The Golden Yarn Read online

  “Can’t you see? Her lips have turned so thoroughly to silver we can’t get the potion into her.” Chanute avoided looking at Fox. She was almost as much a daughter to him as Jacob was a son.

  “How did you find us?”

  “Has there ever been anything Albert Chanute could not find?” The old man coughed some slime into his handkerchief. Jacob saw blood in it. “Don’t you look at me like that!” Chanute growled. “Alma wanted to send young Bachmann, the one who helped her get rid of the Stilt in the White Brook, but what does he know about following a trail? I know you so well I could find you with my eyes closed!” Chanute stopped coughing, but he looked bad, as though he’d crawled fresh out of his own grave.

  “You should’ve seen how angry she got when Bachmann told her Sylvain and I were going.” He laughed, which brought on another coughing fit. “I thought she was going to hex me into my bed.”

  “Pity she didn’t.”

  “Really? Then why don’t you learn to take care of yourself?”

  Just like old times. They were both so good at hiding what they felt for each other.

  “Albert’s taking something the Witch called grave-bitters,” Sylvain said to Jacob. “It didn’t sound as though she thought much of it.”

  “And that’s how you thank me for taking you along?” Chanute barked at him.

  “Grave-bitters? Are you trying to kill yourself?” Jacob managed to get to his feet. Every movement felt like Seventeen had poured lead into his limbs. Not lead, Jacob. Silver. The fire seemed to have melted it so it could now course through his veins. The shimmering film on his skin meant he must’ve sweated out at least some of it.

  Chanute spat. “What’s left to kill? I just wish we’d gotten here in time for Fox as well.”

  Sylvain stroked Fox’s hair. “Ciboire. I will kill him,” he muttered. “I swear, I will kill them all!”

  Jacob didn’t ask him how he planned to accomplish that. Instead, he had the same futile thought in his head. I will kill him. All of them. Even the girl with Clara’s face.

  “Was that one of the Mirrorlings Sylvain met?” Chanute threw some fresh wood on the fire. Even the warmth reminded Jacob of Seventeen.

  “Yes.” Jacob didn’t want to talk about him. Not about Seventeen or about the Elf. He took the card from his pocket. It was blank.

  “What’ve you got there?” Chanute asked him.

  Jacob turned away from Chanute, staring at the empty card. Give her back to me. Give her back and I will turn around. I promise. He could no longer think clearly.

  “Ta-bar-nak! I haven’t been in a forest like this for years!” Sylvain muttered behind them.

  Because where Sylvain came from, there hadn’t been forests like this for centuries.

  What else could Jacob offer? Anything—it didn’t matter.

  I will find you. I will find something that will destroy you more thoroughly than anything the Fairies can do to you. Give her back!

  Then the words came.

  Everything has a price, Jacob. And war means war.

  War. He looked down, then up at the trees, anywhere, just not at Fox. Fine. I’ll pay your price. I promise. Stop it, Jacob! But he would’ve offered Spieler his beating heart on a plate not to have to see her lying there any more.

  “Câlisse, I’d forgotten how good it feels. I’ve been stuck in the city for too long.” Sylvain stroked the bark of a pine tree as though it were a dog. “Damn cities. Spreading like a stone fungus. Accouche qu’on baptise, Albert. We have to go to Canada! What’s it like on this side? The rainbow fish, the leaves of gold...”

  “Canada? What’s that supposed to be?” Chanute asked.

  “He means l’Arcadie,” Jacob said. “Ontario. It’s many countries here. The West is the land of tribes.” Yes, keep talking about Canadian provinces. That way maybe you won’t lose your mind.

  “Really? Tabarnak!”

  “The last time Crookback sent troops over there, they were all turned into seals.” Chanute didn’t know how much he liked that kind of warfare. “The savages there know more about magic than our Witches do.”

  The savages. Jacob looked at his card. Say something. Anything.

  The letters formed slowly, in perfect green curlicues, every letter written with joyful relish.

  Take her to Schwanstein. Maybe then I’ll tell you how you can get her back.

