Peterborough writer Holly Bennett recently launched Drawn Away, her seventh young adult novel, about a teenaged boy who finds himself transported from the modern day into the world described by Hans Christian Andersen in his grim short story “The Little Match Girl.” Kirkus Reviews describes it as “a definite crowd-pleaser for fairy-tale enthusiasts and fantasy lovers.”
Holly is the author of six other young adult titles: The Bonemender teen fantasy series (The Bonemender, The Bonemender’s Oath, and The Bonemender’s Choice), Redwing, and two books inspired by Irish mythology: The Warrior’s Daughter and Shapeshifter. All are published by Orca Book Publishers.
Her books have been nominated and shortlisted for numerous awards and honours, including the OLA Forest of Reading Awards, the Sunburst Award, the Stellar Teen Book Award, Resource Links “Year’s Best”, and The New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age” list.
To explore Holly’s other books, visit her website at www.hollybennett.ca.
Holly is a freelance editor and writer who worked for many years as editor-in-chief of the Today’s Parent Special Editions, heading up the “birth and babies” beat. She is now editor of Education Canada, a magazine published by the Canadian Education Association. Born in Montreal, she is a long-time resident of Peterborough, where she and her husband John Hoffman have raised three sons, three dogs, and many small critters.
An excerpt from Drawn Away
Published by Orca Book Publishers, 2017, and available in print and ebook versions on Chapters/Indigo and Amazon in print and ebook versions and in selected bookstores.
JACK
I don’t believe it. I’m here again.
I’m here again, and it’s just the same: the long street, the grimy, looming buildings, the mist. More mist, even.
And the girl.
I’m still not scared, not exactly, but I don’t have the calm dreaminess of last time. This time there’s no pretending it’s just a dream. This is something really freaky, and not in a good way.
I walk toward the skinny girl, because what else is there to do? She sees me right away this time, and when she does her face lights up like it’s Christmas Day.
“Jack! You came back!” she says, and for some reason her smile and warm welcome creep me out.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m back, but I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“Oh.” I’m up close now, so I get a good look at the strange expression that flits across her narrow face. It looks like … disappointment? Maybe even a bit hurt. Then she gives a little shrug, fastens those big blue eyes on me and smiles again.
“Well, no matter. You’re here now, and that’s lovely. I’ve been hoping you’d come.”
I shuffle uncomfortably, with no idea how to respond. Then I have the really uncomfortable thought that I am worrying about my manners with a hallucination.
The match girl gazes up at me, and it strikes me that her eyes are a lot like Lucy’s, and that the look in them right now is not so different from how Lucy looked at me right after we — no, no, no, I don’t want to have this thought, but I’m having it anyway.
“Jack,” she says — and suddenly I don’t like her using my name, wish I’d never offered it — “you’re the first person to ever visit me. I never knew how lonely it was here until you came. So of course I’m happy to see you. Will you stay and talk longer this time?”
“Well.” I clear my throat, stalling. For the first time, it occurs to me that I have no idea how to go home, or wake up, or whatever. And now I am scared. “The thing is, um — look, won’t you tell me your name? I can’t very well call you Match Girl.”
Her face shuts down and hardens for a second. “Other people do.”
I backpedal. Somehow it doesn’t seem like a good idea to make her mad. “Okay, that’s cool.” Her expression changes to confusion, and I realize cool is probably not part of her vocabulary. “No problem, Match Girl. See, I don’t seem to have any control over this, coming or going. I just … find myself here.”
I’m actually trying not to think about this fact-that way lies panic. And in groping for a different thought, I get a great idea. I’ll take a pic, and then when I get home — if I get home, my mind corrects, and I shove that word away, hard — when I get home, if the photo’s there I’ll know I didn’t imagine her.
I reach into my jeans pocket, but there’s no phone. I pat down my other pockets, come up blank and think it’s probably in my jacket or backpack. Then I realize I don’t have my meter either. It’s almost always in my front right pocket. I grope at my beltline — no pump. What the hell?
“What’s wrong?” asks the Match Girl. She’s watching my performance with bright interest.
“I’m missing some things — some important things.” I do feel the familiar lump from my glucose tabs, but there’s something odd about it, and when I pull them out the tablets are in a little cloth bag instead of a plastic tube.
The girl nods knowingly. “Pickpockets. They’re thick on this street.” Then, puzzled, she corrects herself. “Were thick. There’s nobody now. What have you lost?”
I open my mouth and then realize she won’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about. Instead I ask, “What year is this, and what city?”
She rolls her eyes. “Copenhagen, of course. And it was 1823 when I died, but that was some time ago.”
She says it so casually — when I died — and now my floaty little don’t-worry-this-can’t-really-be-happening bubble bursts, and I’m so scared I’m afraid my legs might buckle. I’m in a time warp with a dead girl and none of the technology that keeps me alive came with me, maybe because it doesn’t actually exist here. I start to shake, and I’m shaking so hard my head’s nodding back and forth and —
“JACK!”
— and I’m staring up into wide blue eyes, but they’re Lucy’s eyes. She’s standing over me, shaking my shoulders and shouting my name and looking terrified.
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