by Anne Ursu
“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.
But she was no swan. She had legs, she had arms, she had a swan neck dangling uselessly behind her. Of course it would never work, not on her. She didn’t even know her name.
Hazel walked over to the edge of the ridge, thinking she might catch a glance of her reflection in the stream below. But it was too far away, and moving too quickly. It didn’t matter. Hazel knew what she looked like. The skin was just a taunt, just one more thing she would never have. And she was still alone.
She tore the skin off and hurled it into the ravine.
Hazel watched as the beautiful, terrible thing fell into the water. It could not fly, it could not float, because all its swan-ness had been taken away. She stared down at the ravine, and then turned and walked slowly back to her backpack.
And a hand grabbed her arm.
“Where is it?” a voice hissed in her ear.
A woman was standing over her, her hand clutching Hazel’s arm like a claw. The woman did not look right. Her skin was sickly yellow, and it hung oddly on her too-thin body, like someone hadn’t gotten the size right. Big dark eyes popped out of a head that was a layer of skin away from being a skull. Nearly colorless hair hung in deadened strings over her shadowy, gaunt face.
Fear exploded in Hazel’s stomach a
nd she sucked in breath. She could not tell whether or not the woman was human or something else, but it didn’t seem to matter, because the woman oozed blackness and rot. Hazel exhaled in a whimper, and the woman leaned into Hazel and sniffed her.
“My skin,” she said again, her voice a parched rasp. “You touched it. I can smell it on you.”
“I—” Hazel tried to back away, but the woman’s grip on her arm tightened.
“Where is it?” she repeated.
“I—I don’t know—”
“You think you can lie to me, you worthless thing? Who put you up to this? Were you going to sell it?”
“No—”
The woman’s head tilted, and a cracked smile spread slowly across her yellowed face. “Did you think you could use it yourself?” She drew out the last word in a hiss. Hazel sucked in breath in little pathetic gasps. “Did you want to be a beautiful swan, you ugly little girl? Did you think you could fly?”
Her face was right up against Hazel’s now, enough so that Hazel could smell the odor of decay that emanated from her. Hazel squirmed, trying desperately to wrench herself free. The woman’s grasp tightened.
“You think I’m going to let you go? Is that what you think?” She pulled Hazel into her and clutched her against her chest. Hazel could feel the woman’s body against her back, and it was all bone and rattling breath. “Tell me where it is,” she whispered into Hazel’s ear. “Now.”
Hazel should have had a story ready. Something. Something to say that the woman would believe. This is what you were supposed to do now, come up with a clever story. But her mind was nothing but fear and pain.
She could only whimper, “I’m sorry.”
“I see,” the woman said, running a cold finger down Hazel’s cheek. “Actions have consequences, little girl.”
And then there was pain. Stinging, and then searing. The woman had stuck a nail into Hazel’s cheek, and it was like a talon. She dragged her finger down, splitting the skin on Hazel’s face. It traveled down her cheek to her neck.
“Did you want to be beautiful?” she hissed. “Is that what you wanted?” She moved her hand to Hazel’s wrist and lifted her arm above her head, twisting it in a way it was absolutely not supposed to go. Hazel yelped, and tears sprung to her eyes.
“Now you’re coming with me.”
Hazel was bent over, trying to un-contort her arm, her body alive with panic. She could not get away. She had to get away. Her cheek was hot and wet and stinging with pain. She needed something, anything.
“Wait,” Hazel said, or something very like that. “I’ll take you to it!”
The woman loosed her grip slightly and Hazel lunged for the nearest thing—which turned out to be the arm strap of her backpack. She hurled the backpack up at her attacker, using all the force of her body.
Her wrist exploded in pain. The backpack slammed into the woman’s skull face and she stumbled backwards.
Clutching the backpack by the strap, Hazel took off in a run, darting through the trees, leaping over roots and clumps. She dared not look back, she just ran.
And then her foot hit something and she went flying into the dirt. Her hands skidded on the ground and her knee bumped up against a rock, tearing the leg of her jeans. Hands stinging, knee throbbing, she sprang back up again.
She could not hear anything but the sounds of her own breath, heart, and blood—all so loud that she wouldn’t have heard a semitruck behind her.
Anyway, the woman had come upon her silently before, with nothing but the squeezing of her claw hand to announce her presence. It was not something Hazel wanted to experience again.
And so when the hand landed on her arm, she shrieked. But it wasn’t a claw hand at all. A teenage boy was leaning out from one of the trees, arm outstretched. He grabbed her and pulled her behind the tree, then put his arm around her and whispered, “Come with me.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Birdkeeper
The boy guided her forward, moving quickly in and out of the trees. He kept looking behind and then urging her onward.
She had no business trusting this boy. Except he was getting her away from the swan lady, and that’s all she cared about in the entire world.
Her leg hurt as she ran, and she could feel fresh blood on her face. Her hands still stung, and her knee was raw. But still she ran.
