Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [50]
“Now you’re coming with me.”
Hazel was bent over, trying to un-contort her arm, her body alive with panic. She could not get away. She had to get away. Her cheek was hot and wet and stinging with pain. She needed something, anything.
“Wait,” Hazel said, or something very like that. “I’ll take you to it!”
The woman loosed her grip slightly and Hazel lunged for the nearest thing—which turned out to be the arm strap of her backpack. She hurled the backpack up at her attacker, using all the force of her body.
Her wrist exploded in pain. The backpack slammed into the woman’s skull face and she stumbled backwards.
Clutching the backpack by the strap, Hazel took off in a run, darting through the trees, leaping over roots and clumps. She dared not look back, she just ran.
And then her foot hit something and she went flying into the dirt. Her hands skidded on the ground and her knee bumped up against a rock, tearing the leg of her jeans. Hands stinging, knee throbbing, she sprang back up again.
She could not hear anything but the sounds of her own breath, heart, and blood—all so loud that she wouldn’t have heard a semitruck behind her.
Anyway, the woman had come upon her silently before, with nothing but the squeezing of her claw hand to announce her presence. It was not something Hazel wanted to experience again.
And so when the hand landed on her arm, she shrieked. But it wasn’t a claw hand at all. A teenage boy was leaning out from one of the trees, arm outstretched. He grabbed her and pulled her behind the tree, then put his arm around her and whispered, “Come with me.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Birdkeeper
The boy guided her forward, moving quickly in and out of the trees. He kept looking behind and then urging her onward.
She had no business trusting this boy. Except he was getting her away from the swan lady, and that’s all she cared about in the entire world.
Her leg hurt as she ran, and she could feel fresh blood on her face. Her hands still stung, and her knee was raw. But still she ran.
And then suddenly they came upon a small wood cabin. There was an ax leaning against the front wall and a pile of logs off to the right. The boy stopped and looked wildly around, then skipped up to the door, unlocked it, and motioned to Hazel to go inside.
“Wait in there,” he whispered.
She looked from him to the door.
“Please,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. But she’s coming.”
And she will hurt you, Hazel finished silently. She ran up the step and into the cabin.
The boy did not come in. He closed the door behind her, and in a blink of an eye she heard the sound of wood being chopped.
Hazel knew she should be wary, knew she shouldn’t trust a boy in the woods, but she had no wariness left. She collapsed in a heap on the floor.
She lay there, shaking. It was all too much, the monstrous woman and the monstrous fear. She could feel the woman’s hand squeezing her, her nail in her cheek. Hazel was such a small, breakable thing.
She squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment, she imagined she was home in her own bed, the hum of her mom talking on the phone in the background. For once Hazel was fantasizing about the real world.
She inhaled and opened her eyes. Wherever she might want to be, she was here. She pushed herself up and eyed her surroundings. She was in a one-room cabin that was about the size of her classroom. There was a fireplace built into one wall, and above it hung two pots. A few shelves lined with jars of food hung next to it. There was a small bed against the other wall with a heavy blanket and a pillow, and a trunk at the foot. Near the fireplace sat a wooden table with a lantern and one chair. This was not someone who had a lot of visitors.
There were three strange things about the cabin. The first was the entire back wall, which was taken over by book-lined bookshelves, like a very rustic library. Except the books were not the musty, cloth-bound kind with gold lettering,