Breadcrumbs Read online

  The witch motioned to one of the chairs in a long, graceful gesture that made Adelaide’s swan arms look jerky and pained in comparison.

  Hazel fell against the chair. It embraced her.

  “Take this,” said the witch, picking up a large white fur. She wrapped it around Hazel’s shoulders, and Hazel sank into it. She would have taken anything from her.

  “Is that better?” the witch asked.

  It was. Hazel was tucked into the furs like a baby cub. She could stay that way forever.

  The witch settled herself into the chaise. “I’m sorry about the difficulty of your journey. This winter has been particularly harsh.”

  Hazel huddled in the furs, trying to take in the witch in front of her. It was just like being out freezing in the woods, how all you wanted in the universe was to curl up under a tree and fall asleep. And you knew it meant death. But it didn’t matter.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Hazel found herself saying.

  “Good,” said the witch. “It is a difficult journey, and you are such a small girl.”

  Hazel winced. Splotch.

  “So,” the witch said, leaning in, “what brings a girl like you to me?”

  “I lost my friend,” Hazel said. As she spoke the words, she felt the snow-touched darkness seep back into her.

  “I’m sorry,” said the witch. “It can be quite cruel out there. The world is no place for young girls.”

  “He left me,” Hazel said.

  “I know. I’m glad you’ve come.” Hazel searched the witch’s eyes for some sign that the words were true. But there was nothing but cold curiosity. Of course not—what about her would gladden a witch?

  Hazel looked away. Her eyes fell on the crystal ballerina statue. Its arms were up and its feet were in perfect third position. Hazel’s feet twitched.

  Then she blinked and straightened and shrugged the furs off. What was she doing? “No, wait. You took him. I came to take him back.”

  “Oh!” said the witch, her head slowly tilting to the side. “I see! That’s very interesting. No one’s ever done that before.”

  “I came to take him back,” Hazel repeated. “Where is he?” Her voice was shaking. That was the point where she was supposed to sound tough, like she was someone to be reckoned with, like she was the sort of person witches should listen to. Was this really her plan? She sounded like a child.

  “Why,” said the witch, “he’s right out there.” She extended an arm toward the window behind her.

  “What?” Hazel looked from the witch to the window, then pushed herself off the chair.

  She hurried to the window and opened the curtain. In back of the palace was a giant lake. Patches of ice floated gently on top of dark water. And in the distance Hazel could see a small, dark form crouched on one of them, perfectly framed by the window, like a piece of three-dimensional art. He was moving, she could see that much. But that’s all she could tell.

  Jack.

  “You see?” said the witch, her voice in Hazel’s ear.

  Hazel whirled around. The witch was standing right next to her.

  “What’s he doing there? Is he okay?”

  “He’s safe,” said the witch. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “But . . . he’ll freeze out there.”

  The witch’s brow furrowed. “But he’s already frozen.” She said this as if it should be comforting.

  “He’s . . . what?”

  “Well, it’s just his heart that’s frozen, really.”

  Hazel stared up at the witch.

  “Something landed in his eye,” the witch said, clasping her hands together. “Something . . . harmful. It went to his heart, you see. And so I froze it. It was for his own good.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You are a very small girl,” said the witch.

  Hazel opened her mouth but had nothing to say. She could see Jack out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be moving something around with one hand. He was totally focused on whatever was in front of him, like he was when he was drawing. And suddenly all her Jacks came rushing back. “I want him back now. He’s my friend. I miss him and I want him back.” Hazel’s voice cracked. How she hated the weakness of her human heart.

  “I see,” said the witch. She turned her full gaze on Hazel. “You feel quite empty without him, don’t you?”

  The eyes pried at her, and Hazel could only nod.

  The witch leaned in, her voice soft. “He was the thing that made you belong, after all. He made all the pieces fit together. And without him . . .” The witch moved her hands in the air.

  Hazel’s gaze snapped to the floor, lest she see herself in the witch’s eyes.

  “It’s funny. You came through the woods for him, and he never even mentioned you.”

