The Darkest Part of the Forest

  At that, the Alderking laughed. “Ah, yes, there’s that true nature of yours coming out. You play at obedience, but it isn’t obedience if you only answer the orders you like. Much as my son does.”

  Ben screamed again. A second finger.

  The Alderking had Heartseeker on his right, sheathed in the furred skin of some creature. Could Hazel get herself another weapon and slit his throat before he drew on her? Hazel thought it was unlikely, but she eyed the courtiers, noticing a goat-footed girl with a knife strapped to her belt and wondered. She pictured herself grabbing the blade. She counted how many steps to the throne there were and calculated how fast she could take them at a run. Her fingers twitched.

  She had to do something.

  “One cannot heal a musician’s fingers without breaking them,” said the Alderking. “Your brother is in pain, but his suffering may be a boon to him. If you both continue being obstinate, I will do far worse. There are some torments so terrible they change a person forever. There are some torments so terrible that bodies refuse to withstand them. You had better tell me what you know and you better tell me now.”

  “Leave Benjamin alone,” Severin said. “Your grievance is with me, Father. Leave him!”

  Hazel had to do something. She had to stop Ben from being hurt.

  “Me,” Hazel said. “I freed Severin. Me. So leave Ben alone. I did it and I did it by myself.”

  “You?” The Alderking stood, eyes blazing. “You who came to our sacred hawthorn tree and asked for our help? Was it not you who gave up seven years of your life voluntarily, gladly even? I could have taken those seven years any way I wished, but I wasn’t cruel. Instead, I gave you not just what you asked for, but all the things you never dared ask. When you came to me, you were a child, eleven years old, and we stole you from your bed to fly through the skies on rushes and ragwort. We trained you to swing a blade and to take a blow. We taught you to ride on our swift-footed steeds, like you were Tam Lin himself. Some part of you recalls it, recalls the wind whipping your hair and the howl of the night sky before you. Recalls the lessons in courtly manners. Recalls laughing when you rode down a girl from Fairfold out by the highway, the footfalls of the other knights behind you, your horse outpacing theirs—”

  “No. You’re wrong. I didn’t do that,” Hazel said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. But they didn’t lie—couldn’t lie, so some part of it was true. She thought of the dream she’d had, the one where she’d tormented a family and laughed when they were cursed to stone. How much had she been changed in his service? How much could she trust her other self?

  “I made your wishes come true,” The Alderking spread his hands wide in a gesture of acceptance, smiling. “And if our gifts have barbs, you know enough of our nature to expect that. And so, tell me, who told you how to free my son? The real answer now. Who gave you Heartsworn? And where is my sword?”

  “I don’t know,” Hazel said, panicked, because she didn’t know where the sword was, yet he had no reason in the world to believe her.

  He beckoned to the Bone Maiden, who advanced toward the throne, drawing a thin and jagged blade. It looked as though there was dried rust or blood marring the metal. “Mortals are born liars,” said the Alderking. “It’s the only thing your kind has any exceptional talent in.”

  Hazel swallowed and prepared herself. She let herself be afraid, let herself get lost in the moment, tried not to think too much. She needed her instinct. She hoped she seemed stunned enough that the Bone Maiden expected her to be passive, to allow herself to be tortured, to scream and weep and never fight back. And when the creature got close enough for Hazel to smell the crushed-pine-needle scent of her, to see the strange gleam of her ruby eyes, then Hazel went for the rusty knife.

  It scraped the skin of her arm as she moved, hand closing on the blade. It cut her palm, but she jerked it out of the hag’s hand and slammed it into the creature’s throat. Black blood gouted out. The hag’s long fingers scrabbled at her neck, but her eyes were already dulling, the shine going out of them.

  A knight grabbed hold of Ben, jerking his hands behind his back, careless of his fingers. Ben howled with pain.

  Three of the knights circled Hazel, wary of the thin, rusty knife. She slipped into a crouch, watching them.

  “No,” commanded the Alderking. “Let her keep it. You see, Sir Hazel, so long as I have your brother, it’s my hand that holds the knife.”

