The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(84)

He smiled at me, the kind of smile that cost something. He looked young enough to be a college student. My stupid, yearning heart dipped as I remembered dreaming, long ago, that he was my father.

“I’ve lived too many lives since I loved her,” he said. “I’ve died too many deaths. It doesn’t just … it leaves an echo.”

It leaves an echo. Would it be the same for me? There’d been moments even before the story, wild, piercing moments, when the Hinterland sang high in my blood and I wondered—should I stay here? If, a world away, Ella might already be gone? Maybe I belonged in this place, where my bones grew in the night and my eyes were black ponds and my cells were made of the same strange stuff that made up the trees and the water and the earth.

But now I was feeling an itch under my skin. Somewhere far away, on some other clock, the days were counting down on my mother’s life. Whether seven years had passed or seventy, I had to get to wherever she was. She deserved to see me this way—as an ex-Story, not just a stolen one.

I turned away from the red-haired brother. “Which way to the border?”

The handsome man had backed up politely while we spoke, pretending not to hear us. Now his face closed like a fist, and he pointed in a general way toward the land stretching beyond the valley.

“I don’t know what could be waiting there for you,” he said. “But good travels to you all the same.”

I turned to Finch. “It’s time. Let’s go home.”

His face was soft and sorry. Janet touched the redheaded brother’s sleeve; she led him gently away.

“Alice,” said Finch.

It dawned on me, what I already should have known. “You’re not coming, are you?”

He sighed and took my arm, walking with me into the fog. It swirled around our knees, our hips, higher. It had a gentle, flexible give, like wet petals against my skin.

No matter how much time had passed in this world or the other, Finch had changed. He’d grown up. At the fringes of my story, in a brutal make-believe world. But that wouldn’t have been his whole life. He must’ve been living with more of the displaced all this time. I pictured him at the refugee bar, falling in love with some Earth girl. In my mind she had a smile without shadows in it, and perfect jeans.

I was feeling more human all the time.

“I’m not going back,” he said, answering my question minutes after I’d asked it.

“Why not?”

“Because this was always what I wanted. Not quite the way I got it, of course. It shouldn’t have been like that. Alice, it shouldn’t have been blood money.” He sounded suddenly, comfortingly unsure.

“I know. You’ve made up for that, don’t you think?”

“I hope so,” he said seriously. “But that wasn’t what this was about. I wanted to see something through to the very end. And I’ve been living here all this time, in this world. It isn’t all bad. It’s beautiful. And strange. And bigger than you’d think. Alice, there’s a whole ocean. And ice caves—oh, you know that. I heard there are pools in the mountains that are a thousand feet deep, and clear as glass.”

“Fairy-tale shit.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Fairy-tale shit.”

“And there’s a girl?”

He smiled. It was so kind I almost died of embarrassment. “There might be. But believe me when I say I wouldn’t leave the whole world behind just for a girl.”

“Yeah. You would.” I meant it, too. He’d grown into the sort of man who would do more than that for someone he loved.

He’d done a whole hell of a lot for me.

“So what do I do now?”

“Now you find the Spinner. It shouldn’t be hard—she’ll be on the move since the story broke. Cleaning up messes, looking for you.”

I’m just one big fucking mess, aren’t I. That’s what I wanted to say. But didn’t. Finch deserved better than my self-pity. It felt like he’d become too old for it.

Janet was grilling the redheaded brother on his first escape and my abduction when we returned. “You taught yourself to drive a car and it didn’t kill you,” she said comfortingly. “You’ll do fine without a story. Who needs a story?”

He kept nodding, jittery with cold feet. I got it—life was a big thing to live without a map.

Janet turned her flinty eyes on us. “You off to find your own country?”

“Come with me?” I said impulsively, knowing she’d turn me down.

It still hurt a little when she did, however gently. This was a journey I’d have to take alone.

I hugged Janet, and I shook the brother’s hand. Then I stood in front of Finch. He wrapped his arms around me, and the last burning ember of ice in me melted to nothing.

I was hungry, and so tired the ground moved like waves beneath my feet. But I didn’t trust myself to stop now, to rest. I climbed onto Janet’s red bicycle and set out for the edge of the world.





30


The land beyond the valley was uneven, grass littered with rocky bits where my wheel caught and turned. The sky was a mottled blue, the sunlight strange. I rode for a time alongside a stream that flowed but made no sound. I passed a quarry and crossed a bridge barely wider than a car, stretching over a ravine so deep I couldn’t see the bottom. The earth and sky looked unfinished here, sketches from a restless pen. The air was thick and silent. I wheeled through a tunnel of firs that moved their branches and smelled, disorientingly, like rain on hot pavement. Past them was a dirt road with endless flat plains on either side. Far, far away I saw a glittering line at the horizon. The ocean? I sniffed but smelled no salt.