The Dark and Hollow Places Read Free

beautiful, make her flying through the air as if gravity would never dare to sully her with its grasp.
    It’s a rush. I feel like I’m reclaiming the control the woman stole from me. And when it’s over and I step back I realize that at some point I stopped painting the stranger and started painting myself. But not how I am now, not scarred, withstringy blond hair that tangles in front of my face. How I could have been if I’d never left my sister in the Forest that day.
    The woman asked me what I wanted in my life if it could be anything. I haven’t given any thought to what I want in a long time, outside of longing for Elias to come back. When we first arrived in the Dark City I’d have said I wanted to go home to my village in the Forest but somewhere along the way I’ve forgotten that. I’ve let the day-to-day existence of life blind me to dreams.
    Just like this city, I used to be something once. I used to be a girl who liked to get out of bed every morning and who understood passion. Yet for the past three years—longer than that, even—I’ve been frozen, incapable of accepting that life around me has shifted without my consent.
    Exhausted and lost in thought, I push away from the wall and start making my way back to my flat, needing the familiar surroundings to remind me why I’m still here.
    Why I’ve allowed myself to stay stuck waiting.
    The darkness of the night settles heavy on my shoulders as I retreat toward the Dark City. I scamper over bridges and wade through the line of people waiting to cross the Palisade wall into the City proper. I feel invisible, everyone around me wrapped up in their own problems, not caring about an anonymous girl with her gaze trained on the ground.
    I scramble past the debris pile of what used to be a wing of the building housing our flat and climb down the fire escape, slipping through the window into the emptiness of my home. Bare walls, scarred floor, dust coating everything.
    Nothing personal except for the quilt twisted at the bottom of the bed, where it landed after I kicked it off thismorning. I wrap it around myself, burying my face in the tattered cloth that was once bright. That once held his smell.
    Usually sleep comes fast and easy. Usually I want nothing more than to be yanked into the featureless dreams, but not tonight.
    Tonight I think of the woman. The stars spin outside, chasing dawn across the sky, and sleep never comes. Only the cold emptiness of the flat.
    No other heartbeat to keep me company. No voice to keep away the blackness of night. Nobody to share the length of days with.
    And I realize that I’ve been spending too long trying to forget that I’ve lost the part of myself that used to belong to someone else. That I once held my sister’s hand and sat on my father’s lap and knew my neighbors’ names. I’ve filled that place with an emptiness, and the woman tonight made me see that that hole inside me is from Elias and that I’ve waited for him to come home long enough. He’s gone. And I’m alone. Crouching here in my empty flat, listening to the moaning of the City dying around me, I remember what I want.
    I want to find my way back home, to my sister and my family and my village in the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

T here are only two ways off the island: boat or bridge. The boat docks sit on the southeast side, deep in the protected range of the Dark City. A series of gates and fences blocks the City from the docks, and Recruiters patrol with dogs that can smell infection to ensure that no vessels carry it into the City.
    The few boats remaining after people fled during the Recruiter Rebellion are fiercely guarded, and I know it would be almost impossible for me to book passage on one. Which means that if I’m going to really do this—leave—I’ll have to travel by foot like everyone else who wants to get off the island. And the only bridges in and out are far north in the Neverlands.
    I start my journey in the late morning after a