  Hazel’s heart twisted. She would give anything not to feel this way.

  “I don’t think you know how to get by without him, do you? That’s why you came. You can’t survive out there.” She motioned vaguely out the window. Whether she meant in the storm or in the real world, Hazel did not know, but it didn’t matter. The witch rested a long finger on her cheek and shook her head. “You could stay,” she said. “You could be with him forever. It would be better for you.”

  Hazel could not resist, she looked up at the witch’s eyes and searched them, desperately. She could search them forever if she thought one day there might be something there for her.

  But there wasn’t and there never would be.

  “No,” Hazel said. “I have to go home, and I have to take Jack with me.”

  “Ah,” said the witch. “You are a very small girl.” She turned her eyes from Hazel, and Hazel wanted to go out and give herself to the storm.

  “If you wish to live your life out there, that is your choice,” the witch continued. “But as for your friend, you do not know what’s best. Look at him.” She motioned out the window. “He wants for nothing. Would you really take that from him?”

  “Yes,” Hazel said.

  “You know you’ll never get him back,” she said. “Not really. Even if you take him, it won’t be the same.”

  Hazel looked at the ground. “It doesn’t matter,” she said in a whisper. That’s not what this was about. Not anymore. “What do you want?”

  The witch raised one careful eyebrow. “I? I want nothing,” she told Hazel. “Don’t you see? I want nothing.” She waved her hand in the air. “Your Jack came to me of his own free will. If he chooses to leave, I will not stop him.”

  “If I can get him to leave, you’ll let us go,” Hazel said.

  The witch opened up her arms to the air. “Certainly. But I don’t think he’ll choose to leave. He gave his heart very freely.”

  Hazel felt her stomach rise up into her throat. The witch was standing over her, looking so pleased with herself, looking as if Hazel should be pleased, too, and Hazel could barely breathe for all the coldness coming from her.

  “Remember,” she said, fixing her eyes on Hazel. “I’m always here.”

  Hazel let herself live for a moment in the witch’s unwanting eyes, and then broke away. “I’m going,” she said, and walked toward the door.

  “Hazel,” said the witch. Hazel turned around. The witch was standing perfectly erect. She seemed to loom in the room, and her eyes were like a storm.

  “Know this,” she said, her voice as clear as a shard of glass. “If you take him away, he will change. And someday he will be a man, and you will not even know him, and he will only think of you with a passing smile.”

  At least he would think of me, Hazel wanted to say.

  And she turned. Something released inside of her, some cold inexorable pulling.

  It was not supposed to be this easy. This was to be the final confrontation. There was to be struggle, torment, despair. But the witch—who was the only person in the woods who wanted nothing—was not what Hazel had to defeat.

  And so Hazel left. She walked through the palace and outside, back i
nto the terrible cold. And then she was afraid. For this was her battle now. She took a deep breath and took a step into the snowbanks, and another, and began to fight her way to Jack.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Puzzles

  Jack could not make the pieces fit. He worked diligently, constantly, but every time he made something fit together, another problem presented itself. The pieces made him promises, but the promises were lies. The shards had secrets. He was never going to finish.

  He was afraid she would stop coming, that he would disappoint her—or even worse, bore her. She would lose interest, not even notice him anymore. He would not give up, though. She would not like that.

  And she had not come since giving him the puzzle. So when he sensed someone coming from the palace toward him, his head snapped up.

  He saw a small, dark shape struggling its way through the snow toward the lake. It was not the witch.

  He felt like he’d been plunged into the dark water. She was not coming.

  His hands moved back to the puzzle, but after a few moments his eyes flickered back to the shape. It was a girl, and she was made of colors.

  She was standing at the edge of the lake now. She seemed very small. Something about the girl tugged at him, and he wished the witch were there to kiss him on the forehead and make it go away.

  He looked down, and one of the pieces called to him. Its edges clarified before his eyes and he understood it. Or thought he did. He took one of the small sections he’d been able to make and tried to add the piece to it, but it would not fit.

