Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [54]
“I have a whistle,” she said.
“Good. You just blow on it. It doesn’t matter how far away you are. As long as you’re in the woods, I’ll hear you and I’ll come for you, okay?”
“Okay,” Hazel said. It didn’t really make sense, but she believed him. This place was seeming less and less like a place every moment.
“And . . . remember. People who come here looking for things . . . they don’t usually find what they want.”
“I have to try to save my friend,” she said.
“I understand,” he said.
“I just want him back. That’s all.”
“I know. I hope it works.”
Ben stepped out of the cabin so she could change, and Hazel got out the extra pair of jeans and the shirt that she’d brought. She folded up her bloody clothes on the wooden chair and let Ben back in. He said he would take her clothes and bury them, somewhere far away.
He refilled her water canteen, pointed her in the direction of the path, and told her again to be careful, eyes full of brotherliness. As Hazel left the small wood cabin, the small white bird began to sing, calling her back.
Chapter Seventeen
The Marketplace
Hazel walked through the trees toward the path, hearing the birdsong in her head. She wondered if the bird remembered anything of her life before, if she wanted to tell her brother things, if she dreamed of having two legs and running. Or did she just think about birdseed and wonder at that funny boy who read her books?
Ben was just a few years older than Hazel, and he was stuck here. He and his sister were all long gray string now.
A few days ago she would have found this story so beautiful. It was the sort of story your mother told you before she tucked you in at night, and you would sigh and think of the steadfast birdkeeper and his bird sister and the marvelous tragedy of it all. It would have been beautiful, as a story.
Hazel would have gone to sleep confident that if she were a bird, Jack would be her keeper, that they would spend their days in a small cabin tucked in the fairy-tale woods, and no one would ever tell them they needed to face reality. There was a time when this was true, but maybe not anymore. And maybe she wouldn’t want him to anyway. Jack would have a big puff of wool left, and she could learn to be a bird.
Hazel didn’t know what the right thing was. What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Do you hold on or let go?
It didn’t matter, though. Hazel was here, in this place where people did not mean her well. And she was on her own. No one even knew where she was. And if someone decided to turn her into a bird, there would be no one to look after her. She’d have to figure it out by herself.
Hazel stepped back on the path, but kept to the side. And she walked on.
She found herself reacting to every murmur of the wind—each and every one a potential footfall of someone coming toward her. There were witches in the woods, they stole beauty from swans and then rotted from the inside. There were couples who wanted to turn girls into pretty little birds. The woods does strange things to people.
Hazel was exhausted. Her wounds throbbed. Her muscles felt like warm Play-Doh. She wanted nothing more than to curl up on a pile of leaves and rest, just for a few hours.
And the cold was there, too. It called her forward, whispering promises at her that it would not keep. Hazel’s skin prickled underneath her shirt. She stopped and got out her jacket from her backpack. She saw the whistle at the bottom of the bag and tucked it into her jacket pocket where she could get it quickly if she needed it. At least she wasn’t alone anymore. In some way.
Ahead of her, somewhere, was the white witch, who had a palace of ice with a heart to match. The Fates were afraid of her. Ben tried to warn her away. Hazel was supposed to defeat her, somehow—though she could not even function in the real world. What was she against a witch? She couldn’t even deal with fifth-grade