Anne Ursu

“Hazel understood. Being grown up meant doing what grown-ups wanted you to do. it meant sacrificing your imagination for rules. It meant sitting quietly in you chair while your best friend is helicoptered off for emergency eye surgery. It meant letting people say whatever they wanted to you.”

“Somebody sniggered. From Somewhere int he back of the room someone else sneered, "Yeah, Hazel," which was not the greatest insult ever, but one thing Hazel had learned at her new school was when it comes to insults it's the thought that counts”

“Sometimes superheroes are born, sometimes they are made. Sometimes they make themselves. Sometimes all it takes is will.”

“She'd read once that if you ran into a bear in the woods you should avoid eye contact and you shouldn't run away, but all she knew about wolves is that you should never tell them how to find your grandmother's house.”

“Kids can handle a lot more than you think they can. It's when they get to be grown up that you have to start worrying.”

“She looked at her shelves, filled with books in which the bad stuff that happened to people was caused by things like witches who lured people into the woods. In a weird way, the world seemed to make more sense that way.”

“The house felt strange. Altered. Like someone had come in during the day and shrunk all the furniture just a tiny bit.”

“...she wore weird baggy clothes and seemed like the sort of person who might tesser in some dark and stormy night.”

“She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.”

“His words sounded foolish to his own ears. He was not impressive. He was small like the world.”

“It’s a plié. You do it on all the positions. It’s very good for dramatic moments.”

“Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and shift underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people—a great many people—who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes. But we know better.”

“It snowed right before Jack stopped talking to Hazel, fluffy white flakes big enough to show their crystal architecture, like perfect geometric poems.”

“There were so many Jacks she had known, and he had known so many Hazels. And maybe she wasn't going to be able to know all the Jacks that there would be. But all the Hazels that ever would be would have Jack in them, somewhere.”

“Hazel shrugged. She heard Bobby’s voice in her head and wondered why it was she who was not allowed to hurt anyone.”

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who got lost in the woods. His best friend went after him. Along the way, she had many adventures. She met woodsmen, witches, and wolves. She found her friend in the thrall of a queen who lived in a palace of ice and had a heart to match. She rescued him with the help of a magical object. And they returned home, together, and they lived on, somehow, ever after. It went something like that, anyway.”

“No one took her seriously because she was small and feathered, a strange little dino-bird, but she had a sickle claw and she was not afraid to use it.”

“Jack hesitated still, and Hazel wanted to say something comforting, give him some bright plastic flowers of words, but Jack would see them for what they were. Jack knew how to see things.”

“Hazel wanted to ask him what he was thinking, what he was feeling, if he was regretting the witch or was just too tired to think, if he was embarrassed that the princess had rescued the knight or if he didn’t mind so much now that it had happened, if he remembered everything that had passed, if he was mad at himself for going with the witch, if his warm blood was winning the battle against the water in his veins; she wanted to reach out and grab the things in his mind and heart and hold them so they could examine them together, but they were not hers to take.”

“It turned out she did not need the compass. It was easy to head in the other direction from the lair of the witch. All you had to do was move away from the thing pulling at you.”

“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.”

“The witch raised one careful eyebrow. “I? I want nothing,” she told Hazel. “Don’t you see? I want nothing.”

“That was the point where she was supposed to sound tough, like she was someone to be reckoned with, like she was the sort of person witches should listen to. Was this really her plan? She sounded like a child.”

“People feared snowstorms once. Hazel read about this all the time. Pioneers opened their front doors and saw they’d been entombed in snow overnight. They walked across malevolent swirling whiteness and did not know if they would survive. Nature can destroy us in a blink. We live on only at its pleasure. That was what looking at the witch was like.”

“This is nothing. And you are nothing. She took another step, and stumbled. The ground was plummeting downward now. You are nothing. There was a starving girl. You gave her things and then left her like a beggar on the street, and for what? There was a couple in the cottage. You could have given them something, but you left. And for what? There was a dancing girl in the marketplace. You could have helped her, but you left. And for what?There was a boy and his bird sister. He helped you, and you gave him nothing. There was a swanskin, and you thought it might make you beautiful. There were red shoes, and you thought they might make you graceful. There was a threshold and a magical woods, and you thought they might make you a hero. There was a boy, and he was your best friend. Your father left you. You left your mother. Come, the wind said, and I will blow you away. Come, the snow said, and I will bury you. Come, the cold said, and I will embrace you. Come. Come. And so she did.”

“A sick-hued darkness overtook Hazel. There was ground, somewhere, and somewhere beyond that there was a palace, and somewhere beyond that was a witch, and somewhere beyond her was a boy who did not want her to come, and she would not come, could not come, because she could not defeat the winter. She was going to collapse here. She would fail.”

