The Golden Yarn Read online

  What was she talking about? Clara saw a drop of blood on her finger. The needle had gone surprisingly deep. Heavens, she was suddenly so tired. Too many night shifts.

  She looked up.

  The girl had her face.

  “It’s just as beautiful as your name,” she said. “I have many faces.” She became the girl again. Yes, Clara remembered that face. It reminded her of a photograph Will had of his mother. She tried to get up, and her knee hit the desk.

  Her legs buckled. Sleep. She just wanted to sleep.

  “Spindles. Thorns.” The girl sneered. “A brooch is so much better.”

  The Bloody Crib

  The woman was hysterical. Donnersmarck didn’t understand a word she was muttering in her peasant dialect, her bloody hands stretched toward him. The two Goyl soldiers who’d found the screaming nursemaid in the corridor were visibly disgusted by so much human lack of restraint, yet even their faces showed some of the horror the woman was screaming into the palace.

  “Where is the Empress?” Donnersmarck demanded.

  “In her dressing room. Nobody dares to tell her.” The soldier who’d answered had the same carnelian skin as his King. Amalie allowed only guards with her husband’s skin to attend her.

  “Nobody dares to tell her.” And so they’d come to him. God knows, Donnersmarck would’ve rather delivered different news to his former employer’s daughter, especially just after Her Imperial Majesty Amalie had taken him back into her service despite his weeks of unexplained absence. He’d told her about the Bluebeard but had kept all other details from her: the terrible wounds the stag servant had inflicted on him, the weeks at the child-eater’s. Leo von Donnersmarck, adjutant to the Empress—even the merchant’s daughter whom he was hoping to make his wife this coming fall didn’t know about the scars on his chest. He didn’t want to explain why the fingerprints of a Witch were burned into the skin next to them. His chest looked like the churned mud of a battlefield, yet that wasn’t the worst. In his dreams he changed into the stag who’d wounded him. Nearly every night found him pleading with the god protector of warriors and soldiers to let him keep the body his bride had fallen in love with.

  The chambers of the Moonstone Prince lay far away from his mother’s so the infant wouldn’t disturb Amalie’s sleep. That’s why this morning’s dark news had indeed not yet reached her.

  The young Empress was sitting in front of her mirror, which supposedly had been crafted by the same glazier who’d made her grandmother’s infamous speaking mirror. “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” If Amalie’s mirror answered such questions, it probably would’ve given her the answers she wanted to hear. The golden hair, the flawless skin, the violet eyes—there was but one woman whose beauty compared to that of Amalie of Austry, and she was not human. The day and the night. Since his wedding, Kami’en, the King of the Goyl, preferred the day, and his Fairy lover bore her own darkness like a veil, mourning the death of her love. It had to be bitter that the beauty that so enchanted Kami’en had been granted by a Fairy lily.

  The lady’s maid who daubed Amalie’s hair every morning with naiad tears shot an irritated glance at Donnersmarck as he entered. It was too early. Her mistress was not yet ready to face the world.

  “Your Highness?”

  Amalie did not turn, but her eyes met his in the mirror. She’d celebrated her twenty-first birthday barely a month ago, but Donnersmarck still felt he was looking at a child who’d gotten lost in the woods. What good did the crown or the golden dress do if even her face had been bought by her mother because the one she’d entered the world with had not been pretty enough?

  “It’s about your son, Your Highness...”

  The darkness of the world made no distinctions; it entered its palaces as it did its huts.

  Amalie still hadn’t turned around. She just looked at Donnersmarck in the glass of the mirror. There was something else in her face now beside the familiar lostness, and he couldn’t tell what it was.

  “The wet nurse was supposed to have brought him already. I should never have hired her. She’s useless!” Amalie touched her golden hair as though it were that of a stranger. “My mother was right. These peasants are even dumber than their cattle, and servants are no smarter than the pots in my kitchens.”

  Donnersmarck avoided the maid’s eyes, though she was probably used to her mistress’s insults. He was tempted to ask, “What about the soldiers? Are they as dumb as their uniforms? And the workers in the factories? As dumb as the coal they shovel into the furnaces?” Amalie wouldn’t even have noticed the irony. She had just sent her husband’s troops to put an end to a workers’ strike. Without Kami’en’s approval. A child in the woods. A child with an army.

