Hazel and Holly

by Sara C. Snider

  “Quite effective, don’t you think? I might do it again in the future. Gone will be the days of struggling to get you out of bed. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  Holly glowered at her. “You really need a hobby.”

  Hazel grinned. “Don’t be sore. We need to wash up anyway, and be thankful that this water was warm.”

  Holly opened her mouth but then seemed to think better of it and snapped it shut again. They both used the water to wash up—which was little more than them splashing it on their faces and drying them on their skirts. Hazel would have liked to wash up properly—with soap and everything—but not here in a drafty barn with Francis potentially skulking about.

  “You and Hemlock have fun last night?” Holly asked, grinning. Her voice had taken an overly sweet, taunting tone.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Hazel said drily. “But you were asleep, so I guess you won’t.”

  “Was it amazing?” Holly said as she leaned into Hazel. “Was it magical?”

  Hazel moved away from her. “Honestly, Holly, who needs a hobby now? Go pester Hawthorn if you’re in need of romantic frivolity.”

  Holly sobered, and Hazel frowned in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

  “I… I kissed Hawthorn.”

  “What? When?”

  “Back in Sarnum. In the graveyard.”

  “Is that what happened? I knew something was weird when Hemlock and I walked in.”

  “It was weird, that’s the thing. I… I don’t think he enjoyed it. I don’t think I enjoyed it. I don’t know why I did it.”

  “Maybe because you’ve been pining for Hawthorn since the day you met him?”

  “I haven’t been pining.”

  Hazel raised an eyebrow.

  “All right, I’ll admit I might have been rather keen in my fondness for him…”

  “Mildly obsessed is more like it.”

  “But I’m not pining,” Holly continued, ignoring Hazel’s interruption. “You’re making it sound like I’ll wither away and die if he doesn’t notice me.”

  “You mean you won’t?”

  “No!”

  “Just asking.”

  “Besides, I’m pretty sure he has noticed me now. I think I made sure of that in the graveyard.”

  “You do have a knack for getting noticed.”

  “It’s just… I’m not sure it’s his attention that I want anymore. I’m not sure if it feels right.” She peered at Hazel with dewy eyes. “What does that say about me?”

  “Good grief, Holly, it doesn’t say anything other than you perhaps having a dreadful sense of timing.”

  “But if I don’t love him, then who? What if I never find someone to love? What if I’m not capable of it?”

  Hazel took hold of Holly’s shoulders in a firm grip. “Now you listen to me. You’re the most infuriatingly loving girl I know. You take the most wretched of us into your heart, even the ones who don’t deserve it. Including me. Including Hawthorn even if you might not love him the way that you hoped. It’s going to take an exceedingly rare soul to be worthy of your love, Holly, so don’t you be sad about this. You just keep being you, and if it’s right, it will happen.”

  “But what if it’s never right? What if it never happens?”

  “So what if it doesn’t? You’ll never be alone, I promise you that. Not as long as I draw breath.”

  “But you have Hemlock now.”

  “And you have the both of us. For as long as you can stand us.”

  Holly wiped at her eyes. “Promise?”

  Hazel nodded and swallowed. “Promise.”

  Holly took a deep breath and gave a shaky smile. “All right then.”

  Hazel squeezed her shoulders. “Feeling better?”

  Holly nodded. “I think so.”

  “Good, because there’s a shed I need you to go investigate while Francis is eating breakfast.”

  Holly could only stutter incoherent half protests as Hazel herded her out the barn door and prodded her towards the house.

  “All right,” Hazel said in a low voice once they reached the steps of Francis’s home. “You wait here while I go inside. If I’m not back in five minutes, you come inside too. Otherwise, I’ll come back out and let you know it’s safe to go investigate the shed.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “There’s no time to explain. But we need to make sure Francis doesn’t catch us poking around. He already caught me once this morning, so I can’t do it.”

  “But why are we poking around?”

