Hi John,
I enjoyed these. I think you have some strong ingredients for a series, and I look forward to one day reading it. Here we get a small look at this world, and I imagine that in each further instalment we would learn more. I definitely sense a journey / quest on the horizon, into and through that wood.
Winter knows: So, the house is magical. It burns down completely and is there again in the morning. I like that he is excited when the house is gone. It's suggestive. Of some sort of freedom, perhaps. I enjoy the description of the imagined journey -- the dark water the colour of the sky and the rabbits, crows and bears.
You might lose "hanging from his hand". It doesn't seem to add anything. It's exactly how I imagine a bucket of water being carried.
I find "old house's brown-board wall" a bit of mouthful and would prefer, "the brown-board wall of the old house".
Something about "will become aware" feels a bit flat, or like it could be tightened. Is there a single verb that could replace "become aware". Something like "notice", "learn" or "discover" maybe -- though I guess they don't have quite the same sense.
You need a comma after "black water", I think.
Walnuts out of their shells gives us a possibly magical disappearing woman. I get the sense that she is a mother-figure or sorts, and that maybe the boy lacks a mother (or a loving one). Also, we get a little closer to that forest. Again I like the nature description, the naming of the birds.
Sentence 2. Is the waking and walking a single event, or the general case? In context it sounds like the latter, in which I wonder if you need a "would" before "wake"?
"She held walnuts out of their shells in her hand" Struck me as a little awkward/odd about the current phrasing, because it's not quite clear what's going on with the verb. "holding walnuts out of the shells" might mean prevent the nuts from returning, or she holds them just above their shells, say. Also, it seems first as if the verb is "to hold out" but then isn't. I don't know. But does "She held shelled walnuts in her hand" convey anything less than you want to say?
At the close I'm wondering how it follows from her being gone that no one else would visit her. She might be in the forest rather than at its edge and just as visitable.
best,
Matt
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