The Golden Yarn Read online

  Fox was also wary of the flowers growing from the cracked plaster. They looked too much like the ones on the frame of the mirror that had brought her here, and their scent filled the musty air like a lullaby. They, like the mirrors, the Grass-Elves, and the cloaked buildings, clearly did not belong in this world.

  Everything around her seemed dangerously beautiful, like a Venus flytrap trying to snatch its prey amid mildewed stones and rat droppings. Every step increased her fear that Jacob had been caught by that very trap. But the first rooms she checked were empty. She followed footprints across the dusty floor to a staircase leading down into a basement. Fox listened, thought she could hear the scraping of shoes and then a suppressed curse. It wasn’t Jacob’s voice, but he was there. She could feel it like the touch of a familiar hand. She heard an engine in the distance, the slapping of water against wood or stone, voices and steps, worryingly clear. But they weren’t coming closer.

  The flowers also grew along the stairs. Fox carefully avoided touching them. The staircase ended in a wide cellar, from which a corridor with windowless rooms branched off. The mesh of wires in the doors was hard to spot, even for her eyes. Silver gratings. The cells behind them were empty, except the last one.

  Fox recognized the lifeless body behind the grate, though Jacob had his back to her. She closed her hands around the bars. It felt like clutching air. The magic was so strong that not even touch revealed it. Fox pulled her hands back nevertheless. Her skin tightened as though it was turning into silver itself.

  “Ah, bonjour! Or is it bonsoir out there?”

  There was a man crouched on the floor behind Jacob, wearing clothes from this world. His back was against the cell wall as though he’d been sitting there for a long while. His dark hair was as curly as sheep’s wool. “Your face is new. Whoever you stole it from!”

  He got to his feet, his fists clenched like a boxer ready for the next round. “You come to invite me for another look in the mirror, non? Sacrament, you must really like my face. Mais, Sylvain Fowler will not come voluntarily, ma puce.”

  He raised his fists and boxed the air as though to prove how hard he’d make it for her.

  Fox would have laughed if Jacob hadn’t stirred.

  “There’s no reason to fight,” she said. “I don’t belong to them. I’m here for him.” She nodded toward Jacob. “What did they do to him?”

  The gloves she pulled from her pocket had saved her from many magical traps, but she couldn’t be sure they’d work here.

  “Ostie de moron!” Sylvain let his fists drop. “You don’t recognize your own kind anymore, Sylvain? She is human!” He leaned over Jacob. “I think he’s fine. Probably had too much of their dust. How did you find him? Love, and all that?” His sigh sounded jealous and understanding.

  Fox started forward.

  “Do not come in! There’s something with the door.” Sylvain pushed up his sleeve to show her his forearm. Next to a tattoo of a fiery maple leaf, a strip of his skin shimmered like metal. “This is what happens when you try to get through.”

  “It’s a grille made invisible with camouflage magic.” Fox cautiously closed a gloved hand around one of the bars. It was still an unpleasant feeling.

  “With what?” Sylvain eyed her as though she weren’t quite sane.

  The lock, once visible, was easily picked. The gloves shimmered silver as Fox pulled them off. She ran to Jacob. His skin was warm and his breathing regular, like he was asleep. Fox couldn’t see any wounds, but then her fingers found the head of a tiny needle in his dark hair. It was embedded in his left temple. They had a fairy tale in Lotharaine—her mother had told it often—in which the Devil held a prince captive for a hundred years by sticking a silver needle in his head. The prince woke as soon as his sister pulled the needle out. In Fox’s world, it was often a good idea to follow the lessons of such tales, but this was Jacob’s world.

  “I can carry him if he can’t walk,” Sylvain whispered. “We have to cross the river. They control the entire island. Won’t be easy, but we find a boat, maybe?”

  Although Fox guessed Sylvain Fowler to be in his mid-forties, his lively eyes and wide mouth made him look like a handsome boy who’d aged only a little but had broken his nose a few times in the process.

  “We don’t need a boat. We’ll take another way.” We? Fox! She couldn’t take a stranger through the mirror.

