The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

  “What are you talking about?” He was staring at her as though he really had no idea.

  “You know what I did.” She hated having to explain. She hated that Jack was looking at her, all concern, and how differently he’d see her once he realized what she’d done. He’d said that anyone who offered up their heart on a silver platter deserved what they got, but he was wrong.

  “Hazel, what you did? You mean when Kerem kissed you?”

  “Obviously that’s what I mean,” Hazel bit out.

  Ben threw up his hands, exasperated. “That’s not what you did—that’s what he did, because he was a jerk and he was thirteen and totally confused about everything. He was freaking out. Look, I’ve talked to him on Facebook and he’s fine now. He’s got a boyfriend, he’s out, his parents came around. But back then he was freaking out and his parents were freaking out and he wanted to prove he didn’t like me. You were there. That’s all.”

  “I know what happened because of that kiss,” Hazel said, keeping her gaze on the kettle, fixing cups of tea.

  Ben’s voice had gone soft. “That wasn’t because… you can’t blame yourself because I lost control. I kept losing control. I wanted to go to music school because I was already afraid of how much I was losing control. When I saw Kerem with you, the first thing I thought was that maybe I’d enchanted him to like me. Because I’d liked him so much. After what happened, after my teacher—look what I did with my hand. That was a good thing. What happened in Philadelphia was my fault and no one else’s.”

  It was on Hazel’s lips to say that no, it was all her fault, and then she realized how ridiculous that would sound. They had been hiding secrets from each other, resenting each other, and it had all been for nothing. Ben had never blamed her. For so long, her determination to hide this from Ben had been the center of so many of her choices. She felt almost impossibly light without the burden of it. “Smashing your fingers wasn’t a good thing, Ben. What you can do is incredible.”

  “You sold seven fucking years of your life for my scholarship and you never even told me.” Ben still sounded angry, but not with her. “You should have told me. Maybe we could have figured something out.”

  “Well, we have to figure something out,” Jack said, interrupting them. “Tell them the rest.”

  And Hazel did. She told them about the messages, about waking up with mud on her feet, afraid that her debt had come due; she told them about the revel and the Alderking’s words. In turn, Severin told them his story, with Ben nodding along.

  “Why now?” Ben asked. “That’s the question, right? What changed? What is the Alderking up to?”

  “He found some way to control Sorrow,” Hazel said. “Isn’t that it?”

  Jack shook his head. “We shouldn’t be thinking about what changed recently. We should be looking back. Something set him off, made him lose his leash on the wild fey like the townspeople said at the meeting. Eight years ago, the Court in the East was taken over. Could that have pissed him off enough?”

  “Too recent,” Ben said.

  “Who rules there now?” Severin asked, but Jack held up his hands helplessly.

  “I don’t pay attention to names,” he said. “None of it means anything to me.”

  Severin nodded thoughtfully. “I still have some contacts in my father’s court. No one with any real power, but some of the wild fey who knew my mother spoke with me. They told me that a little more than a sesquidecade back, he took another one of the wild fey as a lover. She tarried with a mortal, though, and bore him child. That’s around when other mortals began dying in greater numbers, yes? And that’s when he began in earnest to find a way to control my sister, turning her dead husband’s bones into an enchanted ring.”

  “A sesqui-what?” Hazel asked, a shiver of horror going through her. She’d seen an ivory ring on the Alderking’s finger, but never would have supposed it was carved from a corpse.

  “Sesquidecade. Fifteen years,” Jack said, mouth moving like he tasted something bad. “It’s an SAT word. And the woman you’re talking about is my mother.”

  Ben’s eyebrows went up. Even Severin looked surprised.

  “Your mother?” Hazel asked. She remembered the elf woman in the faerie court, clutching at Jack’s sleeve. There had been real fear in her face.

  Jack nodded. “That’s why she hid me. She was the Alderking’s lover, but he wasn’t very nice, so she took up with a human and wound up with me. That’s why she wanted to leave me with humans, to keep me out of his path. At least until he forgot the slight.”

