The Golden Yarn Read online

  “Interesting.” Kami’en looked out the window again. He pointed east. “How many men do you need?”

  “Ten. More would be too conspicuous. I’d also like to take a few Man-Goyl.”

  “Indeed? Didn’t you want me to shoot them all?”

  “A good soldier adapts his strategy before the enemy expects him to.”

  Kami’en smiled.

  So much shared. The King’s Bloodhound would defend his King, let the pack tear him apart in the King’s stead. But first he’d put a bear by his side.

  Once Upon A Time

  Will was still awake when the phone rang. Two o’clock in the morning. Clara had put his mother’s old alarm clock on his desk. Clara had kept many of his mother’s things in the apartment, and she often asked Will about her, maybe because she’d never known her own mother.

  He reached for his phone without wondering about the late hour. Clara had been working night shifts at the hospital for weeks, and Jacob was often out until dawn, and both of them knew Will rarely went to bed early. Even as a child, Will had feared his dreams, and since his time behind the mirror they’d turned into enemy territory.

  “Will? Dr. Klinger. Clara works in my ward.”

  “Yes?”

  Dr. Klinger kept talking. The sound of the physician’s voice reminded Will of another call. The same mixture of soberness and empathy. “Your mother is deteriorating. You should come.” That call had not been unexpected, but this time the words were making no sense to him. She’d only just gone to work!

  Dr. Klinger’s final words broke through his thoughts. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can say right now.”

  Will left immediately. From the taxi, he desperately tried to reach Jacob.

  Their mother hadn’t died in the hospital where Clara worked, but the elevator was the same, reminding Will of the weeks he’d spent visiting her. The elevator, the corridors, the smells...

  The doctor was waiting for him. Will remembered having met him at a party Clara’s colleagues had organized for her when she published her first paper. “A sudden coma...Unconscious...One of the nurses found her.” Words that only conveyed the doctor’s helplessness. Will followed him into one of the rooms, and there she was. Sleeping.

  Will had seen such a sleep before, but how could he ever explain to anyone in this world about the princess he’d found lying on a bed, covered in wilted roses? Clara’s coat was on a chair by the bed. Pinned to it was a brooch he’d never seen before. It was shaped like a moth, with black wings and silver tentacles.

  The wrong world.

  The doctor was uttering more helpless phrases. “Rare infection...An injury on her finger...Blood tests.” Will said nothing. What could he say? Had she been visited by a Fairy?

  He asked Dr. Klinger to leave them alone. He approached her bed. No thorny brambles keeping him away, no tower. It’s so easy, Will. Kiss her. But she looked so alien, just as his mother had. He tried to forget where he was and to remember how he’d first met Clara, but all he got were other images: the gingerbread house, the cave, the disgust as she’d stroked his jade skin.

  Just a kiss.

  But all he did was stand there. Maybe his heart was still made of stone. How else could he have lost his love so easily? How could he betray her now? He just had to kiss her like he had then, remember that first time, in the hospital corridor, outside his mother’s room. Why were love and death such close neighbors?

  He leaned down. Clara’s lips were so warm and familiar. But she didn’t wake up. And all Will could see was the dead girl in the rose tower, with her parchment skin and hair like bleached straw.

  Wake up, Clara. I love you!

  He kissed her again, but all he felt was his own despair. I love you. She loved him more. Always had.

  Dr. Klinger came back and told Will about some more tests they would run. Will signed the papers and tried again to reach Jacob. He tried and tried. No reply.

  The doctor sent him home, promising to call if there was any change.

  Will couldn’t recall whether he’d taken the elevator or the stairs. He just found himself out on the street, waiting for the tears that wouldn’t come, staring into headlights as if they could explain what had happened. Jacob. He had to talk to Jacob. His brother would know a way. Some spell. That did what? Replace true love? Whatever that was...

  Will looked back at the hospital. He couldn’t just leave Clara there. He had to take her with him. Jacob would find something to help her, she would wake up, and he’d love her the way she deserved to be loved.

