Breadcrumbs Part 19

The wolf turned and walked back the way Hazel had come. Hazel followed behind, trying to move as stealthily as the creature. Up ahead there was another flash of light, just as before. The wolf moved a few steps toward it, then stopped. It looked at Hazel, and then looked ahead.

"You want me to go there?"

The wolf gazed at her another moment, then disappeared into the night.

Hazel crept on ahead. She had decided to throw her lot in with the wolves, and there was no going back now. She followed the dimming light into a clearing and back onto the path.

There was a girl a few years older than Hazel sitting on a tree stump next to the big path. She did not belong out here on this cold night. All she wore was a patched-up thin brown dress, a little shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and slippers. She was visibly s.h.i.+vering.

The girl did not notice her. She had in her hands a lit match and was staring into the flame as if it held wonders.

She must be bewitched, Hazel thought. Someone had caused her to be so confused she'd wandered half-naked into the middle of the woods. She was hypnotized by the light and didn't know the danger she was in. Someone had done this to her, and Hazel was not going to leave this one behind. The wolves would not let her.

She approached the girl carefully. "Are you all right?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

The girl looked up at Hazel with dull eyes. She had dead-looking blond hair and a too-thin shadowy face. Her skin had been blanched by the night's cold, and her cheeks looked blue-black. Her body trembled against the air as if the sky scared her. She looked like a blotchy, fading ghost.

"Hey," Hazel said, keeping her voice soft. "Are you okay? Did someone do something to you?"

The girl blinked at Hazel. "I'm fine," she said. "Where am I?"

"You're . . . you're in the woods. How did you get out here?"

"Oh," said the girl, her voice thin and vague. "I live back near the village."

She nodded to a place somewhere beyond them.

"Come on, we have to get you home."

"I can't," said the girl, her eyes on the fading match. "I can't go home until I've sold all the matches." She nodded to a bunch of long matches in her dress pocket. "I was selling all night, but- Oh!"

The match in her hand had gone out. She dropped it, and in one motion grabbed another one from her dress and struck it against a small tinderbox. A flame burst from it into the night, and the girl stared into it and exhaled.

Hazel grabbed her arm. It was shaking. "It's freezing. I'm sure they didn't mean-"

"Oh, he meant it," the girl said, still staring into the flame, and in the match light Hazel noticed that her arm was covered in bruises.

No one is from here, Nina had said. Once upon a time this girl lived in the real world, and she came into the woods looking for something. And what she found was this.

"I'll buy them!" Hazel said. "How much do you need?" She began to shrug off her backpack.

"Fifty kroner," the girl said.

"Oh."

"It's all right," said the girl. "The matches are magic."

"They are?" Hazel asked warily.

"Yes. I never knew. But look!" She stared back into the flame.

Hazel followed her eyes. She saw nothing but dancing fire against a blue girl. "What are you looking at?"

"That's my grandmother," the girl said, voice hushed, eyes glued to the flame. "She's made dinner. She makes the most wonderful turkey, do you smell it?" The girl was staring into the fading flame as if inside it was the secret truth of the world. But they were ordinary matches, and her visions were the deluded comfort of a dying mind.

Hazel could feel her heart lose its solidity and diffuse slowly in her chest. She had a strong urge to grab a chunk of her own hair and pull it as hard she could. "Don't you see it?" asked the girl, voice suddenly wavering.

Hazel wanted to tell her no, to tell her to stop wondering at phantoms, because she was freezing to death and maybe starving, and they needed to find someone who could help her. But . . .

"Yes," she whispered. "I see it. It's beautiful. Where does your grandmother live?"

"Up there." The girl pointed to the sky.

"Oh," Hazel said again.

She looked at the girl and the matches. They had been real, useful things once.

And then Hazel knew what she had to do.

"Stay still," she whispered.

She removed her green jacket, then gently took the smoking match out of the girl's hand. She dressed the girl in the jacket, one arm at a time, and zipped it up. She pulled off her hat and mittens, then placed the hat on the girl's head and the mittens on her hands.

