Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [45]
She tried again. The word mustered inside her, air swirled around in her lungs, her vocal cords vibrated, her lips readied. “Wolf,” Hazel said.
But the sound was no more than a breath.
And then some change on the wolf’s face. A darkening. Its blue eyes flashed, and though he was some distance from her, she saw it like lightning. He lifted his lips and his face contorted into a snarl, revealing yellowing fangs. He growled, and only she heard it.
Hazel was nothing, nothing at all. She would disappear here in the woods and no one would even know she’d come.
The horse whinnied. The rider clucked. The hoofbeats started and began to travel off down the path. The wolf did not move, did not release her, did not ease his fangs. The horse and rider disappeared into the distance and still Hazel stood.
Finally the wolf relaxed, the cable that tied them together broke. Hazel eyed the wolf, who still stood in front of the path. And then slowly turned her head toward the woods behind her.
“I’m going to go over there now,” she told the wolf.
He did not answer.
She willed herself forward. She took a step—and heard a small plastic-y crunch. She stopped. The hand that had been clutched around the compass was empty. She picked up her foot and saw just underneath the cracked remnants of her guide to Jack. Her heart sank. Of course, it might still work, it might still point north, she might still be able to use it to get there and even back again.
She looked down at the compass for a moment, pictured herself bending down to pick it up. Her neck tingled. She turned to see the wolf pacing on the path now, back and forth like a sentry.
Then Hazel noticed something on the path, something that had definitely not been there before. She stared. There, in the middle of the path, was a pair of shoes. The woodsman must have dropped them.
They were not just any shoes. They were girl’s shoes, for one, something close to the size of the battered sneakers on Hazel’s feet. And they were beautiful, better than the sum all of the shoes Susan had in her closet—shiny slippers with a pile of long ribbons on top. And they were a bright, beckoning red.
They were dancing shoes—real ballet slippers, not just what Adelaide had, but the kind they have in books, the kind where you can wrap the ribbon around your ankles. They were shoes that called to Hazel’s heart. They were full of promise, of leaps and pliés and the feeling of being lighter than air. They were not for the woods, but they were for everything after.
Hazel took a step toward the shoes and the path. And the wolf stopped. And stared. And bared his teeth.
He was taking those from her, too.
There was nothing she could do. So, leaving the cracked toy among the leaves and the shoes on the path, she turned around and headed into the trees.
Chapter Fifteen
Skins
Hazel scooted forward quickly, though her heart still tried to tug her back. She didn’t even know where she was going, or whether she could find her way back home, but the path belonged to the wolf now.
Maybe, when she had Jack, she could come back for the shoes.
The best she could do was move along the edge of the ravine. The path had been running parallel to it—logically it still would be—and at least that way she’d still be going in the direction the raven had told her to.
She trod along the unsteady ground, trying to move as soundlessly as possible. The sun was at its peak in the sky now. She’d been walking for at least half a day. Her body was wearing, and there was no sign of anything that would point her to Jack. She thought again of the woodsman, and what he might have told her, and hoped there were as many woodsmen here as wolves.
But she went