Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest

by Matt Haig

  Earth could fall down on him at any moment, making him one more dead rabbit in a world of dead rabbits. He dug uphill, no longer caring which side of the fence he came out on. Panic had given him more energy, but he was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

  At school, he had been able to hold his breath for whole lengths of the swimming pool and pick plastic bricks up underwater. But now he was a rabbit he couldn’t hold his breath at all.

  Just as he was about to run out of air completely, the earth fell down on him and everything was darkness.

  I am dead, thought Samuel. No. I am still thinking. I must still be alive.

  The earth felt light, not heavy on his head. He shook it off and blinked and found himself out in the open.

  It is nighttime. I must have been digging all day.

  He looked behind him and saw the other rabbits staring at him from behind the fence.

  “He has betrayed Thubula!”

  “He has refused paradise!”

  “Shame on him!”

  “Shame!”

  At the end of the line of rabbits was Gray-Tail, saying nothing.

  After all, what could the old rabbit say? Samuel had shown him that it was possible to escape before the—

  “Aaaagh!”

  Samuel was yanked high in the air by his ears. He recognized the grip instantly as that belonging to Troll-Father.

  “No!” the rabbits shouted. “Pick me! Pick me! He’s not worthy! He’s not worthy of the Green Field!”

  But Troll-Father begged to differ. “Nearly got away there, didn’t you?” He held Samuel up in front of him as he walked around to the other side of the cottage. “Don’t think you’ll be escaping now, though, furry fellow. Not unless you be digging a tunnel out of our stomachs!”

  The Miracle

  By the time they reached the wooden bench, Samuel’s ears felt like they were about to tear off. He saw the brilliant white moon reflected in the metal knife, and became fully aware of what was about to happen.

  The booming voice of Troll-Father miles above him: “Troll-Mother, I’ve got him ready. He’ll skin good, this one will.”

  The door opened, and Troll-Mother walked blindly toward the bench. “Where he be hiding, then?” she asked, her hands out in front of her, the fingers opening and closing like dangerous plants.

  Troll-Father placed Samuel on the table, with a heavy hand fixing him in place. Samuel’s rabbit face stared up at him from the blade of the massive knife.

  “Ah yes, he be there…he be there…” said Troll-Mother, her fingers reaching his fur. She pressed deeper, to feel the life she was about to take. “He be there.”

  Samuel could hardly believe that these were the same trolls who had been so kind two nights ago.

  “It’s me,” Samuel said. “It’s me. I’m not a rabbit. I’m a human. A human. I know I look like a rabbit, but I’m not one. I just changed. Please…”

  It was useless, of course.

  They couldn’t hear him. Trolls may understand humans and humans may understand trolls, but neither understand rabbits.

  He tried to work out how long he had left. Troll-Mother had to put in her eye, and sharpen her knife and then…well, that was all she had to do. However long these two jobs were going to take was the precise length of the rest of Samuel’s life.

  Something flew over Samuel’s head. A tiny dot, reflected in the cold metal in front of his face.

  What was that? he wondered.

  Before he had time to think, he heard Troll-Mother’s voice again.

  “Give me the eye. Let me see the little beauty. Come on, pass it over, you useless lump.”

  “All right,” said Troll-Father, sticking his finger into his eye socket.

  Samuel heard a wet clicking sound as the eye was pulled out.

  “Right, Troll-Mother, there you be. There’s the—”

  Troll-Father’s words were replaced by the sound of fluttering wings. And just at that exact moment his hand, as well as Troll-Mother’s, left Samuel’s back. Samuel looked up and saw what was happening.

  And so, what was happening?

  A miracle, that’s what.

  Just as Troll-Father was passing the eyeball over to his wife, a bird flew right in front of his face. It was the bird that had been following Samuel. The one with blue feathers who had flown into the tunnel.

  “Agh, get off! Who’s there?” Troll-Father said as the feathers flapped in his face.

