A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

  The pain lessens. The wound stitches back together. I wipe at the blood, making sure it’s completely closed. Elle’s hands are covered in red.

  “Wonderful,” Frank breathes. “Absolutely wonderful. Let’s take a quick break before the flowers, shall we?”

  As Frank leaves, Irene rushes to Elle, who leans into her. Elle’s arms are wrapped protectively around her stomach. That test had to have hurt her, too. She still won’t tell Frank, of course. If he knew that excessive healing can bring out deep, gnawing pains in her stomach, he might see her as defective.

  I’d forgotten that Frank made this into a show for all of our siblings. Brooke is holding the little twins, rocking them, while Violet trembles next to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Elle says again. She turns her head toward me, still leaning into Irene. “I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “No,” I say. “Nothing to apologize for. You didn’t have a choice.”

  “I did,” she whispers. She returns to pressing her forehead against Irene’s shoulder. Her voice is muffled when she says, “I just didn’t make the right one.” Footsteps mark Frank’s return, and Elle sits up, smiling as if she’s in no pain at all.

  He frowns. “You two should get cleaned up. Irene, take care of . . .” He waves a hand over the blood-drenched kitchen island. “. . . that, will you?”

  Blood loss and trauma or not, I still have to do my test. It’s . . . fine. Mediocre. I’d wanted to show off what I could do with Claire, but with Frank watching, I can’t. My flowers wilt as soon as they bloom.

  So it’s a surprise to all of us when my flower flashes so bright during the evaluation that I have to close my eyes against it. I feel a surge of pride, followed quickly by fear. What will Frank think? What possible reason could there be in his mind for my magic to grow so much, so fast?

  He doesn’t say anything. His brow furrows as he taps on his iPad, and he moves on.

  That night, I return to the forest. I wait until I’m sure everyone’s asleep. They’re all in their own rooms now, and I guess no one’s thinking about my transgressions anymore. No one guards the tunnel—I go right through. Not risking the vine again.

  “Claire?” I call as I enter the forest. “Are you here?”

  “Derry.” She appears out of nowhere, as usual. “You came back.” She says it like she knew I would. She says it like it was a done deal before I even decided to return.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday,” I say. “It’s been . . . hard at home.”

  She looks me over, head to toe. “Something happened.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it.” She sounds so concerned, and it makes me . . . angry. “I need to find Jane and Winnie.”

  “I know. But you aren’t ready yet.”

  I laugh. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m not sure why you think I wouldn’t be.”

  “By what standards are you measuring my readiness, exactly? Yours? Because you told me magic isn’t a test. Frank makes it a test because he’s trying to teach me, and that’s apparently bad, but it gets to be a test when my sisters are missing?” I’m shouting, but I lower my voice, letting my next words come out sharp and cruel. “I don’t come out here so another Frank can manipulate me with some bullshit tests.”

  Claire regards me coolly, unimpressed with my anger. “I said, you aren’t ready yet. I’ll thank you not to argue with me when you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Temper flaring, I step up close to her, getting in her face. “What I know is that you’re keeping my sisters from me and I’ve had enough. You’re going to take me to them, now—”

  I don’t see Claire move. I feel the push, and I go flying backwards. I land hard on the ground. The wind is knocked out of me. As I struggle to sit up, Claire smooths her hands down her dress.

  “I’m not saying this because your magic isn’t up to my standards,” she says in a clipped voice. “It’s fact. Your sisters are lost in this forest, and only power can bring them back.” She looks me in the eye. “You don’t have enough.”

  We stare at each other in tense silence. Claire sighs, walks over to me, and holds out a hand. “If you’re done throwing a tantrum, I had a challenge for you tonight that I thought you’d enjoy.”

  “It wasn’t a tantrum,” I mutter. I ignore her hand and stand up on my own. The pressure of her hands on my chest as she pushed me feels too recent. It was a glimpse of a Claire that used to send me running. “What’s the test?” I ask. My anger is dying out and I sound petulant.

