The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

I picked up the knife I was going to use.

And I carried on.

“Then, when you start carving, you think of all the things this year that you weren’t a big fan of. Things you want to cut out of your life. Things that happened or things you felt or things about yourself you want to change. Each piece of pumpkin flesh carved out represents those things.”

When I took a moment to assess their interest, I saw even Bohannan was now paying a lot closer attention.

“Then,” I continued, “we clean up the seeds, spread them on a tray, salt them, roast them and consume all the good things we want for ourselves for the next year. While the seeds are roasting, we take the pieces to the yard, dig a hole and put the bad things in the ground. Bury them. We do this to literally bury them, but we also do it to turn them positive. Change them. Because that happens when you return something of the earth to the earth. It nourishes it.”

I looked among them.

“Does that make sense?” I asked. “Are you okay to do that?”

“I’m in,” Jason said gamely.

Jess looked down at his pumpkin, and it was quiet when he said, “I’m in too.”

“Totes!” Celeste chirped.

Bohannan’s answer was picking up his knife.

I grinned to myself.

We stabbed and cut and carved and scooped. There were times of quiet. There were more times of conversation and ribbing. Jess had some chops with carving. Jace’s attempt was terrifying. Bohannan’s pumpkin looked exactly like a winking emoji…with eyebrows. Celeste’s had bow lips and eyelashes carved into the flesh. Mine was traditional with three teeth.

When we were ready to rumble, Bohannan ordered, “You girls get those seeds ready. We’ll go get the shovels and figure out where to dig.”

Clearly, this fixed gender allocation of roles should be addressed.

Except I didn’t know where the shovels were, it wasn’t my property we were digging on, and bonus to having men around during this ritual, I didn’t have to dig any holes like had been my job in the past because neither of my girls liked digging either, though I will admit, digging a hole wasn’t hard.

We’ll just say I selected acting and writing as my career trajectory for many reasons.

Therefore, I didn’t argue.

Before the men took off, though, Bohannan slid his arm around my shoulders, pulled me into him and gave me unofficial first kiss number two (which, as you can tell from my use of the word “unofficial,” I also wasn’t counting), he pressed his lips to the side of my head.

He then whispered in my ear, “Don’t put them in the oven yet.”

He pulled away just enough to catch my eyes and my confused but affirming nod, since dumping the stuff in the ground didn’t take that long at all.

Celeste and I cleaned the seeds, spread them on the tray, salted them and set the oven to preheat.

We then gathered the pieces of pumpkin at each station in newspaper, keeping track of whose was whose.

We went out and found the men leaning into shovels about twenty yards away from the pier, still in the clearing, but just. You could reach out and touch the first tree.

An excellent spot.

It wasn’t as much as normal, but mist was on the water again, even if the moon was bright, the sky was cloudless, and the weather was for once warm-ish.

Celeste and I handed out the parcels.

“Any words of wisdom?” Bohannan prompted.

“Just do you,” I said. “You want to say a few words, out loud or in your head, go for it. As for me…”

I stepped forward and dumped my bundle in the rather deep hole (another bonus to men around, I’d never put the effort into digging that deep of a hole, and what I had to bury this year needed to go down deep).

And there went Bob Fucking Welsh.

I knew, of course, he wasn’t gone. What he did wasn’t gone.

But I’d learned over the years there was strength and power in rituals like these, and this wasn’t the only one I participated in (it was just the only one I did with others).

And somehow, in my head, doing this lessened his hold on me.

Celeste went next, and she also dumped.

Bohannan went next, the same.

Jace dumped his, saying “Sayonara, bullshit.”

It was then, we turned to Jesse.

And it was then that I knew what Bohannan knew before we even walked out there.

I hadn’t taken it further.

He always did.

Jesse was frozen, staring into the hole.

“Son,” Bohannan murmured, starting to move to his boy.

He stopped when Jess took a step back but only to freeze again and continue to stare at the hole.

Everyone was silent.

Jesse broke it.

“I don’t want Alice in that hole.”

Celeste made a move, but I caught her hand. When I did, she stilled but held on so tight, my fingers hurt.