The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  “And yet,” the Alderking said, gesturing to the air as though that was all the explanation needed. Magic as both question and answer. “We came to your window and carried you through the air to our court, evening after evening. You are the knight you always dreamed of being.”

  Breathe, Hazel told herself. Breathe.

  She remembered the tiredness that had come over her in Philadelphia, a lassitude that had never quite left her. Now, at least, she knew where it had come from—not puberty, as her mother had believed. “I never dreamed of being your knight.”

  “Indeed?” drawled the Alderking, as though he knew the truth of her heart better than she ever could. “I forbade you from telling your day self about our arrangement, but there is no small pleasure in seeing you so astonished.”

  Hazel was speechless. She felt as though she didn’t know herself. As if she’d betrayed her own ideals in some vast and profound way, but she wasn’t yet sure how deep that betrayal went. She remembered her dream of riding beside other knights, of punishing humans with a grin on her face, and shuddered. Was that the person she’d become?

  He laughed. “Well, Sir Hazel, if you haven’t come here as my knight, why have you come?”

  She had to think fast. She had to push away thoughts of her other, untrustworthy self.

  He must not know that she’d been the one to smash Severin’s coffin. Since she’d been awake all the night before, following Ben through the woods, her other self wouldn’t have shown up, couldn’t have been interrogated, couldn’t have revealed anything. And since the Alderking hadn’t wanted her to know about her night self, he wasn’t the mysterious Ainsel. Which meant her knight self might have an ally in his court, someone whom she was working with.

  Hazel’s gaze went to the creature lying at the Alderking’s feet. This was the being to whom she’d rendered a promise, and while it had accepted her vow in the Alderking’s name, maybe it had power over her still.

  “I came here because there’s a monster in Fairfold. I wanted to know how to slay it.”

  His smile was cold as his hand went to lift a silver-chased goblet and bring it to his mouth. A few of his courtiers laughed. “Sorrow, she’s called. A great and fearsome creature, her skin hardened to bark tough enough to bend even faerie metal. You cannot slay her—and before you ask, the only antidote to the sleeping sickness she brings, to the moss that seeps into your veins at her touch, is her sap-like blood. So how about I make you another bargain, Hazel Evans?”

  “What kind of bargain?” Hazel asked.

  “The monster hunts for Severin. After all these long years, I discovered a means to control her. She obeys me now.” He raised his hand to show off a bone ring.

  He spoke on, not noticing her grimace. “Bring me Severin, and I won’t use her might against Fairfold. I will even keep my people in check. Things will return to the way they once were.”

  Hazel was so surprised, she laughed. “Bring you Severin?” He might as well have asked for her to bring him the moon and the stars.

  The Alderking didn’t look particularly amused. He looked impatient. “Yes, that’s the order I intended to give my Hazel, but last night passed without her arrival. That’s two nights you’ve cost me her service, counting this one. She is to hunt down the horned boy—my son, Severin—who’s escaped his confinement. She is to kill anyone he is in league with and drag him before me to face my wrath.”

  Bring him Severin. His son. Her prince. A very real prince.

  Am I actually capable of doing that? Hazel wondered. She was a little worried she was going to laugh again. It all seemed so impossible. “Why me?” she managed.

  “I think it would be appropriate if it were a mortal who defeated him,” the Alderking said. “Your better self would know not to trifle with me, but in case you have some romantic idea of warning my son, let me explain why you ought not do that. You think I have done your people such grievous wrongs, but allow me to demonstrate what I could do without any effort at all.” He turned to one of his knights. “Bring me Lackthorn.”

  A few moments later a fierce-looking goblin with grayish skin and pointed ears came before the Alderking, holding a dirty hat in his hands.

  “What pleasures do I allow you in town, Lackthorn?”

  The goblin shrugged. “Only a few. I steal the cream and break some dishes. When a woman threw dirty water on me, I drowned her. Nothing more than you said I might do.”