The girl hugged the jacket around herself. Her eyes widened and she stared at Hazel.

"It's warm, right?" Hazel said, trying to control her voice. "It's a nice jacket."

The girl nodded slowly. "Aren't you cold?" she whispered.

Yes. "No," she said. "I don't have much farther to go."

"Why are you doing this?" The girl looked so bewildered, like kindness was unfathomable to her, and that broke Hazel's heart more than anything.

"Here," Hazel said, handing her one of the energy bars. "I have one more. You need to eat it."

The air had no trouble working its way through Hazel's s.h.i.+rt, and she felt the bite of cold on her bare hands. She blinked it away.

"There's one more thing."

Hazel reached over to the jacket and put her hand on the zipped-up pocket, feeling the familiar outline of the whistle. She unzipped the pocket and gave the whistle an almost invisible caress with her thumb. Then she blew into it three times, just as she learned to at school, and presented it to the girl.

"Blow on this," she said. "Three times, every few minutes. A boy will come. His name is Ben, and he'll help you. You tell him what happened. You tell him I gave you this. He'll take care of you. You can trust him."

Those were all the real things Hazel had left, other than the baseball-which was just a fantasy, really.

The girl blinked at her, and then thrust the bunch of matches into her hand. "Take these," she said. "It's the only payment I have."

"No, you have to sell them."

"Please," she said. "Take them. Please take them."

"Okay," Hazel said, if only to quiet her. "Okay."

The girl handed her the matches and the tinderbox. The wind stirred, and Hazel felt the cold tugging at her, trying to pull her to it. She belonged to it now.

Hazel opened her mouth to find some way to say good-bye, when the girl's hand flew to the ap.r.o.n pockets that hung down below Hazel's jacket. "I have something else!" she said.

"I don't-"

"Take it," she said, pulling a s.h.i.+ny something out of her pocket. "It shows you things, like the matches. But this shows you the truth. It shows you the way things really are." It was a shard of mirror, about the size of Hazel's hand. Hazel just nodded and put it in her backpack.

"Thank you," the girl said, voice soft. Her eyes had lost their vagueness now and looked at Hazel with piercing clarity. Hazel could only nod again and then turn away into the cold.

As Hazel walked on through the night, the feeling of the air biting into her took all her attention. At least it kept her from thinking about the match girl. And if she thought too hard about her, Hazel would just stop right there in the woods and wait for herself to take root. This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.

From somewhere off in the distance came the sound of Hazel's whistle blowing-once, twice, three times. Somewhere Ben, the one person in the woods who would come when she needed someone, heard the call and was coming. But not for her. Hazel was on her own.

She had nothing left, except a baseball, matches, and a broken piece of mirror. She had taken the girl's fantasy from her. She would at least keep it well.

She walked on. Her eyes were watering, her skin was chafing, her body was s.h.i.+vering. The ticking of the clock seemed to taunt her, as if it was marking out the time she had left. She remembered running out of the house the morning the snow fell. It had been just over a week ago, but for Hazel it felt like an epoch away. Going outside in socks and her pajamas was a game, a lark. The frozen white world offered only possibility.

The cold laughed at her now.

After a while she realized she was walking in a layer of snow. She had not noticed when it had taken over the ground. And yet it was there, all around her, like the world had transformed itself in a breath.

The snow had started to fall, too, in soft flakes that tumbled exuberantly in the wind. They fell against Hazel's s.h.i.+rt, brushed against her face, a flirtation.

The wind roused itself, pus.h.i.+ng against her softly, a whispered threat. The ground beneath her had begun to tilt, and Hazel found herself heading up an incline. Her legs whimpered at her, for that was all they could muster now. Her lungs sucked in biting air with each breath, and it invaded her body eagerly, ready to freeze her from the inside out.