  “It looks like your hand slipped,” she said as the hag’s body gave a final twitch and was still. Hazel was flushed with victory and violence. She felt like her most dangerous self, the self who had once walked through the woods of Fairfold and believed herself to be their defender. Around her, the crowd of courtiers had gone silent. She had brought death to this place, to these deathless and ancient people, and they watched her with wide, puzzled eyes.

  “Observe,” he said, speaking as though he was giving a lesson to a very small child. “Now, Hazel, I want you to recite the rhyme to summon the monster at the heart of the forest, my sweet daughter. You know it, don’t you? Say the words or he’ll gut your brother.”

  Hazel hesitated for a moment, realizing how trapped they all were. “Fine,” she said, taking a deep breath. The singsong tone of it brought back memories of skipping rope, of the feeling of bare feet hitting hot pavement on a summer day, and of the ever-present temptation of saying that final word. “There’s a monster in our wood. She’ll get you if you’re not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. A nest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming… home.”

  Hazel felt the ripples of magic, felt the breeze that blew through the hollow hill, felt the touch of cold that accompanied it. Sorrow was coming, and if he could really control her, they were all doomed.

  The Alderking nodded. “Very good. Now, let’s see what else you can do. Slash your own arm or my knight will slice open your brother’s face. See how you hasten to obey? Go ahead, hasten.”

  Hazel pushed up the sleeve of her shirt with trembling fingers. She raised the Bone Maiden’s crooked little blade, pressing the tip to her skin. Then she pressed down until sharp, bright pain bloomed across her arm, until a thin trickle of blood ran all the way to her palm, spattering onto the stone.

  The smile that cut across his face was awful.

  “Hazel, stop,” Ben yelled. “Don’t worry about me—”

  “Enough, Father,” Severin shouted, his voice commanding. “She doesn’t have Heartsworn.”

  “She’s a liar,” said the Alderking. “They lie! All mortals lie.”

  “It’s me that Hazel is protecting,” Jack said, stepping away from the other courtiers, eyes flashing silver, head held high. Eolanthe reached for him, but he shrugged off her touch. All around him, courtiers went quiet. He walked before the Alderking’s throne and made an elaborate bow, one that Hazel had no idea he even knew how to make. “I conspired to betray you. Let her go. Let her go and punish me instead.”

  “No!” his mother said. “You swore! You swore not to harm him.”

  “Jack?” Hazel said, frowning. She felt light-headed, maybe from the blood running down her arm. For a single moment, she wondered if there was some truth to it, if there was another secret yet to be revealed. Then she saw the flash of panic on his face, heard the catch in his voice.

  He was buying her time. Time for her to puzzle through the clues she’d left herself.

  CARROTS. IRON RODS.

  REMEMBER TO KNEEL.

  What did it mean? The human farmer had tricked the boggart by planting carrots underground. And the iron rods were buried as well.

  Maybe she buried the sword.

  “You? The boy who plays at being mortal?” The Alderking studied Jack through narrowed eyes and then moved to his throne, sweeping back his cape and sitting. “What possible reason could you have to stand against me? Your birth was proof of your mother’s betrayal and yet here you are, alive and unharmed.”

  REMEMBER TO K
NEEL.

  “What does it matter why?” Jack said, and there was something in his expression—as though he was daring the Alderking to press him further.

  “You presume much, changeling child.” The Alderking’s brows rose. “I may have promised your mother that I would order no hand raised against you, but Sorrow will welcome your pain—your death—because all she knows is pain and death and grief. Put him into the cage with my son.”

  Jack took a deep breath and then half-smiled, allowing himself to be forced back from Hazel, toward the cage. Despair flooded her. They were all going to die. She wanted nothing more than to sink down onto the cold stone and beg, offer up anything, everything. But she had nothing to offer.

  CARROTS. IRON RODS.

  REMEMBER TO KNEEL.

  Then she realized what the answer must be. She knew where she’d hidden the sword.

