The Hazel Wood

by Melissa Albert

  I held the comb up so moonlight skated over its teeth. “I’ll give you this if you let me cross to the other side. Unharmed. Meaning you don’t get to eat or otherwise remove any part of me.”

  Fairy tales teach you the importance of precise communication. The thing looked disappointed by my thoroughness, but it was already reaching for the comb. When I passed it into its fingers, it slipped into the water and disappeared.

  First I kneeled on the bank. I scooped up enough melt to wash the blood from my hands, reaching for a prayer, a poem, a goodbye that felt right. But all I could think of was the Vonnegut quote Finch had inked onto his skin. I never asked him when he’d gotten it, or why, and now I never would.

  Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

  I whispered the words, rubbing at blood that looked black in the moonlight. I closed my eyes and held his face in my mind and said it one more time. And a third, because Finch would’ve wanted things done right in a fairy tale.

  Then I stood and pressed a testing toe against the ice. It was already spring ice, midway between freeze and slush. But the shore was so close. I took off across it at a run, sliding and nearly making it before my leg plunged through a sour spot. I felt the numb pain of frigid water and the teasing grip of the creature’s fingers, then it shoved me out of the cold and sent me sprawling onto the opposite bank.

  I wanted to crawl back and rinse the mud from my mouth, but I didn’t dare. Instead I walked up the bank till my calves ached. It angled more and more sharply till I had to grab at bushes just to pull myself along, cursing when I gripped a handful of thorns. When I finally reached the summit, I’d cleared the tops of the tallest trees. I looked out over the whole woods, stretching to the horizon below me. The fear I’d held back with sweat, with thoughtless forward motion, settled back around my shoulders.

  Then I saw it. Or part of it: in the distance, between the swaying night-green heads of the trees, a patch of something black and unmoving. A rooftop, I thought—it had to be. It had to be the Hazel Wood. I felt the phantom presence of Finch beside me, the lift of wonder he would’ve felt standing here.

  A sudden snicking reached my ears, the out-of-place preschool sound of scissors cutting through paper. I turned and saw a little girl sitting on a red-and-white checkered picnic blanket in the moonlight, cutting up the pages of an old atlas. Moonlight lit the crown of her downturned head. I wavered for a moment, wondering if I should creep quietly away, but didn’t. I’d been thrust by the Hinterland into a tale. Maybe, if I let it reach its end, I would escape it.

  The girl’s soft little hands ripped pages from the atlas one by one. Green maps threaded with silver rivers, castles and towns marked in ruddy ink. Nautical maps crawling with sea creatures and rippling waves, grounded at each corner by the puffing faces of the four winds. The East Wind seemed to scream as the little girl’s scissors cut it into shreds. She turned the page to a yellow map that glittered. I sucked in a breath as I spied a tiny caravan crossing it, and the scissors descending to cut it in two.

  “Why are you doing that?” I asked. I’d reached the edge of her blanket.

  She kept her gaze on the atlas, but I could hear the scowl in her voice. It was a funny voice, froggy and boyish. “My grandmother doesn’t like me talking to strangers.”

  I looked around for the grandmother, expecting some gorgon to launch herself at me from the other side of the hill. The girl rolled her eyes. Her face was peaky and pointed, but her eyes were beautiful, the color of the oceans she was cutting into confetti. “She’s up there,” she said, jabbing her scissors toward the sky.

  I looked upward and saw nothing but the moon, gathering bits of cloud around itself like a shrug. For a moment I could see a face in it. Not a man’s, a woman’s. A beautiful, distant woman who watched me with a disapproving look.

  Then the face smoothed itself away, and the moon was just a moon, a perfect orb the flat gold of a Casio watch.

  “What if I introduced myself,” I said, “so we won’t be strangers anymore? I’m Alice.”

  Her scissors stopped, and she looked up. “You’re Alice?” But she must’ve seen nothing interesting in my face, because she shrugged and tilted her head back down. Snip snip snip. A Queenswood labeled in looping script was sheared away from a tiny ivory castle, its ramparts bristling with spikes. “My name is Hansa.”