  Then Samuel saw the eye slip out of his hand and drop onto the bench, in front of him, rolling straight toward the edge.

  “I’ve dropped it,” Troll-Father said. “I’ve dropped the eye…There was a bird—”

  Troll-Mother started screaming. “You stupid flenking idiot! Find it! You hairy lump! Find it!”

  “All right,” said Troll-Father. “Don’t be getting hipperty.” His hands landed on the table, searching for the eye. They were about to reach it when the bird flew down and picked it up in its clawed feet, before flying off high in the air.

  “Well?” Troll-Mother asked. “Have you found it?”

  “I’m…er…it’s here somewhere.”

  While Troll-Father searched for the eye, Troll-Mother searched for Samuel.

  “Come here, rabbit,” she said as her hands moved like crabs across the bench. “Where are you? Come here, fur-brain…come to Troll-Mother…”

  Samuel hopped as fast as he could away from the hands heading his way. After three hops he was at the edge, staring down at the ground below.

  “Jump,” he told himself. “Jump. Do it.”

  A finger touched his fur. Samuel closed his eyes. He remembered his dad taking him up to the high dive at the swimming pool. He hadn’t dared jump. Now, though, he had no choice. He had to be brave, like a hero.

  He closed his eyes and hopped out into the empty air. It seemed ages before he hit the ground.

  Thud.

  The landing hurt, but he could still hop. Which he did, as fast as he possibly could, away from the blind trolls, who kept feeling on the bench for their missing rabbit and eyeball.

  Samuel hopped around to the other side of the cottage, and saw the bird fly toward the rabbit enclosure.

  If his eyes had been stronger, he would have been able to see that same bird letting the eyeball drop directly into the hole Samuel had dug his way out of earlier that day, giving it an almost perfect view of the shining stars and the brilliant white moon above.

  Part III

  The Elkhound’s Return

  Professor Tanglewood had been writing a birthday card to himself when the Shadow Witch flew to him, and brought him news.

  “Well? Is it done?” Professor Tanglewood studied the Shadow Witch, but she wasn’t looking into his eyes. He began to worry that she hadn’t found the human children.

  “Yes, master. The humans have been changed.”

  “Into what, if I may ask?” The Professor was clearly relieved, and his question had an almost happy playfulness about it.

  “Into a bird. And a rabbit.”

  “A rabbit!” The Professor looked startled at the thought. “Who? The boy or the girl?”

  “The boy, master.”

  “A stroke of genius. What a fantastic birthday present for me. He will never survive.”

  She was looking straight at him now, but he couldn’t read her expression. Studying her too dark eyes was like staring down two bottomless wells.

  “He was with someone,” she said.

  “The boy?”

  “Yes. He was with a dog.”

  “A dog? What type of dog?”

  “An elkhound.”

  Professor Tanglewood’s eyes widened in disbelief. “No.”

  The Shadow Witch suddenly looked worried, and regretted giving this information. “Master, I don’t thi—”

  The Professor raised his hand, to silence her. He took a deep breath, as if the news was something that needed to be inhaled in order to be fully understood. “He must have told them.
”

  “Master?” The Shadow Witch didn’t understand.

  “The elkhound must have brought them into the forest.”

  “But, master, it makes no sense. Why would he want to do that? Why would he want to return? Why would he put the children’s lives in danger? And how can a dog tell a human anything?”

  The Professor flapped away the Shadow Witch’s questions as if they were annoying flies. “Our policy is no longer enough. We must reconsider what we are to do with humans who enter the forest.”

  “Master, if we transform the humans into animals, the forest will always be—”

  “Safe? How can you say that when you know that is no longer the case. We transform a human into a dog and what happens? The dog brings more humans into the forest?”

  “Master, we don’t know…”

  “Silence! You are not here to question me. You are here to obey me. I saved your life. I saved your life. The Hek Code. You do remember the Hek Code, don’t you?”

  “Yes, master. Of course. I am a witch. The code is what I am.”