  She purses her lips disapprovingly, but if she has another reprimand in mind, she doesn’t voice it. “Is there something you thought about growing, but you didn’t believe it was possible, so you never thought to try?” she asks. “Maybe never even thought to hope. Just a little daydream. Nothing that could be real, of course.”

  I go still in the act of brushing myself off. I have the answer immediately, but is it really something I want to grow? Sure, I keep sketching it, and it shows up in my dreams, but . . .

  “Maybe,” I say carefully. “I might have something like that.”

  Claire’s crooked smile makes its first appearance of the night. She never smiles with teeth. I hadn’t really registered that before, but tonight it makes me shudder. It makes me wonder what she’s hiding.

  “Then grow it,” she says. I look at her doubtfully. She only continues to smile.

  I get down on my knees. I press my hands into the ground, dig my fingers in. Claire kneels beside me, so close that I would feel the heat of her if there was heat to feel. Her proximity feels dangerous now, but I don’t want her to move.

  “Ask the earth for a dream,” she whispers.

  I don’t have the words to send into the ground. Only images. The curve of a tree limb, the flare of glowing flowers. Even the inspiration for this dream wasn’t something I saw. I was able to draw it before I ever encountered it, before I felt its breath on my neck. Some primal part of my brain knew it, latched on, wound itself around those antlers as they reached into the forest canopy.

  The lightning bugs descend around me, circling my head like a crown as I feed the earth my dreams. I close my eyes tight. All I can hear is my own breath, my own heartbeat.

  And then a step.

  Tears I didn’t realize I’d even cried blur my vision for a moment, until I rub them away and lift my gaze upward to the creature stepping toward us.

  It’s vaguely human shaped, and made of intertwined branches. The roses woven among those branches glow like the lightning bugs. It has no mouth and no eyes and no anything except for that basic form—two legs, two feet, two arms, two hands, a torso, a head, and those antlers. Massive, magnificent antlers ringed in glowing roses.

  “Beautiful,” Claire breathes.

  “Did I . . .” I swallow, hard. “Did I make that?”

  “Didn’t you intend to?”

  “Yes, but . . .” Everything I’m feeling is too big. Emotion after emotion swelling up in my chest until I can hardly breathe. Pride. Anxiety. Fear. Love. There’s a living thing walking the earth that exists because of me. I made that. It’s not the creature I felt in the forest days ago. That was something else, something old, something I may never truly see with my own eyes. Something I don’t want to see, when just thinking of it fills me with dread.

  But this? This is mine.

  Slowly, I rise to my feet. There are no eyes, but I feel my creation watch me as I approach. After a long moment, it bows. I laugh breathlessly, and bow in return.

  My creation doesn’t stay for long. Its head cocks to the side, as if it hears something, and it wanders off into the forest.

  “Wait—” I reach out an arm, but Claire pushes it down.

  “Let it go. You made it, but it belongs to itself. You’ll see it again.”

  My heart aches with it out of my sight. Something I made out of a dream lives in this forest now. I can’t begin to guess the implications of that. What impact could it have on
the ecosystem? What does it eat, if anything? This isn’t like growing a flower. This is my magic being real and leaving footprints in the earth.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say. “Something I’ve been wondering.”

  “Of course.”

  I turn to her and look her in the eye. “Are you Claire, or are you the forest?”

  She does that curious owl-tilt of her head. “I don’t see why you have to make the distinction.”

  It’s not a satisfactory answer, but I suspect it’s all I’ll get for now. Instead of pushing, I say, “Frank did something today. Something that makes me worried about what else he could do.”

  “Anything,” Claire says. “Never underestimate him. Whenever you think Surely he wouldn’t, know that he would.”

  I laugh, and she doesn’t. She’s not kidding. It has to be hyperbole, though.

  “I can think of plenty of things he’d never do,” I say. It’s not like he would have stabbed me himself. He’s never asked Irene to invade our privacy by learning to read minds, even though she thinks she could. He’s never made London do anything too terrible with her magic, and she can do terrible things. She told me about a nightmare she had once. In it, she used her magic to pull at a person’s torso until the skin and flesh parted and their intestines came into view. It didn’t bleed like a wound. Just a window. But the person screamed and screamed.

