the straps of her backpack. “Your group, uh, seems pretty tense.”
She looks miserable. “My brother loves hiking, and he finally convinced us all to join him. He wanted to find the wishing well.” She glances at me as if making sure I know what she’s talking about.
My chest tightens. Of course I do. Every child in Prior’s End grows up with the legend of the well where you can wish for any of your regrets to be undone.
If you can find it.
And since our town’s founding, so few have. Oh, plenty of locals and visitors alike claim the wishes they spoke over the wishing well have come true, and with no one to disprove it, the boasts stand.
In every single group Dad took out, there was at least one person who wanted to try their luck. Mostly novices who thought they were hot stuff, but sometimes even hikers who knew what they were doing tried to coax Dad and Shane to be their guides to the wishing well. Especially when they found out through the independently published guidebook The Way of the Wish that Dad descended from Henry Prior himself.
Their tour company’s online reviews show plenty of five stars, but the last few are ungenerous. People hate being told no. The most incensed one is from a man who spent five paragraphs ranting that it serves Dad right that
he went missing looking for the same miracle that he dissuaded so many others from. Accusing him of wanting the magic all to himself.
Asshole. My dad would never have risked his life for something so stupid, something that probably doesn’t even exist. It’s that guidebook’s fault and that of the Roses who published it.
The Marwoods and the Roses are distant branches of the Prior family tree, each descended from a different wife. By all accounts, our forefather was a controversial figure. Dad and I come from Henry Prior’s first wife while my classmate Radhika’s grandfather is a Rose by adoption. Radhika’s dad never cared about family history as much as his father did, but Radhika cares as much about the Prior lineage as she does her Indian ancestry from her mother’s side.
History regards Henry Prior with esteem but also with fear and suspicion, so sure that this legend of a man was driven to paranoia and murder to protect the wishing well from prying eyes. There hasn’t been anyone with the Prior last name for the last couple of generations, but nonetheless, his legacy lives on. The legend lures adrenaline junkies and the desperate to our town, and my dad was neither of those things.
“You really chased after that old myth?” I ask.
“Yeah, I know,” Aaliyah says, misreading the expression on my face. “Ahsan’s too old and too rational to believe in fairy tales, right? That’s what I said. I didn’t even want to come, but our parents said he had to go with a group, and he said this could count as my birthday present to him. So here I am.”
“That’s…nice of you?”
“Not that nice.” At my questioning look, she
explains. “We lost our lighter after our first night. My brother had it last, and he swears he zipped it up safe and sound, but I made so much fun of him instead of helping him look. It’s just that he’s so annoying when he acts like he knows everything! He spent this whole trip showing off, and now he’s embarrassed about all the setbacks. We haven’t been able to start a fire for the last couple of nights, so everyone’s hungry and cranky. I’m so sick of granola bars.”
I laugh. “My dad always brought bags of rice and beans. That’s all he knew how to cook.”
“I’d murder for some rice and beans.” She sighs. “It’s nice you can do fun things like this with your dad.”
“Yeah,” I say.
I don’t correct her, tell her that he’s gone. A word so loaded yet so nebulous.
I close my eyes and see Dad hunching over our campfire, stirring taco seasoning into our pot of beans while I suck applesauce through a squeezable pouch and watch him. It’s so real I can almost feel the smoked paprika tickle my nostrils, breathe in the scent of his vetiver aftershave and the spruce needles scattered around us and the faintest scent of eco-soap from the rinse in the river.
Aaliyah’s voice intrudes on my memory. “My brother was so stoked. He had this trip planned down to the minute, and now he thinks I wrecked it all. Said I didn’t pack matches on purpose so we’d have to turn back. And then our lanterns ran out of power in the middle of the night, and nobody could find the spare batteries in the dark. I thought I stashed them in my backpack, but we couldn’t find them in the morning. This whole trip sucked, and what’s worse is my dumbass brother thinks I sabotaged it on purpose.”
We walk in tandem, far enough behind the others that I don’t lower my voice to ask, “Did you?”
She shakes her head. “I’m not a total jerk. We just…didn’t plan it well, I guess.”
I don’t know what compels me to say it. “He’ll forgive you. It wasn’t your fault.”
It’s clearly the right thing to say. She brightens. “Of course he will. Family always does.” And then she gives me a conspiratorial little smile, like I’m supposed to know this, too.
are loading their things into the back of an SUV. The rest of the gravel parking lot is empty. The blond girl jumps into the driver’s seat and shouts, “Aaliyah, hurry up! I want to shower and get all this grime off me!”
“Coming!” She turns to me. “Do you need a ride?”
Her friend honks twice. “That’s okay,” I say. “My house isn’t far.”
“See you tonight maybe!” Aaliyah says.
I neither agree nor disagree, and we part ways. Enjoying myself at the Fall Festival feels like a betrayal. How do I mark the day I lost my dad? By gobbling caramel apples and sugared pecans and kettle corn? This is the first year since it happened that I agreed to go with my friends, and I already regret it.
Why are you punishing yourself like this, Nova? the dad of my memory asks. I don’t want this for you.
Maybe that’s so, but it doesn’t mean I don’t deserve it. If he knew the truth, he’d agree.
Someone laughs. I startle, recognizing the overlapping voices. When I turn over my shoulder, Aaliyah is thrusting her backpack at her brother, who takes it with a grin and pretends to stagger under the weight. Agog, I stare at the obvious affection between them. She’s forgiven, then. I didn’t expect that.
It’s hard not to envy her.
I’m almost out of the parking lot when she calls out, “Hey, I forgot to ask! Were you out there looking for something, too?”
I don’t answer. I lift my hand as if I’ve misheard, as if I’m just saying goodbye.
A moment later, their SUV overtakes me. No hands wave at me from the windows. Their tires spit up gravel, the radio blasting lyrics I can’t even hear over the sounds of their chatter.
And then I’m alone. I’m in their rear view, relegated to “that one girl we met that one time we thought it would be fun to go camping.” They didn’t find what they came to the Longing Woods for.
Neither did I.
Heart heavier than before, I point my feet in the direction of home. At dusk, the carnival that marks the first day of the Fall Festival will begin, and the music and merriment will be so raucous that I won’t be surprised if it stretches all the way into the woods. Wild, giddy hope takes flight in my chest. For a second—a half second—I imagine the pipes and strings leading Dad out of the forest. Back home.
Jules Marwood is everywhere my eyes land, my fingers touch, my lungs breathe. Every blade of grass and dirt-caked pebble could be Every blade of grass and dirt-caked pebble could be one he trod on first. ...
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