  Heartsworn, a blade that could cut through anything, a blade so sharp that it could be sheathed in stone itself. And that’s where she must have hidden it, just as she first found it, buried blade deep in the dirt and sand beside Wight Lake. The Alderking would no more look for it paving the ground of his throne room than he would look for it among the clouds.

  REMEMBER TO KNEEL

  Her gaze dropped to the floor, looking for any shine in the dirt between the massive stone tiles. She spotted what she thought might be a shimmer, but it could have been a trick of the light. She had one chance to find it.

  Three knights in gleaming gold marched Jack to the cage and gingerly opened the door. As it swung wide, though, Severin ducked down, rolling under the swords knights pushed through the bars to hold him back. He’d clearly been anticipating them, and he moved fast. Fast enough that by the time they’d pulled their swords out to face him, he was through and straightening up.

  Wounded from whatever fight had taken place earlier, he wore the ripped and bloodstained remains of a shirt wrapped around his waist—Jack’s undershirt, she realized.

  The knights who had been standing near Hazel ran toward Severin, swords flashing. Hazel had her chance. She crossed quickly to where she thought she’d seen a glimmer of the hilt.

  Then, despite herself, she looked back toward the cage.

  The knights had surrounded Severin, none of them bold enough to come at him, despite the fact he was unarmed. Severin spoke. “Give me your sword,” he said to Marcan. “Give me your sword and let me die with a blade in my hands. I don’t want to fight any of you and my father has Heartseeker. You can hardly fear for him. Surely, he will fight me. I cannot win.”

  The courtiers looked from one to another, a nervous energy taking hold of them.

  The Alderking stood, drawing Heartseeker from his sheath. He looked at the assembled throng. They were watching him with fear and something else—something she thought might be hatred. Perhaps the Alderking could not lose with the enchanted blade in his hand, but she saw that no one would delight in his winning.

  “Take mine,” said Marcan, and placed his sword in Severin’s hand.

  “I didn’t give you leave to arm him,” the Alderking said.

  “No prince should die without a blade,” said Marcan.

  Hazel found what she thought might be the shine of the bottom of a pommel and dropped to her knees. Fingers sliding over it, she tried to get a grip, tried to pull it up. It slipped from her fingers. No one had noticed her yet, crouched there, but they would, surely. She had to work fast.

  On the other side of the floor, Severin and his father circled each other. Heartseeker darted out toward Severin’s shoulder. The horned boy tried to block the blow, but the other sword was too fast. It sunk into his arm, making him cry out. His grip on his own sword wavered. Each time he blocked, he was a moment too late. Already wounded, he quickly became a mess of small cuts, bleeding freely.

  “As amusing as this is,” said the Alderking, “it cannot continue. Subside. Your sister is coming. She will rip you limb from limb if I don’t cut your throat first. Either way, this time when you lie in the glass coffin, you will truly be dead, dead and on display for all the rest of the forest.”

  Severin slashed his blade at his father’s side and hit, slicing through fabric to show a thin line of welling blood. The Alderking looked at his son as though seeing him for the first time.

  “Heartseeker means you never miss, Father,” Severin said. “It doesn’t mean I always miss you.”

  The Alderking roared forward, no longer content to amuse himself with cruel, shallow cuts. Abruptly, brutally, he thrust Heartseeker into Severin’s gut. The horned boy howled and fell to his knees, hand pressed to his stomach. The Alderking had stabbed him where he was already wounded.

  But as the Alderking stepped back, his hand went to his own arm. It was bleeding from a fresh cut. He’d stuck his son, but Severin had dealt him a second blow.

  “Enough,” the Alderking shouted, breathing hard, pointing to his knights. “Finish him.”

  They hung back. Because they might be cruel and capricious, might care nothing for mortals, but they had their own sense of honor, Hazel realized. They were knights, like the kind in books she’d read when she was little. Knights, like in Ben’s stories. What the Alderking was asking was against their code.

  After a moment, Marcan stepped forward. They would face Severin one on one, as honor demanded. But as wounded as the horned boy was, that would be no fair fight.