  His eyes flickered upward again. The girl was still there. She was edging her way onto the lake now. She picked up one foot and set it carefully onto the ice, and then the other. She slipped a little, and her arms shot out to the sides.

  Jack had never seen anyone approach him on the lake before. The witch always just appeared. The ice seemed a treacherous thing to walk on. And the girl was having trouble. She moved as lightly as a baby bird, but still she bobbled and slid.

  The ice floated on the dark water in broken pieces—

  large versions of the puzzle Jack had at his feet. The girl took big, careful steps over the cracks in the ice, moving in wobbly slow motion. And then she came upon a crack too big to step over. She stared at the dark water, and at the patch of ice just out of reach. She hugged herself again, and her eyes traveled ahead and met his. She looked at him so sadly. He wished he could help, but he could not make the pieces fit together.

  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 all this cold.

  His eyes went to the flame. And then something passed over his face, and he peered at the flame like it had a secret to tell him.

  “What is it?” Hazel asked, trying to control her voice. “Do you see something?”

  He shook his head, but kept staring.

  Hazel looked into the light, searching desperately for magic, because she needed it now. It was nothing but flame.

  Hazel closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again.

  “I see something,” she said, her words a whisper.

  He looked up at her.

  “I do,” she said, trying to sound more sure. “I see you at your house. Do you remember your house? You live next door to me. Your kitchen is bigger than mine, and yellow-er, and it’s got these big blotchy flowers that you think look like soup stains, and you’ve got a plastic table in it.” Hazel took a breath. He was still staring into the flame. “You’re in the kitchen, and I’m with you. We’re . . . we’re sitting there in your sparkly plastic chairs making little clay guys. First you did a knight and I did a robot. I thought the robot would win. But you said that that was the obvious choice, people always pick the robots, and the knight’s ability to think freely would eventually win out. Now . . . now, you’re making a dragon, and I’m making a velociraptor. I’m having trouble with the neck. It’s too wobbly. You tell me a T. rex would be better, and I say you always think a T. rex would be better, and then you remind me what your knight did to my robot.”

  The flame was dying now. But Jack still stared.

  “I say,” she said, h
er voice firm and clear, “that if you’re fighting a fire-breathing dragon—and when you meet a dragon, it’s best to assume it’s fire breathing—what you want is speed. And the element of surprise. The dragon’s going to fight hard against the T. rex, but the velociraptor won’t seem like much of a threat. It’s small. The dragon doesn’t know it’s got a sickle claw. He just sees the feathers and thinks it’s a goofy dino-bird . . .”

  And the flame was gone. All there was was smoke, dissolving into the lightening sky. Hazel lost her words. Her eyes went to Jack. Something had changed. He was shuddering violently now, and he dropped the shard he was holding.

  “I’m cold,” he said.

  “Oh,” she choked. “Okay. Okay. Jack . . .” She felt like someone was scooping out her chest. “Jack, I’m so sorry, I gave everything away. I don’t have anything else. I—” His teeth were chattering loudly. Hazel thought she might freeze just looking at him.

  “Okay, listen,” she said. “I—” The backpack. Hazel took the last thing out—the baseball—and set it on the ice, and then struck another match and put it to the backpack.

  The flame took hold of the backpack for a moment, then smoked and smoldered and died out.

  Hazel whimpered.

  “You lit your backpack on fire,” Jack said.

  Hazel let out a small gasp and shook her head. She was going to fail. All this way only to learn that there was nothing she could do.

  Jack looked at her, shuddering and clattering and wide-eyed. His eyes fell on the baseball next to her. “What is that?” he asked.

  She picked up the baseball. It was firm and real in her hands. “This?”

  “Can I see that?” he asked through clattering teeth.

  “Of course,” she said, handing it to him.

  He turned it over in his hands, considering it. His eyes fell on the big black scuff, then the signature. He studied it a moment. He moved his fingers around the soft leather, then ran his thumb slowly across the bumpy stitches.

  “You gave that to me,” Hazel said in a whisper. “It’s a baseball, signed by Joe Mauer. He’s your favorite baseball player,” she added. He looked up at her, his hand firm around the baseball.