  “I don’t believe it was the nursemaid’s fault. Your son was not in his crib this morning.”

  The violet eyes went wide. Amalie pushed away the maid’s fingers. But she was still looking into the mirror as if she had to read her own face to understand what she was feeling.

  “What do you mean? Where is he?”

  Donnersmarck lowered his head. The truth and nothing but the truth. No matter how dark.

  “My men are searching for him right now. But the crib and the pillows were splattered with blood. Your Highness.”

  One of the maids began to sob. The others just stared at Donnersmarck with open mouths. And Amalie sat and stared at her reflection, until the silence grew louder than the nursemaid’s screams.

  “So he is dead.” She was the first to say what everybody thought.

  “We don’t know that. Maybe—”

  “He is dead!” she cut off Donnersmarck. “And you know who killed him. She’s always been jealous of my son because she can’t have one herself. But she only dared to do something about it once Kami’en was out of the city.”

  Amalie pressed her hand to her perfect mouth. The violet pupils swam in tears as she turned around.

  “Bring her to me!” she ordered as she got to her feet. “To the throne room.”

  The maids stared at Donnersmarck with a mixture of horror and pity. They’d been told by the kitchen girls that the Dark Fairy had them boil snakes to give her skin the luster of their scales. The servants whispered that anyone whose shoes even so much as brushed the hem of her dress died immediately. The coachmen swore that anyone touched by her shadow died immediately. The gardeners insisted that anyone who stepped into the footprints she left on her nightly walks died immediately. And yet they were all still alive.

  Why should she have done anything to that child? She was the reason he’d been born at all.

  “Your husband has many enemies. Maybe—”

  “It was she! Bring her to me! She’s murdered my son!” Her rage was different from her mother’s. There was no logic in it.

  Donnersmarck bowed his head in silence and turned around. Bring her to me. Amalie might as well have ordered him to bring her the oceans. For a moment he considered taking the entire palace guard with him, just to reinforce the invitation. But the more men he brought, the greater the affront would be, and the greater the temptation for the Dark Fairy to demonstrate how silly any threat of force was against her magic. The two soldiers who’d brought the nursemaid to him could not hide their terror when he told them that only they were to accompany him.

  Donnersmarck had ordered the nursemaid to be locked in her room, but the bad news had already spread through the entire palace. The faces he passed showed not only shock but also relief. The Moonstone Prince had the face of an angel, but the child had seemed like a bad omen to many, Goyl as well as human. Had, Leo? You’re already thinking of him in the past tense. Yes. Because he’d seen the crib.

  After the announcement of Amalie’s pregnancy, the Dark Fairy had moved into a pavilion in the palace gardens. The Fairy had supposedly picked the place herself, Kami’en had it remodeled for her, and it was guarded by Kami’en’s personal guards. Nobody could tell who they were supposed to protect her from. The loves
truck men who kept falling under her spell after a fleeting glance as she drove through the city? The supporters of the old Empress, who kept smearing death to the goyl or death to the fairy on the houses of Vena? Or the anarchists who painted their death to all rulers on the same walls? “Nonsense! The Stone King is not protecting the Fairy. He is protecting his subjects from his lover.” So said the flyers that could be found on park benches and train platforms every morning. After all, nobody doubted that the Dark Fairy could have held her own against the combined armies of Lotharaine and Albion.

  “Bring her to me.”

  As the glassy gables of the Fairy’s pavilion appeared behind the trees, Donnersmarck caught himself hoping she might be out on one of her drives, which could sometimes last for days. The stable boys whispered that the horses pulling her carriage were actually enchanted toads and the coachman was a spider to whom she’d given human form. But the Dark Fairy was home—if that’s what she called this place. Or any other place.

