The MirrorWorld Anthology Read online

  He emptied half a bottle of wine while he gave his speech, and split his ugly face with a grin when he saw the guests staring at him. Albert Chanute. Everyone knew that name, even Jacob. He had read about him in the beer drenched newspapers he picked up under the tables. Albert Chanute. Treasure hunter for the Empress. Finder of the Seven Miles Boots, of Cudgels-in-the-Sack, and of Cinderella’s glass coffin. Fairies, Watermen, Child Eating Witches… Chanute had seen them all.

  “What will you find next?” Jacob was glad that his Austrian was by now almost as fluent as if he’d been born behind the Mirror.

  Chanute gulped down the other half of his bottle and stared down at Jacob with eyes that were already becoming shortsighted.

  “What will I find next?” He laughed. “Did you hear the boy? What will Chanute find next? I don’t know. What do you think I should look for?”

  “The knife that cuts through anything! No. A witch comb that turns you into a crow!”

  “I found a witch comb,” Chanute grunted while he ordered another bottle of wine, “but it almost turned me into a rat. Not exactly the shape you wish for.”

  The men around the tables laughed. None of them took their eyes off Chanute’s ugly face. How could one? Every line on it had been written by adventure. Every scar had been carved by glory. Jacob was breathless with adulation.

  “How did you find the glass coffin?” he asked.

  Chanute scrutinized him. “Where do you come from, boy? I can’t place that accent, and I’ve heard them all.”

  Damn. Careful, Jacob. “Uh, from Albion,” he stuttered. “A small village far up north.” A seamstress had told him that he sounded like her cousin from Albion.

  Chanute frowned. “Really? Well, there’s for sure something strange about you. Maybe some Thumbling blood, considering your size?”

  The others laughed.

  “I am only twelve.”

  “Well…” another glass of wine. “I was a head taller than you when I was twelve. And I had already killed my first Stilt. Mean skinny bastard. Tried to suck my blood. Killed him with my bare hands.”

  Jacob stared at the hand that once again grabbed the wine bottle. He believed every word. Later on he would hear at least a dozen versions of that story, but he never found out whether any of them were true.

  Chanute told many stories that night, until his tongue got too heavy to form the words. When he stumbled up the stairs to his room the others left, as if the sun had set in the middle of the night.

  As usual, the Innkeeper didn’t allow Jacob to go to sleep before he had cleaned all the glasses and tables. Ignaz Winterer was a tall baldheaded man with teeth that reminded Jacob of the horses at the stable, and he counted his money every night before he went to bed. He was as joyless as he was cheap, but that night Jacob didn’t care. He didn’t care that Winterer inspected the glasses he had washed and pushed half of them back into the dirty water, didn’t care that he told him he’d take it from his wages when he broke one. Jacob heard his nagging voice as if from afar. He knew he would be gone soon.

  Chanute didn’t wake until three o’clock the next day, and he could barely open his eyes when he came down the stairs. Jacob waited until he had had another mug of wine for breakfast and followed him when he walked over to the stables to pick up his horse. Chanute only noticed him after he’d crossed half the marketplace.

  “What?” he turned with a growl.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chanute spit out, swiping a fly off his scarred brow.

  “I’ll come with you. You need an apprentice.”

  Chanute stared at the statue of the Empress’ uncle that stood in the middle of Schwanstein’s market — a reminder of the days when a shadow in the sky could still be a Dragon. Jacob was terribly sad that he had missed those days. So was Chanute.

  “I can clean your knives and pistols. I can feed your horse and grease the saddle. I can get you wine and tobacco, and make sure the elves don’t sit on your forehead when you sleep.” (This was said to give one very bad dreams.)

  Jacob had spent all night figuring out what he would say. He thought it all sounded quite convincing, but Chanute looked at him as if he had offered to carry his head from now on.

  “Listen, boy,” he growled at him. “I have a hangover, and you are a dirty little liar telling me you’re from Albion. Get out of my sight.”

  Well, there had always been the possibility that this wouldn’t be easy.