  “You always put all the blame on yourself, Will. Is it because your brother takes his responsibilities so lightly?”

  Will turned around. The strange man sitting on one of the benches in front of the hospital had used his name like he was an old acquaintance, but Will couldn’t recall ever having seen him before. Clara called these benches the “pews of tears” because they were the first stop for people leaving the hospital who’d just had bad news.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?” It was the kind of question you asked when you wanted to be left alone but were still as helpless and polite as Will.

  The stranger smiled. “Yes, but you were probably too young to remember. I was a close friend of your mother’s.”

  An ambulance drove past. Someone bumped into Will. So much activity, so many people, especially at this time of day. But something about the stranger didn’t belong here. Or was it that their surroundings didn’t fit him? Maybe Will was just dreaming. He’d been thinking that a lot since he’d returned. How did Jacob do it, change worlds all the time? It made you lose your mind...

  Why couldn’t he wake her? If only he’d looked after her better. If only he hadn’t stopped loving her.

  The stranger watched Will with an amused expression, as though he was listening to Will’s thoughts. He still hadn’t introduced himself. Suddenly Will heard words in his head: Woulda, coulda, shoulda...Always the good son, brother, friend, lover...Will Reckless, the canvas others paint on. What about you? Who do you want to be, Will?

  “Sit with me for a while.” The stranger patted the bench next to him. Will hesitated. He had to go back. To Clara.

  “Sit, Will.” The stranger’s voice caressed him like a warm breeze, but the invitation didn’t sound like a request. “I have an offer for you.”

  A drunk man stumbled by. A couple kissed by a bus stop. True love...

  “I’m sorry,” said Will. “I have to go back.” He gestured toward the revolving door of the hospital. “My girlfriend...”

  “Yes, my offer is about her.” The stranger again patted the bench. There was a hint of impatience in the gesture. The dirty curb, the tired faces, the coffee shop on the corner. The stranger made it all look so unreal. Will slowly sat down next to him. The man had a tiny ruby in his earlobe. What did that remind him of?

  “I assume you’ve tried kissing her? Sadly, that only works in the rarest of cases.” The man pulled a silver cigarette box from his pocket. “The spindle sleep is very old Fairy magic. Very effective, and very easy to use. I assumed your brother had warned you and your girlfriend. You rejected the Fairy’s gift, the skin of sacred stone. Immortals take these things very personally. And since she can’t do anything to you...”

  He took a silver cigarette case and lighter from his pocket. That’s when Will saw he had six fingers on each hand. The wrong world. This entire night belonged to the wrong world.

  “Fairies love to play fate, Will, and that’s not limited to their infamous love magic. We both know what I’m talking about: a different skin, a deadly sleep, a wooden prison...” He lit a cigarette as white and slender as his fingers. “But this time your brother won’t bring everything back to the way it was. This time you will have to do it yourself. Isn’t that your biggest wish? To have everything the way it was? Before you made the mistake of following your brother?” He exhaled smoke into the night and ignored the disapproving looks of the passersby. “Once upon a time...There’s a r
eason all fairy tales begin like this. But the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ at the end? That has to be earned.”

  Will thought he could see the face of a woman in the wafts of smoke. Moths were fluttering around it.

  “It’s incredible, isn’t it?” The stranger tucked the cigarette case and lighter back in his pocket and pulled out a pouch. “She made you immune even to her own magic, all to save her lover. Love makes fools, even of immortals.” He dropped the pouch on Will’s lap. Jacob had a similar one. “It all began with her. It can only end with her.”

  The pouch seemed empty, but when Will reached inside, he felt a wooden handle.

  The stranger got up.

  “Find her. Use my gift, and you have my promise everything will be just as it was meant to be.” He leaned down. “I will show you who you are, Will Reckless. Your true self... Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”

  He didn’t wait for Will’s answer. He turned and walked toward a car parked by the curb. A driver got out and opened the back door, and the stranger slipped inside. Will sat with the pouch in his hand and watched as the car merged into the pre-dawn traffic.

