The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  Ben shook his head, then grinned. “I have absolutely no idea. Where do you look for somebody who doesn’t even seem like he could be real?”

  Hazel considered that, biting her lip. “Town would be strange. All the cars and the lights.”

  “If he goes back to his own people, he’s dead, apparently,” Ben sighed, and hunched over the wheel, maybe going through the same thoughts she’d had before, the same fear this would amount to nothing, that it was playing a child’s game they ought to have outgrown. Or maybe he was thinking about the ways magic had betrayed him before and was likely to do so again.

  She was tempted once more to confess how she’d woken with mud on her feet and glass splinters in her hands, but now it seemed almost like bragging. And to explain why it wasn’t, she’d have to say too much.

  In general, her family wasn’t very good at talking about important stuff. And of all of them, she was the least good at it. When she tried, it felt like all the chains on all her imagined safes and trunks started rattling. If she started to speak, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop.

  “His own people are the ones who cursed him. He knows not to go back to Faerie,” Hazel said, watching the seesaw of the wipers. The familiar thrill woke in her: the hunt, the planning, the discovery of a faerie lair, and the tracking of a monster. Hazel thought she’d given up her dreams of knighthood years ago, but maybe she hadn’t given them up quite as completely as she’d supposed.

  Ben shrugged. “Okay. But then where?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself in the place of the horned boy, rousing from long dreams, not remembering where she was at first. He’d panic, slapping his hands against the inside of the glass case. Relief would flood him as he realized jagged pieces of it were missing, the glass smashed. Blinking into the leafy dark and with whatever memories he had from before the curse pounding in his head. But after that…

  “I’d want food,” she said. “I’d be super hungry, not eating for decades. Even if I didn’t need it, I’d want it.”

  “He’s not like us.”

  “Jack’s like us,” Hazel said, hoping it was true. “And he’s like Jack.”

  Ben blew out a long breath. “Yeah, okay. But you’re not going to go through the McDonald’s drive-through. You don’t have any cash. So what do you eat?”

  “I’d forage for chestnuts.” Hazel had bought a book identifying edible plants years ago during the library’s get-rid-of-everything-ancient-tattered-or-oddly-sticky sale for twenty-five cents. With it, she and Ben had managed not to poison each other while gathering up a whole lot of dandelion leaves and wild onions and other edible plants. “But he’d have to roast them. Bird eggs would be good eating, although they’d be hard to come by this late in the year.”

  Ben nodded, clearly deep in thought. He steered the car toward the part of the wood where the horned boy had slept. “Or he could look for a hazelnut tree. You know, your namesake nut.”

  Hazel snorted, but there was a place she’d gathered hazelnuts before the worms could eat them. She remembered leaving them on a rock to dry in the sun. “I have an idea.”

  They parked by Wight Lake and walked from there. A hazelnut tree grew not far from the remains of an old stone building, now overgrown with vines. It was about a quarter mile into the woods, two miles from the glass coffin, and such a perfect place to hole up that her skin shivered with the possibility that she might be right.

  The rain was still coming down hard, although the canopy of leaves stemmed the worst of it. Hazel was glad of her wellies while stomping through the mud and slick moss. She and Ben climbed over fallen and desiccated trunks of trees, past brambles and branches that snagged on their clothes. Past buckthorn and privet; past trout lily, closed up tight, and clumps of moonseed, its wide green leaves collecting water; past carrion flower, with Sputnik-shaped blooms bowed by the wind; past wisteria and bee balm; past jewelweed and milkweed and tufted knotweed; past dame’s rocket and creeping jenny and maidenhair ferns in profusion. She used her umbrella as much to knock vines out of her way as to keep dry.

  Then the stone building came into view, covered with ivy. Its roof had caved in years ago, and although rusted-out hinges held a strip of weather-beaten wood along one edge of the frame, the rest of the door was gone. Ben ran ahead of Hazel, and as he did, she slowed her step.

  Her hand went to her side automatically.

  Ben looked back at her, frowning. “What are you doing?”

