Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [75]
Hazel looked at the ground. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in a whisper. That’s not what this was about. Not anymore. “What do you want?”
The witch raised one careful eyebrow. “I? I want nothing,” she told Hazel. “Don’t you see? I want nothing.” She waved her hand in the air. “Your Jack came to me of his own free will. If he chooses to leave, I will not stop him.”
“If I can get him to leave, you’ll let us go,” Hazel said.
The witch opened up her arms to the air. “Certainly. But I don’t think he’ll choose to leave. He gave his heart very freely.”
Hazel felt her stomach rise up into her throat. The witch was standing over her, looking so pleased with herself, looking as if Hazel should be pleased, too, and Hazel could barely breathe for all the coldness coming from her.
“Remember,” she said, fixing her eyes on Hazel. “I’m always here.”
Hazel let herself live for a moment in the witch’s unwanting eyes, and then broke away. “I’m going,” she said, and walked toward the door.
“Hazel,” said the witch. Hazel turned around. The witch was standing perfectly erect. She seemed to loom in the room, and her eyes were like a storm.
“Know this,” she said, her voice as clear as a shard of glass. “If you take him away, he will change. And someday he will be a man, and you will not even know him, and he will only think of you with a passing smile.”
At least he would think of me, Hazel wanted to say.
And she turned. Something released inside of her, some cold inexorable pulling.
It was not supposed to be this easy. This was to be the final confrontation. There was to be struggle, torment, despair. But the witch—who was the only person in the woods who wanted nothing—was not what Hazel had to defeat.
And so Hazel left. She walked through the palace and outside, back into the terrible cold. And then she was afraid. For this was her battle now. She took a deep breath and took a step into the snowbanks, and another, and began to fight her way to Jack.
Chapter Twenty-three
Puzzles
Jack could not make the pieces fit. He worked diligently, constantly, but every time he made something fit together, another problem presented itself. The pieces made him promises, but the promises were lies. The shards had secrets. He was never going to finish.
He was afraid she would stop coming, that he would disappoint her—or even worse, bore her. She would lose interest, not even notice him anymore. He would not give up, though. She would not like that.
And she had not come since giving him the puzzle. So when he sensed someone coming from the palace toward him, his head snapped up.
He saw a small, dark shape struggling its way through the snow toward the lake. It was not the witch.
He felt like he’d been plunged into the dark water. She was not coming.
His hands moved back to the puzzle, but after a few moments his eyes flickered back to the shape. It was a girl, and she was made of colors.
She was standing at the edge of the lake now. She seemed very small. Something about the girl tugged at him, and he wished the witch were there to kiss him on the forehead and make it go away.
He looked down, and one of the pieces called to him. Its edges clarified before his eyes and he understood it. Or thought he did. He took one of the small sections he’d been able to make and tried to add the piece to it, but it would not fit.
His eyes flickered upward again. The girl was still there. She was edging her way onto the lake now. She picked up one foot and set it carefully onto the ice, and then the other. She slipped a little, and her arms shot out to the sides.
Jack had never seen anyone approach him on the lake before. The witch always just appeared. The ice seemed a treacherous thing to walk on. And the girl was having trouble. She moved as lightly as a baby bird, but still she bobbled and slid.
The ice floated on the dark water in broken pieces—
large versions of the puzzle Jack had at his feet. The girl took big, careful steps over the cracks in the ice, moving in wobbly slow motion. And then she came upon a crack too big to step over. She