Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [46]
She came upon an area of flat ground, about the size of her school gym. And spread over much of it was the canopy of a tree that had a trunk the width of a minivan. This tree, unlike every other one she’d seen, still had its leaves—a massive cloud of green hanging low over the grassy land and supported by a mess of tangled branches. It looked like an entire world might live within those leaves.
Hazel could not help but stop and stare at it—this, the biggest tree in the world. There was flickering within the leaves, birds that made their universe inside the mammoth cloud of branches. She wondered if they even knew about the sky.
Her eyes traveled past the tree, and then her heart lifted. For, just when she needed it, the path had appeared again.
She moved toward the path, wondering at the massive tree as she passed around it. And then she noticed the three women who sat at its base.
These women had oddly smooth features and eyes that were mostly pupils. They wore cloaks of a soft gray with hoods that framed their faces in shadow. They each had dark brown hair, dark skin, and deep brown eyes, so they looked like sisters to the tree behind them. A string of gray yarn stretched across them, and the last woman was working on a large wooden spinning wheel.
And as one all three turned to look at her.
“Oh, hi!” shouted the first. “Come here!” She motioned Hazel over with a cheerful wave. Hazel glanced toward the path, then took a few steps toward them.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked brightly.
“Um”—Hazel pressed her shoe into the ground—“Hazel Anderson.”
“Oh,” said the first. “You don’t look like an Anderson.”
“That’s rude,” said the second.
“So sue me,” said the first. “We get a lot of Andersons here,” she added to Hazel, by way of explanation. “Now . . .” She bent down, and as the other two watched her, began rummaging in a small wooden box that lay at her feet. The woman picked up a handful of gray strings and sorted through them, and then looked at Hazel thoughtfully. “Has that always been your name?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s rude, too,” said the second.
Hazel felt herself flush. Her parents had never mentioned it. She had never asked. But it probably hadn’t always been her name. Someone had called Baby-Who-Would-Be-Hazel something before her parents flew in on their rocket ship to get her, in the place where there was culture. There was the orphanage—she was there for months. Surely the nurses murmured something to her as they gave her a bottle and changed her diaper and placed her back in her crib. And somewhere there was a before-mother—and maybe a before-father, too. And maybe the before-mother never gave her an official name, maybe she never even held her, maybe she decided to give the baby up before it became something other than a red squalling it. But there must have been something in her head at some point—a wish, a whisper—some dream of a future with a daughter. There must have been a name.
“I don’t know,” Hazel said, shifting.
“You don’t know your name?” breathed the first.
“No,” said Hazel.
The first woman shook her head. “How do you expect to know who you are?”
She looked at Hazel like she expected an answer, but Hazel did not have one to give. The first woman sighed and rummaged through the threads some more. “Aha!” she said suddenly. “Lookee lookee, Cookies!” She picked a long gray string out of the box. It had a puff of wool attached at one end. She passed the string down, puff end first, and the three hooded women stared at it as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.
“Is that me?” Hazel asked quietly.
“It is,” said the first woman, raising her head.
“You’re like the Fates.”
“Somebody had to do it,” said the second woman. “This is the sort of place where people want answers.”
Hazel stared at the long, ordinary thing. “Does that mean you know what’s going to happen?