  Hansa. I knew the name—I’d read it in the contents page of Tales from the Hinterland.

  “You’re Hansa the Traveler,” I said quietly, trying not to draw the attention of the moon. “Where are we?”

  “You’re stupid for being so much older than me,” she said. Not meanly, but matter-of-factly. “You don’t know we’re in the Halfway Wood?”

  “Not the Hinterland?”

  “The Hinterland’s that way.” She gestured meaninglessly and flopped onto her stomach. “I’m not allowed to talk with strangers anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m too trusting,” she said primly. It sounded like she was quoting something an adult had told her. “And I made friends with the thief.”

  The thief? A character from her story, probably. I wished for the thousandth time I’d read Tales from the Hinterland, that I knew every inch of it the way Finch had. No. Don’t think of Finch.

  “Who’s the thief?” I asked, bracing for her to tell me I was stupid again.

  “She comes from that side.”

  “From Earth? Where I come from?”

  “You really are stupid. She came from Earth, but it was a long time ago. She doesn’t visit anymore. Now go away, please, I’m busy.”

  I squatted down beside her. “Hansa, one more question, okay? The thief—was her name Ness?”

  “No. Her name was Vanella.”

  My heart went hollow. “Ella—was here? When?”

  “I told you, she doesn’t come anymore. You’re in my light—would you leave me alone now?”

  “Wait. Please. Have you seen her? Ella? Has she been here in the last couple of days? What did she steal?”

  “I told you I can’t talk to you,” Hansa said primly, turning a page of her atlas. “Now go away before my grandmother gets angry.”

  “Hansa, please.” I grabbed her shoulder—not hard, but firmly—and she hissed in pain, skittering away from me like a crab.

  “Grandmother!” she screamed.

  Suddenly my vision was all white fire. The moon threw its rays over me in a hot spotlight, and I screamed and swatted at my face like the moonlight was flies. I heard the prickling noise of Hansa’s laughter as I staggered away.

  All at once the moon’s horrible spotlight switched off. I fell in the sudden dark, my eyes swimming with dots. Then I was rolling, grass slicing at my skin and crushing into a sharp perfume.

  I landed at the bottom of the hill, chilled and scratched and wanting Ella so badly I could’ve given up right there. The green fragrance of ruined grass got into my head and gave me that high, lonesome feeling you only get at night, when you feel like the last person on Earth.

  I was staring miserably into the dark when the hill in front of me cracked like an egg. A scent like the amber perfume Ella wore poured out from the glowing break in the hill; if my head hadn’t been filled with green grass, it might’ve overwhelmed me. Before it could, I stood and ran to a cluster of bushes big enough to duck behind.

  The line of light grew so viciously bright I wondered if the sun was hiding in that hill, preparing to do battle with the moon. But it faded as it widened, until I could just look at it through my fingers.

  The broken hill looked violated, a wrenched-open chest cavity. Black shapes appeared in the space where it split, and became people.

  Or something like people.

  They moved furtively at first, stepping onto the grass like it might set off an alarm. Then one of them—a beautiful girl wearing pants and a coat that made her look like an aviatrix—somersaulted across the grass. The people with her, a mix of men and women a little younge
r than my mother, laughed and joined in. They didn’t seem like figures you’d imagine crawling out of a hillside. Most looked like they’d gotten dressed from a Salvation Army donation box.

  The aviatrix seemed to be the ringleader. She kept raising her head to sniff the air. There was something wrong with her eyes. The rest crept close to her, drawn in like down-and-outers gathered around a trash can fire.

  A girl wearing an empire-waist dress over a hugely pregnant stomach threw a blanket over the grass. Everyone sat down but the aviatrix and a man dressed like Mr. Rochester. They circled each other, bowed, and brought their hands to their waists.

  I was watching the start of a swordfight, I realized. Or, no—a knife fight. Their blades were short and blunt, made of a glittering metal. They moved lazily, feinting and jabbing, the rest of their party laughing and applauding impressive dodges.

  If I look away, something terrible will happen.

