by Anne Ursu
There was a squawking from above, followed by an odd croaking, and then some sort of throaty trilling, and Hazel looked up to see two big black birds perched on a branch behind her chattering to each other. The birds were the size of eagles and pitch-black, with long, hooked black beaks. They looked like crows, but puffier and shinier and much, much bigger.
Ravens. The word popped into Hazel’s head. The bigger one turned its head toward her and looked back at her with beady black eyes, taking her in. Hazel shifted under its gaze, and it turned to its partner and croaked something. They chattered back and forth and Hazel understood that they were talking about her.
She took a deep breath. “I’m Hazel,” she said. “I lost my friend. Do you know of a woman who looks like she’s made out of snow?”
She felt like Alice, questioning caterpillars and grinning cats. Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The birds both turned their heads to look at her, and she stood in the middle of the clearing surrounded by tree giants while two dog-size maybe-ravens eyeballed her and a naked clock ticked on behind her like fate, and she felt quite small and quite real, and wondered what she thought she was doing and what she was going to do now.
And then one of the birds lifted its head slightly, focusing on a point somewhere beyond Hazel. She turned to follow its gaze and saw, leading out of the clearing, a small path.
She looked back at the birds. The smaller one croaked something at her and flicked its head toward the path again, and then they turned back to each other. They were done with her.
Now, Hazel was not stupid. She knew that just because you see a piece of cake and a sign that says EAT ME doesn’t mean you should actually do it. And just because two giant ravens point you in the direction of a path doesn’t mean you should take it. But it was the only path she had.
Hazel crossed the clearing and stood in front of the path. It didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary—just trodden dirt weaving around the trees. She took off her hat, mittens, scarf, and green jacket and put them in her backpack, then took out her compass, because it seemed like the thing to do. Her mom would be pleased. Hazel might have plunged into a mysterious fantasy woods after an evil witch with a pack of wolves at her disposal, but at least she’d brought a compass.
Hazel watched the face of the compass as the needle wavered slightly, as if afraid to make too firm a commitment. But it was pointing roughly the way she was heading. Hazel was going north. Her heart lifted a little. This might be a magic woods, but there was still a north here. It was a place, like any other. The compass would guide her to Jack, and then guide her home. Who needed breadcrumbs?
She had a compass. She had a direction. She had a path. She knew where north was. So Hazel stepped on the path and headed forward.
Last year her class had taken a field trip through the woods in some state park or other. There was a guide who’d taught them how to spot poison ivy and look for water and find shelter, and Hazel had been too busy dreaming of centaurs to pay attention. The only thing she remembered was the guide passing out whistles and showing everyone how to blow three times for an emergency signal. The whole class practiced, again and again, while the guide whipped them up into a whistling frenzy. Hazel had been afraid they would scare off the centaurs.
She had the wilderness kit whistle in her backpack, and now could not imagine why. Because whatever the emergency was that might cause her to blow the whistle, there was no saying that whatever answered it wouldn’t be far worse. It could be just the thing that allowed the Snow Queen’s flying monkeys to find her.
Flying snow monkeys, probably.
The path led Hazel up an incline, and now she was moving along a ridge above the ravine. From somewhere down below she could hear a stream running. In another world she was on a field trip surrounded by all her old classmates, the guide was yammering on about potentially useful information while Hazel dreamt of magic.
It was then that she realized that the tick tock sound of the clock had never quieted—it was as if she was still standing next to it. She stopped for a moment and looked around, as if maybe she hadn’t moved at all. But she had. And yet there was the sound: Tick tock. Tick tock.
Hazel stiffened. It made no sense—when she’d entered the woods she hadn’t heard it at all, and it had gotten louder as she approached it. This is the way things worked. Now that it was in her ears, though, it seemed it would never go away.
She took a deep breath and moved on, her feet walking in rhythm with the clock. After some time, she came upon a fork in the path. Hazel looked from one side to the other and bit her lip, then consulted the compass. One was heading north and one eastward. Hazel was looking for a witch made of snow with a sleigh pulled by wolves. She would go north.
She walked on, consulting the compass when she needed to, always heading the direction it pointed. She was just thinking how odd it was that there was no one else in the woods when she felt a shaking on the ground and heard hoofbeats in the distance. They were coming toward her. Hazel stopped and looked behind her, but could see nothing.
She did not know these woods. She did not know the rules. She did not know what manner of man patrolled the paths. All she knew was her job, and that was to get Jack and get out.
Clutching the precious compass, Hazel left the path and scurried into the trees to hide. She ducked behind a particularly wide one, and slowly peeked around to see who else was in the woods.
The hoofbeats approached and the ground beneath Hazel vibrated in response. Hazel moved her head out as far as she dared.
A man was on the path, riding a sturdy chestnut horse. The man was wearing a flannel shirt and a cloth hat. On one side of the horse hung a saddle bag and a long, old-fashioned ax.
Hazel understood. He was a woodsman. In a woods full of wolves there were woodsmen, too. Her heart eased.
The horse made a noise and stopped suddenly, pawing at the ground with its hoof. The woodsman whispered something to it and patted its flank. He reached into his saddlebag and began rummaging inside it. Something seemed to catch his attention then, and he looked around, eyes searching the trees. Hazel darted back, then wondered if she needed to. Maybe he could help her.
She peeked out again and the woodsman’s posture had changed. He was erect, watchful. One hand held taut the reins of the horse, who was stomping agitatedly, and another clutched the handle of the ax.
Hazel felt the expectant hush in the air, like the trees were waiting for something. If she took a breath, the sound would shatter the silence. And then the horse let out a noise and the woodsman relaxed his grip on the ax and lifted the reins.
Her heart pounded. She’d asked a wolf and two ravens about the woman in white. It might be time to ask an actual person.
She gathered herself and stepped out from the tree. There, standing between her and the path, where a moment before had been nothing, was another wolf.
This one was bigger than the first, with a thick brown and black coat and creepy blue eyes. Hazel froze. She heard the sound of the horse stirring. The wolf was in the shadows, too far behind the man for him to see. And the creature had no interest in him at all—all its energy was fixed on her.
Hazel could scream. There was a wolf and a woodcutter with an ax. This was the way the story went. She did not know how long it took a woodcutter to hear a yell, understand what it meant, unhook his ax, and swing—and how that compared to the time it took a wolf to cross the distance between desire and prey. The scream came out as a strangled, whispered thing, the sort that could barely bother the air.
She tried again. The word mustered inside her, air swirled around in her lungs, her vocal cords vibrated, her lips readied. “Wolf,” Hazel said.
But the sound was no more than a breath.
And then some change on the wolf’s face. A darkening. Its blue eyes flashed, and though he was some distance from her, she saw it like lightning. He lifted his lips and his face contorted into a snarl,
revealing yellowing fangs. He growled, and only she heard it.
Hazel was nothing, nothing at all. She would disappear here in the woods and no one would even know she’d come.
The horse whinnied. The rider clucked. The hoofbeats started and began to travel off down the path. The wolf did not move, did not release her, did not ease his fangs. The horse and rider disappeared into the distance and still Hazel stood.
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.
Chapter Fifteen
Skins
Hazel 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?”