  But what if the treasure hunter got on his horse and rode off? He would never be able to follow him on foot!

  Chanute disappeared into the stable.

  When he came out with his horse, Jacob was waiting.

  “I’ll find my own food and I’ll work for nothing.”

  Chanute ignored him.

  He tried to get into the saddle but the horse shied away from him. They didn’t like the smell of cheap wine on a rider’s breath.

  Jacob caught the bridle and calmed the horse.

  Chanute cast him a dirty glance. “So you know about horses too?”

  “Everything,” Jacob lied.

  “I don’t like them,” Chanute grunted. “Never have.”

  That was a godsend.

  He tried once again to get into the saddle, but he was still quite drunk.

  Jacob grabbed his boot and pushed. He nearly broke his fingers, but Chanute made it into the saddle. He stared down at him.

  “You’ve been in the forests?”

  “Sure.” What a blessing that he was such a gifted liar.

  “I am heading for a gingerbread house. You’ll run away screaming like a little girl.”

  “No I won’t.”

  Chanute groaned and slapped his fist against his forehead. “Get me something from the apothecary. Something that helps a headache.”

  He threw a few copper coins onto the grey flagstones. Jacob hastily picked them up.

  He had never run so fast in his life.

  What if Chanute had tricked him?

  What if he rode off, laughing at the stupid boy who’d been foolish enough to believe he could be the apprentice of the great Albert Chanute?

  But he was still there when Jacob came back.

  Chanute was still there.

  The Beginning

  Fox hadn’t seen them. The iron teeth in the dew-damp grass. The trap carefully hidden beneath wilted leaves. The scent of a rabbit had distracted her. Winter was coming and food was getting scarce.

  The trap snapped into her left hind leg, smashing her bone and drowning the world in pain. And while the vixen struggled to lick the blood off her downy fur, Celeste wished back the hands she’d nearly forgotten. But the fur wouldn’t let her go. She had exchanged her human form for the body of the vixen far too often, and far too long. Maybe the girl she had once been was nothing but a dream.

  Yes. A dream.

  She was Fox. Nothing else.

  She just hoped death would find her before the trapper came to claim his prize. They smashed in the heads of the ones who were still alive, and they did it with particular pleasure when their quarry was a fox. They didn’t like animals so cunning, sly and red-clad — like the devil. They preferred wolves.

  It hurt so much. The cold iron in her warm flesh.

  What if she bit off her leg? And then? How far would a three-legged vixen get?

  A horse.

  Fox heard it snort between the trees. The rider dismounted. Boots plowing a path through the ferns and bramble. She would bite him. She had at least that much strength left.

  Fox snapped at him as soon as he leaned over her. But all she caught between her teeth was his sleeve.

  He yanked his arm away. He was young. Nearly a boy.

  “As you wish
,” he said. His voice was cool. “You’ll bleed to death before nightfall. Unless they get to club you to death first.”

  He got up. Something about his scent was strange, like a foreign land.

  “This is not your trap?” She barely recognized her own voice. She hadn’t used it for human words in a long time.

  What are you doing, Fox? If he didn’t kill her for her fur, then he would do so for speaking in a human voice. But he just looked at her. And all she saw in his eyes was curiosity.

  “I can open the trap. But not if you’re going to bite me.”

  The vixen still wanted to bite, but Celeste held her back, even when he touched her injured leg.

  “It will be fine,” he said, quietly, as though fearing his voice might add to her injury.

  It will be fine. She held on to his voice while she drowned in pain. The iron would not give up her flesh easily and finally the world around her went as black as death. The last thing she felt was the touch of his hands.

  Black.

  But this wasn’t death.

  She awoke to the smell of burning wood, meat roasting over open flames and when she opened her eyes she saw the pale light of morning sneaking through the branches of an oak.

  Celeste wanted to get up, but her first movement immediately brought back the pain — and the memories. Her hind leg was splinted with a piece of wood and her wounds were dressed.

  “Looks bad. But I’ll take you to a friend of mine. She can heal almost any wound.” He threw a strip of meat towards her. “What’s your name?”

