By Elizabeth Anne Myrick

My glasses fog, smearing the police tape into a fluttering yellow ribbon against the forest. Sunlight cuts across my cheek, but it can’t shake the chill under my skin. I’m shivering as Andersen finishes the report.

“The kids disappeared, just like…” He glances at me, concern thick as molasses.

I sip my latte. Pumpkin spice coats my tongue, mingling with the scent of pine and the taste of bile crawling up my throat. Hand shaking, I set the drink on my car. “Like me and Hans?”

Andersen looks at the tree line. “Greta, I can take this case alone. You should go home.”

But I can’t. I’m not sure I’ve been able to since the day my brother and I strayed into this same forest and I came out alone. Without a word, I step forward. When I pause, turning, Andersen follows, the glint of his gun extinguished by shadows.

Under the trees, darkness smooths Andersen’s face until he looks thirteen again, and I’m eight, as broken as the day he found me with twigs in my hair and Hans’s last word looping in my mind.

Run.

Andersen has been on this side of the search before, but I’ve only been the one lost. As we delve deeper, I can’t outrun the memories of what came after I escaped.

Police interviews. A woman’s face on the news. The black body bag when they brought Hans home.

I don’t realize I’m hyperventilating until Andersen takes my hand, just like he did then. We are only a few hundred meters deep, sunlight still visible from the parking lot. “Greta, this isn’t like last time. We’ll find them.” He shows me his phone. Our location is marked by a blue dot on a map. “Then we’ll find the way home. No problem.”

It’s the same thing Hans promised the day he died.

Every fifteen minutes, Andersen checks our progress. We’ve been gone two hours when he whips his head up. His gaze locks on mine, eyes wide with irises like black stones. Then I smell it, too.

Burnt sugar and rotten apples.

Andersen holds my hair as I retch. When I’m done, he pulls the radio from his belt. Static crackles. He turns the volume down and checks our location before he speaks. “Suspicious activity in Sector C-15. Backup requested.”

I count the heartbeats in my throat. One. Two. Three. After twenty-three, there’s a response. “ETA, one hour thirteen minutes.”

I flinch. If it’s like last time, these kids don’t have that long. Andersen and I may already be too late.

He starts forward, needles muffling his footsteps. A spiderweb snags in his hair, graying the dark strands as if he’s already a fading memory.

No. I silence the thought, remembering Andersen’s assurance. This isn’t like last time. Then, I was lost, and he was scared, and Hans was dead.

Now, I’ve got Andersen to guide me. He isn’t scared; he’s a force all his own, gun in hand and something dark in his intense expression. And Hans…

Hans is forever eleven years old, but these children have a chance.

“Andersen. Wait.” I jog to catch him, pulling my gun from its holster. His smile is brittle as hardened caramel, and it fragments into steely resolve as we inch forward.

The cottage is unchanged—cherry-red windows, a cinnamon-stick chimney billowing smoke, and mudded walls like swirls of chocolate frosting. We freeze when a shadow darkens the nearest windowpane.

As the door swings open, Andersen pulls me backward.

Time has not been kind to the woman. White glazes her hair, and her cheeks sag with folds of wrinkled skin. Her eyes, pale as milk, sweep blindly over us.

I wonder if Hans was the last face she ever saw.

I raise my gun. Andersen’s breath catches, warmth brushing my cheek. Gaze locked on those unseeing eyes, I settle my finger on the trigger.

“I know you’re there.” Her voice rasps like dead leaves. “I can smell you, child.”

I step out of the trees, Andersen right beside me. He trains his gun on her, too.

“My brother. Hans.” Sticky-sweet smoke weighs heavy on my tongue. “Do you remember him?”

When she cocks her head, powdered sugar dusts her shoulder. “I’ve known many sweet children.”

“He outsmarted you.” I move close enough to see the flour caking her apron. “He gave his life, but I made it home.”

Her eyebrows knit. “Did you really, dear?”

I falter. She knows. Somehow, she must sense that, though I left this place, I lost part of myself in the forest. I’ve never once truly gone home.

Screaming, I lurch toward her and press the gun to her pasty temple. But I don’t shoot. Andersen’s hand on my shoulder anchors me to something beyond this moment. Under the pain of my haunted memories, I know one thing for certain.

If I pull the trigger, I will never make it home.

I don’t lower my weapon until Andersen pushes the witch to her knees. She cackles as he secures the handcuffs, the sound tugging me toward the past. But there’s another sound: a child calling from the cottage. For a moment, I almost believe it’s Hans, like he’s been waiting for me.

“Greta.” Andersen’s voice brushes away the cobwebs of memory. He nods at the door. “They’re waiting.”

I push the door open. The children blink up at me—alive, every last one. Cautious, they step out of the cottage. The woods ahead are dark with the threat of night, and the witch begins to wail. The smallest girl draws close to my side.

“You’re found, darling,” I say. I glance over to where Andersen has the witch subdued, her hands behind her back. Next to him, she looks like a doll. He doesn’t let her go as he passes me his phone.

On the map, we’re an electric-blue dot, the edge of the forest just visible on screen. I smile and take the girl’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Anne Myrick lives in Kansas City with a golden retriever named Edith, a suitcase named Posey, and several houseplants with unfortunately forgotten names (but she swears there’s a Kenneth in there somewhere). Always hungry for adventure, she’s visited sixteen real-world countries and countless fictional ones. Her stories glimmer with hope and a sprinkle of magic. You can find Elizabeth on the back deck with her iced coffee, lost in a good book, or on her social media.

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