After the message was sent, they waited.
Ben thought he remembered the name Ainsel from somewhere and, taking his mug of honeyed tea, went to look through some of the books in the den to see if he could find the word in one of their indexes. Severin went out to the shed to collect Ben’s ax and see what other weaponry he could sharpen into usefulness.
Without her secrets, Hazel felt a horrible, anxious vulnerability. Shadows waited to flood in. To keep busy, she went to find all the iron and scissors in the house, all the salt and grave dirt, all the oatmeal and berries and charms. After Severin brought the weapons back inside, she spread some on every lintel and across each doorway.
When that was done, she sat down on one of the chairs and dozed. Whatever magic allowed her to serve the Alderking without sleeping seemed to be wearing off. Exhaustion overtook her.
She woke to find the sun going down in a blaze of molten gold. She heard Severin’s voice upstairs, a low warm mumble, and then a bark of laughter from her brother.
“Hey,” Jack said softly, coming over to where she was. His jeans were hanging low on his hip bones, exposing a slice of warm brown skin where his T-shirt rode up. She imagined resting her hand there and curled her fingers to keep from touching him. “I just came to wake you before you… changed.”
Hazel flinched. She’d nearly forgotten.
“None of this is your fault,” he said. “Just so we’re clear.”
“I lost the sword. I freed Severin. I made a stupid bargain. It’s at least somewhat my fault.” She began to finger-comb her hair and then braid it out of her face. “But I’m not letting her take you back if you don’t want to go.”
He gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “Eh, it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses.”
Hazel made a face. “I’m pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that.”
“Maybe,” he said, then shook his head. “It’s always been an elaborate game of pretend here in Fairfold, you know? Pretend you’re human. Pretend no one thinks it’s weird when Mom calls the relatives and tries to explain how she actually had twins, but one was really sick and that’s why she didn’t tell anyone about him. Pretend everyone believes her. Pretend that Dad doesn’t think it’s strange that I exist at all. Pretend no one in town stares. Pretend that I haven’t been sneaking off to the woods for all these years. Pretend I’m never tempted to leave. Pretend I can’t do magic. My life has always been a powder keg waiting for a match.”
“Well, hello, match,” Hazel said, pointing to herself with both thumbs, but she smiled as she did it, hoping to take the sting out of the words.
“Hello, match.” Somehow his snagged-silk voice gave them an entirely different meaning. She thought about waking in the forest, about the smell of the pine needles in the air and the feeling of his mouth on hers with the uneven ground rough against her back, and squirmed.
But they were far from the heady, pine-soaked woods.
And she still hadn’t told him the thing.
“I like you,” Hazel blurted abruptly, the words coming out all wrong, like an accusation.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Why else would I say it?” Now he knew and now they could go back to talking about colleges or killing things or strategy or something—anything—else. Now they could go back to worrying about his being taken away to Faerie. At least he knew. At least she’d said it.
“If you like me, why do you sound so mad about it?”
“I’m not angry,” she said. She sounded angry, though. She sounded furious.
He sighed. “You don’t have to tell me that you like me. Just because I am having a bad day or because I told you—you’re not obligated.”
“I know that.” She did. She did know that. She’d loved Jack for ages, loved him for so long that her love was an ache that never left her body. Jack, who kissed her like nothing else mattered. Jack, who knew her too well. She’d loved him and had believed he couldn’t ever like her, had believed it so firmly that even with the memory of his saying he did, she still felt as though he was going to snatch it back, declare that he’d made a mistake.
He probably should take it back. She was a mess. She couldn’t even tell a boy she liked him the way she was supposed to.
“You don’t owe this to me,” Jack said. “And if this is because you don’t think it matters, since I won’t be here to find out you lied—”
She realized abruptly that he really didn’t believe her. Her declaration was going even worse than she’d thought. “No. No, I’m not lying.”
“Hazel,” he started, voice flat.
“Look,” she told him, interrupting, hoping she’d get it right this time. “After I made that bargain, I thought I was going to be taken away by the Folk. And I could have been! I didn’t want to get close to anyone, okay? I’m not good at getting close to people. I don’t have boyfriends. I don’t date. I hook up with boys at parties, and I definitely don’t tell them that I like them. I’m not good at it, okay? That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “But I’ve known you all my life, Hazel. Your brother is my best friend. I hear the stuff you say to each other, and I hear a lot of the stuff you don’t say, too. I know you don’t want to get close to anyone, but it’s not just because of the faeries.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “We shouldn’t talk about this.”
“No,” she said, although she felt cold all over. “Say what it is you’re thinking.”
He sighed. “I mean, you’re the one who showed me how to forage for food in the woods. We were, what, nine or ten when you showed me how to find stuff to eat? Do you remember why you’d learned that—why you were such an expert? Or how about the time that you stayed for dinner at my house and hid food in your napkin to eat later because you weren’t sure your parents would remember to feed you, but we all were supposed to pretend things were fine? The parties your parents used to throw were legendary, but I’ve heard the stories about you and your brother eating food out of the dog’s bowl. Heard you tell the story, too, like it was a joke. You talk about your childhood like it was just wild, bohemian fun, but I remember how much it wasn’t fun for you.”
Hazel blinked at him. She’d been so good at shutting out memories she didn’t like, so good at locking them away. None of what he said should have surprised her; they were only facts about her life, after all. But she found herself surprised anyway. All that stuff was so long ago that she’d felt like it didn’t matter anymore. “My parents are fine now. They grew up. They got better at stuff.”
He nodded. “I know. I just also know you always think it’s down to you to fix things, but it doesn’t have to be. Some people are trustworthy.”
“I was going to save Fairfold.”
“You can’t save a place. Sometimes you can’t even save a person.”
“Can you save yourself?” Hazel asked. It felt important, as though his answer would be the answer, as though somehow he might really know.
He shrugged. “We’ve all got to try, right?”
“So do you believe me? That I like you?” she asked. But he didn’t get to answer.
Ben strode into the room triumphantly, holding a book up in the air. “I found it. I found it! I am a genius! A memory genius. I am like one of those people who count cards in Vegas!”
Hazel stood up. “Ainsel?”
He nodded. “And by the way, Hazel, this was in your room.”
She recognized it with alarm. The spine read, FOLKLORE OF ENGLAND. It was the book she’d found in the trunk underneath her bed. Had she not understood its significance?
Her brother flipped it open. “There’s this story from Northumberland about a little kid who won’t go to bed. His mother tells him that if he stays up, the faeries are going to come and take him away. He doesn’t believe her, so he keeps on playing anyway as the hearth fire burns down. In time, a faerie does show up, a pretty little faerie kid who wants to play with him. The boy asks the faerie’s name, and she says, “Ainsel.” Then she asks the boy’s name and he says “my ainsel” with a wicked grin.
“So they play a little more, and the boy tries to get the fire going. He stokes it, but one of the dying embers rolls out and burns the faerie child’s toe. She howls like crazy, and the huge, scary faerie mother barrels down the chimney. The boy hops into bed, but he can still hear the faerie mother demanding her child name the one who burned her. ‘My ainsel! My ainsel!’ the faerie girl howls. Apparently, ‘my ainsel’ is what ‘my own self’ sounds like when said with a Northumbrian accent, so hearing that, the faerie mother becomes very stern. ‘Well, then,’ she says, grabbing the faerie child by the ear and dragging her up into the chimney, ‘you’ve got no one but yourself to blame.’ And that’s the whole story. Ainsel. My ainsel. My own self.” Ben bowed exaggeratedly.
“But what does that mean?” Jack asked.
Myself. My own self.