A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

  “We can’t do that on our own—”

  “No, no, we can. We can!”

  I fell to my knees. That’s when I dug my first grave. It wasn’t like digging Elle’s. It was messy and fast. The jagged, uneven shape of it mirrored my panic.

  Jane helped me drag him to the grave, and she watched me cover him with dirt. I wiped my hands over my shoulders and neck, up over my face, because the skin there was covered in quickly blooming purple flowers. I recognized them. The flowers that grow from my magic are usually indistinct little things, but those flowers—I knew those flowers. They were mandrake flowers.

  In legend, mandrakes grow where the blood falls under a gallows.

  I tasted copper where the hiker’s blood had smeared across my mouth.

  How many unique ways are there to arrange the letters in the word KILLER? Your answer should be an arrangement of mandrakes on the sloppy grave of a man who will never go home.

  I swore Jane to secrecy again and again. Two weeks later, she was missing.

  “You woke the forest up,” Claire tells me as the memory fades around me. “When Frank first arrived and built the house, the forest thought it would finally get its fill. But Frank kept it all for himself—all the magic, all the souls. He burned the bodies instead of burying them beneath the trees. It would occasionally get scraps across the decades, like when a certain princess ran from Frank when she saw him kill her sisters. Oh, how Frank screamed after strangling her in the forest and realizing all her magic had been wasted. None for him.” Claire smiles upward at the trees. “All for the forest.”

  “It feeds on death?” I ask, voice thick with dawning horror.

  “Among other things. For the longest time, it never got enough to wake up. Until you and Jane.”

  “What do you mean? Why us?”

  Claire rolls her eyes. “You’ve really got to snap out of it, Derry. You know so many truths that you’re always hiding from yourself. Your visits to the clearing and the magic you both showed off were the tinder.” She points at the grave. “The spark. And all of your returns? All the magic you two did here? You revived the forest until it could breathe again. Then Brooke’s fiery display, then Elle . . .”

  The new trees. All of those new, young trees that began to sprout up after Brooke tried to burn it all down. The ones that only multiplied after Elle’s life and magic bled out into the forest floor.

  “You’re connected now,” Claire says. “The forest is part of you.”

  Brooke and Irene aren’t with me anymore. How much did they hear? I back away from Claire, whose crooked smile is so much more sinister than it was before, and join my sisters at the edge of the clearing.

  They’ve found the little twins. Both are clinging to Irene and Brooke as if they’re life preservers. Olivia clings with just one arm, though. The other is cradling Gabriel’s terrarium. The beetle crawls up the inside of his cage, unimpressed with anything that’s going on.

  “Oh my god,” I whisper. ‘Where did you find them?’

  Brooke disentangles herself enough to sign. ‘Here, hiding in the brush.’ The little twins don’t say anything. They’ve turned their big, scared eyes on me, but remain eerily silent.

  I crouch down. “What did you see?” I ask.

  Olivia looks past me to Claire, and neither of them respond. I decide not to press it.

  I’m ready to get us all back home when I see it. There’s a tree, only feet from where the little twins were hiding. It’s nothing impressive—just a standard maple, the ground around it littered with helicopter seeds. It would never catch my eye, except that it’s covered in blazing red amaryllis. Next to it, another tree, covered in bright pink camellias.

  It could be a trick. The forest can grow whole new trees now. Flowers would be simple.

  But this isn’t a trick. Or if it is a trick, it’s the kind that still leads you to what you’re seeking, only without telling you the real price.

  If I’m right, it doesn’t matter. There’s no price I wouldn’t pay for what’s in those trees.

  My sisters are confused by my sudden silence, and even more when I walk away. I should explain. Instead I press my hands to the trunk of the camellia tree, finding a place between the flowers to make direct contact with the bark.

  This tree is different from anything I’ve met in the forest so far. It doesn’t feel like a tree, exactly. I don’t hear that laughter and joy. This tree is something . . . I can’t find the words. If Claire is a hole in the universe, then this is a piece of the universe that fell to earth and formed into a tree. It’s older and bigger than it looks. It’s cosmic.

