Breadcrumbs (12 page)

Finally the wolf relaxed, the cable that tied them together broke. Hazel eyed the wolf, who still stood in front of the path. And then slowly turned her head toward the woods behind her.

“I’m going to go over there now,” she told the wolf.

He did not answer.

She willed herself forward. She took a step—and heard a small plastic-y crunch. She stopped. The hand that had been clutched around the compass was empty. She picked up her foot and saw just underneath the cracked remnants of her guide to Jack. Her heart sank. Of course, it might still work, it might still point north, she might still be able to use it to get there and even back again.

She looked down at the compass for a moment, pictured herself bending down to pick it up. Her neck tingled. She turned to see the wolf pacing on the path now, back and forth like a sentry.

Then Hazel noticed something on the path, something that had definitely not been there before. She stared. There, in the middle of the path, was a pair of shoes. The woodsman must have dropped them.

They were not just any shoes. They were girl’s shoes, for one, something close to the size of the battered sneakers on Hazel’s feet. And they were beautiful, better than the sum all of the shoes Susan had in her closet—shiny slippers with a pile of long ribbons on top. And they were a bright, beckoning red.

They were dancing shoes—real ballet slippers, not just what Adelaide had, but the kind they have in books, the kind where you can wrap the ribbon around your ankles. They were shoes that called to Hazel’s heart. They were full of promise, of leaps and pliés and the feeling of being lighter than air. They were not for the woods, but they were for everything after.

Hazel took a step toward the shoes and the path. And the wolf stopped. And stared. And bared his teeth.

He was taking those from her, too.

There was nothing she could do. So, leaving the cracked toy among the leaves and the shoes on the path, she turned around and headed into the trees.

H
azel scooted forward quickly, though her heart still tried to tug her back. She didn’t even know where she was going, or whether she could find her way back home, but the path belonged to the wolf now.

Maybe, when she had Jack, she could come back for the shoes.

The best she could do was move along the edge of the ravine. The path had been running parallel to it—logically it still would be—and at least that way she’d still be going in the direction the raven had told her to.

She trod along the unsteady ground, trying to move as soundlessly as possible. The sun was at its peak in the sky now. She’d been walking for at least half a day. Her body was wearing, and there was no sign of anything that would point her to Jack. She thought again of the woodsman, and what he might have told her, and hoped there were as many woodsmen here as wolves.

But she went on, following the ravine below, up a hill and then back down again, wondering if she was going in the right direction, or in any direction at all, accompanied all the while by the ticking of the great clock.

She came upon an area of flat ground, about the size of her school gym. And spread over much of it was the canopy of a tree that had a trunk the width of a minivan. This tree, unlike every other one she’d seen, still had its leaves—a massive cloud of green hanging low over the grassy land and supported by a mess of tangled branches. It looked like an entire world might live within those leaves.

Hazel could not help but stop and stare at it—this, the biggest tree in the world. There was flickering within the leaves, birds that made their universe inside the mammoth cloud of branches. She wondered if they even knew about the sky.

Her eyes traveled past the tree, and then her heart lifted. For, just when she needed it, the path had appeared again.

She moved toward the path, wondering at the massive tree as she passed around it. And then she noticed the three women who sat at its base.

These women had oddly smooth features and eyes that were mostly pupils. They wore cloaks of a soft gray with hoods that framed their faces in shadow. They each had dark brown hair, dark skin, and deep brown eyes, so they looked like sisters to the tree behind them. A string of gray yarn stretched across them, and the last woman was working on a large wooden spinning wheel.

And as one all three turned to look at her.

“Oh, hi!” shouted the first. “Come here!” She motioned Hazel over with a cheerful wave. Hazel glanced toward the path, then took a few steps toward them.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked brightly.

“Um”—Hazel pressed her shoe into the ground—“Hazel Anderson.”

“Oh,” said the first. “You don’t look like an Anderson.”

“That’s rude,” said the second.

“So sue me,” said the first. “We get a lot of Andersons here,” she added to Hazel, by way of explanation. “Now . . .” She bent down, and as the other two watched her, began rummaging in a small wooden box that lay at her feet. The woman picked up a handful of gray strings and sorted through them, and then looked at Hazel thoughtfully. “Has that always been your name?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s rude, too,” said the second.

