Into the Wild(36)

Concerned, the captain leaned in. “She has to knit them perfectly, or we’ll be swans forever.”

Julie waggled her finger at Kristen. “Not so fun being not quite perfect, is it? Bet it’ll take you a long time to knit these.”

“Six years,” the captain said.

Julie stopped. Six years? She stared at the soldier. Did he mean it? Even Kristen didn’t deserve . . . but no, she did deserve it. Julie thought of how many days she had gone home in tears, hating herself because of Kristen. Who knew how many other lives she’d ruined? But six years . . . Julie turned back to Kristen. Kristen knit furiously.

The captain clapped his hand on Julie’s shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

He led Julie across the clearing. Julie kept glancing back over her shoulder until Kristen was swallowed in darkness.





Julie tossed on the cot. It wasn’t really night; she couldn’t sleep. Besides, each time she closed her eyes, she could feel the seawater closing over her. She’d been lucky.

Lucky. Oh, yes, she’d been lucky: she’d met the animal helpers before she met the witch; Boots had come to guide her to the griffin; the swans had appeared before she drowned . . . Sure, “lucky.” She was no different from Kristen, sewing silently in the tree. She was following the Wild’s script—just like Kristen and Grandma and New Little Red—and the Wild could twist the plot any way it pleased.

Curling into a ball, she squeezed her pillow. The Wild would never let her succeed. It wouldn’t want her to rescue her mother, the one person who knew how to defeat it. It wouldn’t want to be put back under Julie’s bed.

Except that she wasn’t dealing with a malicious mind plotting against her. The Wild had rules, events, conventions. Her eyes flew open, wide awake, as the idea came to her. Instead of trying to escape the stories, she should be trying to live them.

Yes, that was the way to win: follow the tales to the happily ever after of her mother’s rescue. Play the role of the hero in a rescue tale—and avoid the role of evil stepsister who spits toads and has her eyes pecked out by talking birds. She might not be able to avoid being in the tales altogether, but she could try to be in the right ones.

Could she do it? She turned the idea over in her head. From what she’d seen and learned, she didn’t think that the Wild could control her between story bits, just during them. Between events, she had freedom. She could use those moments to find the tales that would lead her to the ending she wanted: her mother’s rescue. It could work. Boots had talked once about all the story bits being jumbled because the Wild was growing. He’d used that to avoid his story. Couldn’t she use that to choose her story?

Julie tossed off the thin blanket. At the foot of the bed, Boots burrowed into her discarded blanket with a contented purr. She took a flashlight and went outside.

Outside, the darkness seemed to close in on her. Nervously, she peered at the shadows. Now that she was out here, she wasn’t sure what had prompted her to come outside. What was she trying to prove? Was she trying to prove something?

The darkness retreated to nibble at the edges of her light. Cautiously, she walked across the clearing. Halfway, she heard the clacking sound. She followed it. She raised the flashlight and the light fell on Kristen, knitting in the tree.

Kristen lifted her head and looked at her, and then Julie understood what had made her come outside. “I’m going to end this,” Julie said. “You won’t have to do this for six years.”

Kristen raised her eyebrows. Julie recognized that expression: disbelief. “Look, I know more about this than you do. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

Kristen’s nostrils flared: disgust.

“You might know how to deal with the school world better than I do. But all your perfection out there doesn’t help you in here. You know what’s going to happen to you next if you continue with this set of events? You’ll knit in silence for five and a half years, and then some king will come along and marry you. You’ll have kids. Your mother-in-law will kill them and tell the king you ate them. And then you’ll be tied to a stake to burn. Bet you didn’t know that.”

Julie warmed to her subject: “You don’t know enough to avoid the wrong roles. And Grandma and the others know too much.” It was beginning to make sense. Gothel and “our kind” had roles here, so they were trapped quickly. Kristen and the others didn’t know enough to avoid the roles, so they were also trapped quickly. Julie was the only one who could recognize the story bits and who didn’t already belong to a specific story. “I’m the only one who straddles both worlds,” Julie said.