  I press harder. I gasp as my hands sink right through the trunk. Okay, definitely not what I was expecting, but . . . it’s still exactly what should happen. I sink in up to my wrists, then farther.

  “What are you doing?” Irene asks from behind me. I don’t answer. Pushing through this tree is like pushing through mud. The deeper I go, the more resistance. Irene says something to the little twins, and I hear the small sounds Brooke often makes while signing, all of them trying to figure out what’s going on.

  I’m honestly not sure I could explain it if I tried.

  The sparkling I’ve come to associate with forest magic threatens to catch fire inside me. I keep reaching, and reaching, until I’m buried nearly to my shoulders and camellias brush my face. I’m dimly aware that the tree should not be this deep. I stretch out my fingers as far as I can.

  Another hand brushes mine. I lose it for half a beat, then it brushes again, and I grab on. I pull. I grab the second hand, and I know these hands. I pull harder, backing up, heels digging into the earth. My feet slip, pitching me forward, and the hands slip from my grasp, and I don’t know what happens if I fall fully into this tree—

  Arms wrap around my waist. Brooke shouts for Irene as she catches me. I’m soon surrounded by my sisters. They steady me. They won’t let me fall.

  I reach until I find those hands again. This time I hold on so tight that it hurts, but I’m not about to stop. “Pull!” I yell. My sisters help me back up, hauling ourselves away from the tree, fighting against it, until suddenly we’re free.

  We fall to the ground together in a heap, me and my sisters. The wind is knocked out of me but as I stare in wonder at Jane, there’s just enough breath left to whisper, “I found you.”

  21

  “Where was I?” is the first thing Jane says once she sits up. Her eyes are a little wild, a little unfocused.

  I laugh, mostly out of sheer relief. Brooke sobs into her hands. The little twins are all over Jane in moments, no matter Irene’s admonishments to give her space. Jane smiles at them, clearly dazed. I talk to her over their heads. “I was hoping you’d know. We pulled you out of a tree, but I’m not sure that’s where you really were.”

  Jane’s brow furrows. “No. I don’t think I was in a tree. I was somewhere else.”

  “Hold that thought,” I say, standing and running to the amaryllis tree. Please, please, please, if it worked once, it has to work again. I turn to Brooke and Irene. ‘One more go?’ I ask.

  With Brooke and Irene as my anchors, I reach in and search for another pair of familiar hands. When I first touch them, they’re cold and unmoving. “No,” I whisper. “No.” I grab onto them and pull. It’s no easier than it was with Jane. Brooke and Irene have to add their strength to mine. God, I really fucking hope I’m not pulling out a corpse.

  The fingers twitch. Slowly, the hands return my grasp. I grin. “Okay. Come on, then. No time to be stubborn.”

  We’re better braced this time, but when Winnie pops out of the tree, Brooke and Irene are the only ones who manage to stay standing.

  Winnie’s eyes are like Jane’s—wild, unfocused. Her braids are barely intact. We help each other to our feet, gripping each other’s forearms tightly.

  “What happened?” she asks. “I was . . .” She looks back at the tree we pulled her from. “I thought I was . . .”

  “Hey,�
�� I say. I squeeze her arms, bringing her attention to me. “You’re here now.”

  Nearby, Jane is trying to get an explanation about what the hell is going on. I can see her signing to Brooke and Irene, and I can see both of them shrugging.

  “I couldn’t wake up,” Winnie says. “It’s like I was dreaming, but I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t move and there was something just out of the corner of my eye. Something in the shadows.”

  A shiver runs up my spine. What was happening to them in those trees? I draw Winnie in for a hug. She tenses and her little pet poltergeist protests with a weak puff of air in my face. For all the affection we’ve shared, Winnie and I have never been huggers. Not with each other. But right now I need her to know she’s not in that tree anymore. I need to know it.

  “You’re here now,” I repeat. “You’re back with us.”

  After several long seconds, Winnie sags, relaxing into the hug. Returning it. “I’m awake?” she asks in a whisper.

  “Yeah. You’re awake.”