  Hazel finally caught hold of the edge of the sword. She pushed her fingers deeper into the ground, as far as they would go, hooking her nail beneath the metal and insinuating her fingers until she could grip it. Carefully, she pulled the sword up, up from the stone where she’d buried it, up through the deep slice in the rock. Up until it was in her hand.

  Her sword, the golden blade gleaming, black paint long chipped off. The one she’d borne on her back. The one that had made her a knight. Heartsworn.

  Half not believing what she’d done, she took several steps toward Severin, realizing in that moment that she was too late. He was bleeding too freely from too many wounds. As Marcan circled him, he stumbled. He was barely on his feet. He couldn’t wield the blade and win against his father, no less his fearsome sister.

  She had failed. She was too late.

  “Ben,” Severin called as he slumped to the ground. “Benjamin Evans, you’re wrong, but you’re not stupid.”

  “What?” Ben called back from where he stood, at the edge of the cage, the broken fingers of his hands curling around the bars. His gaze flickered between Severin and Hazel, as though he wasn’t sure whom he feared for more.

  “I love you,” Severin said, looking up, looking at nothing at all. “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.”

  Ben tried to move toward him, clawing at the bars of the cage, but a gleaming knight held him back. “You’re insane,” Ben shouted, and Severin started to laugh.

  Hazel crossed the floor in front of the throne. She wasn’t sure if the other knights recognized what she held or if they just weren’t paying enough attention to her.

  The Alderking whirled, eyes widening in surprise. Then he decided on amusement. “What are you thinking, little knight? Do you even remember how to hold a sword? Do you think you’re being honorable? He won’t be able to save you.”

  “No,” Hazel said. “I’m the one who’s supposed to save him.”

  He swung at her, but she’d had time to think about this. She didn’t bother aiming to block him. She aimed Heartsworn not at him, but at his sword and swung with all her might.

  Heartsworn cut the blade of Heartseeker in half with a terrible crack, like that of shattering glass. The Alderking looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe wha
t she had done. Then his gaze went to something she couldn’t see and he managed a smile.

  Sorrow had come.

  Courtiers had their hands pressed against their mouths, smothering small shrieks. Behind her, Hazel heard the heavy, thudding tread of the monster, heard the shiver of her branches. Hazel shuddered, taking a deep breath.

  She pressed the edge of Heartsworn against the Alderking’s throat. It nicked his skin, blood beading like a single garnet where the point touched him.

  “She’s coming closer, ever closer,” the Alderking said, swallowing, holding out the broken blade in one hand, as though in surrender, as though he meant to drop it. Hazel was fairly sure he wouldn’t, though. “Remember that I have the bone ring. Remember that with it, I can influence her.”

  Hazel swallowed, coming to a decision.

  “If you turn, you’ll have a chance,” he said. “All you have to do is turn. You have the sword. But if you don’t strike now, you’ll be hers. She’ll make you cough up dirt and vine, make you sleep in a bed of your own tears.”

  There was a rush of air, like something moving very fast. Maybe the monster was pulling back to strike. Hazel knew what it was like to lose, knew it so well that it had washed the taste of winning from her mouth, so that she wasn’t sure she even remembered the savor of it.

  She might be about to lose again.

  Hazel thought of the creature she’d seen in the school, of the creature she’d seen the day before in Jack’s house. She thought of the strange, shambling beauty of her treelike shape, the impossibility of her. She thought of the way Ben had sang and the way the monster had let Severin touch her face.

  Was Sorrow still under the Alderking’s influence? Or was she awake, conscious, no longer able to be fooled by a bit of bone?

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Quick now, trust me or trust a monster?”

  “Don’t—” Jack yelled, but Hazel couldn’t wait until he finished what he was going to say.

  Quickly, she moved, slicing down fast, so that the very tip of Heartsworn sliced the grim bone ring in two. “I swore I would defeat the monster at the heart of the forest—and I have. It was never her. It was always you.”