The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  In the spring and summer, Fairfold was clogged with tourists. You could spot them eating pancakes with real maple syrup over at The Railway Diner, picking up T-shirts and paperweights with clover suspended in resin at Curious Curios, getting their fortunes told at Mystical Moon Tarot, taking selfies sitting on the prince’s glass casket, picking up sandwich boxes from Annie’s Luncheonette for impromptu picnics out near Wight Lake, or strolling hand in hand through the streets, acting as though Fairfold was the quaintest and kookiest place they’d ever been.

  Every year, some of those tourists disappeared.

  Some got dragged down into Wight Lake by water hags, bodies cracking the dense mat of algae, scattering the duckweed. Some would be run down at twilight by horses with ringing bells tied to their manes and members of the Shining Folk on their backs. Some would be found strung upside down in trees, bled out and chewed upon. Some would be found sitting on park benches, their faces frozen in a grimace so terrible that it seemed as though they must have died of fright. And some would simply be gone.

  Not many. One or two each season. But enough that someone should have noticed outside Fairfold. Enough that there should have been warnings, travel advisories, something. Enough that tourists should have stopped coming. They didn’t.

  A generation ago, the Folk had been more circumspect. More inclined toward pranks. A stray wind might grab an idle tourist, sweep her up into the air and deposit her miles away. A few tourists might stagger back to their hotel after a late night, only to realize six months had passed. Occasionally one would wake up with his or her hair in knots. Things they’d been sure were in their pockets went missing; strange new things were discovered. Butter was eaten right off a dish, licked up by invisible tongues. Money turned into leaves. Laces wouldn’t untie, and shadows looked a bit ragged, as though they had slipped away for some fun.

  Back then it was very rare for someone to die because of the Folk.

  Tourists, the locals would say, a sneer in their voice. And they still did. Because everyone believed—everyone had to believe—tourists did stupid things that got them killed. And if someone from Fairfold very occasionally went missing, too, well, they must have been acting like a tourist. They should have known better. The people of Fairfold came to think of the Folk as inevitable, a natural hazard, like hailstorms or getting swept out to sea by a riptide.

  It was a strange kind of double consciousness.

  They had to be respectful of the Folk, but not scared. Tourists were scared.

  They had to stay clear of the Folk and carry protections. Tourists weren’t scared enough.

  When Hazel and Ben lived briefly in Philadelphia, no one believed their stories. Those two years had been bizarre. They had to learn to hide their strangeness. But coming back had been difficult, too, because by then they knew how weird Fairfold was compared with places outside it. And because, by the time they’d returned, Ben had decided to give up his magic—and his music—entirely.

  Which meant he could never, ever know the price Hazel had paid for them to go in the first place. After all, she wasn’t a tourist. She should have known better. But sometimes, on nights like the one she’d just had, she wished she could tell someone. She wished she didn’t always have to be so alone.

  That night, after she and Ben went up to bed, after she stripped off her clothes and got into her pajamas, after she brushed her teeth and checked to make sure the scattered bits of salted oatmeal were still under her pillow where they might keep her safe from faerie tricks, then Hazel had nothing left to distract her from remembering the dizzying moment when her mouth had met Jack’s. Only, as she slid off into dreams, it wasn’t Jack she was kissing anymore, but the horned boy. His eyes were open. And when she pulled him closer, he didn’t push her away.

  Hazel woke up feeling out of sorts, restless, and melancholy. She put it down to drinking the night before and swigged back some aspirin with the last dregs of a carton of orange juice. Her mom had left a note to pick up bread and milk clothespinned to a ten-dollar bill in the giant pottery catchall bowl that sat in the center of the kitchen table.

  With a groan, Hazel went back upstairs to put on leggings and a baggy black shirt. She shoved the green hoops back into her ears.

  Music was on in Ben’s room. Even though he didn’t play anymore, Ben always had a continuous sound track in the background, even as he slept. If he was up, though, she hoped she could persuade him to run Mom’s errand, so that she could go back to bed.

  Hazel knocked on Ben’s door.