  Jacob still didn’t answer his phone, and Clara’s face was as pale as a corpse’s. Will didn’t have the courage to kiss her again, and the night nurse just shook her head when he asked whether he could take Clara home.

  The apartment was so still, the rooms so empty. Once upon a time. Will sat at the kitchen table and took the pouch from his pocket. He carefully put his hand inside, and his eyes widened at the sight of the weapon that slid out. A crossbow. It was so beautiful and so terrible. The silver fittings were warm, as though the silver were melting under his touch. There were whispers lodged in the patterns etched into the precious metal. Will closed his fingers around the hilt. He cocked the glass string, placed the silver arrow, and feared what he felt: the wish to let the arrow fly, into the heart of darkness, to where all magic came from. But that place has no heart.

  In the Wrong Place

  Fox had spent so many months waiting for Jacob in the past that it seemed absurd to be so worried after three days. But during the fourth night of being kept awake by Chanute’s coughing, she found it easy to convince herself she had to find Jacob for the old man’s sake. The idea of going through the mirror by herself was not very enticing, but her fear was one more reason for Fox to do it. Fear was like a beast that only grew fiercer when one gave in to it.

  She took Chanute’s horse. The old gelding was as ill-tempered as a stray dog, but he’d carried Jacob to and from the ruin so many times that Fox knew he’d be able to find his way back to the stable by himself. Chanute used to claim his gelding wasn’t afraid even of wolves, but when Fox let him loose by the ruin, he seemed very keen to gallop straight back to Schwanstein. Horses didn’t like the ruin. Alma thought it was because the place was haunted by the ghost of a stable boy who used to torment his master’s horses. There was no sign of a ghost on this misty morning, but Fox did find boot prints in the damp ground by the tower. She’d also seen prints when she returned, on the broken steps leading to the old stables. Wenzel had told her the mayor of Schwanstein was trying to sell the ruin and put an end to the rumors that it was cursed. The charred walls had so far deterred any potential buyers, but maybe it was time to start thinking about a new hiding place for the mirror.

  The heavy silence in the tower reminded Fox of the many days she’d spent by the door waiting for Jacob, every day filled with the dread of his not returning.

  The mirror was clear this morning, as if someone had polished it. Fox had stood in front of it many times, but she’d always turned away again, preferring to wait for Jacob in her world. She’d never followed him; that was the rule. His paths, her paths. But whose rule was it? More hers than his, if she was honest. Jacob had always wanted her to come with him.

  She reached out and pressed her hand against the glass.

  It was dark. That was strange. The tower had been bright with morning sunshine, and time was supposed to be more or less the same in both worlds. Fox reached for the edge of the desk, the window through which she’d seen Jacob’s city. Her eyes were already adjusting to the darkness, her fur sharpening her human senses even when she wasn’t wearing it. But there was no desk, and there was no window. The room she was standing in looked and smelled like the old stone barns she used to hide in as a child to avoid having to mend her stepfather’s fishing nets. In the murky light, she could just make out bricked-up windows and rows of crates along the walls, some of them as tall as a man, others small enough for her to carry.

  What was the mirror doing here?

  There were other mirrors leaning among the crates, most of them smaller than the one she’d come through, but of all shapes and sizes. The only thing they had in common was a silver frame. Fox felt like she’d strayed into a room with hundreds of glass doors, and now she had to figure out which one Jacob had disappeared through.

  She put her ear to a wide gate that seemed to be the only exit. Voices. Car engines. Proof she was in Jacob’s world.

  He’s fine.

  The fur had taught Fox to ignore her fear, but it was harder when she feared for Jacob. She pulled the gate open, just wide enough so she could peer through.

  It was as though she could see two places at once.

  One place seemed deserted—a wide courtyard overgrown with thistles and nettles, a group of empty buildings surrounded by a dense forest. But superimposed on this place was a second place, blurred as though its reality was trying to push through to make itself invisible. Fox knew this kind of magic from her world: a place hidden to protect a secret. Bridges, castles, treasure caves ...sometimes they stayed invisible until they were touched, or until you spoke a magic formula, but they could never completely fool the shape-shifter. She was just surprised to find such magic in Jacob’s world.