  “Because I don’t trust him, that’s why. I want to know what we’re in for here, and I feel like he’s hiding something.”

  Holly frowned and pursed her lips.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look,” Hazel said. “You’ve talked me into more ridiculous schemes. Remember Zinnia? You owe me this one.”

  Holly let out a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”

  “Remember, if I’m not out in five minutes, you come inside.”

  “And do what, exactly?”

  “Nothing, just come in. Don’t make a bigger issue out of this than it needs to be.”

  “Right, I’m the one making a big issue out of things.”

  Hazel ignored her and disappeared into the house.

  Holly lingered by the steps, poking at her skirts and kicking at rocks. How long was five minutes anyway? She didn’t have a watch. Was she supposed to be counting? Because she hadn’t been counting. So was she supposed to start counting now, or was it too late? Would she need Chester with her? She thought about running back to the barn to fetch him when Tum appeared from around the house. When he saw her, he smiled.

  “Pretty good digs we’ve got here, eh? Not much in the way of beer, but that Francis fellow piled up a bunch of those dolls around the cellar door. He must want me to have them. Not too shabby a payment.”

  “He’s probably hoping they’ll ward you away. The dolls are supposed to be for protection.” Holly screwed up her face. “And what do you mean, ‘payment’? You’re our cellar gnome, not his.”

  Tum thrust a finger into the air. “Never refuse a payment, I always say. Even ones not owed.” He looked her up and down. “Besides, your payments have been a little lacking.”

  “We’ve been busy traveling! You’ve nabbed more than enough beer and goods on this trip, and you only got those because we brought you along, so you can’t complain.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Holly rolled her eyes.

  Tum squinted up at her. “Why’re you standing out here?”

  “I’m waiting for Hazel. She wants me to go poking around some shed, but she told me to wait here first.”

  “A shed, you say? I seen a shed. I’ll go look.”

  “No, wait!” Holly said, but Tum had already run off around the house and disappeared.

  Well, now what? Should she go after Tum? Should she wait for Hazel? Had it been five minutes yet? She imagined Hazel sitting inside silently fuming at Holly for botching up what should have been a simple plan. It must have been at least five minutes, right? Holly was fairly certain she was supposed to go in now.

  She eased open the door and stepped inside. Voices carried from the kitchen, but the main room was empty except for all the shelves of creepy dolls. She hastened across the room and passed through the threshold into the hallway and nearly collided with Hazel.

  A fork clattered to the floor from the plate Hazel held in her hands. On the plate were more pickled eggs along with a wedge of lumpy bread that looked like solidified porridge.

  Hazel’s expression tightened, but before she could open her mouth, Francis appeared in the hallway behind her and beamed.

  “Ah, Holly,” he said. “Feeling better, I hope?”

  “What?” Holly said.

  “You said you weren’t feeling well,” Hazel said, giving Holly a weird look. “So I was going to bring you breakfast out in the barn. But you seem to be feeling better no
w. Right?”

  Holly’s mouth hung open as her mind reeled at what she was supposed to do, how she should act. What should she say? She’d never been any good at thinking on her feet, not like Hazel.

  “Of course she’s feeling better,” Hawthorn said as he walked out of the kitchen and took Holly’s arm. “Why else would she be here? Though with you crowding her as you are, I wouldn’t be surprised if she needed more air. I’ll take that.” He took the plate from Hazel and, holding on to Holly’s elbow, led her back outside.

  “What just happened?” Holly said once they left the house.

  Hawthorn kept on walking until they reached the barn, then he handed her the plate of food. “I just salvaged whatever plot you and your sister have been scheming.”

  “We haven’t been scheming.”

  He folded his arms and cocked an eyebrow.

  “It was Hazel’s idea! I was just going along with it.”

  “What is she up to?”

  Holly told him of Hazel’s plan to get her to the shed unnoticed.

  “How ridiculously complicated,” he said. “Why don’t you just walk over there and look inside?”