  But Sylvain was right—she might need his help. First, though, she had to find out a bit more about him. “Why are you here?” She tried to make her question sound like little more than concerned curiosity.

  “I worked for them.”

  “Them?”

  Jacob shuddered as soon as Fox touched the needle.

  “Immortal Glass and Silver. I delivered their mirrors.”

  Mirrors. Pull it out, Fox. Jacob groaned, but the needle slid out without resistance.

  “My daughter’s hair is as red as yours,” Sylvain whispered. “I’m thinking of her all the time since I looked into that damned mirror. Maude merde. That devilish glass doesn’t just steal your face—it brings up the memories, as though someone’s stirred them around. All the filth I’d forgotten, but the good things are worse.”

  That didn’t sound like the mirror that had brought her here. In Fox’s world, there were mirrors that fulfilled wishes, gave aid, revealed the truth—they could be a promise or the perfect trap. Witches always spat on a mirror before looking into it to make sure it wasn’t magic.

  Jacob began to stir. Fox had to whisper his name a dozen times before he finally opened his eyes. They stared at her through silver.

  “Fox?” His fingers sought her face. “I can’t see.”

  She was glad to hear his voice, but there was no time for joy, nor for fear. Jacob groaned as he leaned on his right hand.

  “What’s happened to your arm, Jacob?”

  “Long story.”

  Fox helped him to his feet. He was so weak he had to lean against the wall.

  “We should wait for dark,” said Sylvain.

  “Who is that?” Jacob squinted. He seemed to at least be able to make out shapes.

  Sylvain gave a bow. “Sylvain Caleb Fowler. It seems we have the same enemies. That’s a beginning, non?”

  He was right—they should wait for dark—but Fox wanted to get away. This place made her sick. “You can try finding a boat,” she said to Sylvain as she dragged Jacob through the open door. “Good luck.”

  Sylvain cursed, then followed them. Fox only just managed to stop him before he stepped on one of the flowers at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Sylvain! This place is cursed!” she hissed. “Your eyes are as useless as Jacob’s. Stay where you are and place your feet only where I place mine.”

  She told them both to wait while she carefully broke the flowers growing along the steps. She could only hope her fingers wouldn’t trigger any alarms. All seemed still. Nonetheless, Fox kept stopping to listen, and her mind pestered her about how she planned to take Jacob across the courtyard and to the mirror undetected. Even if he were able to see, he could barely stand. She could think of only one way, and for that she would need Sylvain.

  It took endless patience to cross the room. Fox laid her coat over the floorboards so they didn’t step on the silver threads.

  “Do you know your way around here?” she asked Sylvain when they finally reached the door. A rat scampered away as Fox opened it, but apart from that, all was still. The voices she could hear were far enough away.

  “Sure. I told you, I delivered their crates for months.” Sylvain pointed in the direction from which Fox had come. “They keep the mirrors back there, and there”—he pointed north toward the silver chimneys—“is where they make the glass. These cursed islands in the East River. My wife warned me. Ex-wife. ‘Sylvain,’ June said, ‘why do you think they pay you so well? Those islands are cursed. Find some decent work.’ But how much can you make with decent work?”

  Sylvain was talking himself into a r
age. Fox put her hand over his mouth. “Not another word,” she whispered. “Or you can try swimming across the river.”

  That helped. Sylvain was as quiet as a mouse as he tiptoed after her and Jacob. They reached the courtyard. The van was gone, but other visitors had apparently arrived. Neither Jacob nor Sylvain could see the three carriages, nor the building they were parked in front of. To Sylvain they probably looked like ordinary cars. Camouflage magic didn’t just make things invisible; sometimes it gave a different appearance to them. Fox remembered a hazelnut shell she’d found in a cave. Jacob had seen only the shell, but to her it looked like a tiny silver cradle in her hands.

  The guards waiting by the carriages had the same clay faces as the man who’d brought the food. Their weapons, however, looked very much of this world. Jacob, blind and lame as he was, would never get past them undetected, and if that wasn’t enough, the huge dog and his master also appeared from behind one of the carriages. He was the only human Fox could see, if he really was human. He was very young for a guard.