  Hazel was astonished at the casualness with which he listed awful things. But no one else seemed surprised. The Alderking was looking down on him as though these were normal faerie caprices. Maybe to him, they were. “You didn’t always let them go so far, though, did you?”

  “I have allowed more leeway as I have come to see what a blight you mortals are. But attend closely. Lackthorn, if I gave you leave to do what you’d like, what would you have done?” The Alderking cut a glance at Hazel.

  “What would I have done?” The little goblin laughed in such a gluttonous, awful way that the sound shivered up Hazel’s spine. “I’d set fires and burn up their houses with them inside. I’d pinch and pinch them until they ached to their very bones. I’d curse them so they’d pine away, then I’d gnaw on what was left. What would I do if you gave me leave? What wouldn’t I do?”

  “Did you know that the meat of the hazelnut was once thought to be the repository of all wisdom?” the Alderking said. “Be wise, Hazel. Lackthorn is one of the least dangerous of my troop. Imagine the answer the Bone Maiden might give. Or Rawhead. Or my splendid, monstrous Sorrow. Do not test my goodwill. Bring me Severin or I will harrow Fairfold. I have plans afoot and I would not like them to be interrupted. Sorrow hunts for him now, but I need her for other things.”

  Hazel felt as though she couldn’t quite get her breath. Music still played in the background, people still whirled around, laughing and dancing, but it all went a little blurry and odd in her peripheral vision. She seemed to have been robbed of her power of speech. He’d made a threat so vast and terrible she couldn’t quite believe she’d heard it right.

  Hazel could tell from the Alderking’s expression that he no more expected Hazel to speak than he expected a toad to turn into a toadstool, but she had to say something.

  Clearing her throat, she spoke. “If you set Sorrow on the town, I’ll stop you.”

  He had a cruel laugh. “You? Like a wren stops a storm? Go now, Sir Hazel, and delight in the revel. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin your hunt. I will give you two days and two nights.”

  The knight with the screaming faces on his shoulder plates stepped to her elbow. A lutist began playing. Lackthorn made a bow and disappeared into the crowd. Hazel knew she was dismissed.

  “Oh,” the Alderking said, and she turned back to him. “One more thing. My son has a sword—a sword he stole from me. Bring it here and I will forgive your seven-year debt. Now, aren’t you pleased that I’ve given you this task?”

  “How long have I served you?” Hazel said. “I made that vow when I was almost eleven. I’m sixteen now. That’s five years, give or take.”

  “But you’ve only served me half that time,” said the Alderking. “You owe me all your daylight hours yet.”

  Numbly, she began to move through the crowd. Finally, she found Jack, standing near a table set with golden plates piled high with ripped open-pomegranates whose ruby beads clung to the fruit’s wet, membranous skin; dusky plums; and grapes so purple they were black.

  These are his people. She’d known it intellectually, but really seeing, really believing, had taken until that moment. This was all familiar to Jack, this hidden, terrifying, beautiful, awful place. These terrifying, cruel people.

  But even knowing that, he was still the only familiar thing in a sea of strangeness.

  “What did he say?” Jack asked, looking puzzled but not displeased when she took his hand. “Did you find out anything?”

  Hazel shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him then and there, with all the eyes and e
ars around them. Anyway, she reminded herself, it was just one more secret, one more thing she couldn’t say, just one more thing she was going to have to figure out how to fix.

  Step one: Figure out if her nighttime self was a villain.

  Step two: Find out who was leaving her notes. Figure out if it was the same person who’d gotten her to smash Severin’s coffin. Figure out if that was the same person who had her sword.

  Step three: Figure out whether Ainsel was a friend or another enemy.

  Step four: Figure out how she was supposed to bring Severin to the Alderking.

  It was enough to make her want to sit down on the ground and start to cry. It was too much. But there was no one else, so it couldn’t be too much. It had to be exactly enough. It had to be what she could handle, and she had to handle it.

  “You want to do something before we go back?” Jack looked impish and oddly relaxed. “We could dance.”