  “I don’t know! She told me to wait, and then I lost track of time. And then Tum… who knows what Tum is doing!” Holly shook the plate of food at him.

  Hawthorn backed away from the plate as an egg wobbled over the edge and fell to the ground. “It’s fine. We’ll go look together. All right?”

  Holly took a deep breath and nodded. She poked at the lumpy bread as they walked past the house. “What is this stuff anyway?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t think I want to know. You can thank me later for saving you from that as well.” He took the bread from her plate and pitched it into a nearby field enclosed in a wooden fence. Next to the fence in a corner was a little shed.

  “That must be it,” Holly said, squinting. “It doesn’t look special.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know, something more grand, for all the fuss Hazel’s making about it.”

  As they approached, Tum slipped out of the shed and then froze when he saw them.

  “Well?” Holly said. “What’s in there?”

  Tum rubbed his hands on his shirt. “Isn’t anything in there. Not anything that concerns you anyway.”

  “And it concerns you?”

  Tum drew himself up. “I’m a cellar gnome; most everything concerns me.”

  “I should hope not,” Hawthorn said. “I’d rather rats take an interest in my affairs than a grubby gnome.”

  Tum looked offended. “I’m not grubby! Rats are grubby.”

  “What’s in there, Tum?” Holly said.

  “Told you. Nothing.”

  She reached for the collar of his shirt, but he darted out of the way, straight into Hawthorn who grabbed him and hoisted him off his feet.

  Tum howled in protest and flailed his arms and legs as Hawthorn swung him away from the door for Holly to open. A pile of Francis’s dolls were heaped upon a table, with some scattered on the bare earthen floor.

  Hawthorn dropped Tum on the ground outside the shed and wiped his hands on a handkerchief.

  “Those are mine!” Tum cried. “Don’t you touch ’em!”

  “What are you doing with all these dolls?” Holly said.

  “They’re mine! He gave them to me!”

  “You mean you took them.” She scrunched up her face. “How’d you get them out here so fast? You didn’t even know about this shed until just a little while ago.”

  But Tum just darted past her and Hawthorn into the shed, grabbed a couple of dolls, and ran away.

  Holly shook her head. Other than the dolls, she couldn’t see what was so special. There was a table and some tools hanging from the walls. And there was a crate covered with a grimy cloth. She pulled it aside and gasped and jumped back, stumbling into Hawthorn.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “I… I’m not sure what it is. But it’s looking at me.”

  Holly ventured another peek into the box, and just like before, a disembodied face peered back at her. Yet as she looked closer, she could see that there were only holes instead of eyes and that the skin was really molded wax.

  “It’s a mask,” she said. “A creepy, horrible mask. Why is it out here?”

  “I certainly don’t know, but now you have something to tell Hazel.”

  “I guess we’d better get back.”

  They returned to the house and rejoined the others. Holly still had her plate with the eggs, and Francis, seeing her missing bread, supplied her with a new slice while beaming at her and complimenting her appetite.

  “Well?” Hazel whispered as Holly sat down next to her.

  When Holly told her, Hazel just gaped at her. But she couldn’t ask any more questions, because Francis took to talking instead.

  “So you mentioned last night you were looking for someone. This person got a name?”

  “His name is Ash,” Hazel said. “He’s mine and Holly’s father. And we’re not sure if he came through here or not. We’ve only come here on some far-fetched theory.”

  Francis perked up. “Oh? Those are the best ones. What’s your theory?”

  Hazel glanced at the others and then, folding her hands on the table, said, “Our father, unfortunately, has involved himself with some rather unsavory magical practices.” She studied Francis as she spoke, but Francis just smiled and nodded as he spooned some beans onto a plate. He handed the plate to Hemlock.

  Hemlock sniffed the plate and, with a look that said he was throwing caution out the window, started eating.

  “I’m speaking of necromancy,” Hazel said.

  Francis waved his spoon at her. “Not sure I follow what’s so unsavory about that.”

