The Hazel Wood

A banquet and music establish the setting inside the castle, but Alice notices almost immediately that every person is trapped in a short pattern of activity, over and over; the effect is jarring and discordant, made worse by the knowledge that it was her own departure that caused the “rictus.” The Spinner pulls her along through a courtyard and upstairs; inside a bedroom, Alice’s mother the queen is giving birth. The Story Spinner explains, “When you were ripped away they crawled back to their starting places, […] and there they’ve waited” (312). Alice asks if the Spinner ever intended to really let her break away from this story and go home, and the Spinner tells her she won’t want to. The Spinner catches Alice when she tries to run, touches her cheek to bring the ice into her throat, and whispers the first bit of “Alice-Three-Times”: “When Alice was born, her eyes were black from end to end” (314). Now without any control, Alice enters the story.

The story of “Alice-Three-Times” occurs now from Alice’s first-person point of view: being born, growing in three leaps of time, being mean to her siblings, her fascination with ice, her courtship requirement for potential suitors. When the redhaired brothers bring the ice from the distant caves, she swallows it and turns to ice herself, but she is still cognizant and observant in her frozen form. Alice knows some unknown form follows them from the castle and later unties her from the horse. She kills the older cruel brother by breathing her ice into him, “along with [her] hate” (320). In the morning, the younger brother discovers the older one dead, and he shouts in reaction.

Now, though, the story shifts: The younger brother thaws Alice’s frozen eyes with his own warm breath and says hello to her. She searches her mind until she knows: He is the man from the blue Buick who, when she was six, said he would take her to see her grandmother, and he is the man from the coffee shop. Alice forces herself to recall Ella’s name as well. The man tells her the story is almost broken, but then he screams and falls on her, an ax in his back from the supposedly dead brother. Alice sees strange tendrils of light weaving closed the hole in the story caused by the younger brother’s rebellious actions; “the story fought back if you tried” to find a way out of it (324).

The story brings the younger brother weakly back to life to continue its plot, but this time Alice tries to turn its course. The spidery tendrils prove too strong, though, and Alice is about to give up when Finch and Janet arrive by bicycle. After a few moments, Alice recognizes them. Janet says she learned from ex-Stories that their stories broke when a refugee wandered in. They help Alice and the redhaired man onto their bikes and try to peddle away. The story just moves its edges though, and they make no ground. Finally Alice halts them, gets off the bike, approaches the edge of the story, and tells a revised story aloud: A girl leaves a place and sees her mother again. A hole opens, and the four escape through it.

Alice is stunned to discover that Finch is alive; he explains that the man who cut his throat left him for dead near a refugee village, and the refugees helped him recover. The redhaired man tells Alice he knew Ella in the Halfway Wood, but he does not intend to leave to find her. Finch intends to stay as well. Janet turns down Alice’s offer to go back home with her, so Alice sets out for the Hinterland border and the Story Spinner alone.

Alice finds the Spinner at the edge of a vast sea of sparkling sand. The Spinner tells her that since Alice broke her story, it wouldn’t be worth telling any longer. Alice starts across the burning sand but almost immediately finds herself on the lawn of the Hazel Wood. Unlike her earlier sighting of it, everything is overgrown, dilapidated, and in ruins. She knocks; no one answers, and she does not bother to get in. In her fairy-tale dress and with “hair that fell almost to the tops of [her] thighs” (341), cars on the main road slow to look at her suspiciously. A woman stops to pick her up; Alice learns that two years have passed. She wakes later in a hospital bed and gown, Ella at her side.

Alice and Ella are grateful to be together again; Alice harbors no resentment against Ella and insists she is her real mother. Ella fills in Alice on what happened to her. After being abducted, she was held in a locked apartment for three days; on the third day, the door was unlocked, and she walked away. Ella went north seeking the Hazel Wood, but the Halfway Wood would not let her into the Hinterland; she settled in Birch with an apartment and a diner job but never had any luck finding a way to follow Alice. Later, Ella shares more: She “found the Hazel Wood” and Althea dead inside (347).

Ella uses the money from the sale of the property to get an apartment in Brooklyn. Alice gets a job at a food co-op and begins re-reading stories she first read on her travels with Ella. Once she runs into Audrey and tells her vaguely that the trouble Ella had is now “resolved,” and they part amicably.

Alice also runs into Janet and Ingrid; she is shocked to see them. Janet shows her a curious passport booklet, indicating she is still traveling worlds and finding doors, and tells her that the stories began to fall apart in the Hinterland; once Alice broke hers, other Stories followed suit. She indicates the reality of the Hinterland is slipping away. Alice asks if Finch returned as well, but Janet tells her no: “That boy has other worlds to explore” (353). Alice admits to feeling like she does not know who she is “without the ice” (353), and Janet gives her a street address with a date and time. Alice goes; it is a meeting of ex-Stories and a few ex-refugees from the Hinterland. Her continued attendance along with Ella’s love and support help Alice re-acclimate to the real world, though some mornings she wakes, looks in the mirror, and goes walking with sunglasses on: “I drink scalding tea and ride the ferry, and breathe hard into my hands. When I come home again, my eyes are brown, and faultless, and you could almost, almost say they look like my mother’s. Ella Proserpine’s” (355).