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

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.

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.

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

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

This is what it is to live in the world. You have to give yourself over to the cold, at least a little bit.

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.