Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

“He was not.” Ben didn’t laugh. His smile had gone a bit strained.

Hazel frowned. “Are you okay? Did something—”

“No, not like that.” Ben spoke quickly, shaking off her concern. “We went back to his apartment and his ex was there. As in, his ex still lived there.”

She smothered a gasp, because that did sound awful. “Seriously? He didn’t mention that beforehand?”

“He said he had an ex—full stop. Everyone has an ex! Even me! I mean, you have, what, millions?” He grinned, so she’d know he was kidding.

Hazel wasn’t in the mood for that particular joke. “Can’t have an ex if you never go on a date,” she said.

“Anyway, we go in the door, and this guy is sitting in front of the television looking crushed. Like, clearly, he’s not okay with my being there, and, clearly, he wasn’t prepared for it, either. My date, meanwhile, is talking about how his ex is cool and he’ll even sleep on the couch so we can hang out in the bedroom. Which is how I realize there’s only one bedroom in the apartment. Right then I decide that I have to get out of there. But what am I supposed to do? I feel like I can’t say anything, because that would be rude. Mutually constructed reality, the social contract, something . I just can’t.”

Hazel snorted, but he ignored her.

“So I say I have to go to the bathroom, and I hide in there, trying to get my nerve up. Then, taking a breath, I walk out and just keep going until I’m through the apartment door and down the stairs. When I hit the sidewalk, I book it.”

She laughed, picturing him enacting this less-than-subtle plan. “Because running away isn’t rude at all.”

Ben shook his head solemnly. “Less awkward.”

That made her laugh harder. “Have you checked your e-mail? I mean, he’s going to write and ask where you went. Won’t that be awkward?”

“Are you kidding? I am never going to check my e-mail again,” Ben said, with feeling.

“Good,” said Hazel. “Boys on the Internet lie.”

“All boys lie,” Ben said. “And all girls lie, too. I lie. You lie. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

Hazel didn’t say anything, because he was right. She’d lied. She’d lied a lot, especially to Ben.

“So how about you? How was our prince tonight?” he asked.

Over the years, Hazel and Ben had made up a lot of stories about the horned boy. They’d both drawn endless pictures of his beautiful face and curving horns with Dad’s markers, Mom’s charcoals, and, before that, their own crayons. If Hazel closed her eyes, she could conjure the image of him—his midnight-blue doublet stitched with dark gold thread picking out phoenixes, griffins, and dragons; pale hands folded over each other, each adorned with glittering rings; nails unusually long and subtly pointed; boots of ivory leather that came to his calves; and a face so beautiful, with features so perfectly shaped, that looking at him for too long made you feel as though everything else you saw was unbearably shabby.

He must be a prince. That was what Ben had decided when they first saw him. A prince, like the ones in fairy tales, with curses that could be broken by their true loves. And back then, Hazel was sure she would be the one to wake him.

“Our prince was the same,” Hazel said, not wanting to talk about the night, but not wanting to be obvious about it, either. “Everyone was the same. Every thing was the same.”

She knew it wasn’t Ben’s fault that she got frustrated by her life. Her bargains were made. There was no point in regretting them, and even less point in resenting him.

After a while, their dad staggered in from the studio to make a cup of tea and shooed them off to bed. Dad was on deadline, trying to finish up the illustrations he was supposed to drive to the city with on Monday. He was likely to stay up all night, which meant he’d notice if they stayed up, too.

Mom was probably keeping him company. Mom and Dad had started dating in art school in Philadelphia, bound by a love of kids’ books that led to Ben and Hazel both being named, humiliatingly, after famous rabbits. Soon after graduation, Mom and Dad moved back to Fairfold, broke, pregnant, and willing to get married if that meant Dad’s family would let them live rent-free in his great-aunt’s farmhouse. Dad converted the barn behind it into a studio and used his half to paint illustrations for picture books, while Mom used hers to paint landscapes of the Carling forest that she sold in town, mostly to tourists.

In the spring and summer, Fairfold was clogged with tourists. You could spot them eating pancakes with real maple syrup over at The Railway Diner, picking up T-shirts and paperweights with clover suspended in resin at Curious Curios, getting their fortunes told at Mystical Moon Tarot, taking selfies sitting on the prince’s glass casket, picking up sandwich boxes from Annie’s Luncheonette for impromptu picnics out near Wight Lake, or strolling hand in hand through the streets, acting as though Fairfold was the quaintest and kookiest place they’d ever been.

Every year, some of those tourists disappeared.

Some got dragged down into Wight Lake by water hags, bodies cracking the dense mat of algae, scattering the duckweed. Some would be run down at twilight by horses with ringing bells tied to their manes and members of the Shining Folk on their backs. Some would be found strung upside down in trees, bled out and chewed upon. Some would be found sitting on park benches, their faces frozen in a grimace so terrible that it seemed as though they must have died of fright. And some would simply be gone.

Not many. One or two each season. But enough that someone should have noticed outside Fairfold. Enough that there should have been warnings, travel advisories, something. Enough that tourists should have stopped coming. They didn’t.

A generation ago, the Folk had been more circumspect. More inclined toward pranks. A stray wind might grab an idle tourist, sweep her up into the air and deposit her miles away. A few tourists might stagger back to their hotel after a late night, only to realize six months had passed. Occasionally one would wake up with his or her hair in knots. Things they’d been sure were in their pockets went missing; strange new things were discovered. Butter was eaten right off a dish, licked up by invisible tongues. Money turned into leaves. Laces wouldn’t untie, and shadows looked a bit ragged, as though they had slipped away for some fun.

Back then it was very rare for someone to die because of the Folk.

Tourists , the locals would say, a sneer in their voice. And they still did. Because everyone believed—everyone had to believe—tourists did stupid things that got them killed. And if someone from Fairfold very occasionally went missing, too, well, they must have been acting like a tourist. They should have known better. The people of Fairfold came to think of the Folk as inevitable, a natural hazard, like hailstorms or getting swept out to sea by a riptide.

It was a strange kind of double consciousness.

They had to be respectful of the Folk, but not scared. Tourists were scared.

They had to stay clear of the Folk and carry protections. Tourists weren’t scared enough.

When Hazel and Ben lived briefly in Philadelphia, no one believed their stories. Those two years had been bizarre. They had to learn to hide their strangeness. But coming back had been difficult, too, because by then they knew how weird Fairfold was compared with places outside it. And because, by the time they’d returned, Ben had decided to give up his magic—and his music—entirely.

Which meant he could never, ever know the price Hazel had paid for them to go in the first place. After all, she wasn’t a tourist. She should have known better. But sometimes, on nights like the one she’d just had, she wished she could tell someone . She wished she didn’t always have to be so alone.