And then suddenly they came upon a small wood cabin. There was an ax leaning against the front wall and a pile of logs off to the right. The boy stopped and looked wildly around, then skipped up to the door, unlocked it, and motioned to Hazel to go inside.
“Wait in there,” he whispered.
She looked from him to the door.
“Please,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. But she’s coming.”
And she will hurt you, Hazel finished silently. She ran up the step and into the cabin.
The boy did not come in. He closed the door behind her, and in a blink of an eye she heard the sound of wood being chopped.
Hazel knew she should be wary, knew she shouldn’t trust a boy in the woods, but she had no wariness left. She collapsed in a heap on the floor.
She lay there, shaking. It was all too much, the monstrous woman and the monstrous fear. She could feel the woman’s hand squeezing her, her nail in her cheek. Hazel was such a small, breakable thing.
She squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment, she imagined she was home in her own bed, the hum of her mom talking on the phone in the background. For once Hazel was fantasizing about the real world.
She inhaled and opened her eyes. Wherever she might want to be, she was here. She pushed herself up and eyed her surroundings. She was in a one-room cabin that was about the size of her classroom. There was a fireplace built into one wall, and above it hung two pots. A few shelves lined with jars of food hung next to it. There was a small bed against the other wall with a heavy blanket and a pillow, and a trunk at the foot. Near the fireplace sat a wooden table with a lantern and one chair. This was not someone who had a lot of visitors.
There were three strange things about the cabin. The first was the entire back wall, which was taken over by book-lined bookshelves, like a very rustic library. Except the books were not the musty, cloth-bound kind with gold lettering, but books like you might find at any bookstore now, like he’d just waltzed over to his neighborhood bookseller—or ordered UPS. The second was the rifle that hung above the doorway. It made Hazel’s stomach wary just to look at it. And the third was the strangest thing of all.
Perched on a small table in front of the bookshelves in the back of the room was an ornate gold birdcage with its door open. And inside that cage was a small bird, like none Hazel had ever seen, as gleaming white as the feathers of the swanskin. The bird was about the size of a small robin, and from inside the gold cage it seemed to glow.
Hazel took a step toward the bird, mesmerized.
Then, the sound of voices from outside. She froze. Everything inside of her seized up, as if the claw hands were squeezing down on her right now. Hazel swallowed down the urge to vomit.
Making herself as small as she could, she crept over to the window to the left of the door. The shutters were closed, so she crouched underneath and listened, clutching her backpack in her hands.
Yes, it was the witch. Hazel could hear the rasping voice as if the woman was whispering to her heart. She couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it hardly mattered.
And then the boy’s voice. “No, I haven’t.”
Evil rasping.
“Mmm. I’ve been out here all day chopping wood. I’d have seen anyone come by.”
More evil.
“I will. I will. Of course.”
And then quiet, followed by the sound of wood chopping. Hazel pressed herself against the wall, barely able to breathe. She would not move, lest any disturbance in the air bring the woman back.
Hazel did not know how long she crouched there, while the bird skittered about the cage and outside the boy chopped wood. S
he just stayed, a puff of wool frozen in time.
And then the door opened and the boy burst in. “It’s all right now,” he said, hands out. “I don’t think she’s coming back.”
The boy tilted his head, trying to reassure her with wide, gentle eyes. Hazel blinked up at him. He looked high school age, fifteen or so. He had a thicket of dark hair and wore a worn flannel shirt, rough brown canvas pants, and heavy black boots. His tan face was boyish, and there was no sign of stubble on his chin. He was too young to live in a house with just one bed.
Hazel could not speak, could not do anything but shake her head slowly.
“You need help,” he said, his whole body cautious. “You’re bleeding.”
Hazel put her hand to her face and winced. Her hand came back red and sticky. Her stomach churned.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, reading her face. “It’ll keep bleeding unless I put something on it, though. Is that all right?”
She nodded. He went over to the kitchen area and began poking around on the shelves. He got down a small brown bottle and a towel, which he brought over to her. “I’m going to clean this, okay?”
Hazel nodded again. The boy put some light yellow fluid on the towel and touched it gently to her cheek. Hazel had a flash of a memory—Jack’s mom standing in front of her on some long-ago summer day, gently putting peroxide on a badly skinned knee, wincing along with Hazel.
“My name is Ben,” he said, dabbing at her cheek. “By the way.” He eyed her, but she had nothing to say. He lowered his voice. “Did you, um, do something with her swanskin?”
She nodded slowly.
He blew air out of his cheeks. “That was brave.”
It wasn’t, really.
“That’ll stop bleeding now,” he said, taking the rag away and stepping back. “It’s going to leave a pretty good scar,” he added. “I’m sorry. And, um . . . your clothes . . .”
She looked down. There was blood down the front of her sweater and smeared on one of the sleeves. She must have wiped her hand on her jeans at some point, because there were bloodstains there. The left leg of her jeans was ripped from the knee to her calf, and her knee was skinned underneath.
