The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  She’d look at boys and smile if they caught her looking.

  She’d twirl her red curls around her finger and bite her lip.

  She’d prop up her boobs with her arm, the desk, or one of the new underwire bras she persuaded Mom to buy for her—all of them silky and brightly colored.

  She’d pretend to do badly in all her classes—once or twice because it was true and then chronically when it wasn’t.

  Flirting didn’t mean anything to her. There was no plan, no goal. It was just a little rush, just a way to be seen in a place where it would be easy to drown in invisibility. She never meant to hurt anyone. She had no idea that was even possible. She was twelve and bored and really didn’t know what she was doing.

  While she was flirting, Ben was falling in love for the first time, with a boy named Kerem Aslan. They met every day after school to whisper together over their homework and sneak kisses when they thought no one else was looking. Sometimes Ben would play snippets of a song he was working on, a thing he’d never done with anyone but Hazel before. She still remembered the way she’d seen Ben trace the boy’s name along his arm in water. Aslan, like the lion from Narnia. Kerem looked a little bit like a lion, too, with golden brown eyes and shaggy black hair.

  Hazel and Ben went from having everything in common to having nearly nothing. They went to different schools, had different friends, different stories, different everything. Hazel was miserable, and Ben had never been happier.

  But then Kerem’s family found out about the relationship and his parents called to have a horrible awkward talk with Dad and Dad hung up on them. And Ben cried at the kitchen table, head buried in his folded arms, no matter how many times Dad hugged him and told him it was going to be okay.

  “It’s not,” he whispered, insisting he would never feel any less miserable than he did in that moment. He insisted his heart was broken forever.

  At lunch the next day Ben texted Hazel to say that Kerem had been avoiding him and talking shit to their mutual friends. After her classes were over, Hazel decided to walk to his school instead of going straight home. She knew his last period was a long individual study on the flute. After that, they could go get gelato at the place that poured a shot of espresso over it and maybe Ben would cheer up.

  No one stopped her from going in; she slipped past the security guard and headed down the hall to the bench next to the music room. Perched there, she was surprised to see Kerem Aslan of the lion eyes and lion name walking down the hall toward her.

  “Hey, little sister,” he said. “You look pretty today.”

  Hazel smiled. It was automatic, half a reaction to a compliment and half the familiarity of smiling at him. She’d smiled at him a thousand times before.

  “You know I always liked you. Whenever I came over to the apartment, I’d ask if you wanted to come hang out with us, but Ben said that you were busy. He said you had a boyfriend.” Kerem sounded as if he was flirting, but there was something in his face too close to fear for the words to be convincing.

  “That’s not true,” Hazel said. She’d seen him and Ben, heads bent together as they whispered and laughed, oblivious to the rest of the world.

  “So you don’t have a boyfriend?” Kerem asked. She could tell from his tone that he was misunderstanding her on purpose, but it still flustered her.

  “No, I mean—” she began.

  And then, with a sideways glance down the hall, he leaned in and kissed her.

  It was her first kiss, outside of grandmas and elderly aunts, outside of parents and brothers, despite all the flirting she’d done. His mouth was soft and warm, and while she didn’t kiss him back, she didn’t exactly squirm away.

  It wasn’t nice, her hesitation. It lasted only a moment, but it ruined everything.

  “Stop it,” she said, shoving him. Some other musical-prodigy kids looked over. A teacher came out of her classroom and asked if everything was okay. Hazel’s voice must have been louder than she’d thought.

  But everything wasn’t okay, because Ben was staring at them. Then there were only the sight of her brother’s backpack, the heels of his black Chucks, and the slam of the music room door.

  “You did that on purpose,” Hazel accused. “You wanted him to see.”

  “I told you I liked you,” Kerem said, raising his eyebrows, but he didn’t sound all that triumphant.

  Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking as she waited for Ben outside his classroom, listening to the strains of music that escaped the soundproofing. She wanted to tell her brother what really happened, explain that she hadn’t wanted to be kissed. But she didn’t get the chance, because a few minutes later his music instructor collapsed from a myocardial infarction that nearly killed her. The paramedics came, with Ben and Hazel’s parents arriving soon after. Ben wouldn’t talk to anyone, not then, not on the way home.

  He’d played music when he was upset, when he was probably angry, and his instructor’s heart had stopped. Hazel knew he must be blaming himself. Hazel knew he must be blaming the magic, and she knew he must be blaming her.

  By the time she went up to Ben’s room to try to apologize, he was sitting on the floor, door open, cradling his left hand.

  “Ben?” she said. He looked up with haunted, red-rimmed eyes.

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” he told her, voice weak, and she realized what he must have done to get his hand like that. He’d slammed it in the door. More than once, probably. The skin wasn’t just red, it was purple, and his fingers were on the wrong angle.

  “Mom!” Hazel screamed. “Mom!”

  “It has to stop,” he said. “I’ve got to stop. Somebody has to stop me.”

  They took a taxi to the hospital, where the ER doctors confirmed that he’d broken bones, lots of them. His instructors confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to play anymore, at least not for a long while. He’d have to wait until the bones set and do exercises to give them greater mobility. He’d have to be very careful and diligent.

  Even though Ben never said a thing to their parents about what he’d done or why he’d done it, even though Hazel never told, they got the message and moved the family back to Fairfold not long after, back to their sprawling mess of a house and their old life.

  Ben was neither careful nor diligent with his hands.

  He listened to music, lots of it. He gorged on music. But after they got back, he wouldn’t even hum along. He didn’t play again, which meant the next time a tourist went missing in Fairfold, Hazel hunted alone.

  It was different without him, and it was hard going back into the forest after all the time away. The strap for her sword—the one that had allowed her to carry it on her back—no longer fit right. She had to adjust it for her hip, although that felt wrong, too. She felt silly, almost a teenager, returning to a child’s game. Even the woods had become unfamiliar. The paths weren’t in the same places, and she kept finding herself putting a foot wrong when she tried to race through them the way she used to.

  But she was taller and stronger and determined to handle things on her own—determined to show her brother that she didn’t need him, determined to show herself she still could be a knight. She knew the trick to hunting the Folk was to keep your wits about you, to remember they were tricksy, to remember that the grass under your feet might move sideways, that you might be led in a circle. Hazel had turned her socks inside out before she set off, and her pockets were full of oatmeal, just as her grandmother had shown her and Ben when they were little kids. She was ready. She had to go back out there. She had to find the monsters. She had to fight the monsters, all of them, until she got to the monster at the heart of the forest and ended the corruption forever so that everyone could be safe always.

  Sometimes, if she thought too much about that, her heart would race and panic would set in. Her quest was impossible, and she didn’t know how much time she had left.

  Panic was what she had to guard against, because it was easy to panic whenever she remembered she’d
pledged seven years of her life to the faeries. And after panic came despair—and once despair set in, it was harder and harder to shake it off again. The trick was not to let herself think about it too much. Anything that stopped her from thinking would do. Anything that kept her from pressing her hand against her chest to feel the thudding of her own heart and know that each beat was another moment lost.

  It took her three long days to find the missing girl, a tall and skinny teenager named Natalie. When Hazel did find her, the girl was still alive but unconscious, hanging from the branches of a thorn tree. A thin drizzle of her blood dripped from one of her arms into a wooden bowl. Two short faerie men with long reddened noses and pale eyes busied themselves adjusting the ropes, making the girl spin, making the blood drip faster.

  Hazel had never found a tourist alive before.

  She knew what the creatures with the girl were from stories, although she’d never seen one. They were redcaps, terrifying monsters who delighted in butchery and dyed their garments in blood.

  For a moment Hazel looked at them and wondered what the hell she was doing. She’d gotten used to living in the city. She’d gotten used to a world without monsters. She’d gotten soft and scared. The pommel of the black-painted sword wobbled in her sweaty hands.