  Kami’en’s guards let Donnersmarck pass—a jasper and a moonstone Goyl. Unlike Amalie, the Fairy did not insist that all her guards have Kami’en’s stone skin. The two soldiers with Donnersmarck, however, could not pass. Donnersmarck did not protest. If the Fairy wanted to kill him, then no human would stop her. So far he’d only ever seen her from afar, alone, or by Kami’en’s side at balls, state receptions; the last time had been at the celebrations for the birth of the Moonstone Prince. She hadn’t brought a present—her gift had been the skin that kept the child alive.

  And there she was.

  No servants, no maids, just her.

  Her beauty took one’s breath away, like a sudden pain. Unlike Amalie, there was nothing of the child in the Dark One. She’d never been a child.

  Kami’en had put a glass roof on her pavilion to let in light for the trees that the Fairy had planted among the marble tiles. The saplings were only a few months old, but their branches already touched the glass roof, and the walls had disappeared under blossoming vines. The Fairy’s presence made them grow as though she were the source of life itself. Even the bright green dress she wore looked like it had been sewn from their leaves.

  “That is a very dark mark you have on your chest, Donnersmarck. Has the stag stirred yet?” She saw what he was trying to hide from everyone. Donnersmarck longed to hide between the trees. Her shadow tinged the marble as dark as the forest floor around the child-eater’s hovel.

  “The Empress wants to see you.”

  Do not look at her. But she held his glance with her eyes.

  “Why?”

  Donnersmarck felt her rage, like an animal stirring.

  “I know her son is still alive. Tell her that. And tell her she will die if that changes. I will send her my moths until she has caterpillars hatching from her doll skin. Can you remember that? I want you to repeat it to her, word for word, but do it slowly. Her mind is as dull as her hatred. Now go.”

  The shadows formed wolves under the trees, unicorns behind the silk-upholstered chaise lounge Donnersmarck knew she never sat on, snakes on the rugs Kami’en had bought for her in Nagpur. She did not belong between these walls built by mortal hands. Beneath her rage, Donnersmarck could feel a pain that touched him more than her beauty. And he stood there and looked at her and could not understand how the King of the Goyl could be sleeping in Amalie’s doll bed when he had this woman waiting for him here.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked. But this time her voice sounded softer. The tiles under Donnersmarck’s feet bloomed into flower.

  He turned.

  “Come to me when the stag stirs,” she said. “I can show you how to tame him.”

  Kami’en’s guards opened the doors, but Donnersmarck hardly saw them. He stumbled out into the wide courtyard, his hand on his mangled chest. His two soldiers eyed him quizzically. He could see their relief that he was alone.

  Sleepless

  Four o’clock. For hours, Fox had been listening to the chimes of Schwanstein’s market church tallying the night. She spent the night in Jacob’s room, as she always did when he wasn’t there. The bed smelled of him, though she probably only imagined that. Jacob hadn’t been to Schwanstein in months. Beneath her window, a late patron of The Ogre stumbled drunkenly into the square. The clinking of glass told her Wenzel was clearing the tumblers from the tables in the taproom below. In the chamber next door, Albert Chanute was coughing himself in and out of sleep. Wenzel had told her the old man had been unwell for weeks, but Chanute had apparently threatened that anyone who told Jacob would be drowned in a vat of his most rancid wine. Jacob would have done the same. The two were so similar, and always so anxious not to show how much they meant to each other.

  Just how unwell Chanute was had only become clear to Fox when he’d asked her to fetch Alma Spitzweg. The old treasure hunter couldn’t stand Witches, light or dark. They scared him, though he’d have chopped his remaining arm off rather than admit it. But after the new doctor from Vena had been unable to do anything for him (further confirming Chanute’s opinion of city folk), there was only the old Witch left, who disliked him as much as he disliked her, and who had never forgiven him for taking Jacob as his treasure-hunting apprentice.

  Alma had come to see Chanute tonight. Fox could smell thyme, fairy mint, and lungwort, and Chanute’s cough had begun to sound slightly less labored. Alma usually mixed a few of her cat’s hairs into her potions, but that was a detail Chanute didn’t need to know. A dog barked outside, and Fox thought she could hear the scream of a Thumbling. She pushed her hand under the pillow until her fingers found the fur dress. She’d worn it only twice since her return, but the temptation to ignore that it kept stealing years off her was strong. In every library they visited for Jacob’s treasure hunts, she would search for clues to some magic that might slow the premature aging of shape-shifters, but all she’d found so far were stories about those who had either died young or had ended up burning their other skin. So she now tried to spend most of her time being a human.