  “No dancing,” she said with a forced grin. “That’s one of the rules.”

  He took her hand and drew her across the floor of the hollow hill, seeming to step outside the Jack she’d known most of her life, the Jack who was her brother’s best friend, the Jack who was safe and entirely off-limits. “I won’t let you dance until you wear the leather on your boots through. I won’t even let you dance until dawn. Now, isn’t that a handsome promise?”

  The revel was as beautiful as it was awful. Maybe he wanted to show the beauty to her, to someone from his other life. There were so many things she couldn’t be honest about that she understood the allure for him to be able to be honest about this.

  She rolled her eyes, but after the Alderking’s threats, she craved a distraction. “Promises, promises.”

  A shadow passed over his face. Then he grinned and pulled her toward the music.

  As they got closer, the songs crept deeper into her mind. The ache she’d first felt when she came to the revel returned, pulling at her, sinking down into her bones, and making her body move of its own volition.

  The airs were sweet and wild, full of reckless stories of bravery and honor and chance that she’d lived on when she was little. A jolt of fierce joy shivered through her, and she spun toward the other dancers. The music caught her up and bore her along, leaving her feeling giddy and a little scared and then giddy again. Jack’s hand was in hers, then trailing over her waist, and then gone. She looked for him, but there were too many others dancing, all of them whirling and turning in a circle around the fiddler at their center. A girl with a crowd of braids, a heavy brow, and upturned features laughed in a way that was almost a shriek. A boy with clawed hands dragged them over another boy’s shoulder. Above them, the curve of the hill seemed as distant as the night sky, a canopy of roots and glowing, darting lights. Beside her, Jack’s body moved in parallel, occasionally crushed against hers, warm and strong and not at all out of reach. Hazel danced and danced, until her feet were sore and her muscles ached, and still she danced. She danced until all her cares were swept away. She danced until an arm closed around her waist and pulled her from the circle.

  They collapsed together on the packed earthen floor. Jack was laughing, his brow wet with sweat. “It’s good, right? Like nothing else.”

  She felt abruptly dizzy and also as though she had suffered a terrible loss. She crawled back toward the whirling faeries. It seemed to her in that moment that if she just joined them again, she would be okay.

  “Hey, whoa!” He grabbed her again, pulling her farther from the dance, causing her to have to stagger to her feet. “Hazel, don’t. Come on, sweetheart, time to get going. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would get you so bad.”

  Sweetheart. The word hung in the air, pulling her halfway out of her fugue. But, no, he couldn’t have meant anything by it. Sweetheart was what you called lost cats and adorable toddlers and dames in old-timey movies. Hazel blinked at him, her head starting to clear.

  He laughed again, this time a little uncertainly. “Hazel?”

  She nodded, embarrassed. “I’m okay now.”

  He slung his arm around her shoulders, giving her a half hug. “Good.”

  At that moment, a girl ran up from the dance and grabbed ahold of his collar. As Hazel started to object, the girl pressed her lips to Jack’s.

  His arm slid free of Hazel, his grip going slack, his eyes fluttering closed. The girl had a wide red mouth, a bluish tint to her skin, blue roses braided into her messy brown hair, and the kind of unearthly beauty that caused sailors to steer straight for the heart of storms. Hazel had no idea how they knew each other or even if they knew each other, but watching the muscles of his throat move, watching the faerie girl’s hand travel across the bottom of his shirt, fingers sliding underneath, made shame heat Hazel’s cheeks. She didn’t know what to feel and desperately wanted to stop feeling entirely. Jack broke the kiss, looking toward Hazel, clearly dazed.

  Cups of what appeared to be amber wine were passing by, carried by a creature in golden armor. The girl swept one into her hand, put it to her lips, and drank deeply. Then she turned to Hazel.

  And kissed her, full and deep. Startled and amazed, Hazel didn’t pull away, didn’t draw back. She felt the softness of the girl’s lips and the coolness of her tongue. A moment later Hazel tasted wine as the girl tipped it into Hazel’s mouth from her own.