  He stood up from his desk: “Very well. Then you must do as I command.”

  “Master, what is it that you command?”

  “I want you to find the human children and kill them. Both of them. The girl as well as the boy.”

  There was a pause—a long pause—and the Shadow Witch said: “Yes, I understand.”

  The Professor shook his head. “No.”

  “Master?”

  He was looking at her, and saw something new inside those dark, gleaming eyes. Something he didn’t trust.

  “Give me your Hek bracelet.”

  “My Hek bracelet, master? Are you going out of the clearing? Is that why you need it? To protect you.”

  “Yes,” lied the Professor. “Now. I command you.”

  The Shadow Witch reluctantly slipped the bracelet off her gray wrist and handed it over to her master.

  “Now, give me your powers,” he demanded.

  “Master?” She had heard, but she did not understand.

  “I command you to give me your powers.”

  “But, master, my powers are a burden you do not want.” She looked at the birthday card he was writing to himself, and felt a deep hatred for her master.

  Professor Tanglewood took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Give. Me. Your. Powers.”

  The Shadow Witch thought of her sister, melting in the cage, and found a new strength inside her.

  “Master, I can’t.”

  The Professor opened his eyes, and looked at the Shadow Witch as if she was someone new. “You can’t? You can’t? What about the Hek Code? It is inscribed into the essence of your being. My order is your command.”

  “Master, there is something even more powerful than the Hek Code. Something that has been buried, but which has now risen once again inside me.”

  The Professor gasped in disbelief. “Pray, tell me. What is this deep and powerful thing?”

  The Shadow Witch paused, as if hardly believing her own resistance. “The love I have for my sister.”

  “Your sister is dead.”

  She nodded. “I know. But the love lives stronger than ever before.”

  “I don’t understand. What has your sister got to do with anything.”

  The Shadow Witch cried more black tears. “I have done terrible things in your name. Terrible things. I have turned paradise into a nightmare. And I can’t do it anymore. I can’t give you my powers…I’m sorry.”

  Her head dropped when she finished talking, as if the words had been keeping it upright. She turned, walked past the pickled heads and out of the room. She kept walking through the windowless chamber, passing the skeleton of the last huldre she had been forced to kill, and headed toward the door of the tree house. She was so lost in miserable thoughts that she did not hear the Professor creep across the floor, unsheathe the huldre’s sword and pull it back through the air ready to deliver the fatal strike.

  “I am sorry too,” he said, before pushing the blade through her body and back out. Black blood dripped from the sword.

  The Shadow Witch found strength enough to turn around.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  Following the word, shadows left her mouth in vapors. Professor Tanglewood understood the shadows were the source of her magic and so pressed his mouth against her dying lips, and felt a new and dark power enter his body. All the shadows of every changed creature—including Samuel and Martha—were now drawn into him. He could control them all. And do exactly what he wanted.

  “Now I truly am something to be feared,” he said as his skin changed from pink to gray. “I am a true Changemaker.”

  The Shadow Witch collapsed into his arms, and he held her there for a moment, in the windowless room. Waiting as the dark vapors he had inhaled began to take over every part of him.

  The Boy Who Just about Knew He Was Samuel

  The blue-feathered bird was hard to keep track of. It was dark, and from Samuel’s distance, it didn’t look either blue or feathered. It was just a small dark dot vanishing into a dark and windy night.

  Samuel kept hopping, aware of the blind trolls behind him still groping around for their eyeball.

  “Shame!”

  “Shame!”

  “Shame!”

  “Shame!”

  He ignored the chants of the rabbits, but there was something else bothering him. The ground seemed to be tilting forward. He looked around, but none of the rabbits seemed to notice.

  “What’s happening?” he asked the rabbits. “The ground’s moving. Can’t you feel it?”

  Of course, the ground wasn’t really tilting. What had happened was that the Professor—or rather, the being the Professor had become—was using his new powers to draw Samuel back to his shadow. A shadow that was now contained, along with all the others, inside the Professor’s body.

