Chapter 21
THINK OF THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HAPPY.
Think of Gertrude. Think of Favorite. Think of those three months by the lake, rendered perfect by how wretched your life became after you were stolen away.
Think of the turtle eggs, the bear, the nights by a campfire, the afternoons in the sun.
Swimming, diving, fishing, feeding Favorite mussels from your hand, laughing as his five brothers completely ignored you.
All the time you spent in the woods with Favorite, every moss-soft, pine-scented, bird-songed walk.
And that one kiss. That one kiss that you thought could solve everything, save everyone.
How young you were. How naive. Even after losing Gretel.
Even after the gingerbread house and the hag who lived there.
(Aren’t you glad to have had that happiness now that you can never have it again?)
You’d do anything to go back there.
You’d do anything to be that boy again.
But that boy is gone.
There’s only the huntsman now.