Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [69]
“Thank you,” the girl said, voice soft. Her eyes had lost their vagueness now and looked at Hazel with piercing clarity. Hazel could only nod again and then turn away into the cold.
As Hazel walked on through the night, the feeling of the air biting into her took all her attention. At least it kept her from thinking about the match girl. And if she thought too hard about her, Hazel would just stop right there in the woods and wait for herself to take root. This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.
From somewhere off in the distance came the sound of Hazel’s whistle blowing—once, twice, three times. Somewhere Ben, the one person in the woods who would come when she needed someone, heard the call and was coming. But not for her. Hazel was on her own.
She had nothing left, except a baseball, matches, and a broken piece of mirror. She had taken the girl’s fantasy from her. She would at least keep it well.
She walked on. Her eyes were watering, her skin was chafing, her body was shivering. The ticking of the clock seemed to taunt her, as if it was marking out the time she had left. She remembered running out of the house the morning the snow fell. It had been just over a week ago, but for Hazel it felt like an epoch away. Going outside in socks and her pajamas was a game, a lark. The frozen white world offered only possibility.
The cold laughed at her now.
After a while she realized she was walking in a layer of snow. She had not noticed when it had taken over the ground. And yet it was there, all around her, like the world had transformed itself in a breath.
The snow had started to fall, too, in soft flakes that tumbled exuberantly in the wind. They fell against Hazel’s shirt, brushed against her face, a flirtation.
The wind roused itself, pushing against her softly, a whispered threat. The ground beneath her had begun to tilt, and Hazel found herself heading up an incline. Her legs whimpered at her, for that was all they could muster now. Her lungs sucked in biting air with each breath, and it invaded her body eagerly, ready to freeze her from the inside out.
Everything in her wanted to curl up under a tree—just to rest a little. If she lay down she might fall asleep and dream of warm things. She knew she should not, that her shivery mind was whispering false promises to her, that if she slept she might not wake up. And she knew that if she kept going much longer, she would no longer care.
It had been so hot last summer. The two of them lay on the sidewalk like salamanders in the sun. Hazel wondered what it would be like to melt, if you would feel yourself slowly liquefy, or if your conscious thoughts would evaporate away before you did. Jack went into his garage and pulled out an old plastic baby pool that looked like a frog and dragged it into the backyard. Then he disappeared into the house and came out with a bowl filled with ice and dumped it into the pool. “Come on,” he told Hazel, prodding her with his foot like she was an overturned turtle. They took bowls from the kitchen and filled them with as much ice as the refrigerator could give, until it sputtered and whined and groaned. They milked Hazel’s refrigerator for all it was worth, then went door to door collecting from their neighbors, dumping their spoils into the plastic pool. The neighbors were parsimonious with their ice; it was going to take days to fill the pool. So Hazel flung herself into the thin layer of icy slushy watery mess and rolled around in it, numbing her skin until she was part ice cube herself.
“Get out!” Jack yelled.
“I can’t! I’ll melt!” Hazel yelled back. You had to be very careful when you were part ice cube.
“It’s my turn!” said Jack.
“Have you no pity, sir?”
“Make way!” Jack bellowed, and then jumped into the pool. Hazel had just enough time to roll over to the side so she didn’t get landed on. Jack wriggled around in the ice water like a baby