  Winnie pulls away and offers me a big smile meant to distract from the tears gathering in her eyes.

  “Great,” she says brightly. “So now you can tell me what bullshit trouble you got us all into. I assume this was your fault, Miss ‘I Sneak Out Into The Forest At Night’?”

  The accusation would hurt more if she knew how true it is, but she doesn’t. It’s not really aimed at me. It’s more deflection.

  That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I brush off the deep ache of guilt, roll my eyes, and let the others have their chance at hugging Winnie.

  Jane lies back on the forest floor, one arm around each little twin. She gazes up into the forest canopy, squinting, as if the memories are hiding in the leaves.

  “I thought I heard my mom,” she whispers as Irene translates for Brooke. “I thought I heard her laughing, and I could smell hay and sheep. I felt the scratch of corn stalks on my arms. It was just a dream, I guess, but it felt real.” She closes her eyes. “I was at the window. You were asleep. It must have been a trick of moonlight, but it looked like the trees were moving like corn in the wind, and I knew I had to go outside. So I did, and then . . . I don’t know. I remember stars. I remember being stars, or maybe fireflies? And then—” She falls silent. Her eyes open, and there’s something in them. A haunting, maybe. Did she experience the same thing as Winnie?

  Jane shakes her head. “And then . . .” she says again. She pulls her arm out from under Olivia to reach toward the sky. She’s thinking of our arms outstretched, seeking each other. She smiles at all of us in turn. “And then my sisters were here.”

  Winnie kneels next to Jane. ‘Yeah, I was in the garden and . . . I heard my mom, too. And my dad. They were calling to me from the forest. I knew that was impossible, but I thought maybe it wasn’t. Maybe they came back for me. Maybe they were worried Frank wouldn’t just let me go, so they were going to sneak me out. I walked into the forest, and . . .’ She trails off.

  Claire’s nowhere to be found, and that doesn’t surprise me. She wouldn’t want to be here when I realized the forest took my siblings. They didn’t just get lost. It drew them out here and it hid them from me on purpose. Blood rushes in my ears. I clench my fists. The forest could have led me to them at any time. Claire could have. She tricked me, she—

  The hand on my shoulder surprises me. I only just remember to keep my magic pulled up inside so that I don’t lash out when I whip around to face Irene.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. She glances down toward my feet.

  I look down, too. “Oh,” I say. In a jagged circle around me, the grass in the clearing has withered. “Yeah, I’m . . . I just got upset.”

  Irene nods, like that makes sense, as if this is something that has ever happened before.

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’ Jane asks. She and the little twins are sitting up, but the twins still cling to her. ‘Irene, Elle really let you go on this adventure without her? Is she back at the house with Violet?’

  Of course Jane wouldn’t know. There’s no way she could. Winnie won’t, either. I long to be them in this moment, to be able to picture Elle without picturing her cold on the forest floor or rolled unceremoniously into a grave.

  Maybe I’m not alone in that, because no one else says anything immediately. Jane glances between us, a confused half-smile on her face. She settles on me and signs, ‘Did I miss something? Are we angry at Elle right now?’

  God, it’s all so excruciatingly normal. This could be any day, any moment when Jane found me sulking and asked, “Who are we mad at?” It was just a way to get me to talk it out, because she knows that nine times out of ten, giving me a chance to talk the problem out will end in me forgiving and forgetting.

  ‘She’s gone,’ I sign, but the euphemism is more frustrating than the truth. ‘She’s dead. Frank . . .’

  I can’t finish the sentence. My vision is tunneling as the grief hits with a fierceness I hadn’t yet managed to feel. All I can see is Jane’s brown eyes widening, her lips parting as if to say no, but no sound comes out. I think no sound comes out. Blood is rushing in my ears so loudly that she could be screaming and I wouldn’t hear it. She wrenches away from the little twins and doubles over.

  And there’s nothing to do about it except let her be in pain. All any of us can do about our pain is feel it, sharp in our hearts, stiff and grimy under our fingernails like grave dirt.