  Hazel wondered if he’d ever told anyone this story before. Considering the way he was looking at his cup, not meeting any of their eyes, she suspected he hadn’t.

  Severin’s expression was all regret. “If your mother broke faith with him, if she spurned him for a mortal, his vengeance would have been terrible. Not just on the town, not just on that mortal man, but on your mother as well. He would have hurt her.”

  Jack looked sick. “No. She would have told me.”

  “That seems like a good reason to want him dead,” Ben said. “Could she be the one with the sword?”

  Hazel hesitated, then spoke. “She did say an odd thing to me. When I told her I was there looking for Ainsel at the revel, she seemed to know something, but kept implying I should shut up.”

  Jack rubbed a frustrated hand over his mouth. “She made that odd remark about my being there to save you. Does this mean that people at that town meeting were right? This is all my fault?”

  “No,” Hazel said. “Never. This is never your fault.”

  “But Jack’s mother—what’s her name?” Severin asked.

  “Eolanthe,” Jack said.

  “I knew her, once.” Severin gave Jack a strange look, one that made Hazel think he knew her better than a little. “She’s very beautiful, very clever, but no swordswoman. If she managed to take Heartsworn from Hazel, whether by trickery or force or out of the generosity of her night heart, she would still need someone to wield it.”

  “So, okay, play this through,” Ben said. “Jack tells his elf mother offhandedly about this girl he knows, maybe says she found a sword. So Eolanthe decides to, what? Persuade Hazel to break the curse on Severin? Free a sleeping prince of Faerie—but then not give him the one thing that would let him face his father and defeat Heartseeker?”

  Jack nodded. He’d started pacing the floor, not looking at any of them, caught up in his own thoughts. “I might have said something about Hazel and her sword, when I was younger. And Hazel probably wouldn’t need a lot of convincing to break Severin’s curse.”

  Hazel laughed. “Ben would need even less.”

  Her brother made a face at her.

  “Your mother doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d ally with anyone,” Hazel said. “Least of all me. She didn’t like me much.”

  “What about just taking the sword?” Ben asked. “Maybe she stole it and then left a bunch of cryptic crap to confuse us. Made us chase our own tails while she put her plan in motion.”

  “So what about Severin’s curse, then?” Hazel asked. “Why bother breaking it?”

  “It could be a distraction for the Alderking,” Jack said, looking over at Ben with a frown, as though they were making a particularly devious plan rather than guessing at one. “Plus it’s the proof that Hazel had Heartsworn. Only Heartsworn could smash the casket and break the curse. So no point in stealing a sword until you’re sure.”

  Severin raised his delicate brows. “Then we are back to her needing a swordsman.”

  Ben shrugged. “You said she was pretty and clever. Maybe she found someone who was good with a weapon and wanted to stop the Alderking. There have to be a few bravos at court, right?”

  “Well, there’s at least one,” Hazel said with a snort that had nothing to do with humor. “I want to stop him.”

  “There’s a way to send my mother a message,” Jack said, going to the cutlery drawer and pulling out a slender steak knife.
“Blood summons blood.”

  Hazel trailed after him as he went out the kitchen door to the backyard. “If she has the sword, I’ll promise her anything for its return. If she wants me, I will be hers. Whatever must be sworn, I will swear it.”

  “Jack,” Hazel said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It might not be her,” said Ben. “It could be someone none of us has ever met—it could be someone that none of us recall meeting.”

  “Or it could be the person who hid her son from the Alderking and has good reason to hate him. Which is more likely?” Jack’s face was haunted. “If we don’t get that sword, Carter is as good as dead.”

  “Jack,” Hazel said again, but Jack didn’t turn, didn’t flinch. He thrust the point of the knife into his index finger, lifted up a leaf and wrote on it with blood, the way anyone else might scrawl on paper with a pen. Then he whispered something over it and sent it swirling up into the air.

