The black-eyed girl wanders. Birds converse in the canopies above her, out of sight but ruffling the trees as they land and take flight. Small creatures scurry from one patch of undergrowth to another, disappearing into tangled bowers of barberry and thorn. The scent of blood travels on the breeze.
The black-eyed girl stomps through the brushwood and scrub, tracking the odor to a long-abandoned clearing, the apron to a cluster of elders, where a curtain of cobweb hangs stretched between dark-berried trees. Some strands are patchy, barely strung together, others thick and full and white. It is a home built long ago, a place of refuge for the spider at its center, which hangs roughly the size of the black-eyed girl’s fist. The creature seems to have a wise face, bright and whiskered, its many eyes as ancient as her own. Its spinnerets shiver. Its web holds one gossamer-clad casualty: a man smothered entirely in silk, with just a small sliver of space through which to breathe.
The black-eyed girl approaches, and deftly stills the spider with a finger. She pulls one of its crisp, freckled legs, stretching until she can hear cracking, see the phlegmy rush of innards as they spill. She lifts the limb to her mouth and slurps its contents. After completing this ritual with all eight of the legs, the black-eyed girl discards the shorn abdomen.
Sensing her, the netted man wriggles in his cobweb, knowing even as he does that he’s already met his fate. With a broken branch, the black-eyed girl severs the silk holding him. She takes a fingernail and slices through his packaging, pulling away the webbing until she can see his face, his hooked nose, his eyes wide with terror. Gripping his arm below the shoulder, the black-eyed girl twists until the heavy limb snaps free. She inhales. The meat is bursting and blood-black.
WHEN SHE HAS finished with him, sucking her fingers to lap up the last of the juices, the black-eyed girl turns to find the child, Emma, watching her. One dirty thumb is jammed into the girl’s mouth, a gesture that might seem lewd were it not for her size.
“I saw you,” says Emma, voice muffled by her hand.
Emma is not a conventionally pleasing child to look at. One brown eye cannot face forward, remains permanently pointed at the bridge of her large nose. That splotchy pink birthmark runs from neck to earlobe, over jaw and left cheek. Her lips form the shape of a small heart. Her slender fingers are flaked with hangnails and crusted with mud.
“Saw what?” the black-eyed girl asks her.
Emma shrugs, sucks her thumb louder and harder, lets escape a pink slip of her tongue. In some ways, Emma is more than a child; in others, as childlike as ever one could be. She spent just five years in the world, and then lost lifetimes in the forest, without mother or father to guide her, without synaptogenesis, or growth. As in the old fable, the grass snake that opens its mouth to let its little ones hide in its gullet, the forest saved Emma from early demise. Unlike the grass snake, it did not let her slither back out of its wide maw once danger had passed.
“You ate the dead man,” Emma says, pointing at the remains, the clean bones that litter the clearing.
“I did,” the black-eyed girl agrees.
“Did he taste good?” Emma fingers the remnants of the thick cobweb. A cluster of five-pointed elder flowers has been caught, nearly camouflaged in the white of the web, and she picks at the stamens, releasing chalky bursts of pollen. When she wipes her runny nose, she leaves fine yellow streaks across its peak.
“What does good mean?” the black-eyed girl asks her.
“Tasty.” Emma shrugs. “Like marzipan. Or veal chops.” She smiles. Her eyes widen with the memory of the chops the cook at Urizon made for her fifth birthday, browned in egg and breadcrumbs, dripping with fat, just days before her mother took her out into the forest. A fitting final meal: a calf bred for slaughter, its limbs tied with string so that its muscle could not grow.
“Have you had veal chops?” Emma asks. “I haven’t in such a long while.”
“I haven’t.”
“Oh.” Emma’s hands are knotted in cobweb. “None of the others have ever tried them either. Though Miss Lucy didn’t answer when I asked her, so she might have, I suppose.” Small fingers weave musty strands. “You aren’t like the others.”
“No.”
“Not like them at all.”
The black-eyed girl waits.
“So you can help us.”
“Help you, how?” the black-eyed girl asks Emma.
“Help us leave the forest. To escape. I think my mother must be very, very worried,” Emma continues. “Wherever she is. Even if she’s old and after.”
“After?” the black-eyed girl repeats.
“After death,” Emma says clearly, removing her thumb, which is red-raw and dimpled from the pressure of her teeth. “I’m very tired of being here,” says Emma. “Can you help me?”
The black-eyed girl nods.
She kisses Emma at the center of the strawberry birthmark. The grass snake opens its pink mouth, letting the little girl crawl between the prongs of its forked black tongue. Emma shudders, smiles, is still.
ONCE THE BODY is an empty husk, the black-eyed girl breaks its bones to drink. These bits of Emma make the black-eyed girl grow strong. The rest will crumble, the immortal little girl a meal for scavengers, a heady fertilizer for the trees. Fuel for the forest, now shifting, its ritual begun.
Branches rustle in new rhythm. The ever-present midday sun loses its heat. It peaks with seven sharp rays, lustrous and blinding, and begins its long-awaited descent.
A forest hog grunts approval. A nest of red squirrels chatter. Birds sing louder and faster, excited to share news—
The snake’s mouth remains wide. The wood is open.
25
I awoke in a clean room to the sound of someone fiddling with a window frame at the side of my bed. Coulton, I thought at first, my muscles tight. Then I remembered my escape. This must be Matthew, I realized. I fell back into the pillows of the king bed with relief. But when I opened my eyes, I realized it wasn’t Matthew—this boy’s hair was darker, he was taller, he walked with a cane.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, “just tightening the frame, here. Draft was coming in, didn’t want you getting sicker than you already are.”
“Where am I?” I managed. “Who are you?”
“Our house doesn’t have a fancy name like yours does.” He grinned, and I saw a bit of Matthew in the lines of his smile. “Welcome to Le Chateau Hareven. I’m Charlie.” He bowed, and his cane’s rubber tip scraped the floor. “I’ll go and tell my brother you’re awake.”
Charlie, I thought to myself, before drifting back to sleep.
MATTHEW HAD TOLD me there were seven Hareven children. Charlie was the eldest, Matthew next, followed by Elizabeth, Ben, the twins Teddy and Avalee, and finally little Tessa. These were far more Harevens than I could have imagined until the bulk of them stood over me, their faces grim, the next time I opened my eyes.
“They’ve been worried for you.”
I lifted my gaze above the children to see their mother, Elodie Hareven herself, framed in the doorway, holding a tray of hot liquids, swirls of steam rising to mask her face. Her voice, like Matthew’s, was deeper than I might have expected. Her hair was the same dark gold as Matthew’s, her eyes the same ocean-salted gray.
“Clear out, you lot, and give the girl some space.”
A general muddle of Harevens tripping over one another, quickly castrated complaints. The gaggle dispersed, and Mrs. Hareven settled the tray of food beside me on the bed. Moving to reach it, I was hindered by my body. My right hand was quite usual, the fingernails bitten, a few knuckles dry with cracked skin, but the left was weighed down by an arm wrapped in bandages to twice its normal size. All other dirt and blood had been rinsed off me. For the first time in ages, my hair was wet and clean.
“Our Matthew,” Mrs. Hareven said, “knew what to do with you.” The pride in her voice rang out clear and strong. “Fixed you right up, or at least put you on track. Just like him to want to fix things, as always. He said you might feel fuzzy waking, not to worry, it’s only the drugs.”