  “You have to make it to that building there,” she whispered to Sylvain. “The one in front of the glass vat. Try to sneak around to the other side.”

  Sylvain stared at her blankly. He can’t see the vat, Fox. She could only hope the flowering bushes were there to feed the Grass-Elves and not to trigger alarms.

  “That building next to the rusty gas tank,” she corrected herself. Sylvain nodded with relief, but Jacob closed his hand tightly around her arm.

  “What are you planning?” As if he didn’t know. He just didn’t like it. Together in her world they’d gotten through situations that had looked much more hopeless. Now they just had to find out whether they could summon the same luck in this world.

  The dogs lifted their heads. They could smell human sweat for miles, but Fox was planning to give them an even more enticing scent. She waited until Sylvain and Jacob had disappeared between the trees before she stepped out into the courtyard. One of the guards saw her and called out to the others. They all reached for their weapons as she shifted in front of their eyes.

  And the vixen ran. Away from the building where the mirror was waiting.

  A Brother's Debt

  Schwanstein. As a child, Will had often gone to sleep with the city’s name on his lips. It had sounded like a magical place. The darkness he’d since encountered in the Mirrorworld had not changed that. The church towers were visible from the ruin. They proved to be good guideposts, and as Will asked his way to The Ogre (despite the puzzled looks his clothes attracted), every street name reminded him of a story his brother had told him.

  Jacob had so resented Will for following him through the mirror without asking that he’d never taken his little brother into Schwanstein. And then the jade had made it impossible. Jacob had always been good at keeping a secret, even the existence of a younger brother. Will had never been able to even keep a bad grade from their mother. The only secret he’d ever kept from his big brother was that he did actually remember some of what had happened to him behind the mirror, even though those memories felt like someone else’s.

  The smell of stale pipe smoke and spilled wine, the child-eater’s oven door on the wall, the Ogre’s arm above the bar... Jacob had described Albert Chanute’s tavern so often Will felt like he’d walked into its taproom a hundred times. As a child he’d dreamed of seeing Chanute’s trophies with his own eyes and sitting at one of the tables to plan treasure hunts with his brother.

  “We’re closed!” Flaxen hair, round glasses, crutch...Tobias Wenzel. Jacob had only mentioned him on one of his last visits. Chanute’s cook had lost a leg in the Goyl war. Will was glad his skin no longer gave away that he’d been the Goyl King’s bodyguard at one time.

  “Is Fox here?” Will could never remember her human name. “I’m Jacob’s brother, Will.”

  Wenzel hobbled toward the bar. His crutch was studded with the semiprecious stones Goyl officers wore to signify their rank. Moonstone, jasper, ruby. Memories...

  “No, she’s not here.” Wenzel poured himself a shot of schnapps. The dirty tables spoke of a long night. “I didn’t know Jacob has a brother.”

  The look he gave Will was wary as well as curious.

  Fox was not there. What now? Will had not only wanted to tell her he hadn’t heard from Jacob in days. He’d also hoped Fox would know where he could find the Dark Fairy. He was tempted to ask for Chanute, but if even half of what his brother had told him about the man was true, he’d be in an even worse mood than his cook was at this early hour of the morning.

  “Can I leave a message for her?”

  Wenzel downed his shot. “Sure.”

  The only piece of paper Will could find in his pockets was a flyer for a play he and Clara had seen a few weeks earlier.

  He sat down at one of the tables. What should he write? Despite everything they’d been through together, he’d always felt shy toward Fox. Wenzel was looking at him. Will concealed the ballpoint pen. Maybe he could find some clothes in Jacob’s room, something less conspicuous than what he was wearing now.

  A girl carrying a pail stepped through a door by the bar. She was as scrawny as a bird and nine years old at the most. But it was obvious she was used to hard work. She stopped when she saw Will, but then she put down her pail of water next to one of the filthy tables. She went to the bar and let three Heinzel climb out of her apron pocket. The first time Will had heard about Heinzel was when Jacob had given him one of their tiny jackets for his sixth birthday. Jacob never forgot his little brother’s birthday, and Will’s fingers would tremble with anticipation when he opened his presents. The only one to whom he’d shown Jacob’s presents was Clara.

