Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

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.

Of course, there was the possibility that, having used her for whatever service was needed, she wouldn’t be summoned back for a long while, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

In her room, she knelt down and slid an old wooden trunk from underneath her bed. The wood was cracked and warped in places. When she was very little, Ben would hide in it and pretend he was Dracula in his coffin, and then the prince in his. When she was even littler than that, Mom had put her toys and old blankets inside. But now it was the place where her old sword rested, along with a bunch of mementos of her childhood. Rocks with shining mica she’d loved and pocketed on walks through the woods. The silver gum wrapper Jack had folded into the shape of a frog. Her old, makeshift green velvet cape, which was supposed to be part of a Robin Hood costume. A daisy chain so brittle from drying that she didn’t dare touch it or it would fall to pieces.

Those were the things she expected to find when she opened the box. She’d thought she could take out the black-painted sword and stuff it between the mattress and box spring.

It wasn’t there.

The wooden trunk was empty except for a book and a folded-up tunic and pants—ones made from a light silvery-gray material she’d never seen before—and beside them a note in the same eerily familiar hand that wrote the message inside the walnut: 241.

She took out the book. FOLKLORE OF ENGLAND, the spine read. She flipped to here.

It was the story of a farmer who bought a stretch of land that came with a big, hairy, troublesome boggart who’d claimed the land for himself. After some argument, they decided to split the land. The boggart demanded everything that grew above the ground and told the farmer he could have anything below. But the farmer got the better of the boggart by planting potatoes and carrots. At the harvest, the boggart got only the useless tops. He was furious. He raged and shouted and stamped his feet. But he’d made the bargain, and, like all faeries, he was bound to his word. The next year, the boggart demanded whatever was below ground but again the farmer got the better than him. He planted corn, so that the boggart was left with only stringy roots. Again the boggart raged, more terrible and angrier than before, but again he was bound to his word. Finally, in the third year, the boggart demanded that the farmer should plant wheat, but they would each plow the field, keeping what they harvested. Since the farmer knew the boggart was much stronger, he lighted on the idea of planting iron rods in the ground on the boggart’s side of the field, so the boggart’s plow became blunted again and again, while the farmer plowed merrily away. After hours of that, the boggart gave up, saying that the farmer could have the field and good riddance to it!

The words carrots and iron rods had been circled by a muddy finger.

Hazel frowned at the book. The story didn’t mean anything to her.

Confused and frustrated, she busied herself by pulling the muddy linens from the bed and stuffing them into the hamper. Then she grabbed a clean, but wrinkled, bottom sheet and an old blanket from the hall closet. Finally, she changed into rocket ship–print pajamas, flung herself down, picked up a paperback off the side table at random, and opened it, trying to distract herself, trying to convince herself that she needed an old sword about as much as she needed a Robin Hood costume.

The book turned out to be one she’d read before, where zombies chased around a brother and sister reporting team. After a few pages and the wash of words, she put it down. She couldn’t concentrate. None of it seemed as real as her memory of a mossy stone house with an elf-wrought knife lying on a worn wood table. None of it seemed as real as her sore hands, muddy feet, and missing night.

None of it seemed as real as Jack’s having a double life. She knew you had to be careful around faeries, no matter how beautiful or clever or charming, but somehow Jack had always been the exception. Now, though, thoughts of his silvery eyes and the odd way he’d spoken wouldn’t leave her. Somehow that and the memory of their kiss became tangled and she felt like a fool.