Hazel felt herself flush. Her parents had never mentioned it. She had never asked. But it probably hadn’t always been her name. Someone had called Baby-Who-Would-Be-Hazel something before her parents flew in on their rocket ship to get her, in the place where there was culture. There was the orphanage—she was there for months. Surely the nurses murmured something to her as they gave her a bottle and changed her diaper and placed her back in her crib. And somewhere there was a before-mother—and maybe a before-father, too. And maybe the before-mother never gave her an official name, maybe she never even held her, maybe she decided to give the baby up before it became something other than a red squalling it. But there must have been something in her head at some point—a wish, a whisper—some dream of a future with a daughter. There must have been a name.

“I don’t know,” Hazel said, shifting.

“You don’t know your name?” breathed the first.

“No,” said Hazel.

The first woman shook her head. “How do you expect to know who you are?”

She looked at Hazel like she expected an answer, but Hazel did not have one to give. The first woman sighed and rummaged through the threads some more. “Aha!” she said suddenly. “Lookee lookee, Cookies!” She picked a long gray string out of the box. It had a puff of wool attached at one end. She passed the string down, puff end first, and the three hooded women stared at it as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

“Is that me?” Hazel asked quietly.

“It is,” said the first woman, raising her head.

“You’re like the Fates.”

“Somebody had to do it,” said the second woman. “This is the sort of place where people want answers.”

Hazel stared at the long, ordinary thing. “Does that mean you know what’s going to happen?”

The third one held up the messy, unformed puff of wool and threw up her hands.

“Oh,” Hazel said. She shifted. “Um, do you . . . can you see my name?”

“Nope,” said the first, shrugging.

“Okay.” Hazel looked down and began to dig her foot into the ground. And then she stopped. What was she doing? This wasn’t about her. “Um,” she interjected, raising her voice. “I lost my friend.”

All three heads tilted sympathetically.

“That’s sad,” said the first woman.

“I’m so sorry,” said the third.

The second woman looked intently at her portion of the string. “Oh! You’re looking for your friend!”

“Yes,” said Hazel, wrapping her arms around herself. Wasn’t that what she’d said?

“Your
best
friend,” the woman continued. “But wait!” She raised a hand. “He
changed
.” She drew out the last word dramatically, and then turned to the others. “Isn’t that like a man?”

The three women giggled.

The second one turned back to Hazel. “He changed. But you came into this dark place filled with mysteries, wonders, and terrors
beyond your imagination
”—she stuck her hand out, palm first, and swept it though the air dramatically—“to save him.”

“Um”—Hazel blinked—“right.”

“And to learn about yourself.”

“No.” Hazel shook her head. “I just want to save my friend. Please,” she said, not trying to keep the desperation from her voice. “Do you know where he is?”

“I’m sure we can help you,” said the woman in the middle. “But we need something from you.”

“Something shiny,” said the third one. The other two nodded.

Hazel looked at them to see if they were serious. They apparently were. She exhaled. “Um,” she said, taking down her backpack. She had done her best to be prepared, but had not anticipated the crazy people. She pushed aside her jacket—which she was not giving up—and change of clothes, and then her hand settled on the flashlight.

“Will this work?” she asked, taking it out and turning it on. She shone the beam on the ground.

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed the third woman. Hazel walked it over to her, and she grabbed it eagerly and then sat there, flicking it on and off.

“What’s your friend’s name?” asked the first.

“Jack,” Hazel said. “Jack Campbell.”

“Coming up, Buttercup!” She bent down and began rifling through the box. She took out a clump of gray yarn and began to sort through it, and then frowned and picked up another clump. She shook her head and looked up. “Jack Campbell?”

“Yeah,” said Hazel, a twinge of something in her stomach.

The woman shook her head. “I can’t find his thread,” she whispered to her colleagues.

Hazel’s stomach dropped. “Does . . . that mean he’s dead?” she asked.

“No,” she said. “I would still have it.”

“But”—Hazel looked frantically from one to the other—“what does it mean?”

“Wait,” said the third woman, looking up suddenly. “How did you lose your friend, exactly?”

“He was taken. By a woman on a sleigh pulled by wolves.”

The women all stiffened.

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know who she is?” Hazel asked. “Do you know where she is?”

“You don’t want to go there,” said the third.

“Shhh!” the second said.

“We can’t help you,” said the first.

“Nope,” said the second.

“They’re right,” said the third. “Go home.”

“Wait,” Hazel said. “What do you mean? Can’t you tell me anything?”

They all shook their heads as one. Hazel stared at the women as if trying to pull information out of them with her eyes. And they all looked away.

They were supposed to help her. Why were they there, if not to help her?