  I told her it was just a nightmare, but she shook her head and whispered, “I could do it, though. If I tried. Don’t tell Frank, please?”

  Claire heaves a huge sigh. “You really don’t know anything.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You don’t. You’re standing there completely unable to see past his pathetic facade, and it’s going to get you and your siblings killed.”

  I rear back at killed. “Okay, seriously, that’s enough. I know he’s done some shitty things, but—”

  Now Claire laughs, but it’s like mine was earlier—humorless. Like she’s echoing me again. “I thought you were smarter than this. You need to stop being so obtuse if you ever want to be powerful enough to find your sisters.”

  “Not powerful enough? After I made that?” I gesture emphatically in the direction my creature went.

  “You made yourself a little friend. Impressive, but no, you still aren’t there yet. Power is more than what you can make.”

  “What does that even mean?” I shout. “If you know all the goddamn answers, why won’t you just tell me?”

  “Maybe because you keep proving you aren’t ready for them,” Claire sneers.

  Anger blurs my vision. I lash out. Thick, sharp vines shoot out of the ground, rocket toward Claire. I scream, trying to take it back. It’s too late. It’s too late—

  The vines go right through her.

  I stumble back, gasping for air. Claire didn’t even flinch, but my heart is pounding painfully and I’m shaking so hard I can barely brush the small purple leaves off my arms as they grow.

  I can’t lose control like that. I thought the first . . . incident was also the last. Just a one-time unfortunate event, something I’ll agonize about for the rest of my life, but nothing I’d ever do again. Does it matter that Claire is all fog and mist and magic, not flesh and blood and bone? Does it matter that I didn’t—maybe couldn’t—hurt her?

  Or does it only matter that I wanted to, and that I tried?

  Claire doesn’t call after me as I run off. I guess she knows I’ll always come back.

  I descend into the tunnel, lighting the way. I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I don’t notice I’m not alone until I nearly stumble into them.

  Brooke and Elle are waiting for me at the end of the tunnel.

  14

  ‘You’re telling us everything,’ Brooke signs angrily. Elle stands next to her, arms crossed tightly, glaring at me. Her anger doesn’t seem to include much of the concern I see in Brooke.

  Any other night, I would have argued. But tonight, in the aftermath of Elle’s test and what I tried to do to Claire, with the weight of what happened in the clearing fresh in my mind, with my sisters looking at me like that, I burst into tears.

  I hate crying in front of people, even my siblings. At least we’re still on the other side of the wall, so no one can hear me. Brooke and Elle let me cry—they don’t try to interrupt, don’t try to comfort me. When I finally calm down enough to swipe at my eyes and nose, square my shoulders, and face them, they act as if nothing happened. They spare me the embarrassment of being seen, or the new wave of tears that would surely start if they asked how I am.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ I sign.

  ‘Why do you keep going back to the forest?’ Brooke asks.

  How do I word this? ‘The forest is magic.’ Understatement. ‘And I think it can help me find Jane and Winnie.’ True, but . . .

  Elle drags her hands down her face, then signs, ‘They’re dead. We have to accept it.’

  I recoil as if slapped. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Where are they, then?’ Elle demands.

  Brooke holds up her hands, interrupting. ‘That’s not what we’re here to talk about. Derry, the bigger issue is that you’ve been lying to us. You’ve been sneaking out, putting yourself in danger. I know you made the little twins cry the other night, and you’ve been putting us’—Brooke gestures to herself and Elle—‘through absolute hell trying to get you to just talk to us.’

  I stomp my foot, like a child on the verge of a tantrum. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s to understand?’ Elle asks. ‘You’re being shitty to everyone, and it’s all for a bunch of stupid trees!’

  ‘It’s not just trees!’ It’s magic. It’s power. It’s the being I created that’s walking in that forest right now, alive, because of me. ‘I’m looking for Jane and Winnie—’

  ‘Who are dead.’ She fingerspells dead, putting emphasis on each letter. ‘D-E-A-D. Maybe you should pay attention to the siblings you still have.’