Everything in her wanted to curl up under a tree-just to rest a little. If she lay down she might fall asleep and dream of warm things. She knew she should not, that her s.h.i.+very mind was whispering false promises to her, that if she slept she might not wake up. And she knew that if she kept going much longer, she would no longer care.

It had been so hot last summer. The two of them lay on the sidewalk like salamanders in the sun. Hazel wondered what it would be like to melt, if you would feel yourself slowly liquefy, or if your conscious thoughts would evaporate away before you did. Jack went into his garage and pulled out an old plastic baby pool that looked like a frog and dragged it into the backyard. Then he disappeared into the house and came out with a bowl filled with ice and dumped it into the pool. "Come on," he told Hazel, prodding her with his foot like she was an overturned turtle. They took bowls from the kitchen and filled them with as much ice as the refrigerator could give, until it sputtered and whined and groaned. They milked Hazel's refrigerator for all it was worth, then went door to door collecting from their neighbors, dumping their spoils into the plastic pool. The neighbors were parsimonious with their ice; it was going to take days to fill the pool. So Hazel flung herself into the thin layer of icy slushy watery mess and rolled around in it, numbing her skin until she was part ice cube herself.

"Get out!" Jack yelled.

"I can't! I'll melt!" Hazel yelled back. You had to be very careful when you were part ice cube.

"It's my turn!" said Jack.

"Have you no pity, sir?"

"Make way!" Jack bellowed, and then jumped into the pool. Hazel had just enough time to roll over to the side so she didn't get landed on. Jack wriggled around in the ice water like a baby otter, trying to cover as much of his body as possible.

"I'm frozen in carbonite!" Jack yelled, contorting his arms outward. The left one jabbed Hazel in the face.

Hazel took a handful of dripping ice and flung it at Jack, and Jack took his own handful and rubbed it into Hazel's hair. Soon every bit of Hazel was numb, and she and Jack lay next to each other in the pool, all the ice of the neighborhood melting in puddles around them. But Jack and Hazel were not melting. They had defeated the sun.

A gust of icy wind hit Hazel's face like a slap. The memory left. She stopped and looked around, as if she might see it scampering away. But there was nothing, of course, nothing but the black trees and the snow that worked its worm-tongued way into her sneakers. She reached in her mind for the taste of the sun, but it was gone.

The hill was only growing steeper. Still, she pressed forward. One foot, then the other. Up, and up.

And then she stopped. She had come to a plateau, and the sight before her froze her as still as a winter night.

She was staring into an endless wall of whirling, whipping, roiling snow. The wall spread over the entire horizon, and down as far as she could see. It was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the ground began, if it began at all. If she fell off the precipice she might tumble through the snow for all eternity.

The snow made it look like the very air was churning and gave a sickly cast to the night darkness. It was like she had reached the end of the world, and beyond it was this fierce emptiness that curled its way around everything like a snake, just waiting for its moment to squeeze.

A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.

And then the cold began to whisper to her. Come, it said. This is nothing. You can survive this. Come, I will help you. Come, you belong here. Come, I will show you.

She took a step forward, whether of her own will or because the cold was dragging her now she did not know.

That's right. This is nothing. Come.

There should have been the sound of the wind, there should have been her breath and beating heart, but she could hear absolutely nothing but the whispering of the winter.

This is nothing. And you are nothing.

She took another step, and stumbled. The ground was plummeting downward now.

You are nothing.

There was a starving girl. You gave her things and then left her like a beggar on the street, and for what?

There was a couple in the cottage. You could have given them something, but you left. And for what?

There was a dancing girl in the marketplace. You could have helped her, but you left. And for what?

There was a boy and his bird sister. He helped you, and you gave him nothing.

There was a swanskin, and you thought it might make you beautiful.

There were red shoes, and you thought they might make you graceful.

There was a threshold and a magical woods, and you thought they might make you a hero.

There was a boy, and he was your best friend.

Your father left you. You left your mother.

Come, the wind said, and I will blow you away.

Come, the snow said, and I will bury you.

Come, the cold said, and I will embrace you.

Come. Come.