  He’s trying to distract you from what you should really be thinking about. And he still wanted Jacob to turn around to look at Fox. But Fox wouldn’t want him to. Jacob bent down and picked a small flower growing between the roots of a pine tree. Everlasting dock. Sylvain was right: This forest really was old. Old enough for someone found only in this part of the world? Maybe. But he was going to have to search farther down, where the pines gave way to beeches, oaks, and hawthorns. They, like Witches, preferred deciduous trees.

  “What are you thinking? I don’t like that look on your face.” Chanute knew him as well as Fox did.

  “Do you have your bluepowder?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “First you tell me what you want with it.”

  “You know exactly what I want with it.”

  Chanute took a worn leather pouch from his belt. “Even if you find one... Look at yourself. You can hardly stand! Since when are you the suicidal type? And she won’t give you what you need, even if you offer your soul.”

  “I know.” Jacob took the pouch from the calloused hand. “You’re forgetting who taught me.”

  Seventeen hadn’t touched their horses. Jacob felt like a traitor as he pulled Fox’s fur dress from her saddlebag. Chanute, however, uttered an admiring grunt.

  “Not bad. Just a pity that Fox will shoot you if she ever wakes up.”

  Jacob’s fingers could hardly tie up his backpack. And that’s how he was going to challenge someone even Alma could stand up to only on a good day?

  Chanute stood in his way. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. You make the sure the fire doesn’t go out. And you keep the Klads off her.”

  Klads were the most dangerous treasure-wraiths in this world, and a whole silver body was a very tempting loot. Jacob didn’t have to tell Chanute who else might be attracted by such a prize.

  “Fine!” he growled. “Then at least take Sylvain with you.”

  “So that I can look after him? No.”

  Behind them Sylvain was giving quite an impressive imitation of a raven’s caw. Obviously, Chanute hadn’t yet explained to him how dangerous that could be in this world.

  Jacob looked at Fox.

  “Why am I even trying to argue with you?” Chanute shouted after him as Jacob stepped under the trees. “Even as a child you were more stubborn than a gold-donkey. Did I come after you all this damn way so you could go and kill yourself? You’re no faster than Wenzel on his crutch.”

  The concern in his voice was very touching, particularly from the man who used to send Jacob into Witches’ houses and Ogres’ caves without a second thought. Maybe old age did soften the heart. Jacob wasn’t sure if that was a good thing for Albert Chanute.

  The Wrong Face

  Amalie always made Kami’en wait. Not on purpose, as he did with visitors and supplicants. No. Amalie’s unpunctuality was caused by a last-minute change of dress, or having to powder the face she still wore like a mask. She never lost her fear that she could lose her beauty as suddenly as the Fairy lily had granted it.

  The room where she received Kami’en had been her mother’s favorite room. Amalie had redecorated it, like she had most of the palace. She bought furniture, rugs, paintings, as though she were decorating a dollhouse. And the results looked like it as well: too much gold, the kitsch of a past that existed only in her decorator’s mind. Her mother would have hated it. And Kami’en didn’t like it any better.

  The Goyl King was about to send one of his adjutants to get her when her favorite maid announced the Empress. Amalie loved rituals. She
walked in a little too erectly, as usual—her feeble attempt to imitate the Fairy—and she was again a little breathless, as though she always had too much to do, despite all her servants and maids. Her dress was white. The color of innocence. Surely not a coincidence. Amalie spent hours planning what to wear. She could be very calculating in a very childish way. She had her mother’s intelligence but not her self-assurance. It was never good for children when parents felt they had to buy them a new face because the one they’d been born with wasn’t good enough.

  He had, of course, known all this before he married her. His spies had told him things about Amalie that not even her mother knew. But he’d still underestimated her cruelty, her helpless selfishness, and her impressive talent for seeing herself as the victim and everyone else as guilty. She despised, and still loved, nobody more than herself. Maybe she felt some love for him, but he’d also believed she loved their infant son. Kami’en didn’t really like Amalie, but he still desired her, like a sweet fruit he was forbidden to eat.