  The thought struck me out of nowhere and slid away. I kept watching, but something terrible happened anyway. While the people on the ground drank and talked and clapped, the aviatrix charged forward with a sudden vicious leap, stabbing the man in the neck. Before he could fall, she hopped back and sliced across his chest twice, marking a dark X on his shirtfront.

  She stood over him, chin up and eyes down. The clapping began in earnest as the man moved weakly on the ground. Dying then dead.

  Finch. The tidal horror of what I’d seen done to him came crashing back in, threatening to suck me under. The moan that rose out of me was for him.

  The aviatrix looked up from cleaning her blade.

  “Who’s that?” she said, standing.

  How had I thought her beautiful, a minute ago? Her eyes were pupil-less and perfectly round, and when she licked her lips her tongue looked sick.

  “Who are you?” she asked again. “Come out where I can see you.”

  I stepped out from the bushes. “I’m nobody. I’m a visitor.”

  “From what side?”

  “I … from Earth.”

  “Come closer,” the aviatrix said, “so we can take a look at you.”

  Closer wasn’t good. Closer meant I could see her face more clearly. The flat shine of her eyes and the sticky red of her mouth. The man on the ground looked less human up close.

  “My, what big eyes you have,” the woman said, grinning.

  I blinked. Was she making a joke?

  “I’m looking for the Hazel Wood.” I devoutly ignored the corpse on the ground. “Do you know which way I should go?” If I pretended everything was normal, maybe it would be. Classic monster-under-the-bed logic.

  “You’ve made it as far as the Halfway Wood. You’ll find your way from here. Or perhaps you won’t.”

  Her voice was soothing. But not so soothing that I felt good about the way her followers were surrounding me. The pregnant woman closed the circle, rubbing her stomach like she’d just eaten something big.

  “I’m leaving now,” I said.

  “Leaving? Where would you go?” asked a man with slicked blond hair, wearing a workman’s coat.

  “I’m … my name is Alice Proserpine.” Hansa knew who I was—maybe they would, too. Maybe being Althea’s granddaughter meant something here.

  They didn’t seem to hear me. Their faces were less human every second. They looked like wild animals walking on hind legs.

  A sudden pain in my thigh made me gasp. I jammed my hand into my pocket and pulled out the thing stabbing at my skin.

  It was the bone. As I gaped at it, it grew to the size of a sword, throbbing whitely in the moonlight.

  Maybe it was a sword—was I supposed to fight with it? I gripped the thing clumsily, praying that wasn’t what this tale needed me to do.

  Then the bone began to sing.

  My love he wooed me

  My love he slew me

  My love he buried my bones

  His love he married

  His love I buried

  My love now wanders alone

  Its voice was distinctly female, filled with such terrible sweetness I thought my heart would crack. I heard a mournful sound from far overhead, and looked up to see a wave of grief pass over the face of the moon.

  The bone sang its song again, louder, and the circle of creatures around me fell back. The pregnant one scampered into the trees on all fours, the rest following behind. The aviatrix looked at me with hatred in her eyes, falling to her knees when the bone sang its song a third time.

  Everyone had retreated into the woods but the aviatrix, collapsed at my feet. When the song faded, her eyes ticked to mine, brightening. Her hand went to her knife.

  The bone twitched restlessly in my hand; its job wasn’t done. I perched on the brink for an endless moment, then lifted it over my head. The woods shifted around me; the moon watched from her nest of clouds. I saw myself as she did, a distant girl who was a stranger. That girl knew how to fight her way out of a fairy tale. That girl brought the bone down into the aviatrix’s chest.

  Then I was myself again, feeling the jar of it in my hands as it went through her like a shovel through dirt, gritty. There was no blood, just her sigh, and silence. My stomach lurched, and the back of my throat tasted like a broken battery. Something hard pattered to the ground between the dead woman and my feet. It lay glittering there, carrying the smell of ozone. The moon’s tears. I felt too dirty to touch them.

  The bone shrank so quickly I almost dropped it, till it was the size of my littlest finger. I laid it carefully on the dead woman’s chest. She already looked less than a woman. She was a golem, crumbling back into dry earth. Did that make what I’d done easier to live with? I couldn’t decide.