  Hazel shrugged. She’d been reaching for something—her belt? her pocket?—but there was nothing there.

  “Going for your sidearm?” Ben asked, laughed, and kept on going.

  Hazel had no more known what it was, exactly, that made her pause than she’d known what she’d been reaching for. But she thought about Jack telling them to be careful, about that curdled milk slopping into the bowl, about the note in the pocket of Ben’s jacket, and about the memory of hunting faeries. With all that in her head, she closed her umbrella carefully.

  Ben ducked through the doorway and then darted back out a minute later, a wondrous smile on his face. “You were right. I think you were right!”

  Hazel followed her brother into the house. She’d been in the old stone building before with Ben, many years ago, when they’d been pretending to be witches and wizards just out of Hogwarts, cooking up cauldrons of weeds with a pail and some water. Rain drizzled through the remains of the roof. A weather-beaten table, gray and termite-eaten, was pressed against one of the stone walls.

  On top of it were the skins of three persimmons, ripped open and scraped clean, the heady, spicy smell of them heavy in the air. A handful of bruised herbs rested nearby, of which Hazel recognized only mint. Tiny black elderberries and several chanterelles were scattered over the wood, like beads dropped from a necklace.

  And beside all that was a knife, one with a handle of bone and a twisting blade of some golden metal. It reminded her of the sword she’d found when she was a kid.

  “Shit,” Hazel said, reaching toward it, stopping before her fingers touched the knife. She looked at Ben. He was grinning in a crazy, awed way.

  “He was really here,” she said.

  “Well, he’s got to come back for that, right?” Ben said. “If we wait, we’ll catch him when he does.”

  Hazel nodded, feeling giddy. She found an area by the remains of the hearth and perched there while Ben leaned against a wall. After a few minutes the cold stone had numbed her butt. She watched water drizzling into a growing puddle near the empty hole of a window and tried to calm her nerves.

  “You know how they say that once you eat faerie food, nothing else will satisfy you?” Ben asked suddenly.

  “Sure,” Hazel said, thinking of the pile of berries on the table.

  “I wonder if Fairfold is like that. I wonder if I’d ever be happy somewhere else. Or if you would. I wonder if we’re ruined for other places.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. He never talked about college, hadn’t gotten any brochures in the mail. Hazel had no idea where he was headed after he graduated next year. “If you go away and don’t like it, you can always come back,” she said. “Mom and Dad did.”

  He made a face. “I’d really rather not turn into our parents. I keep hoping I’ll meet someone with an awesome life so I can just slip into it.”

  Hazel remembered how a trick of the light had made it seem like she could see through him the night he came back from his last date. She wondered if that was more true than she’d imagined.

  “The city’s a lot like the deep dark fairy-tale woods of Fairfold, right?” Ben went on. “In the movies, the city’s where all the stories happen. It’s the place people go to be transformed. Where people go to start over. I figure I can be anyone there. Maybe even someone normal.”

  Hazel thought of what her parents said about normal. And she thought about the fact that he was telling her this while out in the middle of the forest, looking for a lost elf prince. If normal was
what he was trying for, he was going to have to try a lot harder.

  Outside, the wind whipped against the trees. Hazel heard faint strains of music.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked him.

  Ben peered out in the direction she was looking. “Full moon tomorrow night.”

  Growing up in Fairfold, everyone knew to stay out of the forest on full-moon nights—and, to be on the safe side, on the nights surrounding them. That was when the Alderking had his revel, and every nixie, pixie, and sprite, every hobgoblin, water hag, phooka, and tree spirit would come from near and far to dance their circle dances and feast until dawn.

  Unless the Alderking was too busy hunting the horned boy to have his party. Maybe those weren’t the sounds of revelers, but the sounds of hunters.

  They sat there for two hours in the cold drizzle, waiting. Eventually, the music faded away.

  Ben yawned, then ran his fingers through rain-soaked ginger hair. His freckles stood out against his cold, pale skin. “I don’t think he’s coming back. So what do we do now?”