  “Enter at your own risk,” he called. Hazel opened it to find him holding a cell phone up to his ear as he hopped his way into a pair of mustard-colored skinny jeans.

  “Hey,” she said. “Can you—”

  He waved her over, speaking into the phone. “Yeah, she’s up. She’s right in front of me. Sure, we’ll meet you in fifteen minutes.”

  Hazel groaned. “What are you agreeing to?”

  He tossed an easy grin in her direction and said good-bye to the person on the other end of his cell. The person she was pretty sure was Jack.

  Ben and Jack had been friends for years, through Ben coming out and his obsessive relationship with the only other out boy at school, which ended in a huge public fight at the homecoming bonfire. Through Jack’s bleak depression after being dumped by Amanda Watkins, who’d told him that she was dating him only because she really wanted to date Carter and dating him was like dating Carter’s shadow. Through both of them liking different music and different books and hanging out with different people at lunch.

  Surely, a little thing like her kissing Jack wouldn’t even ripple the waters. But that didn’t make her eager for the moment Ben found out what she’d done. And she wasn’t looking forward to Jack’s watching her warily all afternoon as though she might lunge at him or something.

  But, despite herself, she was looking forward to seeing him again. She couldn’t quite believe they’d kissed, even just for a moment. The memory filled her with an embarrassing jolt of happiness. It felt like an act of real daring, the first she’d committed in a long time. It was a horrible mistake, of course. She could have wrecked things—she hoped she hadn’t wrecked things. She could never do it again. At least she couldn’t think of a way it would be possible to do it again.

  Hazel wasn’t sure when her crush on Jack had started. It had been a slow thing, an exaggerated awareness of him, a thrill at his attention, accompanied by a constant stream of nervous chatter when he was around. But she remembered when her crush had become acute. She’d walked over to remind Ben he was supposed to be home for a music lesson with one of Dad’s deadbeat friends and found a whole group of boys in the Gordon kitchen, making sandwiches and goofing around. Jack had made her one with chicken salad and carefully sliced tomato. When he was turned away to get her some pretzels, she had snatched his partially chewed gum from where it was stuck to a plate and shoved it into her mouth. It had tasted of strawberry and his spit and had given her the same pure shock of agonized happiness that kissing him had.

  That gum was still stuck to the bed frame, a talisman she couldn’t quite give up.

  “We’re going to Lucky’s,” Ben offered, as though maybe he should inform her of the place she hadn’t agreed to go. “We’ll get some coffee. Listen to records. See if any new stuff came in. Come on, Mr. Schröder probably misses you. Besides, as you are so fond of pointing out, what else is there to do in this town on a Sunday?”

  Hazel sighed. She should tell him no, but instead she seemed to be running toward trouble, leaving no stone unturned, no boy unkissed, no crush abandoned, and no bad idea unembraced.

  “I guess I could use some coffee,” she said, as her brother picked up a red blazer, apparently matching his outfit to a sunrise.

  Lucky’s was in a big, old restored warehouse on the duller end of Main Street, beside the bank, the dentist’s office, and a shop that sold clocks. The place smelled like the dust of old books, mothballs, and French roast. Mis
matched shelves filled the walls and defined the aisles down the center. Some of the bookshelves were carved oak, others were nailed together from pallets, all picked up for cheap at garage sales by old Mr. and Mrs. Schröder, who ran the place. Two overstuffed chairs and a record player sat beside big windows that overlooked a wide stream. Customers could play any of the old vinyl albums in stock. Two big thermal dispensers held organic, fair-trade coffee. Mugs sat on a painted table with a chipped jar beside them marked: HONOR SYSTEM. FIFTY CENTS A CUP.

  And on the other side of the room were racks and racks of secondhand clothes, shoes, purses, and other accessories. Hazel had worked there over the summer, and a big part of her job had been going through what seemed like hundreds of garbage bags in the back, sorting what could go on the shelves from stuff that was ripped or stained or had an unpleasant smell. She’d found a lot of good stuff, hunting through those bags. Lucky’s was more expensive than Goodwill—which was where her parents liked for her to shop, claiming that buying things new was for the bourgeois—but it was nicer, too, and she got a discount.

