The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(75)

27


I followed, leaving my gloves on the bar. I knew without looking that the freeze was spreading; I could feel an itchy flutter over the skin of my neck.

She led me behind the bar and through the swinging doors. If I’d thought about it, I would’ve expected them to open onto a back room like the one at Salty Dog—boxes, coats, maybe a messy desk.

But they led straight out onto a cobblestone street. It was empty, lit by the moon peering between rooftops. Across the way was a shop window warm with candles, their flames making the toys behind the glass glimmer. There were puppets and instruments and a lake of blue tin, crossed in tidy arcs by tiny tin skaters. Masks, hoops, a carnival doll in aged lace with a face of polished wood. At the center of it all stood a model castle that looked like a wedding cake. I could see movement in its tiny windows. I took a step closer, and the Spinner stopped me with a hand.

“Don’t get too excited. That’s not your story.”

As I turned away, something moved in the darkness beyond the window display—a shape too long and slender to be human. I shrank back, following the Spinner.

Propped against the wall of the bar were two bicycles. She climbed on one and I took the other—a vintage beast, heavy as hell with soft, underfilled tires.

“Go quiet,” said the Spinner, her whisper carrying back to me, “and don’t interfere.”

It was a good warning. The village we rode through was sleeping, but it was filled with wakeful things.

We rode past a house that hung too close over the road, as if it had outgrown its lot. Three women moved like mist around its eaves, reaching up to tap their fingernails against its windows. One looked around at me, her eyes pale marbles, and I pedaled faster. A few streets down, a small figure in a nightgown lay on the very edge of a rooftop, arms reaching toward the moon and one foot hanging down to kick at nothing. I saw her for a moment and wondered if she was Hansa.

At the village’s edge sat its largest, loveliest house, backed by a long, torchlit garden. In it a boy paced and held his head and spoke to the air. I could see the barest shimmer in it, could almost make out who or what he spoke to, before we wheeled past into dark.

The road that carried us out of town was glittering red dirt. The moon hit it at funny angles, throwing spangled bits of light into my eyes.

“Stay on the path,” the Spinner said, “no matter what we see in the woods.”

Her voice had changed. She was still a figure on a blue bicycle, but her speech was low and rough, and the shape of her had swelled.

She grinned back at me, white teeth in a hard, unfamiliar face. “Best not to go through the woods looking like a tavern wench. Too tempting for some of the stupider Stories.”

I kept my eyes on her back awhile, watching for another change, but the woods were distracting. The trees woke up as they scented the Spinner. They thrashed their branches, filling the air with their thick, resinous breath. It got into my nose and under my skin and made me question my reasons for following this stranger through the fairy-tale woods.

For Ella, I reminded myself. To finish my story.

But she couldn’t have felt further away.

The road changed to white stone and narrowed, snaking like a necklace through the boiling heads of the trees. I was slicked with sweat and stuck all over with leaves that bleached pale as they fell. None of them landed on the Spinner.

A sudden metronome beat rose from the swirl of trees and night. It filled my chest like a heartbeat and threw off the rhythm of my breath.

“What is that?”

The Spinner braked just off the road. I stopped beside her and looked at the side of her face. The blue eyes were the same, but her features were heavy and blunt.

“Don’t watch me, watch the road.”

Down the path of white stones just wide enough to hold them came a caravan. In front and following behind, men in military dress on high black horses. Between them, two horses carrying a litter. I winced to see them sag under its weight, then breathed in hard when I saw what was inside it.

A woman so pretty it felt like a trick. Her head was shaved and she wore no jewelry; there was nothing to protect you from her face. I looked at it from one angle, then another, watching it change like a hologram. The ice climbed my throat with reaching fingers.

I couldn’t breathe, and the metronome tick was maddening. It came from the woman in the litter. A woman in bridal white, ticking like a clock. Her beautiful bare head turned in a dozen quick beats, and her eyes fixed on mine.

The Spinner moved between us, wrapped warm hands around my throat. The ice receded under her fingers till I could breathe again. “Not yet, Alice-Three-Times,” she whispered.

I sucked in icicle air. Not yet?

When the Spinner moved away, the caravan had passed.

“Not yet?” I said. “What does that mean, not yet?”

“It means the only way out is through. Through the woods, through the story, through the pain. Did you think you’d get what you want for free?”

I fell back, chastened. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

“I told you. ‘Once upon a time.’”

I slipped on loose white stones, rolling my bike’s dead weight back onto the road. “What does that even—and why on bikes? Wouldn’t horses be faster?”

“Horses are unpredictable,” said the Spinner. “Even for me. They tend to turn into Stories halfway there.” She turned and pointed a finger at me, her face irritable and as human as I’d seen it. “Never trust a Hinterland horse.”