  No food or drink. That was one of the important rules, one of the big ones—because after you have their food, anything else tastes like dust and ashes. Or you go mad and wind up wearing a giant mushroom for a hat, running through town, believing that you were being chased by an army of grigs. Or possibly both at once.

  So it wasn’t like Hazel didn’t know how foolish she’d been. Or how screwed she was.

  It tasted as though starlight was slipping down her throat. She smiled stupidly at Jack. Then there was a great roaring in her ears and nothing more.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ben stood in the doorway of Hazel’s room, looking in disbelief at the note on his sister’s bed, a ripped piece of notebook paper with scrawls in ballpoint pen:

  Don’t get mad at Jack. I made him take me. I just want you to know I’m okay and I’m not alone.

  He punched the wall with his bad hand, wincing at the impact, frowning at the flakes of paint that chipped off onto his fingers. Ben was furious—at her, at himself, at the world.

  He didn’t understand why Hazel wasn’t boasting to him about freeing their prince, why she’d let Ben tromp through the wet woods, making a fool of himself, instead of telling him what she’d done.

  Maybe she was trying to protect his feelings. Which made him unbearably pathetic.

  Hazel was bigger than life; she always had been. Always trying to protect people—protect the town, protect their parents from having to confront that they’d let a lot of stuff slide, protect him from having to face his own cowardice after he’d quit hunting. While something was attacking the school and everyone else was panicking, she’d been inside, helping Molly. He remembered how she’d come through those doors with that familiar swagger, the one that said she didn’t need magic, didn’t need any faerie blessing.

  Ben told stories. Hazel became those stories.

  She was brave. And she was an idiot, too, running off like this.

  “Ben?” his mom called from downstairs. “Is everything okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I’m fine,” he called back. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Well, come down here. And bring your sister.”

  Mom was in the kitchen, wearing one of Dad’s big, paint-covered shirts, pulling old stuff out of the fridge to throw away. She looked up when he came in, a plastic container of moldy yogurt in one hand. “Your father called. He wants us to come up and stay with him in Queens for a couple of days.”

  “What? When?”

  She chucked the yogurt into the bin. “As soon as you and your sister are ready. I really don’t like this town sometimes. The stuff that’s been going on gives me the creeps. Where is Hazel
?”

  Ben sighed. “I’ll find her.”

  “Pack light. Both of you.”

  For a moment Ben wanted to ask her if having the creeps meant she was scared. He wanted to know how she managed to pretend bad stuff wasn’t really that bad, managed to pretend it so hard that sometimes Ben thought he was crazy for remembering.

  He went outside. Not really knowing what to do, he sat on the steps for the better part of an hour, picking foxtails and knotting their stems until the weeds snapped, staring up at the moon in the still-bright sky. It was his obligation as a sibling to cover for Hazel, but there was no way Mom wasn’t going to find out she was gone. Finally, he banged back through the screen door.

  “Hazel’s not here,” he said.

  Mom turned toward him. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean?” he said. “She’s gone. She’s not here. She left hours ago, probably trying to figure out what’s actually going on in town.”

  Mom looked at him as though he wasn’t making any sense. “But that’s dangerous.”

  Ben snorted and started up the stairs toward his room. “Yeah, I know.”

  He tried Jack’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. Hazel’s was in the next room. Ben flopped down onto his bed, exhaustion overwhelming him. He’d been up all the night before. He had no idea what to do. Lying there, pondering, it was easy for his eyes to drift closed. And then he was asleep, on top of his bed, clothes still on.

  When he woke, it was due to a cool breeze coming through the open window. He blinked stupidly at the darkness outside. He had no idea how long he’d been sleeping, but he knew the gnawing at the pit of his stomach was instinct kicking in. Something was nearby. Adrenaline and dread and the kind of excitement that turns skin to ice flooded his veins.