  Niomee had always understood this. She’d told him her name only after a whole year. If that was her name. In her language, it meant “green”.

  “I am so glad you’re here!” Amalie’s violet eyes swam in tears. It had taken Kami’en a while to understand that she only ever shed tears for herself.

  She wrapped her arms around him and offered her lips for a kiss. Such perfect lips. Yet all he wanted to do was hit her for the game she was trying to play with him, for the pain her lies had caused him. Niomee had understood the rage that lived in Kami’en’s stone flesh, just as she’d understood his impatience and his urge to break rules, and his preference for attack over defense.

  Not as gently as he’d intended, he freed himself from her embrace.

  The teary eyes became alert.

  “Kami’en? My love? What is it?”

  “You hid my son at your godfather’s? How stupid do you think I am?”

  Through all the powder, Amalie blushed like a child caught lying. Like a child? Like a human child. Goyl learned early to hide their feelings. Stone skin came with a lot of benefits.

  “I just wanted him safe. I was afraid she might do something to him.”

  Ah, she’d planned exactly what to say in case he found out.

  “And the charade with the bloody crib?”

  Kami’en turned his back on her. He wasn’t sure his face didn’t still show some of the despair he’d felt when he heard the news. For a few hours he’d believed her. His son…What did he care if he had a moonstone skin? He was born to a human woman; that was all that mattered.

  His revenge for all the years that humans had hunted him like vermin. For the way they still stared when they thought he wasn’t looking.

  “You gave him to a hunter who couldn’t even read!”

  The alertness in her eyes turned to fear as she realized he was speaking of the hunter in the past tense.

  “I was going to tell you.”

  Kami’en went to the window. Behind the stables, he could see the glass roof of the pavilion where the Fairy had lived. Amalie was stuttering excuses, explanations, accusations against the Other One, as she liked to call the Fairy.

  “The child is no longer at your godfather’s.”

  That made her shut up. Never had her perfect face looked more like a mask.

  “I had the castle and the grounds searched by a hundred men. They just showed the torture instruments to your godfather and he confessed.” Kami’en imitated the heavy Austrian accent: “‘It vaz Amalie’s plan, ja! She sent for zee tshild as soon as the Fairy vaz gone.’”

  Amalie’s face turned whiter than the lilies that had made it beautiful. “That’s a lie!”

  “I don’t care. Where is my son?”

  She shook her head, again and again. “He promised to protect him like his own son until you...” She fell silent, like someone who suddenly realized she was standing in quicksand.

  Until you cast out your mistress. Until you’ve forgotten her. Until you love no one but me.

  “Where is my son?” he repeated.

  Had he actually taken her to be intelligent? She was stupid. How could she expect love if she made him lose what he loved more than anything? And that was? The Fairy? Or his son? Who cared. They were both gone.

  He so wanted to hit her.

  “This palace is now your prison. Your subjects need not know. I can’t afford any more unrest. I give you one month. If by then my son is not returned to me unharmed, you will be executed, together with your godfather.”

  He went to the door.

  Amalie stood there trembling in her white dress. Kami’en still remembered the other one, the wedding dress covered in blood. A marriage born out of betrayal could not end well.

  His adjutant opened the door. He turned around once more.

  “Wasn’t it one of your great-aunts who got her head chopped off in Lotharaine? Goyl are less savage. I will have you shot.”

  “I don’t know where he is. Please! You have to find him. He is my son as well. I never wanted to lose him.”

  Kami’en was already out of the door when she asked, “Will you get the Fairy back?”

  “Why should I? She betrayed me just like you did.”

  He had decided to see it that way—it made it easier to forget that he had betrayed her first.

  A Thousand Steps East

  Walking was so hard. The body his legs had to carry seemed to be three times its usual weight. Pockets full of silver, Jacob. No, not the pockets—his bones, his skin, his flesh.

  A thousand steps eastward. That’s how one was supposed to find the skulls of the Baba Yaga.