  I am a knight. I am a knight. I am a knight. She repeated the words, lips moving soundlessly over them, but she wasn’t sure that she entirely knew what they meant anymore. What she did know was that if she didn’t get herself together, a girl was going to die.

  Hazel burst from the brush, slashing downward. The first redcap cried out and then slumped over, entirely silent. Her stomach lurched, but she whirled on the second, ready to counter his attack, ready to slice him in half. She might have won, too. She was strong and fast, holding a glorious golden sword, and she’d taken the two redcaps by surprise. But there was a third she hadn’t seen, and he knocked her to the ground with a single sharp blow.

  They cut Natalie’s throat. She had such little blood left anyway, they said, and the new one was much fresher. A rope went around Hazel’s ankles, and they were preparing to haul her up like the girl. She felt dizzy and sick and more scared than she’d ever felt in her life. She wanted to call for Ben, but there was no Ben to call for. She had only herself, and she’d failed. She hadn’t saved anyone.

  She hung upside down from the tree for hours, blood rushing to her head, before the redcaps departed for more firewood. Steeling herself, she swung over to where Natalie hung. The horror of the dead flesh under her hands was awful, but she climbed the girl’s body until she could pull herself up onto a branch and undo the rope at her ankles. Tears wetted her cheeks, although she didn’t remember crying.

  She found her sword, stacked with an assortment of other stolen things, and went home, shaking so hard she was afraid she was going to shake apart.

  That night, she’d discovered that thirteen-year-old ferocity was no match for ancient monsters, not alone. She had to admit that her knighthood was lost, along with Ben’s music. When she finally made it home, she stood outside Ben’s door for a long time, palm pressed against the painted wood. But she didn’t knock.

  Hazel had told him that she was sorry, that she had never meant for Kerem to kiss her, had never wanted it, had told him a thousand times. But in her heart of hearts she knew that wasn’t entirely true. She’d flirted with Kerem at the apartment, because he was a cute guy and Ben had everything. She hadn’t wanted the kiss when it happened, but she had thought about it before. And she’d let it happen, when maybe if she hadn’t, Ben wouldn’t have lost his music. Maybe he wouldn’t have given up their quest, either. Maybe Natalie would still be alive.

  She’d told Ben that the kiss meant nothing. And she wanted it to mean nothing.

  She wanted to prove it meant nothing.

  But no matter how many other boys she kissed, she couldn’t bring Ben’s music back.

  CHAPTER 8

  The night the prince went missing from his coffin, Mom made spaghetti with jarred sauce for dinner, along with shake cheese from the green can, and frozen peas. It was a typical deadline dinner, so familiar that Hazel craved it when she was sick the way other kids craved chicken soup. Dad was already gone and was going to stay in New York through the week for meetings. Mom tried to get them to talk about their day, but Ben and Hazel just stared at their food and answered stiltedly, too distracted by everything that had happened to make much of an effort at conversation. According to their mother, the mayor had already reached out to a local sculptor—a friend of hers—to inquire whether it might be possible to create a fake version of the prince, so his absence wouldn’t affect tourism. The official story was that vandals had stolen him.

  “When I was a girl, we all adored him,” Mom said. “I remember there was this one—oh, you know her, Leonie’s mom—anyway, she went out to that casket every Saturday with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex it to keep the glass shiny. That’s how obsessed she was.”

  Ben rolled his eyes.

  Mom looked pleased with the reminiscence. “And Diana Collins—Diana Rojas now—tried to wake him up by reenacting that Whitesnake video, rolling around on his casket like it was the hood of a Trans Am, wearing only a string bikini and baby oil. Ah, the eighties, right?” Absently, she rose and crossed the room to pull out an old, beat-up sketchbook from the bottom-most bookshelf. “You want to see something?”

  “Sure,” Hazel said, a little confused. The image of Megan’s mother and baby oil was stuck in her head.

  Mom flipped through the pages, only slightly yellowed by time. There, rendered in No. 2 pencil, in BIC pen, in colored markers, was the prince, asleep. The drawings were okay, not great, and it took Hazel a moment to realize what she was looking at.

