The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

It was one of those early fall nights when wood smoke was in the air, along with the sweet richness of kicked-up leaf mold, and everything felt possible.

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill monsters and feel quite proud of themselves. Even a girl who carries spiders outside instead of stepping on them, a girl who once fed a tiny fox kit with an eyedropper every two hours until wildlife rescue could come and pick it up—that same girl can kill and be ready to do it again. She can take her dead dog home and bury him and cry over his cooling and stiffening body, making promises as she digs a deep hole in the backyard. She can look at her brother and believe that together they’re a knight and a bard who battle evil, who might someday find and fight even the monster at the heart of the forest. A little girl can find a dead boy and lose her dog and believe that she could make sure no one else was lost.

They were in love with him because he was a prince and a faerie and magical and you were supposed to love princes and faeries and magic people. They loved him the way they’d loved Beast the first time he swept Belle around the dance floor in her yellow dress. They loved him as they loved the Eleventh Doctor with his bow tie and his flippy hair and the Tenth Doctor with his mad laugh.

Faerie hills are hollow inside, she’d once heard Mrs. Schröder say. Hollow like faerie promises. All air and misdirection.

“Lords and ladies who walk unseen, lords and ladies all in green, three times I stamp upon the earth, let me in, green hill that gave me birth.”

You and your sister are very dear to each other. To show your regard, you give each other lovely bouquets of lies.”

And then Hazel understood. Ben was taking her through the storm of grief. He was singing her through the rage and despair. He was singing her through the terrible loneliness, because there was no way to shut off grief, no way to cast it aside or fight against it. The only way to end grief was to go through it.

“I love you,” Severin said, looking up, looking at nothing at all, his face exultant. “I love you like in the storybooks. I love you like in the ballads. I love you like a lightning bolt. I’ve loved you since the third month you came and spoke with me. I loved that you made me want to laugh. I loved the way you were kind and the way you would pause when you spoke, as though you were waiting for me to answer you. I love you and I am mocking no one when I kiss you, no one at all.”

Sorrow had come.

Hazel remembered all those things, slumped on the ground, as Ben told her they’d won, as Severin ordered his father’s body moved to the casket, where he could sleep away all the rest of his days, as the court crowded around the monster, as Jack said Hazel’s name over and over, until the words bled together. She closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

And elsewhere in the woods, there is another party, one taking place inside a hollow hill, full of night-blooming flowers. There, a pale boy plays a fiddle with newly mended fingers while his sister dances with his best friend. There, a monster whirls about, branches waving in time with the music. There, a prince of the Folk takes up the mantle of king, embracing a changeling like a brother, and, with a human boy at his side, names a girl his champion.