  The effect for Samuel, though, was of gravity shifting ninety degrees, turning the flat ground into a vertical cliff face. A cliff face with trees sticking out of it.

  His body dropped.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!” He twitched really fast, which is how rabbits scream. Fortunately (if such a word can be used), the spell made sure that Samuel would avoid colliding into any trees. On and on he fell, sliding down upward slopes, flying over each descent, skimming over the open plain that the Troll-Father had told him about. The sensation of falling was so strong that he was unaware that he was also changing back from a rabbit to his normal self.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

  The scream came out of his mouth now, not as a series of fast twitches, and it lasted right until he reached the clearing. Once he was there, the ground lay back down and gravity stood back up and Samuel skidded to a complete stop.

  He was a boy again. A human. His skin no longer itched with fur.

  He lifted up his head. In the distance, he could see a small fire. Behind the fire was a huge tree, with a wooden palace perched in its branches. The tree seemed too still, even for a tree, its branches completely unaffected by the wind.

  The Sister Bird

  “Changemaker!” Samuel shouted toward the Still Tree. “Where’s my sister?”

  A gray figure stepped out of the wooden palace and turned into a raven. He flew toward Samuel, landing in his natural form a few yards in front of him.

  Samuel noticed how strange the figure looked. Like a man who lived in a world of no colors. His skin wasn’t pink or yellow or brown like human skin, but various shades of gray. Indeed, it wasn’t possible to think of Professor Tanglewood as a human anymore. Consumed by shadows, he had at last turned into his own invention, the sinister overlord known to all the forest—and Samuel—as the Changemaker.

  His lips were dry and black as if they were made of thin pieces of charcoal. That shadowy darkness was in his eyes too, and under them, blackening the vertical scar on his face.

  It wasn’t his looks that made the Changemaker so terrifying, however
. It was the way he made Samuel feel as he walked nearer.

  Weak. Confused. A stranger in his own, shadowless body.

  “Who am I?” Samuel mumbled to himself. “I am Samuel. Remember. Samuel. Samuel. Sam-uel?”

  His own name sounded foreign to him, as if it belonged to someone else.

  “Hello, Samuel.” A black vapor left the Changemaker’s lips as he spoke, and went up his nostrils.

  “You…are…the…Change…” Samuel found it a strange effort to speak, as if the words were heavy things to be carried.

  “I’m so glad you could join me. It’s my birthday, you know.”

  Samuel felt like he was about to faint, but he kept himself together enough to say: “My sister…”

  The Changemaker looked irritated that Samuel hadn’t acknowledged his birthday.

  “Your sister. Yes? What about her?”

  “She…where…she…”

  “I’m sorry. You’re not speaking any sense. What is it with young humans nowadays? Where’s their grasp of language? All right. I’ll make an educated guess. You want to know the whereabouts of your silent sibling. Am I right?”

  Samuel didn’t have any idea if this was what he wanted to know. It was as though his mind had been stolen along with his shadow. In fact, his mind was so lost that he no longer felt scared. (You might think this was a good thing, but there is only one thing worse than feeling scared, and that is feeling nothing at all.)

  “Well,” said the Changemaker. “There she is. Up there in the tree. Can you see her?”

  Samuel looked but couldn’t see anything.

  “Look closer…”

  Samuel strained his eyes and saw a dot at the end of the branch that stuck out higher and farther than any other. A bird. Why was his sister a bird?

  A single memory entered the desert of Samuel’s brain. A memory of the bird that had saved him from the trolls when he had been a rabbit.

  “I don’t know why you would care,” said the Changemaker. “What use is a songless bird? It’s about as good as a body without a shadow…or a child without their—” He stopped, and a look of sadness fell across his gray face. “Never mind. Don’t worry about your sister. If she wants to be up the tree, let her stay there.” He called up to Martha: “Say hello to your brother. Say hello…Oh, silly me. How can a bird say hello?”