  But Hazel had seen his offer: MOTHER, IF YOU HAVE HEARTSWORN, BRING IT TO THE HOUSE AT THE END OF RIVER ROAD AND WHATEVER YOU ASK OF ME WILL BE YOURS.

  After the message was sent, they waited.

  Ben thought he remembered the name Ainsel from somewhere and, taking his mug of honeyed tea, went to look through some of the books in the den to see if he could find the word in one of their indexes. Severin went out to the shed to collect Ben’s ax and see what other weaponry he could sharpen into usefulness.

  Without her secrets, Hazel felt a horrible, anxious vulnerability. Shadows waited to flood in. To keep busy, she went to find all the iron and scissors in the house, all the salt and gravedirt, all the oatmeal and berries and charms. After Severin brought the weapons back inside, she spread some on every lintel and across each doorway.

  When that was done, she sat down on one of the chairs and dozed. Whatever magic allowed her to serve the Alderking without sleeping seemed to be wearing off. Exhaustion overtook her.

  She woke to find the sun going down in a blaze of molten gold. Upstairs she heard Severin’s voice, a low warm mumble, and then a bark of laughter from her brother.

  “Hey,” Jack said softly, coming over to where she was. His jeans were hanging low on his hip bones, exposing a slice of warm, brown skin where his T-shirt rode up. She imagined resting her hand there and curled her fingers to keep from touching him. “I just came to wake you before you… changed.”

  Hazel flinched. She’d nearly forgotten.

  “None of this is your fault,” he said. “Just so we’re clear.”

  “I lost the sword. I freed Severin. I made a stupid bargain. It’s at least somewhat my fault.” She began to finger-comb her hair and then braid it out of her face. “But I’m not letting her take you back if you don’t want to go.”

  He gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “Eh, it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses.”

  Hazel made a face. “I’m pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that.”

  “Maybe,” he said, then shook his head. “It’s always been an elaborate game of pretend here in Fairfold, you know? Pretend you’re human. Pretend no one thinks it’s weird when Mom calls the relatives and tries to explain how she actually had twins, but one was really sick and that’s why she didn’t tell anyone about him. Pretend everyone believes her. Pretend that Dad doesn’t think it’s strange that I exist at all. Pretend no one in town stares. Pretend that I haven’t been sneaking off to the woods for all these years. Pretend I’m never tempted to leave. Pretend I can’t do magic. My life has always been a powder keg waiting for a match.”

  “Well, hello, match,” Hazel said, pointing to herself with both thumbs, but she smiled as she did it, hoping to take the sting out of the words.

  “Hello, match.” Somehow his snagged-silk voice gave them an entirely different meaning. She thought about waking in the forest, about the smell of the pine needles in the air and the feeling of his mouth on hers with the uneven ground rough against her back, and squirmed.

  But they were far from the heady, pine-soaked woods.

  And she still hadn’t told him the thing.

  “I like you,” Hazel blurted abruptly, the words coming out all wrong, like an accusation.

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Why else would I say it?” Now he knew and now they could go back to talking about colleges or killing things or strategy or something—anything—else. Now they could go back to worrying about his being taken away to Faerie. At least he knew. At least she’d said it.

  “If you like me, why do you sound so mad about it?”

  “I’m not angry,” she said. She sounded angry, though. She sounded furious.

  He sighed. “You don’t have to tell me that you like me. Just because I am having a bad day or because I told you—you’re not obligated.”

  “I know that.” She did. She did know that. She’d loved Jack for ages, loved him for so long that her love was an ache that never left her body. Jack, who kissed her like nothing else mattered. Jack, who knew her too well. She’d loved him and had believed he couldn’t ever like her, had believed it so firmly that even with the memory of his saying he did, she still felt as though he was going to snatch it back, declare that he’d made a mistake.

  He probably should take it back. She was a mess. She couldn’t even tell a boy she liked him the way she was supposed to.