“In woods where the woodsmen told lies, maybe it was the wolves who told the truth.”

“She saw signs of another village in the distance—she smelled smoke and saw the faint glow of something like civilization. But there was nothing for her there. She had to go get Jack now, and anyway, she was safer out here with the wolves.”

“Hazel should have done something—left a note, pretended she was going to go visit Jack’s aunt Bernice. Something. She was so busy thinking about the one she needed to rescue she didn’t think at all about the one she was leaving behind. She was supposed to take care of her mother, too. She was not supposed to be sipping honey tea with people who are just like the parents you think you are supposed to have. Her mother was what she had.”

“It’s all going to be okay. She would like to hear that now, even if it was a lie. Because some lies are beautiful. Stories do not tell you that.”

“The boys wouldn’t come to save him. Only Hazel would. And maybe that’s why the boys would win.”

“Jack believed in something—he believed in white witches and sleighs pulled by wolves, and in the world the trees obscured. He believed that there were better things in the woods. He believed in palaces of ice and hearts to match. Hazel had, too. Hazel had believed in woodsmen and magic shoes and swanskins and the easy magic of a compass. She had believed that because someone needing saving they were savable. She had believed in these things, but not anymore. And this is why she had to rescue Jack, even though he might not hear what she had to tell him.”

“She hated this place. Nothing made sense. Nothing worked as it was supposed to. She was supposed to be learning things as she went along, gaining strength for her final battle. All she was doing was losing things, one thing at a time.”

“She could have taken root. She wanted to be a Rose, somebody’s Rose, their Rose—and she would have been company for the flowers. She had new memories to give them, new people to tell them of, people who would help tend to them and keep them. But they warned her. They saved her. Hazel was nobody’s Rose. For better or for worse.”

“They were princesses once, charged with saving the kingdom from a dragon, and whoever could defeat it would be queen. Daisy used strength, Amelia wits, and Isabelle fell in love with the dragon, because that’s the sort of girl she was. She rid the kingdom of the dragon, and then made it its king.”

“He wanted to leave his mom and her unseeing eyes. He was the invisible boy looking for the place where no one could find him, where he did not have to feel invisible anymore.”

“She came in thinking she would rescue him, like some sort of story, like a little kid pretending to be a brave knight. He needed saving; therefore, she would save him. This was the way it used to work. It used to always be so simple, it was just the two of them and they could make shacks into palaces. But things change.”

“Her father said she was a princess. He did not see that she was a brave knight.”

“But I can tell you this,” he continued. “The white witch doesn’t feel things the way we do, do you understand? She’s all ice. That is her whole point.” A palace of ice and a heart to match. “I don’t understand. Why would people go looking for her? Why would they want to go with her?” Ben sat back. He looked at Hazel searchingly, sadly. His shoulders rose and fell. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “it seems like it would be easier to give yourself to the ice.”

“You can’t just kill a swan and wrap yourself in its skin, you know. It takes something from you. In her case it took the thing that she wanted most.”

“Now, Hazel was not stupid. She knew that just because you see a piece of cake and a sign that says EAT ME doesn’t mean you should actually do it. And just because two giant ravens point you in the direction of a path doesn’t mean you should take it. But it was the only path she had.”

“Hazel had read enough books to know that a line like this one is the line down which your life breaks in two. And you have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it’s very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone. But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. And so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.”

“It would not hurt, after all, to walk into the woods.”

“She understood. They were plastic flowers of words—but they looked nice on the surface.”

“I believe that the world isn’t always what we can see,” he said. “I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out.” He gave Hazel a serious look. “So, if someone’s changed overnight—by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle—you have to show them what’s good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn’t save them, they’re not worth saving.”

“He remembered that part like you’d remember a story someone told to you once, like you might nod in sympathy but it wasn’t like it happened to you.”

“Hazel could not explain that she had forgotten, that there was Jack and soul-sucking villains, and sometimes you are too scratchy to remember the things you are supposed to do, even if you do feel really bad about it later.”

“She didn’t know the answer. But there had to be a way. There was always a way.”

“Hazel knew her mother really meant I hope there is something you were dying to do at school today, that you are learning to love it there, and if you are not learning to love it there, can you please try harder? Because her mom seemed to think it was the sort of thing Hazel could choose to do, like she could choose to understand the rules when they weren’t even written in her language, like she could choose to make herself fit when she was so clearly shaped all wrong.”

“We’re starting with the villain,” Martin interjected. “Because they are the most fun.”