  The buildings hidden among the empty houses had towers and gables like the ones Fox knew from home but also the high glass facades and iron beams she knew only from Jacob’s world. Beyond them, among the trees, she could make out giant vats and silver chimneys. To the right of the overgrown courtyard were two basins, plumes of shimmering smoke hovering above them.

  Where was she? And who was hiding behind magic in Jacob’s world?

  No, Fox. This was not the time to find out.

  Where was Jacob?

  A van pulled into the courtyard. The two men who climbed out and started to unload were so unmistakably from this world that they made the glass buildings seem even more unreal. One of them had hold of a huge dog the size of a calf, and Fox was glad she hadn’t shifted shape yet. Neither of the men looked in her direction as she squeezed through the gate. But the dog spotted her. “She’s a fox!” his bark warned. The man holding the leash silenced the dog with a sharp command, but he looked around. Fox barely managed to find cover behind a few barrels. She scented water—maybe a river.

  Fox shifted as soon as the dog and his master had disappeared into one of the abandoned buildings with the other man. As a vixen she could see even more clearly what the magic was trying to hide: plants that to the human eye were mere silvery shadows, swarms of Grass-Elves in bushes with blossoms that yielded elven dust. All of that didn’t belong here. Who had brought it across? She rolled in the grass to mask her own scent. The vixen could smell that there was more than one dog.

  Rotting crates, rusting barrels, mounds of broken glass between overgrown brick walls. A wretched smell surrounding the hidden buildings made the vixen’s fur stand on end. She recognized it neither from this nor her own world. She avoided them, as she did the basins with the shimmering smoke.

  He is fine.

  Another building appeared between the trees. It was from this world and, at first glance, appeared to be empty, but the windows had bars that grew from the brickwork like silver vines. Jacob was behind those—the vixen knew it. Her instinctive knowledge rarely had an explanation, but Fox never had to regret relying on it.

 
He is fine. No. The vixen told her differently. Even if the scent of sickness and death around the building was so stale it only carried echoes of long-past misery, beneath it was the scent of life, weak, like from a wounded animal—or a wounded human.

  The vixen couldn’t reach up to the window, so Fox shifted again. But that brought her human fears back, with all those useless questions: What’s happening? How did the mirror get to this bewitched place? She had no time to search for answers, lest there’d be only one question left: Why didn’t you save him, Fox?

  She’d pushed her way through nettles and dead wood to one of the barred windows when she heard steps behind her. She tried to call the fur, but it was too late, and she cursed her big human body while she sought cover behind a tree. Luckily, the man approaching the building with a plate of food was less vigilant than the dogs who were barking in the distance. He nearly stepped on Fox’s hand as he walked past her. His face looked strange, as though someone had shaped it from clay and hadn’t taken much care doing it. The sight made Fox’s heart beat faster, but from relief rather than fear. Food was brought to the living. Now she could only hope it was for Jacob.

  The man disappeared around the back of the building, and Fox heard him unlocking a door. It was hard to resist the temptation to follow him right away. She probably could’ve overpowered him easily, but she’d once thought the same thing about a servant of a Catalonian vampire who’d then turned into a bat and alerted his master with a bloodcurdling scream before she could grab hold of him.

  It felt like days had passed before Clay-face appeared again. He was talking to someone, and when he turned the corner, Fox saw the phone in his hand. Another reminder of which world she was in.

  The lock in the door was as strange as this world, but her fingers had opened the tombs of kings and the living strongbox of a Troll, and this lock proved no harder. As she squeezed through the door, she wondered whether the invisibility spell was to fool the two men unloading the van. Clay-face had to be part of it, or his first step would have triggered an alarm. In between the filthy floorboards were silver threads, which probably announced any uninvited guest who was clumsy enough to step on them.