  “You don’t owe this to me,” Jack said. “And if this is because you don’t think it matters, since I won’t be here to find out you lied—”

  She realized abruptly that he really didn’t believe her. Her declaration was going even worse than she’d thought. “No. No, I’m not lying.”

  “Hazel,” he started, voice flat.

  “Look,” she told him, interrupting, hoping she’d get it right this time. “After I made that bargain, I thought I was going to be taken away by the Folk. And I could have been! I didn’t want to get close to anyone, okay? I’m not good at getting close to people. I don’t have boyfriends. I don’t date. I hook up with boys at parties, and I definitely don’t tell them that I like them. I’m not good at it, okay? That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “But I’ve known you all my life, Hazel. Your brother is my best friend. I hear the stuff you say to each other and I hear a lot of the stuff you don’t say, too. I know you don’t want to get close to anyone, but it’s not just because of the faeries.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “We shouldn’t talk about this.”

  “No,” she said, although she felt cold all over. “Say what it is you’re thinking.”

  He sighed. “I mean, you’re the one who showed me how to forage for food in the woods. We were, what, nine or ten when you showed me how to find stuff to eat? Do you remember why you’d learned that—why you were such an expert? Or how about the time that you stayed for dinner at my house and hid food in your napkin to eat later because you weren’t sure your parents would remember to feed you, but we all were supposed to pretend things were fine. The parties your parents used to throw were legendary, but I’ve heard the stories about you and your brother eating food out of the dog’s bowl. Heard you tell the story, too, like it was a joke. You talk about your childhood like it was just wild, bohemian fun, but I remember how much it wasn’t fun for you.”

  Hazel blinked at him. She’d been so good at shutting out memories she didn’t like, so good at locking them away. None of what he said should have surprised her, they were only facts about her life, after all. But she found herself surprised anyway. All that stuff was so long ago that she’d felt like it didn’t matter anymore. “My parents are fine now. They grew up. They got better at stuff.”

  He nodded. “I know. I just also know you always think it’s down
to you to fix things, but it doesn’t have to be. Some people are trustworthy.”

  “I was going to save Fairfold.”

  “You can’t save a place. Sometimes you can’t even save a person.”

  “Can you save yourself?” Hazel asked. It felt important, as though his answer would be the answer, as though somehow he might really know.

  He shrugged. “We’ve all got to try, right?”

  “So do you believe me? That I like you?” she asked. But he didn’t get to answer.

  Ben strode into the room triumphantly, holding a book up in the air. “I found it. I found it! I am a genius! A memory genius. I am like one of those people who count cards in Vegas!”

  Hazel stood up. “Ainsel?”

  He nodded. “And by the way, Hazel, this was in your room.”

  She recognized it with alarm. The spine read, FOLKLORE OF ENGLAND. It was the book she’d found in the trunk underneath her bed. Had she not understood its significance?

  Her brother flipped it open. “There’s this story from Northumberland about a little kid who won’t go to bed. His mother tells him that if he stays up, the faeries are going to come and take him away. He doesn’t believe her, so he keeps on playing anyway as the hearth fire burns down. In time, a faerie does show up, a pretty little faerie kid who wants to play with him. The boy asks the faerie’s name, and she says, “Ainsel.” Then she asks the boy’s name and he says “my ainsel” with a wicked grin.

  “So they play a little more, and the boy tries to get the fire going. He stokes it, but one of the dying embers rolls out and burns the faerie child’s toe. She howls like crazy, and the huge, scary faerie mother barrels down the chimney. The boy hops into bed, but he can still hear the faerie mother demanding her child name the one who burned her. ‘My ainsel! My ainsel!’ the faerie girl howls. Apparently, ‘my ainsel’ is what ‘my own self’ sounds like when said with a Northumbrian accent, so hearing that, the faerie mother becomes very stern. ‘Well, then,’ she says, grabbing the faerie child by the ear and dragging her up into the chimney, ‘you’ve got no one but yourself to blame.’ And that’s the whole story. Ainsel. My ainsel. My own self.” Ben bowed exaggeratedly.