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Back The Lollipop Shoes
Chapters (96)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Book
  3. The Lollipop Shoes
  4. Dedication
  5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  6. PART ONE
  7. 1
  8. 2
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. PART TWO
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. 6
  19. 7
  20. 8
  21. PART THREE
  22. 1
  23. 2
  24. 3
  25. 4
  26. 5
  27. 6
  28. PART FOUR
  29. 1
  30. 2
  31. 3
  32. 4
  33. 5
  34. 6
  35. 7
  36. 8
  37. 9
  38. PART FIVE
  39. 1
  40. 2
  41. 3
  42. 4
  43. 5
  44. 6
  45. 7
  46. 8
  47. 9
  48. 10
  49. 11
  50. 12
  51. PART SIX
  52. 1
  53. 2
  54. 3
  55. 4
  56. 5
  57. 6
  58. 7
  59. 8
  60. 9
  61. 10
  62. 11
  63. 12
  64. PART SEVEN
  65. 1
  66. 2
  67. 3
  68. 4
  69. 5
  70. 6
  71. 7
  72. 8
  73. 9
  74. PART EIGHT
  75. 1
  76. 2
  77. 3
  78. 4
  79. 5
  80. 6
  81. 7
  82. 8
  83. 9
  84. 10
  85. 11
  86. 12
  87. 13
  88. 14
  89. 15
  90. 16
  91. 17
  92. 18
  93. 19
  94. Epilogue
  95. About the Author
  96. Also by Joanne Harris

And suddenly I find my voice, and I shout out as loudly as I can, without quite knowing what the words mean, but knowing they’re words of power, somehow, words to conjure with, words to stop the winter wind—

And I shout, ‘Zozie!’

She looks at me.

And I say, ‘What was in the black piñata?’

15

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Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.25 p.m.

IT BROKE THE charm. She stopped. She stared. Moved closer to me across the snow, and brought her face up close to mine. And now I could smell that dead-crab stink, but I didn’t blink or look away.

‘You dare to ask me that?’ she snarled.

And now I could hardly bear to look. She’d changed her face and was fearsome again; a giantess; her mouth a cave of mossy teeth. The silver bracelet on her wrist now looked like a bracelet of skulls, and her skirt of hearts was dripping with blood, a curtain of blood in the fallen snow. She was terrible, but she was afraid, and behind her Maman was watching with a funny kind of smile on her face, as if she understood far more about it than I did, somehow—

She gave me the tiniest of nods.

I said the magic words again. ‘What was in the black piñata?’

Zozie made a harsh sound in her throat. ‘I thought we were friends, Nanou,’ she said. And suddenly she was Zozie again, the old Zozie of the lollipop shoes, with her scarlet skirt and her pink-streaked hair and her jangly multicoloured beads. And she looked so real and so familiar that it hurt my heart to see her so sad. And her hand on my shoulder was trembling, and her eyes filled with tears as she whispered—

‘Please – oh please, Nanou, don’t make me tell—’

My mother was standing six feet away. Behind her in the square were Jean-Loup, Roux, Nico, Madame Luzeron, Alice, and their colours were like fireworks on the Fourteenth of July, all gold and green and silver and red—

I caught a sudden scent of chocolate drifting from the open door, and I thought of the copper pan on the hob, and the way the steam had reached out to me like ghostly pleading fingers, and the voice I’d almost thought I heard, my mother’s, saying, Try me, taste me—

And I thought about all the times she’d offered me hot chocolate, and I’d said no. Not because I don’t like it, but because I was angry that she’d changed; because I blamed her for what happened to us; and because I wanted to get back at her, to make her see I was different—

It isn’t Zozie’s fault, I thought. Zozie’s just the mirror that shows us what we want to see. Our hopes; our hates; our vanities. But when you really look at it, a mirror’s just a piece of glass—