  He’d barely walked a hundred steps when he had to lean against a beech tree. His breath came as a silver mist. At least it was a beech. There were now more leaves than needles around him.

  Did her house really stand on chicken legs?

  The fairy tales of his world sometimes gave surprisingly accurate descriptions of things behind the mirror.

  A thousand steps...

  Every tree trunk seemed to make faces at him. Elf faces everywhere.

  “War is war.”

  A hundred and fifty steps. Two hundred. Compass in hand, through shoulder-high ferns, through undergrowth furry with moss and flowering lichen. A young wolf ran away only after Jacob pointed his pistol. He could barely bend his finger around the trigger.

  Three hundred. The next hundred felt like a thousand, and breathing became as hard as if he were carrying Fox’s silver body on his shoulders. He was such a lousy savior.

  Four hundred. Five hundred. Six hundred.

  Seven hundred. Eight hundred.

  Jacob rubbed the bluepowder on his scorched skin. It masked his smell. The skulls had fine noses, and meeting them unprepared could make the difference between life and death.

  Nine hundred and fifty.

  A thousand.

  And there they were. So far, the fairy tales were right. Fence posts with skulls on top appeared between the trees.

  The fence surrounded a hut adorned with carvings: leaves, flowers, animals, human faces. They reminded Jacob of the woodcuts found in old fairy-tale books. Or maybe those woodcuts were reminiscent of this hut.

  He stopped, waiting for his breathing to slow and the weariness to leave his poisoned limbs. In his first years with Chanute, he’d dreamed of finding one of the famous glowing skulls of the Baba Yaga all by himself. He’d wanted to give it to Chanute as a night-light. Fool. Back then he’d been always on the lookout for ways to prove his courage to himself and the world. That had changed. “Has it?” he could hear Fox jeer.

  A gold bunting in a nearby oak stopped its song. A brittle branch snapped under Jacob’s boots. The air was heavy with the scent of woodruff and damp wood.

  A toad sat between the fence posts, peering at him through golden eyes. A short croak and the hut began to rise from the wet grass, exposing two spindly, leathery legs. The fairy tales of his world were true, though Jacob do
ubted they’d gotten the animal right. Chicken legs? Those blood red legs looked more like a lizard’s.

  The hut slowly turned around a few times. Then it settled back into the grass, now with the door facing Jacob. The toad hopped away, but its mistress took her time. Maybe she wanted to give the skulls enough time to take a good look at him.

  But then the Baba Yaga appeared out of the wood next to the door. A bony face. Flowers became a patterned dress; carved branches turned into arms and legs. The dress gained color as she moved toward Jacob, dozens of colors in embroideries depicting the magic of the world and the Baba Yaga. The dress was not clean. Its owner obviously liked to rub forest earth on her skin, but the colors still would have put the most precious royal robes to shame. Ukrainian villagers traditionally imitated the dresses of the Baba Yaga, embroidering patterned blankets that were passed from generation to generation to wrap their newborns and their dead. There were as many stories about the Baba Yagas here and in Varangia as there were carvings on their huts. It was said that their noses sometimes grew all the way into their attics, and their fingers ended in raven claws. They could probably make these stories all true, if they felt like it. Like all Witches, Baba Yagas could make themselves look any way they liked.

  On this young morning, this one showed herself to Jacob as old as she was, older than the forest she lived in, older than the house that had been her home for centuries. Her skin was as furrowed as the walls of her hut, her hair as gray as the smoke drifting out of its chimney, and her eyes as red as the wild poppies growing behind the skull-fence.

  “Look at what you’re bringing me.” She snapped her fingers, and the silver evaporated off Jacob’s skin like steaming sweat. “I thought Alderelves had all been caught! Incarcerated in bark, silent and blind, smothered with leaves, their fleet feet tied by roots.” She made the silver dance in the air until it settled on her skulls. “Did one of them escape? And you made him your enemy? That’s not good. Not even I can take them on.”

  Jacob approached the fence, but he stopped one step short. Beyond it all time and memory would cease. They said the Baba Yaga ate time like bread.