  Jack, whose family definitely qualified as bourgeois to Hazel’s parents, and who bought his clothes new from the mall, came to Lucky’s for stacks of biographies of the obscurely famous, which he read with the frequency other people smoked cigarettes.

  Ben came for the old records, which he loved, even though they skipped and hissed and degraded over time, because he said the grooves mirrored the sound’s original waveform. He claimed they gave a truer, richer sound. Hazel believed that what he truly loved was the ritual, though—taking the vinyl out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, bringing down the needle in just the right place, and then balling his hands into fists so he wouldn’t tap out the notes against his thigh.

  Well, he might not love that last part, but he did it. Every time.

  The day was bright and chilly, the wind slapping their cheeks on the walk over, turning them rosy. As Hazel and Ben entered the shop, a dozen crows rose from a fir tree, cawing as they flew up into the sky.

  Mr. Schröder looked up from where he was napping when the bell over the door jingled. He winked at Hazel, and she gave him a wink backing return. He grinned as he slumped back into his armchair.

  On the other end of the room, Jack was putting a Nick Drake album on the turntable. His sonorous voice filled the shop, whispering about golden crowns and silence. Hazel tried to study Jack without his noticing, gauging his mood. He was his usual slightly rumpled self, wearing jeans, two-tone oxfords, and a wrinkled green shirt that seemed to bring out the silver shine of his eyes. When he saw Hazel and Ben, he smiled—but was Hazel imagining that his smile looked a little forced and didn’t quite reach his eyes? Either way, it didn’t matter, because his gaze slid over her and went to her brother. “So what’s all this about ditching your date like Bruce Wayne after spotting the bat signal?”

  Ben laughed. “That’s not what happened!”

  What had she been thinking, kissing him? Just because she’d had a crush on him when they were kids? Just because she’d wanted to?

  “Yeah,” she forced herself to say. “Batman would never ditch.”

  Ben was happy to tell the story of his disastrous date again. They scrounged up change for honor-system coffee as Ben’s new version became more exaggerated and dramatic. The roommate was even more wildly in love with Ben’s date and even more furious at Ben. Ben was even more comically incompetent at sneaking out. By the end, Hazel had no idea how much of it was true anymore and she didn’t care. It reminded her of how compellingly Ben could tell a story and how many of her most beloved tales about the horned boy had been ones he’d made up.

  “So what about you guys?” Ben asked, finally. “Hazel says nothing even remotely interesting happened last night.”

  Jack’s laugh stopped. “Oh,” he said after a pause that was just a couple of seconds too long. There was an odd light in his amber eyes. “She didn’t tell you?”

  Hazel froze.

  Her brother was watching them curiously, brow furrowed. “Well? What?”

  “Tom Mullins got wasted, climbed up on the glass coffin, and tried to smash it. He’s cursed for sure, poor bastard.” Jack’s smile was tilted, rueful. He ran his fingers over his tight brown curls, rumpling them.

  Hazel let out her breath a little dizzily.

  Ben shook his head. “What makes people do that? Bad stuff happens whenever somebody messes around with the coffin. Tommy doesn’t care about the prince, so what’s the temptation?” He looked honestly frustrated, but then Ben and Tom Mullins used to be friends, before Ben moved away and Tom became a drunk.

  “Maybe he was tired of the same old parties and the same old people,” Jack said, perching on a table arranged with stacks of books, belts, and scarves, and looking at Hazel. “Maybe he wanted something to happen.”

  She winced.

  “Okay, enough with the weirdness,” Ben said, leaning forward in his chair, cradling his cup. His red curls looked gold in the light filtering through the dirty windowpanes. “What’s wrong with you guys? You keep staring at each other like creepers.”

  “What? No,” said Jack softly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  Hazel shook her head, going to refill her coffee cup. “Huh,” she said, eager for a subject change. “Is that a sequined tube top I spy with my little eye?”