  Nobody waited for me in the trees. The aviatrix’s friends had slunk off like cowards. I looked back at the hill to orient myself, then pointed my step toward the Hazel Wood.

  The woods grew darker, and the air began to lighten. Around the time I realized it was getting close to dawn, I broke free into an orchard. The trees were low, planted at intervals. They reminded me of the two months Ella and I had spent living and working at an All U Can Pick apple farm.

  I had a semi-suburbanite’s understanding of trees—maple, birch, crabapple, oak; willow and pine are easy—but I’d stopped caring to identify what I’d walked around and under and been whipped, tugged, and scratched by hours before.

  These trees were different. Their branches were made of something soft and glimmering. When I got close, I could see each trunk, branch, and leaf was cast in a thin, flexible metal.

  Silver trees. They looked like Etsy jewelry on steroids. I walked slowly under their branches, glad the sun hadn’t come up yet. When it did, the grove would be blinding. The silver trees gave way to gold, followed by copper, with blood-colored leaves that clattered together with a sound like bones. And I remembered the rhyme.

  Look until the leaves turn red

  Sew the worlds up with thread

  If your journey’s left undone

  Fear the rising of the sun.

  In the east, if this was still a world where the sun rose in the east, a wedding band of white-gold light inched over the horizon. I started to run. The trees rustled their branches as I passed, flinging down metal leaves to tangle in my hair. I felt the cheap canvas of my sneakers rubbing my heels bloody.

  I ran so fast I almost pinwheeled over the edge of the ravine when I reached it. Below my feet, a fall so endless I saw clouds. Ahead, green iron gates, a hazel tree picked out across them. I caught my breath, held it.

  Between me and the gates was a stretch of thin air. The sun was edging upward, the sky gathering color. My hip burned hot where the feather nestled in my pocket. I pulled it out and held it before my eyes.

  It was gold edged with green, speckled haphazardly with eyes. It shivered to attention in my palm and sent its tickling fibers coursing up my left arm. I squicked out at the sensation, itchy and warm and intimate, like someone sewing a sweater onto my body at the speed of sound. The tickle skate
d across my back and down my right arm. Before the sun was halfway risen, I had wings as wide as I was tall. They unfurled without my asking them to, lifting me a few inches off the ground. When I panicked, they dropped me on my ass.

  The metal trees were blatantly watching now, chattering advice I couldn’t understand in their rickety typewriter voices. I stood and let my shoulders relax. I listed to one side as my left wing perked to attention, then my right, and exhaled as my toes left the ground.

  Setting my sights on the Hazel Wood gates, I let the wings carry me into open air.

  22

  My feet thumped crookedly to Earth. I whipped around to look for the red-leaved trees, to see if the sun had reached them yet, but a thick bank of fog had sprung up between me and the other side.

  Another fairy-tale lesson learned: don’t look back.

  The dream I’d been living in for the past hours was fading away. I could remember everything I’d done, but it felt flat as a picture book. The mermaid, the moon. The bone that slid so easily into the aviatrix’s chest. Was that really me?

  I didn’t want to end up like Ness, trapped in a room by memories, so I decided it wasn’t. The story I’d lived through was just that: a story.

  As if it agreed with me, a gust of wind blew the feathers off my arms in one great puff. They swirled into a winged shape and flew away. My pockets were empty: I had no tricks left. Maybe that was why the Hazel Wood let me in. I reached for the gates, and they swung open without a sound.

  And there it was. The grass cropped close as green velvet, racing toward the distant steps of the house. Althea’s estate was pillars and white brick and gabled windows. It was a flat swimming pool set like a lucid blue brooch against the lawn, trimmed in glittering stone. It was exactly as my mind had built it, right down to the electric feeling in the air, of some wonderful thing about to unfold.

  It chilled me to my marrow. Life never turns out how you imagine it will when you’re young. Everything is smaller than you think, or too big. It all smells a little funny and fits like somebody else’s shirt.