The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(74)

When the last one left, she sighed and pulled the clip from her hair, massaging her scalp as it fell to her shoulders. She had fairy princess hair, like mine would be if I let it grow out.

She slipped onto the barstool next to mine and tapped the back of my glove with one finger. “Hello, Alice-Three-Times.”

Her voice was throaty and low, and even through the gloves her touch sent a line of pale fire from my fingertips to my shoulders.

I pulled them off, stretched my fingers so the bones cracked. “I’ve been looking for you, I think.”

She laughed. “I’ve been looking for you longer.”

I saw her now that she wasn’t masquerading as a bartender. I felt her tight-packed energy, so fierce it almost distorted the air around her. Her eyes were too close to mine, too focused, two blue saucers that ate up light. I didn’t let myself look away.

“What did you do, to make them all leave? Was it magic?”

“Nothing so unpredictable as that. I just … tweaked the narrative. Made it the right time for them to go.”

“So you control everyone here? Not just the Stories?”

The Story Spinner pushed up on her elbows, pulled herself a pint of something bubbly from across the bar. “I don’t have to control anyone, least of all the Stories. Once I set them going, they’re like clockwork. A self-contained engine.” She looked at me dryly. “Well. Usually. What I do is keep the threads untangled, keep the realms separate, make sure the stories have room to unfold. But you”—she pointed a finger gun at me; I wondered for an aimless moment whether the Hinterland had guns—“are the hitch in the clockwork. Is it too much to hope that you came back to finish your story?”

This, I realized, was Althea’s she. The one who wouldn’t let Althea die, who let her go once and regretted it. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“Can I? Finish it, I mean? If that’s all you need me to do before I go, then I’ll do it.” I didn’t know what I was promising, or what it might mean, but what she said made it sound finite. Like maybe I could make a deal.

Her eyes took the measure of me, a quick water-blue assessment that made me feel like a bolt of cloth or a coffee cup. Just for a moment, before they dropped like mercury into soft sympathy.

Don’t trust her, then. Though that was already clear.

“When you finish a story,” she said patiently, “it begins again. Until I stop telling it. And while they’re being told, stories create the energy that makes this world go. They keep our stars in place. They make our grass grow.”

“Are you a Story? Or an ex-Story?”

“I’m not from here. I’m not from there, either,” she added, before I could ask.

A third place, then. The idea plucked at the edges of my brain. I imagined a whole universe of worlds floating in an unfathomable vastness, like lentils scattered through ashes. It was such a lonely vision it made my chest ache.

“Are you going to let me go home?” I whispered.

“Oh, Alice.” The regret in her voice sounded real. “Look at yourself—at your hands. It’ll reach your mind soon, you know. It’ll reach your heart. They’ve been waiting a very long time for you to come back—the queen, the king. And stasis is worse than stories, they say.” She laughed, like what she’d said was funny.

“You say stories run until you stop telling them,” I said wildly. “Can’t you just decide, then? To stop telling mine—to let me go?”

“What about the Hinterland makes you think I’m nice?” She drank half her beer down, leaned in. “I did a favor for a woman once—a spinner in her own way, I have a soft spot for my kind—and look where it got me. Rules exist for a reason. But. But.” She held up a finger. “You can’t finish your story, but you can change it. Technically speaking, you can. You can choose another ending, and destabilize it from the inside. If you fail to close the loop, finish it right, the story might let you go. In theory.”

“I can do that,” I said quickly. “I’ll do that. I could go home, if I manage to do that?”

She rested her chin on her hand, eyes hooked on me like I was an experiment. “It’s a big if. But yes, perhaps you could. If that’s the new ending you chose.”

“How do I do it? Where do I start?”

“Where do all these things start? Once upon a time. And you just … go from there.”

Something struck me—Finch had never finished telling me my story. “But what if I don’t know how it ends? ‘Alice-Three-Times,’ I mean?”

“Maybe your odds will be better that way. Or, more likely, the ending will find you. And then you’ll begin again. Even if you did manage to break it, and leave this place behind, don’t forget—time works differently than you think it does. There’s no guaranteeing you’ll recognize the world you’re trying to return to.”

I flashed on an image of hovercars and robot politicians, Ella long dead and myself a relic of a time known only in books. “There’s some chance I’ll get back to my own time, isn’t there?” I asked, pathetically. “Even if it’s slight?”

The Spinner looked at me like she knew exactly how my story would end—in more ways than one—but was just curious enough to see it unfold for herself. She swallowed the last of her drink, throat working in a python pulse, and stood. “Come with me.”