  “We could leave him something,” Hazel said after a moment’s considering. “We could get him food and—I don’t know—some clothes. Show him we’re worth trusting.”

  Ben snorted. “I guess. I mean, I don’t know if I’d prefer sweats to an embroidered doublet, no matter how long I’d been in it. But anything we could do to make him less freaked out would be good. To show we’re friendly weirdos, not dangerous ones.”

  “You think he’s freaked out?” Hazel pushed herself up and started to walk toward the doorway. She looked back at her brother, still leaning against the rough stone wall, moss clinging to it like shadows.

  “I would be,” he said.

  Hazel raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought he wasn’t like us.”

  Ben shook his head, then grinned at her. “Let’s just go get the stuff.”

  Hazel ripped a piece of lined paper out of her book bag and wrote out a note in a ballpoint pen:

  Hi, we’re Hazel and Ben. We’ll be back soon with some food for you and other stuff. It’s yours if you want it. We’re not asking for anything in return. We’re just glad you’re finally awake.

  They were quiet on the way back, Hazel making a mental list of what they could pack: three cheddar-and-mustard sandwiches with relish, wrapped in tinfoil; a can of Coke; a big mason jar of coffee, with lots of milk and sugar in it; and two kale-granola-raisin bars. She thought there might be an old sleeping bag in the back of the attic; if it wasn’t too musty and moth-eaten, he could use that, too. Ben could give up some clothes, and Dad had a pair of old army boots he wouldn’t miss.

  It all seemed like a poor offering for a lost prince of Faerie, but what else could they do?

  Ben pulled the Volkswagen into their driveway. It was just after three thirty and Jack sat on the front stoop. He raised a hand in salute. The rain had stopped, but the lawn was still covered in shimmering beads of water.

  Ben rolled down the window. “What are you doing here?” he called. “What happened to being forbidden from helping?”

  “Not helping, just warning,” Jack said, eyes flashing silver, bright against his dark skin and darker hair. “I might come over on a normal day, so I’ve decided to pretend this day is normal.”

  Hazel got out of the car.

  “So did you find anything?” Jack asked, clearly expecting them to say they hadn’t.

  Ben shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “I just wanted you to understand,” Jack said, glancing in her direction to make it clear he was speaking to both of them. “His waking was no accident. And whatever happens next will be no accident, either.”

  “Whatever,” Ben said, walking toward the house. “We get it, okay? Gloom and also doom.” The screen door banged behind him.

  “What’s with him?” Jack asked.

  “He’s in love,” Hazel said, forcing a smile, because she was surprised at Ben’s indifference to the warnings, too.

  “You all are,” said Jack, softly, as though speaking to himself. “The whole town’s in love.”

  Hazel sighed. “Come on in. Help me make sandwiches. I’ll make you one, too.”

  He did. He sliced cheddar and she spread mustard, while Ben went through his clothes to find some stuff he thought might fit the horned boy. He brought down a gray hoodie, a pair of jeans, and two pairs of black boxers. He held up each for inspection. Hazel found the sleeping bag and boots in the attic and shook out any spiders on the lawn. They brewed fresh coffee and packed some in a large mason jar mixed with cream and sugar for the horned boy and in smaller jars for themselves. Ben found a basket to put all that in, along with the kale-granola-raisin breakfast bars, the soda, a pack of matches that Jack helpfully wrapped in plastic, and a baggie of pretzels.

  When the three of them got to the stone cabin, the golden knife was no longer lying on the table. The horned boy had come and gone again.

  And he’d taken their note with him.

  CHAPTER 7

  Gifted, they’d called Ben, since the elf woman touched his brow and a port-wine stain bloomed on his temple and he’d come home able to hear their music and make it, too. Gifted, they said, when he composed songs on a child-size ukulele that no adult could replicate. Gifted, when he played a tune on a xylophone that made their babysitter weep. Gifted, his sister called him, when he charmed faeries in the woods and saved her life. (And doomed it too, maybe.)

  But what he could do scared him. He couldn’t control it.