  Holly sucked in a breath as Hazel clenched her jaw and stared at Francis the same way she usually looked at Holly when she was trying really hard not to yell at her (but usually did anyway).

  “It’s an atrocious practice,” Hazel said, her voice tight. “It is manipulation of the dead for one’s own personal gain. How can you not see the unsavoriness of that?”

  “Death is a part of life. I don’t see how manipulation of dead things is any different than manipulation of living things. You a worker of magic? You ever manipulate living things?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “But there you go. We’re all in the same boat. All magic is finding different ways of steering that boat. But we’re all going to the same place, regardless of how we get there.”

  Hazel’s mouth worked soundlessly, but words seemed to have abandoned her.

  “How do you know so much about magic?” Holly said. “You a warlock?”

  Francis chuckled. “Warlock? Goodness me, no. I’m a simple doll maker. But as a doll maker, I understand that there are forces in the world beyond us and that sometimes we can talk these forces into working for us.”

  Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Is that what the mask is for? Out in the shed?”

  “Hazel!” Holly hissed.

  Francis paled. “You saw the Witness?”

  “No, she didn’t— Ow!” Holly said when Hazel dug her nails into her hand.

  “I saw everything,” Hazel said, raising her chin.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Francis said. “This changes things. This changes everything!” He got up from the table, flapped his arms uselessly for a while, then ran from the room.

  “Well, that can’t be good,” Hawthorn said. “Pass the beans, Hemlock.”

  Hemlock stared blankly at him and then at Hazel as he pushed the pot of beans over to his brother. “What just happened?”

  “Hazel got us in trouble!” Holly said.

  “We don’t know that!” Hazel snapped. Then she straightened her back and folded her hands on the table. “Let’s just see what happens before we jump to any conclusions.”

  Hawthorn pointed a spoonful of beans at her. “I think you’d better hope old Martha is clean out o
f chickens.”

  “He’s not really going to tar and feather you, is he, Hazel?” Holly asked.

  “Perhaps we should think about leaving,” Hawthorn said, “before we find out.”

  “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” Hemlock said. “Why am I the only one not in on this?”

  Holly told him of the morning’s events while Hawthorn continued to glower at Hazel.

  “What I don’t understand,” Hawthorn said, “is why you must purposefully aggravate the man. Why have Holly sneak out to the shed only to tell him you were out there? What was the point?”

  “I don’t know!” Hazel said. “He was just so… so smug talking about how ‘natural’ necromancy is that I couldn’t help myself. This certainly wasn’t how I thought the morning would go.”

  “You do have a gift for the unexpected,” Hawthorn said. “So well done with that.”

  Hazel glared at him.

  “What’s done is done,” Hemlock said. “We need to figure out what to do next.”

  “I think we should leave,” Holly said. “We’re leaving, right?”

  “I should think so,” Hawthorn said.

  Hazel said, “We’re not leaving.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you have the most dreadful sense of humor?” Hawthorn asked.

  Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact. But we’re still not leaving.”

  Hawthorn put up his hands and then, shaking his head, returned his interest to the pot of beans.

  “Hazel,” Holly said, “be reasonable.”

  “No, I will not be reasonable, because this is an unreasonable situation. Where else can we go? To say that coming here was a long shot in finding Father is being overly optimistic. But right now it’s all we have, and I am not giving up!” Hazel’s voice had risen, and she cleared her throat as she tried to regain her composure.

  “Leaving’s not an option,” Hemlock said. “So we need to focus our attention on how we’re going to keep Hazel—and quite potentially all of us—from getting tarred and feathered.”

  Everyone grew silent.

  “Anyone?” Hemlock said.

  Hawthorn sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I really need new friends,” he muttered.

  Francis returned to the kitchen, his wrinkled face flustered. He flapped his hands at Hazel. “Time to go. I got the wagon ready, so we better be off. The rest of you… ah…” He flapped his hands some more. “We’ll figure it out later. But you and me,” he said to Hazel, “we’re going into town.”