  It was, and nearby was a big, gauzy prom dress in bright mermaid aqua that she danced around the room in. And beside that was a herringbone suit that looked as if it could have been worn on one of the early seasons of Mad Men. Jack put on a Bad Brains vinyl, Ben tried on the suit, some tourists came in to buy postcards, and everything started to feel like a regular Sunday afternoon.

  But then Ben put his hands into the pockets of the jacket he was peacocking around the store in, daring them to say it was a little tight on him, and Hazel picked up his blazer, folding it over her arm. Something fell out of one of the pockets. It bounced once on the ground and then rolled against Jack’s shoe. A walnut with a thin bow of grass tied around it.

  “Look at that,” said Jack, frowning down at her discovery. “What do you think it is?”

  “Was it in my coat?” Ben asked.

  Hazel nodded.

  “Well, let’s open it.” Jack slid off the table, a bowler hat sitting cockeyed on his head. He had a relaxed, loose-limbed way of moving that made Hazel think the exact sort of thoughts that had got her into trouble in the first place.

  The grass unfurled easily, and the two halves of the walnut came apart. Inside was a small scrap of paper, rolled up like a scroll.

  “Let me see,” Hazel said, reaching for it. Unfurling the thin piece of parchment, a shiver went up her spine as she read the spidery lettering, SEVEN YEARS TO PAY YOUR DEBTS. MUCH TOO LATE FOR REGRETS.

  They were all silent for a long moment, and Hazel concentrated on not dropping the paper.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Jack.

  “It’s probably some old thing a tourist bought in town.” Ben’s voice was a little unsteady. “Bullshit fake magic fortune walnut.”

  There was a shop near the end of Main Street called The Cunning Woman that sold souvenirs to faerie seekers. Incense, bags of salt mixed with red berries for protection, maps to “sacred” faerie sites around town, crystals, hand-painted tarot cards, and iridescent window dazzlers. Cryptic faerie notes in nuts was the sort of thing they might carry.

  “What kind of fortune is that?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah,” Hazel added, trying to sound as if her heart wasn’t thundering, trying to behave as though she didn’t know for whom the note had been meant, pretending everything was still normal.

  “Yeah.” Ben put the shell and the note back in his pocket with a little laugh. “Creepy, though.”

  After that, Hazel could only pretend to be having fun. She watched Ben and Jack, memorizing them. Memorizing the people and the place, the smell of old books and the sounds of normal stuff.

  Ben bough
t a polka-dot bow tie, and then they walked over to the general store, where Hazel picked up the carton of milk and loaf of bread. Jack was heading back to his parents’ for dinner because they had a tradition of playing family board games on Sundays, and no matter how dorky Jack or Carter felt that was, neither was allowed to skip out on it. Hazel and Ben went home, too. Outside their front door, Hazel squatted to pour a little milk into the ceramic bowl Mom kept next to the stone walk. Everyone in Fairfold left food out for the faeries, to show them respect, to gain their favor.

  But the milk glubbed out in thick chunks. It had already gone sour.

  CHAPTER 4

  That night, Hazel tossed and turned, kicking the sheets, willing herself not to worry about promises made and debts coming due. She imagined them away, bound up in a hundred barnacle-encrusted safes, a thousand buried chests, chains tight around every one.

  In the morning, her limbs felt heavy. When she rolled over to hit the snooze on her phone alarm, her fingertips stung. Her palms looked red and abraded. There was a splinter of glass the length of a pin nestled under the swell of her thumb, and a few smaller shining splinters scattered across her fingers. Her heart began to race.

  She kicked off the covers, frowning, only to find that her feet were caked in mud. Chunks of it dropped off her toes as she got up. Dirt spatter clung to her leg all the way to her knee. The hem of her nightgown was stiff and filthy. When she pulled back the sheet, her bedclothes looked like a nest¸ with grass and sticks everywhere. She tried to think back to the night before, but there were only vague dreams. The more she concentrated on them, the more they receded.

  What had happened? What had she done, and why couldn’t she remember any of it?