**CHAPTER TWO

  “Founders in the Wilderness”**

  Long before Anna Keller ever laid eyes on the valley, before the cabins and barns rose from the earth, Helvetia had been nothing more than a dream carved onto a map.

  The first settlers—mostly young Swiss men weary of crowded cities and shrinking farmland—arrived in the spring of 1869. They came with wagons piled high, boots worn thin from days of travel, and letters promising fertile land in the quiet mountains of West Virginia. When they climbed the ridge and looked upon the valley for the first time, they saw a cradle of rolling green, dense forests, streams that glittered even under clouded light.

  It reminded them of home.

  Of the Alps they had left behind.

  Of places they would never see again.

  The valley whispered familiarity, and so they claimed it with grateful hearts.

  The earliest cabins were simple structures—narrow, drafty, held together by determination and rough timbers. The settlers slept on straw mats and cooked over shared fires. Wolves howled through the nights. Snow arrived earlier than expected and lingered longer than was welcome. But the Swiss were used to hardship. They chopped wood until their hands blistered, tilled soil until their backs ached, and prayed until their voices broke.

  By the second year, more families arrived—wives, children, and elderly parents who had traveled across an ocean to begin again. With each new arrival, the settlement grew, and so did the need for unity. The people built a bakery, a workshop, a schoolhouse no larger than a stable, and at the center of it all, the Festhall—a place to gather, to remember who they were.

  The Festhall became the heart of Helvetia long before the church was finished.

  Anna had heard these stories many times, but that morning, as she paused outside the Festhall door while the twins darted inside, she let herself imagine the settlers arriving—soaking wet from rain, tired from travel, but hopeful. That hope had a spirit to it, something that lived in the walls even now.

  Inside, the hall smelled of pine, smoke, old wood, and the faint memory of roasted chestnuts from past celebrations. Woven tapestries lined the walls—scenes from Switzerland their mothers and grandmothers had recreated by lantern light. Mountain flowers. Sheep on slopes. A procession of masked revelers chasing away the cold.

  The first immigrants had brought very little, but they had brought their memories.

  And Faschnat.

  Anna touched one of the tapestries—a mask with painted horns and an exaggerated grin. Even faded by time, the face still carried mischief. The first settlers had celebrated Faschnat in Helvetia the winter after their arrival, eager to drive out the darkness that clung to them. That first festival had been small, barely a handful of families marching around a bonfire. They had worn scraps of cloth over their faces, laughed too loud, danced on numb feet. It hadn’t mattered. It had worked. The cold seemed to lift, the air lightened, and the settlers felt, for the first time, that their new land might welcome them after all.

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  The tradition had continued every winter since.

  “Mama,” Lukas whispered beside her, “who made this one?”

  He pointed to a mask carved with deep-set eyes and a jaw that jutted forward like a wolf’s muzzle.

  “Your father,” Anna answered softly. “The first winter after we came.”

  Lukas reached out, fingertips brushing the smooth grain of the wood. Lena pressed to Anna’s side, studying her mother’s face instead of the mask. Anna steadied herself.

  “Why do we make them?” Lena asked.

  “To remind the winter it cannot stay,” Anna said. “To remind ourselves we are stronger than the darkness.”

  She didn’t tell them the other part—the older belief, the one whispered by the settlers who clung to the superstitions of their grandparents. The masks weren’t only meant to chase winter away.

  They were meant to keep things out.

  From the woods.

  From the cold.

  From the shadows.

  Those stories felt too heavy for her children. Too heavy even for her.

  The Festhall door creaked open behind them, letting in a harsh gust of wind and the scent of snow. Elder Dietrich stepped inside, his long gray beard dotted with flakes. He leaned on a cane carved from a twisted piece of mountain laurel, each knot smoothed to shine like polished stone.

  “Frau Keller,” he greeted her. “You’re here early.”

  “Habit,” Anna replied. “The children have been eager to see the mask wood.”

  Dietrich chuckled, though his eyes remained serious. “Good. The young must learn our traditions if we are to keep this village whole.”

  He stepped beside her, looking up at the tapestry of Markus’s mask.

  “Your husband understood that,” he said. “He wanted this festival to last long after we are all gone.”

  Anna swallowed. “I know.”

  Dietrich tapped his cane once on the floorboards. “There are whispers this year,” he said quietly, glancing to ensure the twins were out of earshot. “People say the woods have been… restless.”

  Anna stiffened. “Restless how?”

  “Tracks that aren’t animal,” he murmured. “Voices heard at night. A hunter said he saw someone walking through the trees in the last snowstorm—a man with no lantern, no coat, no footprints behind him.”

  Anna felt a cold sliver trace her spine.

  “Superstition,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction.

  “Perhaps.” Dietrich’s eyes drifted toward the snowy window. “But the winter feels different this time. Heavy.” He leaned closer. “When you feel the valley listening, you listen back. Our ancestors knew this.”

  Anna nodded stiffly.

  Outside, the wind rose, sharp and whining. The old Festhall groaned as though answering something far off.

  Dietrich straightened and forced a reassuring smile. “Come. Let the children choose their pieces of wood. Tradition must continue, fear or no fear.”

  But as Anna guided her twins to the carving table, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the valley had indeed begun listening.

  And that something very old—older than Helvetia, older than any Swiss tradition—was waking in the winter’s dark.