  “Fox.”

  “That’s it?”

  She didn’t answer. “What shall I call you?”

  He brushed his dark hair from his forehead. “My name is Jacob.”

  His eyes were alert, like those of an animal. Fox could smell his loneliness and his anger, but also his fearlessness. Almost too much of it.

  He had saved her life. There was only one way to repay that debt. One day she would do the same for him.

  Jacob.

  The taste of his name on her tongue was familiar, as if she’d always known him.

  Hopes & Dreams

  Johann and Traugott were farmers’ sons. They had worked their fathers’ fields since the age of six, and knew all about the hardships of living off the land. They saw the town folk who drove past in their carriages, who didn’t have to worry about the weather, who hid under umbrellas from the sun and were safe from the rain in their well heated houses.

  Johann and Traugott wanted lives like that.

  So one night Johann convinced Traugott to come with him... down the road to Schwanstein, where they could find work in the factories. Johann was good with words. He painted a beautiful picture for Traugott, of city life, nights illuminated by more than a candle, clean clothes, clean hands, a straight back, a warm room — and instead of the smell of cow shit, the scent of perfumes and smoked meats.

  They followed the freshly laid tracks of the trains that wrote progress into the air with smoky smears. The fields they passed showed the scars of battle. War was upon them, but so far it had just been a distant rumor, a rumbling of cannons beyond the horizon, as unreal as the new life they were dreaming of.

  As dawn broke, they came upon a dead soldier. There was stone growing on his neck and cheek.

  The Petrified Flesh.

  Traugott had heard about it, but thought it to be only a fairytale. He backed away. His mother had been right. His father’s fields were after all the safest place. He would go home.

  But Johann wanted to press on. He called his best friend a coward, maybe afraid that he too would turn around without Traugott by his side. They came to blows — the two best friends fighting the fear in their hearts by fighting each other.

  They didn’t hear the riders approaching through the thick forest...

  Goyl.

  Their stone faces were wet with rain. Two of them were wounded.

  They were angry. And their rage was legend.

  Neither Johann nor Traugott had ever seen a Goyl before. They had only heard about them. The ‘Stonefaces.’

  Their claws were as sharp as the blade of a sickle and they cut through the boys’ skin as if it were paper.

  The Goyl then bound the boys and took them with them.

  One of the Goyl was as young as they were. Nesser. She watched them. She despised humans. She preferred to kill them. It frightened her that they could become like her.

  On and on they rode. Into a cave. Into the dark underground.

  Into the warm womb of the earth...

  Their eyes were already changing. The dark was suddenly as bright as the day. They saw flowers on the walls around them. Stone flowers, made of malachite and ruby. And creatures neither of the farmers’ sons had ever seen before. Giant bats, lizards with two tails, spiders that glowed in the dark.

  It was easier for the boys to look at the Goyl than to look at each other.

  Johann’s skin was turning jasper, as dark as the earth he used to plow. The stone in Traugott’s skin was as gold as ripe grain.

  Their own human flesh began to disgust them. So pale and soft. Like snails’ flesh.

  On the third day Traugott managed to grab the pistol from Nesser.

  He put it to his head and pulled the trigger.

  Johann stared down at his bloody corpse. But he couldn’t feel anything.

  He was almost relieved that Traugott was gone. He didn’t want to be reminded of what they had once been.

  He liked the dark.

  The shimmering stone that did away with his flesh.

  The golden eyes that looked back at him.

  And Nesser was so beautiful.

  The Spell of a Fairy

  First he sees her only in his dreams.

  Skin as white as moonlight.

  Eyes like water drowning you.

  Hair like spider webs.

  Fairy.

  He can’t wait to go to sleep just to see her.

  And touch her.

  He wakes still feeling her warmth on his empty hands.

  So empty.

  Everything seems empty.

  The days grow long.

  The voices of his wife and children seem to come from a faraway place.

  He wants the dreams.

  Nothing but those dreams.

  His wife goes to a witch and puts oak leaves on his chest at night.