  Winnie makes the first move. She crashes into Jane. She’s clumsy as she burrows into Jane’s arms, and they hold each other up, crying together. The little twins follow, then Irene, then Brooke. I join last. I hold them, and let myself be held, too.

  Our bodies don’t fit together cleanly. Shoulders knock together and hands don’t know where to land. Our skin is sticky with sweat. Our breath mingles in the center of our huddle, ragged and too hot. It’s awkward and uncomfortable and I never want to leave. For this moment, we’re joined. Grief travels through us like electricity through a power line—the charge of the pain isn’t lessened, but spread across us, it’s a little easier to bear.

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’ Winnie asks when we finally pull apart. ‘We can’t just go back there and pretend like everything’s normal. Any one of us could be next.’

  ‘Violet’s at the house, packing,’ Brooke signs.

  ‘So we can run away,’ Winnie signs.

  I raise my hand, then sign, ‘I’m for it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Jane agrees. ‘But . . . can we really?’ She looks exhausted, ready to collapse. I move in and let her lean on me. ‘Where would we go?’

  If we were a group of normal kids, we could throw ourselves on the mercy of strangers, but we aren’t. We’re alchemists. If we’re going to leave the lake house, we need our own money and transportation to stay hidden from everyone, not just Frank.

  ‘We’re supposed to talk out our problems,’ London signs. ‘Use our words.’

  Jane smiles down at her, fondly stroking back her curls. She opens her mouth to speak, but doesn’t seem to have it in her. She settles for the smile.

  I step in. ‘You’re right, in most situations, we should use our words. It’s almost always better to speak honestly about something that’s upsetting you so that it can get worked out. But sometimes, it’s not a good solution—and this is one of those times.’

  London considers that, then shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Brooke takes over trying to explain to an eight-year-old why, no, we can’t just talk it out with the man who murdered our sister. I can feel the hiker’s grave at my back like a bonfire.

  We can’t run away. We can’t talk to him.

  I did it once before.

  Couldn’t I do it again?

  ‘What if we do go back and act like everything is normal?’ I ask. ‘We have to go back anyway for Violet. Maybe he’ll let down his guard if he thinks we don’t suspect anything. Make him less dangerous.’ Make him less careful, I think.

  ‘How do we explain Ja
ne and Winnie?’ Irene asks. ‘We won’t just be able to bring them back in and pretend nothing happened.’

  I don’t have an answer for that, so instead I say, “. . . Shit.”

  Brooke and the little twins rejoin the conversation, and Irene catches them up on the plan. ‘What if the story will be that they just . . . came back?’ Brooke asks. ‘We’re never going to come up with something more elaborate that sounds believable and doesn’t get us killed. So we keep it simple.’

  ‘Like we just, what, appeared at the front door?’ Jane asks uncertainly. Then her face clears of confusion, and she nods. ‘We can say we don’t remember anything other than being lured into the forest. Blame it on this place. We can make him believe that, make him . . .’ Her hands flutter as she searches for the words, stares off into the distance. A few new tears streak down her cheeks. ‘Make him believe we aren’t a threat, so he doesn’t . . .’ She can’t finish that sentence, but we all know.

  ‘It’ll work,’ I sign. ‘We can do this. Just have to act oblivious long enough to find a way out for good.’ I hold Jane’s hand tight all the way back to the lake and our tunnel, even tighter when we pass a copse of new trees, and tighter again when the sweat condensing between our palms makes the grip slick. Maybe I’ll just never let her go again.

  The forest watches us leave. The pressure of its gaze bears down on me with such force that I nearly stumble, but Jane keeps me upright. I wish I could say that I’ll never be going back into the forest, that taking my sisters was the last straw and I’ll dedicate my life to destroying it.

  I could say it. It just wouldn’t be true.

  I know there’s something wrong before we reach the tunnel entrance. My flowers light the walls as usual, but just around the final bend there’s a different kind of light.

  The wall is open.

  My sisters and I exchange uneasy glances. “We closed it, right?” Irene whispers. We never leave the wall just open like that. We know Frank can’t see the tunnel from the lake side, but there’s no reason to think a missing wall would stay hidden from him.