  “You drew these,” she said, her voice coming out slightly accusatory.

  Mom laughed. “Oh, I sure did. I used to go out to the woods after school, pretending that I was going to sketch trees and whatnot, but I always wound up drawing him. I did a big painting of him, too, in oils. It was one of the pieces that got me into college.”

  “What happened to it?” Hazel asked.

  Mom shrugged. “Someone bought it off me for a couple of bucks when I was living in Philly. Hung it up in a coffeehouse for a while, but I don’t know where it is now. Maybe I’ll paint another, since he’s gone. I’d hate to forget him.”

  Hazel thought of the knife embedded in the wood of the old table and wondered how gone he truly was.

  After dinner, Mom opened her laptop in front of the television and watched some cooking show while Hazel and Ben stayed in the kitchen, eating grapefruit marmalade on toast for dessert.

  “So what now?” she asked her brother.

  “We better find the prince before Jack’s warnings start coming true.” Then, with a frown, Ben nodded at her hands. “You fall or something?”

  She looked down at them, no longer red, healed to scabbed lines. Something happened last night. The words sat on her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak them out loud.

  After she’d nearly gotten killed by the redcaps all those years ago, after he’d seen the bruises and heard the story, he begged her never to hunt alone again. We’ll figure something out, he promised her, although they never did.

  If he knew she’d made a bargain with the faeries, he’d be really upset. He’d feel bad. And it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it now. “I must have got scraped out in the woods,” she said. “Sticker bush or something. Ah well, totally worth it.”

  “Yeah,” he said faintly, getting up and putting his plate in the sink. “So you think he’s out there, somewhere, bedded down in our old sleeping bag? Eating our stale pretzels?”

  “And drinking the drip coffee of our modern age? It’s a nice thought. I hope so,” Hazel said. “Even if he’s the villainous prince from your stories.”

  Ben snorted. “You remember that?”

  She turned her head, trying to summon up a smile
. “Sure. I remember all of it.”

  He laughed. “God, I haven’t thought about our telling each other all that stuff. It’s so crazy, the idea that we get him. That he woke up in our generation.”

  “There’s got to be a reason,” Hazel said. “Something’s got to be happening out in the forest. Jack’s right about that.”

  “Maybe it’s just time. Maybe his curse is up and he smashed the coffin himself.” Ben shook his head, his mouth lifting at one corner. “If our prince was smart and wanted to be safe from the Alderking, he’d come straight to the center of town. Go door-to-door. He’d be invited to more dinners than a preacher on a Sunday.”

  “He’d be invited to more beds than a preacher on a Sunday,” Hazel put in, to make Ben laugh, because Pastor Kevin was much lusted over by the youth group kids because he used to belong to some semifamous Christian rock band. The horned boy was a way bigger local celebrity, though. If he showed up in the middle of Main Street, the Fairfold Women’s Auxiliary would probably hold a very sexy bake sale in his honor. Ben was right, if the prince didn’t mind hiding from the Alderking in the bedrooms of Fairfold, he’d be set.

  “All this rushing into danger isn’t like you,” Hazel said, finally, because she had to say something.

  Ben nodded, giving her an odd look. “Finding our prince is different.”

  She pushed herself up from the kitchen table. “Well, if you have any brilliant ideas, wake me. I’m heading to bed.”

  “ ’Night,” Ben said cheerfully—maybe a little too cheerfully—and headed for the living room. “I’m going to check the local news. See if they’re sticking to the vandal story.”

  Climbing the stairs, Hazel resolved to try to stay awake as long as she could, hoping to catch whatever called her from her bed the night before. She’d heard stories of people so enchanted that they slipped out of their houses to dance with faerie Folk on full-moon nights, heard stories of people waking up at dawn with raw feet, lying in rings of mushrooms, with a yawning chasm of yearning for things they could no longer recall. If she was going to be used by the Folk, she wanted to know about it.