  She’d been out with Ludovik Rensman, and with Gregor Fenton, who’d already asked her a dozen times to model for one of the photographs the people of Schwanstein always stopped to admire in his shop window. Both men knew nothing of the fur. Nobody in Schwanstein knew about it, except Wenzel and Chanute. When Ludovik had tried to kiss her, she’d pushed him away with some stammered excuse. Ludovik Rensman wouldn’t even have dared to go within sight of the Black Forest, so how could she have explained the memories his shy kisses evoked—of another’s kisses, of a dark carriage, a red chamber, the fear-milk she’d drunk. The Bluebeard’s terrible parting gift had been to make desire rhyme with death and fear.

  Definitely not the right thoughts to find sleep.

  Fox pushed back the blanket under which Jacob had slept so many times. She reached for her clothes. The scents of another world clung to them. Clara had insisted on washing them. It was finally quiet behind Chanute’s door, but now two Heinzel were squabbling over a rind of bread in front of it. Fox shooed them away before they could wake the old man. Just then, Alma stepped from the room. Her face seemed even more wrinkled by night. Like all Witches, Alma could look as young or as old as she wanted, but she mostly wore the face that gave evidence of her long life. “I prefer to look as old on the outside as I am on the inside,” she said to anyone who was stupid enough to ask her about it.

  The Witch gave Fox a tired smile, though she was used to long nights. People called her to tend to sick cattle and ill children, to help with aching souls and hurting bodies, or whenever there was reason to believe someone had been cursed. The women in particular trusted Alma more than they trusted the city doctor, and she was the only Witch within a hundred miles...except for the child-eater in the Black Forest, but she now lived out her days as a toad in a well.

  “How is he?” Fox asked.

  “How do you think? He quit the liquor too late for a quiet death of old age. I can ease his cough, that’s all. If he wants stronger remedies,
he’ll have to go to a child-eater. But he’s not at death’s door yet, though that’s what he’d want you to believe. Men! A few nights of coughing and they see the reaper standing by their bedside. And what about you? Why are you not sleeping?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “In the beginning, Jacob couldn’t sleep for weeks after coming through the mirror. Was this your first time?” Alma pinned up her gray hair. It was as thick as that of a young woman. “Yes, I know about the mirror, but don’t tell Jacob. He’s always worried someone might find out. Is he with his brother?”

  Fox wasn’t sure why she should even be surprised. Alma had already been alive before the ruin became a ruin.

  “He wanted to be back days ago—”

  “Which doesn’t mean much when it comes to Jacob.” Alma finished her sentence.

  They exchanged a smile—one Jacob wouldn’t have liked at all.

  “If he doesn’t come soon, maybe we should let him know about Chanute,” Alma said. “The old drunkard would feed me to his horse if he knew I said that, but Jacob might do him good. I can’t think of any man Albert Chanute’s heart clings to like it does to Jacob. The only competition is probably that actress whose face he had that hack in Braunstein tattoo on his chest. The old fool was so embarrassed about it, he wouldn’t open his shirt!”

  Chanute started coughing again. Alma sighed.

  “Why do I always feel sorry for them? I used to wish the spider’s plague on Chanute every time he beat Jacob, and now I’m letting him keep me from my sleep. The child-eaters get rid of their compassion by eating the heart of a child. I wish there was a more appetizing method. Will you keep me company while I brew him a tea? Which he will again just spit all over my dress, because there won’t be any liquor in it.”

  Fox knew Alma didn’t need company. But the Witch could see Fox needed to be distracted from the thoughts that were keeping her awake. They went downstairs and found the taproom empty. Wenzel had gone to sleep. He rarely went to bed before daybreak. It was Chanute’s firm rule that The Ogre closed only when the last guest went home. The dark kitchen smelled of the soup Wenzel had prepared for the next day. Tobias Wenzel was the first to admit he’d been a lousy soldier, but he was a very good cook. Fox warmed the soup while Alma brewed Chanute’s tea.