Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [76]
The girl’s face tightened, and she took a couple of uneasy steps away from the edge of the ice floe, squeezed her arms to her sides, and leapt over the dark crevice. She landed at the edge of the next floe and slipped. Her feet flew up from under her, and she contorted herself in the air so she would not fall backward. The side of her face thwacked onto the ice, water splashed up at her hair and her feet. She pushed herself up, grimacing and holding her head. Jack looked down at his puzzle.
Even the pieces he had fit together seemed wrong now. Everything he did seemed to make it worse.
He moved one of the pieces around, thinking its secrets might reveal themselves that way. He was surprised to look up and see the girl standing in front of him, looking down at him like he held her life in his hands instead of shards of ice. She was big-eyed and shivering, with wet shoes and hair. Her face was dark where she had hit the ice. Her chest heaved up and down. She had an enormous scar on her cheek.
He put the piece he was holding down and looked up at her. Her eyes were darker than the lake. And they welled as they looked at him, as if he was the one who had almost fallen through the ice.
He was not worth her tears.
He missed the witch.
He was nothing.
Chapter Twenty-four
Object Memory
Hazel stared at the frozen remnant of her friend. His skin was tinged with blue, his eyelashes and hair were covered in frost. He was hard and dull, and there was no life to him at all.
She could feel that her head was shaking and her eyes had tears in them. She had to work to take in a breath, because her body would not breathe in a world where Jack could look like this.
She leaned down and put her hand on his shoulder. “Jack,” she whispered.
He flinched. “You’re warm,” he said.
She drew back.
“Jack,” she said again, because that was his name, and that, at least, was something she could give him. “It’s Hazel. Jack, we have to go home!”
Surely there was something better to say than this. But she could not think of anything else in the whole world.
He tilted his head at her, like her words made no sense to him. Like he was already home.
“No,” she said, shaking her head quickly. “No, listen. . . .” Hazel closed her eyes. All this way, and she had nothing. “Jack. You’re Jack. . . . Please. Here, look.” She took down her backpack and got out the broken shard of mirror the match girl had given her.
“You’re Jack,” she said, putting the mirror in front of him. “Jack Campbell. Do you see?” And you are made of baseball and superheroes and castles, and of lots of Hazels-past, even if you lost them to the wind, it doesn’t matter.
Jack looked into the shard of mirror, and his eyes widened in surprise. As he stared, his face darkened. Hazel glanced down and then started. The image in the mirror was Jack, but ten times worse—dark blue and seemingly made out of cracked ice. She let out a gasp.
Jack looked up at her, eyes wide. “He’s terrible.”
“No, no,” she said, drawing the mirror back. “He’s not. You’re not. Jack . . .”
Jack blinked at her. His eyes fell warily to the mirror shard again as if it might confirm a terrible truth, and Hazel tossed it aside.
“Um, I’m sorry,” she said, struggling valiantly to keep her voice steady. “Forget that. That’s nothing.” She needed to warm him up, that was it. She reached into the backpack again and pulled out the matches and the tinderbox. She tried to strike the match, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t. A tear spilled out of her eye, and she rubbed it away quickly.
She tried again, and with a psst the match was lit. She held it close to him and whispered, “Do you feel that? It’s warm.” The last part sounded like a plea.
He looked at her, confused. Hazel’s heart buried itself in her chest. What was she thinking? Like one match had any power against