The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(68)

Ingrid stood, grudgingly. “First, tell me you haven’t any bad intentions here, or any plan to hurt either of us.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Saying what you want is a dodge. State your intentions.”

“I have no intention of hurting either of you. Or anyone else. Oh!” I grabbed at my stomach—something twisted there, as I thought about the Briar King. About the monsters who’d killed Finch and left me in the woods. “Maybe there’s somebody I’d hurt,” I amended, “but they’re not here.”

That seemed to satisfy Ingrid; she grabbed a waxy-looking coat from a peg and let herself out.

“She’s protective of you,” I said. “It must be nice.”

Janet lifted one shoulder, dropped it. “I made my way here alone for a long while. It took some time to find my place. It took more time to become somebody worth protecting.” She sat down in one of the squashy chairs before the fire, and I sat in the other.

“God, this thing smells like a wet dog,” I said, and bit my lip.

She smiled faintly. “Did you or did you not arrive here today?”

“I did.”

“And it’s your first time here?”

I hesitated. “I can’t remember ever being here.”

Her raised eyebrow told me she caught the dodge. “As you may have gathered, my home is a sort of way station for new arrivals. People come here from your world—my world, once—by various means, sometimes accidental but more often on purpose. I’ve made it my job to welcome them, warn them, and keep track of them. The numbers get a bit dodgy, of course, what with all the things you can fall into or get eaten by. I do my best. They come from other worlds, too, but that’s not my problem. There’s precious little mixing between refugee groups, less than you’d think for such a small place, but … you look like you have a question.”

“How big is it?” I blurted. “What is it? What’s beyond it? Did you come on purpose? Is there any way to go back? And how do people become ex-Story?”

She held up a hand to stop me. “It’s quite small. As small as it can be, considering its borders are shifting, unmappable, and nearly impossible to reach. It’s a kingdom of sorts, but it has many queens and many kings. As far as what’s beyond it, I couldn’t say. I did come here on purpose, God help me, and yes, there are ways back. People become ex-Story when their tales are no longer being told. Sometimes it kills them, sometimes it drives them mad, and sometimes they adjust to it nicely and assimilate into the general population. Them I don’t keep track of, though I do like to know when there’s intermarriage. Their children, when they have them, tend to find their way into trouble—or into stories, which I suppose is the same thing. Now, tell me your story, as short or as long as you like.”

I barely had time to open my mouth before I was talking. Whatever she’d had me drink made the words feel like water pouring from a faucet. While I talked, I kept a dim flicker of hope in the back of my mind: that maybe, if I had enough to say, I could keep from telling her the one thing I wanted to keep a secret. At least for now, until I knew how she’d take to having a Story sitting in front of her fire. Curling my white fingers in their gloves, I told Janet about Ella, about Harold and New York and coming home to find her gone. I backtracked and told her about Althea’s supposed death—referring to her as my mother’s mother, close enough to the truth for the truth serum to bear—before jumping forward again to tell her about Ellery Finch, my night in the woods, my hours or days in the Hazel Wood. It was such a relief to speak that it took me a while to notice her face had gone ashen under the warm color of her skin.

“And I met a man on the path,” I said, and faltered. Janet’s hands gripped the arms of the chair, and her eyes looked past me.

She shook her head, trying to smile, then gave it up. “You said you’re Althea’s granddaughter. Althea Proserpine.”

“You’ve heard of her? Have you read her book?”

“No, thankfully. Not a single copy can be found within the Hinterland’s borders. I imagine you’d be thrown to the Night Women if you tried to bring one in. But I did know her—back there. On Earth. Althea was … hmm.” Janet fumbled with something at her wrist, a narrow string of blue beads. Her fingers moved fretfully, making them flash in the firelight. “We came here together,” she said finally.

“Wait, what?” She looked older than Ella but not nearly as old as Althea. Yet she’d been in the Hinterland for … “Fifty years ago you came here? With Althea?”

“Fifty, you said? Fifty years have passed out there?” She laughed a little frantically. “I always imagined I’d—well, maybe I knew I never would, but—I suppose it’s a near certainty my parents are dead, isn’t it? Fifty years, that’s well into the new century, yes?”

I had a brief, dizzying desire to wow her with news of the internet but decided it mattered not at all. “Tell me about Althea,” I said instead.

“Oh, how can I make it quick? How about this: she made a dark deal, and it ripped holes in the curtain that keeps the worlds apart.”

“That sounds a little dramatic,” said my truth-drunk tongue.

“It was pretty goddamned dramatic,” she snapped. “She didn’t even offer to take me back with her, the selfish bitch.”