Breadcrumbs Part 21

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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.s. "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 pa.s.sing 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 into 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 s...o...b..nks, 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 pa.s.sed 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?"