Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

“Hey, Hazel?” he called softly in the upstairs hall, and she turned. “What did he kiss like?” There was a confusion of emotions on his face—longing and maybe a little jealousy and a whole lot of curiosity.

She snorted a surprised laugh, her bad mood dissolving. “Like he was a shark and I was blood in the water.”

“That good?” he asked, grinning.

She’d known he’d understand. Brothers and sisters had their own language, their own shorthand. She was glad to be able to share the weird, ridiculous impossibleness of it with the only person who knew all the same stories, with the person who’d made up those stories in the first place. “Oh yeah.”

Ben went to her, slinging an arm over her shoulder. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

She let him lead her to the upstairs bathroom, where he sat her on the edge of the tub and then doused all her cuts with peroxide. Together, they watched the liquid hiss and froth over her skin before it swirled down the drain.

Then, kneeling awkwardly on the cracked beige floor tiles, he wrapped her legs and arms in gauze, the stuff they’d called “mummy bandages” when they were little. The old phrase rested on the tip of her tongue, making her remember times they’d come in here after a hunt, cleaning their skinned knees and binding up wrists or ankles.

The house was usually full of people back then, so it was easy to slip in and out. People were always dropping by, come to pose for a piece or to borrow some canvas or celebrate someone booking a job with a bottle of bourbon. Sometimes there wasn’t any food but a weird, boozy trifle left out on the counter, or a can of cold ravioli, or cheese that smelled like feet.

Over the years, her parents grew up and got more normal , even though they wouldn’t admit it. Hazel wasn’t sure if their memories of those days were as much a blur of people and music and paint and confusion as hers were. She wasn’t sure if they missed the way things had been.

What she did know was that normal was a lot more tempting when it was out of reach.

Once normal had been a heavy, smothering blanket she feared being trapped beneath. But now normal felt fragile, as though she could unravel it all just by teasing out a single string.

When Hazel finally collapsed in her bed, she was so tired that she didn’t even bother to pull her comforter up over her body. She fell asleep like a flame being extinguished.

That morning, Hazel dreamed that she was dressed in a tunic of cream wool, with chain mail on top of it. She was riding a horse at night, through the woods, fast enough to see only a blur of trees and flashes of hooves pounding ahead of her.

Then the leaves seemed to part, and by the light of the full moon, she found herself looking down at humans kneeling in the dirt, surrounded by milk-white faerie horses. A man, a woman, and a child. The humans were dressed in modern clothes, flannel, as though they’d been camping. A tent, slashed and sagging, rested beside a dampened fire.

“Shall they live or shall they die?” one of the Folk asked of his companions. He was speaking carelessly, as though it truly didn’t matter either way. His horse snorted and pawed the ground. “I bet they came out here to glimpse sweet little faeries gathering dewdrops. Surely, that’s enough reason to cut them down, no matter how they cringe and beg.”

“Let us see what talents they possess,” said another, leaping off his steed, silver hair flying behind him. “We could let the most amusing one go.”

“What say we give the big one ears like a fox?” shouted a third, a woman with earrings that chimed like the bells on her horse’s bridle. “Give his mate whiskers. Or claws like an owl.”

“Leave the little one out for the monster,” said a fourth, making a face at the child. “Maybe she’ll play with it for a while before she gobbles it up.”

“No, they’ve ventured into the Alderking’s woods on a full-moon night and they must have the full measure of his hospitality,” Hazel heard herself as she swung to the ground—was that her voice? She spoke with such authority. And the humans were looking at her with just as much fear as they’d looked at the others, as though she were a faerie, too. Maybe in her dream, she was. “Let us curse them to be rocks until some mortal recognizes their true nature.”

“That could take a thousand years,” said the first one, the careless one, with a lift of one brow.

“It could take far longer than that,” she heard herself say. “But think of the tales they’d tell if they ever did win freedom.”

The human man began to cry, pulling his child to his chest. He looked anguished and betrayed. He must have loved faerie stories to have sought the real thing. He should have read those stories more closely.

The silver-haired rider laughed. “I should like to see other mortals picnic upon them, all unknowing. Yes, let’s do that. Let’s turn them to stone.”

One of the humans began to beg, but Hazel looked up at the stars above her and began to count them, instead of listening.

Hazel woke, covered by a thin sheen of sweat.

Her alarm played tinny music beside her ear. Turning, she shut off her phone and pushed herself out of bed. She should have been disturbed by her dream, but instead it kindled in her a long-forgotten desire for a blade in her hand and sureness of purpose. She’d barely gotten any sleep; she should have been far more exhausted than she felt. Maybe adrenaline was an even better drug than caffeine.

After her shower, Hazel got dressed in a loose gray T-shirt and black leggings. She felt stiff and sore. Even the knuckles of her fingers were scraped. As she pulled her hair into a rusty ponytail, memories scattered her thoughts. Flashes of the horned boy—of Severin —kept distracting her. His expressions, the feel of his fingers on her skin, the heat of his mouth. In the bright light of day, it seemed impossible, unreal, but she’d felt the realness of it, all the way down to her traitorous gut. And then her brother, ax held high in shaking hands, face flushed, red hair blowing over his eyes. She hadn’t seen Ben like that in years, brave and mad and anguished. She’d been terrified for him—more scared than she’d been during her own stumbling walk through the forest with the horned boy pulling her along.

She wondered if that was how Ben had felt all those years ago, when it had been Hazel out in front, blade clutched tight, facing down faeries.

Mom was making smoothies in the kitchen when Hazel came downstairs. Kale and ginger, kefir and honey were all lined up on the counter. Mom had on one of Dad’s ratty, checkered bathrobes, her short brownish hair sticking up at odd angles, paint still under her fingernails. On the radio, an old song about shiny boots of leather was playing.

Ben was sitting on the counter, dressed in rumpled green corduroy pants and a baggy sweater, rubbing his eyes, yawning, and drinking his smoothie out of a quart jar. A tiny square of kale was stuck to his upper lip.

“Morning,” he said, sounding as though he was still half-asleep. He raised his mason jar in salutation.

Hazel grinned. Her mother handed over a mug of coffee. “Ben and I were just talking about the Watkins girl. She got hurt last night, a couple of blocks from here. Something about it was just on the radio—along with a warning to stay inside after dark.”

Hazel imagined what the emergency services people had seen—Amanda’s body, arms folded over her chest, eyes closed, dirt in her mouth, hair spread out like a cape.