Hazel stood there for a few more moments. She would not cry. “Well, thanks for your help,” she said finally, and turned and walked to the path.

Hazel followed the path through the clearing and up a hill into the trees, heart burning the whole way. She did not understand what had passed. It was like they knew, when they couldn’t find his string, what had happened to him. Something about the thought turned Hazel’s stomach. Why wouldn’t they tell her anything? Was the witch so scary they couldn’t speak of her? All she’d been thinking of was rescuing Jack. It hadn’t really occurred to her that she’d be rescuing him
from
someone.

And why wouldn’t Jack have a string, anyway? He wasn’t dead, they said it didn’t mean he was dead. But Hazel knew that anyway—you know when a piece of yourself leaves the world, never to return.

Hazel had a string. This was a strange idea to get used to. She was a puffy, unformed mass of wool leaving something definite and fixed in her wake. Every step she took in the woods was one more bit of string left to time.

And time was passing.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
The sun was lower in the sky than it should be—she hadn’t been in the clearing that long, but it looked like late afternoon now. It didn’t make sense.

That wasn’t the only thing. She reached the crest of the hill and heard the bubbling of the stream. She had met up with the ravine again—but it was on the wrong side.

Hazel looked around. Was she going in the wrong direction? That wasn’t possible, was it? If she knew anything about anything, she would be able to look at the shadows the trees cast and know if she was going backward. But she hadn’t been paying attention before. She never paid attention to the things she was supposed to. She never had to, before—there had always been Jack.

Somewhere, hours from here, a cracked Junior Explorer compass lay on the floor of the woods.

Her heart twinged. Her legs whined. Hey body protested.

There was nothing to do. Hazel stepped off the path and plopped down behind a nearby tree. She rummaged through her bag, and her hand touched on the Joe Mauer baseball. A pang of missing Jack went through her. Then she pulled an energy bar and her canteen out of her backpack for some approximation of lunch. The energy bar tasted as good as she felt.

But Hazel still ate the whole thing, washing it down with water from the canteen. Then she sighed and looked around for some sign of anything. Something squeezed in her chest. She had no idea where she was or where she was going. And she was alone. No one ever has to do these things alone.

Usually, they at least have a friend with them.

Hazel wrapped her small arms around her small chest and looked around at the great trees. She kept her eyes level—she felt all of a sudden if she looked up and saw how far they reached into the sky she would disappear altogether.

And then her eye caught on a flash of something out of place. She squinted. About ten yards away, near the ravine, something white was tucked into the hollow of a tree.

Maybe it was something. Hazel needed something.

She grabbed her backpack and crept toward the tree, looking around carefully as she went.

It looked like a garment at first, a cast-off cloak made of small white feathers. It was tucked away in the hollow, as if someone had hidden it there. Hazel put her backpack down, grabbed a thick stick, and poked the mass. Nothing happened, so she bent down carefully and placed her hand on it.

It was the softest thing she had felt in her life, and everything that was twisting inside of her stopped. As if there was no need for fear or loneliness when there was such softness in the world.

She picked up the feathery garment—it was surprisingly thick and heavy—and then yelped and dropped it. For attached was a long slender neck that supported a beautiful white head with a black mask and a bright orange beak.

It was a swan, but with no swan inside.

Hazel stared at the thing at her feet. A dead eye stared up at her. It had been alive once. It had been a swan and someone had taken it and killed it for this skin.

Hazel knew about this from fairy tales. There were people who could turn themselves into an animal by wrapping themselves in its skin. It had always seemed to Hazel like the most wonderful power—to be able to transform yourself into something else entirely.

Hazel looked around again and then picked up the skin and let it unfurl. The swan had been no ordinary bird—the skin belonged to a creature bigger than Hazel. It must have been magnificent.

Maybe she could do it. In the real world Hazel was an ordinary thing, a misshapen piece with no purpose. Maybe here she could be a swan. Maybe it had been left here, just for her. She could fly over the woods to rescue Jack. She could bear him on her back on the way home. She would alight just before the edge of the wood and unfurl herself. And then maybe she would hide the skin there, deep in the hollow of a tree, for when she needed to spread enormous white wings.

She held it up. The neck and head hung to the side, and Hazel tried to ignore the way her stomach turned looking at it. After all, she was not the one who’d killed the creature.

She felt naked as she began to wrap it around herself, like a bird plucked of its feathers—all goosebumpy skin and trembling bones and frail, sputtering heart.

And then the skin was around her and Hazel was softness, she was warmth. The skin settled into her as if made for her.