  Parents like theirs were kind of lazy and forgetful about things like paying bills on time or buying groceries or license renewals, but not about art. They might not make a dinner that was more than corn flakes and hard-boiled eggs or remember to sign field trip consent forms or bother about bedtimes, but they knew what to do with a musical prodigy. They called friends, and by the time Ben was twelve and Hazel was eleven, they had a referral to some crazy school where Ben could “fulfill his potential.” At the audition, his playing of the piano made the entire admissions committee sit, rapt and completely ensorcelled for a half hour. It was terrifying, he’d told Hazel later, like playing to a room full of the dead. Once he was done, they began to move again and told him how amazing his playing had been. He’d felt sick inside.

  And he felt even sicker when Mom and Dad told him they couldn’t afford to send him there. He wanted to go more than he’d ever wanted anything, because as strange as his audition had been, he knew learning about music was the only chance he had at controlling his power.

  When the scholarship came in months later, long after he was sure they’d forgotten about him, he felt as though he’d won the lottery. They all went out for ice cream to celebrate, and he ate half of Hazel’s along with his own.

  He wasn’t just glad he was going to a fantastic school to learn music. He was glad they were moving away. He was scared that Hazel was going to get hurt—really hurt, the kind of hurt people didn’t come back from—and it would be because of him. He still remembered how invulnerable he’d felt when he realized that his music had immobilized the water hag, how amazed he’d been by the sight of his sister with the sword. He’d felt like they were born to be heroes. But actually hunting faeries was terrifying. And while he could make excuses to stop for a while, it was just a matter of time before she got fed up with him and went out on her own.

  Dad rented out the house in Fairfold, and they got a cheap apartment in Philadelphia, where only a fraction of their stuff fit. Hazel didn’t like it—didn’t like anything about it. She didn’t like that you could hear the neighbors through the walls. She didn’t like the way she felt tired all the time there, even though her mother told her that was just adolescence and it happened to everyone. She didn’t like the noises of the city or the smell of exhaust and rotting garbage outside the windows. She didn’t like her public school, where her new friends made fun of her when she talked about faeries. She didn’t like that she wasn’t allowed to roam around by herself. And, most of all, she d
idn’t like not being a knight anymore.

  When she’d made the bargain, she’d thought only Ben would go away, not that she’d have to go with him. Not that the whole family would go.

  “Think about all the takeout we can get,” their mother had said, clearly remembering her favorite restaurants from when she was in art school. “We can have bowls of pho one night and tacos the next and injera with doro wat after that.”

  Hazel had made a face. “I don’t want to eat any of those things. I don’t even know what they are.”

  “Then think about your brother,” their father had told her, not particularly sternly, ruffling Hazel’s hair fondly as if he thought she was being adorably childish. “Wouldn’t you want him to support you if you were following your dream?”

  “My dream is to go back home,” Hazel had said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “You just haven’t found the thing that you’re good at yet,” her mother said, smiling. And that was that.

  Hazel knew what she was good at; she just didn’t know how to explain it. That’s not true, she wanted to say. I’m good at killing monsters. But her mother didn’t need to know that, and it would be foolish to say it. Mom might be horrified or scared. Mom might start paying attention to where she went and what she did. Besides, it was a delicious secret. She liked thinking of it almost as much as she’d liked the weight of her blade in her hand.

  And if there was another part of her that wished her parents were the kind who might protect her from needing to kill monsters all on her own, at eleven she already knew that was unrealistic. It wasn’t as if her parents didn’t love her; it was just that they forgot things a lot and sometimes those things were important.

  Which meant for two years, Ben learned to play different instruments (including wineglasses and a tuba) at the fancy school, while Hazel learned a new skill—how to be an unrepentant flirt.

  Hazel wasn’t the best in her classes, nor was she the worst. She might have been good at a sport, but she never bothered to try out for one. Instead, after school, she signed up for self-defense classes at the Y and practiced techniques she learned from YouTube videos of sword fighting. But, at twelve, Hazel discovered something she was weirdly better at than other people—making boys squirm.