  ‘Just because you don’t care enough to look for them—’

  Elle gasps. “How dare you,” she hisses. “I’d be out there with you if there was a chance they were still alive.”

  “You goddamn bi—”

  Brooke inserts herself physically between us. She looks at us both reprovingly, like we’re children and she can’t believe our behavior. ‘Enough is enough. Elle—this isn’t how we’re going to solve anything. Derry—that forest . . . it’s like . . .’ One hand waves about as she searches for the words. ‘A virus. It’s infected you, and you aren’t acting like yourself.’

  She spares us each one more glance. ‘If neither of you are going to take action to actually end this, then I will.’ Brooke pushes past us in the tunnel, stomping outside. She leaves me and Elle stunned in her wake, trying to parse what she means.

  “What is she . . .” I trail off.

  Elle’s confusion is slowly replaced by realization, then by a small smile. “My guess? She’s burning down your forest. And I’m going to go watch.” She turns, jogging after Brooke. My heart has dropped all the way into my stomach.

  She can’t. Brooke’s powerful, but that doesn’t mean she could destroy a whole forest. She wouldn’t, even if she could.

  . . . Or would she, if she thought it had infected me like a virus? If she believes, like Elle, that Jane and Winnie are dead? If I were her, and I believed those things, and I’d just seen the fight Elle and I had, I’d probably see burning the forest as the right move. She’s already lost two sisters, and she thinks she’s losing me.

  So she’s going to protect me, at any cost.

  If anyone can understand that, it’s me.

  But what Brooke and Elle don’t understand is that our sisters are still alive and the forest is our only shot at getting them back. I stumble into a sprint, racing after them. I didn’t think fast enough, I’m going to be too late, the forest will already be burning.

  I emerge into the night. Brooke has planted herself at the e
dge of the trees, feet digging into the mud. Elle stands back from the coming flames. I shout for her. She turns, looks me up and down, and does nothing to stop Brooke. I feel the magic before she releases it.

  I’ve always known that Brooke is the most powerful alchemist in the house. Even if she never says it, the blinding glow of her flower gives it away. I never understood exactly what that meant until the wall of flames towers over us. It roars loud enough for me to worry that Frank will hear it from way across the lake. The flames climb high, reaching for the stars, and then, with a push, Brooke sends them cascading over the forest.

  I scream. Fire plummets between the trees and swirls through their leaves like a living thing. It’s too easy to imagine it overtaking the lightning bugs and catching my creature by surprise. Burning up my only lead on Jane and Winnie. I don’t know if fire can hurt Claire, but I scream my throat raw for her, too.

  For a moment, the world stands still.

  Brooke’s fire hangs in the air, shimmering, and then dissipates until it’s nothing but sparks rising to the sky and a thick cloud of smoke. Confused, Brooke brings her hands back up and conjures a breeze to banish the smoke.

  The forest is untouched. A bright full moon shows the trees unscathed, uncharred.

  “What the fuck,” Elle whispers.

  Brooke’s signs come out in pieces. She’s unsteady on her feet. ‘How—the rain—if it were drier . . .’

  I don’t respond. We all know it has nothing to do with wet wood. Her fire should have taken hold and spread. Even if it couldn’t become a wildfire that took down every acre, a few trees should have been destroyed.

  Instead, impossibly, there are several new trees. They’re all babies, barely to my hip, but they’re real and new and they shouldn’t have been able to grow that fast. It’s like the forest took Brooke’s magic and turned it into new growth.

  We stare at the impossible trees for a long time before Brooke, without a word, walks back to the tunnel. Elle and I don’t look at each other, don’t talk—we just follow her. Nothing is said or signed between the three of us all the way back to the house. Brooke puts a hand on my arm before I can climb the stairs up to our rooms. Elle stops too, until Brooke nods at her. Elle hesitates, looks at me in a way I can’t translate, then hurries upstairs.