The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Holly Black

“You know, it nearly drove me mad to listen to so many voices, a cacophony of sound, of words I didn’t know piling up, of time slipping in skips and jumps. And then you, speaking to me—to me. I started to know the length of a day in the interval between your visits.”

“I think both of you always want a little bite of whatever the other person’s got, that’s all.”

“Go,” she said finally. “Be Jack Gordon. But mortality is a bitter draught.” “And yet I would have the full measure,” he told her.