  “I assume you’ve tried kissing her?”

  The Heinzel started washing the dirty glasses. Will put his pen to paper again. Write. What? That Clara was sleeping herself to death? That a stranger had promised to make everything all right again? He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

  The Heinzel, though hardly bigger than the glasses, were surprisingly noisy. With all their splashing and spluttering, even Wenzel only noticed the Goyl when he reached the bar. The Heinzel gave the stranger just a quick glance, but the girl stumbled against her pail, and Wenzel’s face froze with hatred.

  “You’re closed, I know,” the Goyl forestalled him. “I just want some information.”

  Will had forgotten how rough Goyl voices were. The golden eyes briefly met his. A jasper face, and a King with dull red skin... Lost images filled his head.

  The Goyl was an onyx, the noblest skin to have, but the black was veined with green stone. The unwelcome stranger didn’t wear a uniform like the Goyl Will had seen in Schwanstein’s streets. His clothes were tailored from the speckled skin of saurians Will remembered seeing from the shore of an underground lake.

  “I am obliged to serve your kind, but nobody says I have to speak to you.” Wenzel struck the counter with his crutch so hard the Heinzel scampered behind a couple of empty bottles.

  The Goyl gave Wenzel a wolfish smile. He wasn’t as tall as most of them. “Have you forgotten who’s in charge in your little backwater town now? That kind of attitude could easily cost you another leg.”

  The girl eyed the Goyl with a mixture of disgust and fascination, but Wenzel shot her a warning glance and she quickly resumed mopping up spilled water.

  The Goyl looked up at the Ogre’s arm above the bar. “I am looking for a man who frequently stays here. Even though”—he eyed his surroundings with disgust—“I would’ve thought he could afford better lodgings. Jacob Reckless?”

  Wenzel acted as if he’d forgotten about Will. He shooed the Heinzel back to work. “He hasn’t been here in months, and even if I knew where he was, why should I tell that to a stoneface?”

  “Yes, why indeed?” The Goyl looked at his claws. “Even if you’re as stupid as you appear, I’m sure you can come up with a reason or two. Tell him the Bastard was here and that I shall find him. I always find w
hat I seek; nobody knows that better than Reckless.”

  “I will tell Jacob just one thing,” Wenzel hissed back at him. “That a damned Goyl was asking for him and that he’d better look out for himself.”

  Will got up. The Goyl gave him a blank look. Will remembered the revulsion he himself had once felt at the sight of human skin.

  “What do you want with Jacob Reckless?” Will asked.

  “I fail to see how that’s any of your business, snail face.” The Goyl reached into his pocket and put a moonstone on the counter. “He stole something from me. This could be yours if you tell me where he is. That one”—he nodded toward Wenzel—“hasn’t earned a reward.”

  Will couldn’t take his eyes off the gem. Red moonstone. Kami’en’s bodyguards wore it on their collars.

  “I’ve only heard of him,” Will said. “Isn’t he a famous treasure hunter? I didn’t know he’s also a thief.”

  Will kept his head down as he spoke. He also remembered how easy it was for a Goyl to read a human face.

  “I’ve changed my mind about the message,” Will said to Wenzel. “I have something for the Dark Fairy. Can you tell me where she is these days?”

  Wenzel looked at the Goyl with triumph. “Nobody knows where she is. The Fairy left Kami’en. Soon we’ll see whether the stonefaces can win their wars without her magic.”

  “The Dark Fairy,” the Goyl growled. Will felt the Goyl’s eyes like fingers on his skin. “Didn’t your mother warn you about what Fairies do to little lovesick fools like you? She’ll turn you into one of her moths before you can even lay your puppy eyes on her.” He dropped the moonstone back into his pocket before one of the Heinzel could snatch it.

  “You know where she is?” Will asked.

  The Heinzel started squabbling. They sounded like angry crickets.