The Petrified Flesh Read online

  They barely spoke a word on their way back to the cave. Clara stopped several times as if she could not go on, but then she did, wordlessly. When they reached the cave, she looked at the dark entrance as if she hoped to see Will there. But then she just crouched down in the grass next to the horses, with her back to the cave. She was unharmed, apart from a few small grazes on her throat and ankles, but Fox saw how ashamed she was of her aching heart and of having run away despite Jacob’s warnings.

  For a moment the vixen intended to leave her alone, but then she shifted shape and sat down next to her.

  “Will doesn’t love me anymore, Fox.” Even her voice was soaked with tears.

  “He is changing.” Fox plucked a white feather from Clara’s hair. “He doesn’t understand himself anymore. He is not sure who he is. And who he wants to be. It’s not easy to love when you don’t know yourself.”

  She knew how it felt: another skin, another self. But the vixen’s fur was soft and warm. How did it feel to grow a skin of stone?

  Clara looked toward the cave.

  “Jacob will help him!” Fox said. “You’ll see. He loves his brother very much.”

  Too much, her heart whispered. For he will go back to her to save him. And she will kill him and you will die too, Fox. For how could you live without him?

  21

  HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER

  The vixen was waiting in front of the cave when Jacob returned with Valiant. Will and Clara were nowhere to be seen.

  “Will you look at that! That mangy fox is still following you around!” Valiant jeered, as Jacob lifted him from the horse. He had tied up the Dwarf with a silver chain, the only metal he couldn’t tear apart like thread.

  Jacob had expected Fox to welcome Valiant with a growl and a bite, as she had urged him for a long time to take revenge on the Dwarf. Instead she ignored his prisoner, as if he was just an additional sack of provisions brought back from Terpevas. Something had happened in his absence and it had upset her. Which didn’t happen easily.

  “You have to talk to your brother,” she said and plucked a feather from her fur. It was as white as snow. Jacob knew those feathers.

  “What happened?” He tied the Dwarf to a tree and cast a worried glance at the cave where Will was hiding.

  “Not him.” The vixen pointed her nose toward an oak tree. Clara was sleeping underneath it. The shirt he had bought her was torn, and there was blood on her throat.

  “A bird tree,” Fox explained. “She ran into the woods, after they had a fight.”

  “I won’t just look like them; I’ll be like them, won’t I?”

  Jacob found Will in the darkest corner of the cave. He was sitting on the ground, his back against the rock. They had switched roles. It had always been him who was hiding in the darkness, in his bedroom, in the laundry chamber, in his father’s study. “Jacob? Where are you? What have you done now?” Always Jacob, but not Will. Never Will.

  His brother’s eyes gleamed in the dark like gold coins.

  “Fox says you and Clara had a fight?”

  Will looked at his fingers. Jade fingers. “Not really. I just told her I needed to be alone.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to bring her along!”

  Jacob, stop it. But his shoulder was throbbing with pain, and the jade in Will’s face frightened him so much more than he dared admit.

  “Fight it!” he said. “This time I can’t do it for you.”

  Will got to his feet. His movements gave away his growing strength, and it was now a long time since he had barely reached up to Jacob’s shoulders.

  “Do it for me?” he repeated. “When did that last happen? When I was seven? You still believe Mom and I had a fairy-tale time while you were hunting for glass shoes and Witch combs, don’t you? I guess I was quite good at making you believe we did. But what about her?”

  There it was again. The anger. An anger Jacob didn’t know in his brother. Or had he just not seen it?

  “You know what I think? She sometimes hoped that you had gone to find our father. And that you would come back with him one day. Did you? Did you leave to look for him? Or was it just to get away?”

  It felt as if they were back in the apartment with all its empty rooms and the dark spot on the wallpaper, where the photo of their father had hung.

  “I don’t know,” Jacob said. It was the truth.

  “Come on! Take off that bloody chain, vixen!” Valiant’s voice could be heard outside. “I for one won’t be of much help if I fall off the horse because my limbs go all numb!”

  Will walked to the cave entrance. He shielded his eyes with his hand when the daylight fell on his face.

  “Is that the guide you were talking about?”

  “Yes.” Jacob couldn’t take his eyes off him. A stranger and yet so much his brother.

  “Why is he chained?”

  “Because one can’t trust him.”

  But you need to trust me, Jacob thought. Or I won’t be able to save you. From what? His brother touched the jade in his skin almost tenderly now.

  “I am sorry for what I said to Clara,” he said. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  22

  DREAMS

  It was night and the Dark Fairy was heading east. She always traveled at night; it was too beautiful to sleep it away. Black hills and forests drifted by the train window under a star-studded sky, but from time to time the glass suddenly showed her a face. Now she saw him everywhere whether she was awake or asleep. The boy made from sacred stone. Soon he would make all the stories come true, told long before he had been born. She saw it all so clearly. All Fairies knew about the fruit—that the future grew from the seeds of the past, even when time was still hiding it in its folds. Maybe it couldn’t keep its secrets from them because past, present, and future don’t mean anything to immortals.

  The boy’s face disappeared and the Dark Fairy saw only her own reflection drawn into the night by the window glass: nothing but a pale phantom, behind which the world slipped past with frantic speed. Kami’en knew that she disliked trains almost as much as she disliked the depths of the earth, so he had asked his most gifted artists to cover the walls of her carriage with precious stone mosaics: jade hills were dreaming under an onyx sky studded with moonstone, and above the seats, ruby flowers were blossoming amongst malachite leaves. The Dark Fairy ran her fingers over their red petals. That was love, wasn’t it?

  And yet the noise of the train still hurt her ears, and all the metal made her shudder. She should have stayed in the castle with the bricked-up windows to wait for Hentzau, but Kami’en had wanted to get back to the mountains he called home and to his underground fortress. He longed for the deep as much as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water—although she still tried to convince herself that all she needed was his love.

  Outside the two moons hung in the sky, so calm and steady despite the haste of the train, above a plain dyed raven black by the night. The red moon always reminded her of Kami’en’s skin.

  Yes, she loved him. And he loved her. But he was still going to marry the human princess with the blank eyes and the beauty she owed to a Fairy lily. Amalie. The sound of her name was as bland as her face. How the Dark Fairy would have enjoyed killing her. A poisoned comb, a dress that would eat into her flesh when she put it on in front of her golden mirrors. How she would scream and scratch her skin, so much softer than that of her bridegroom. The Fairy pressed her forehead against the cool glass. Jealousy. She despised the feeling. She had never felt it before. Why this time? Kami’en had always taken other women besides her. No Goyl loved only once. Nobody loved only once… Fairies least of all.

  Of course she had heard all the stories about her kind: that her sisters liked to turn their suitors into fish or reeds, when they grew tired of them. That they drove men mad with desire, until the humans drowned themselves searching for their love even in death. That their moths were the souls of their dead lovers and that all
Fairies had no hearts, just as they had neither father nor mother. The stories were all true. The Dark Fairy touched her chest. No heart, like her sisters. So where did the love come from?

  Outside, the moons were reflecting on the waters of a lake. They turned it into a mirror, made from fire and silver. The Goyl were afraid of the water, even though the sound of its dripping was as natural a part of their underground cities as the sound of the wind was to cities above the ground. They feared the water so much that the oceans drew wet borders for Kami’en’s conquests and made him dream of flying, but she couldn’t give him wings, any more than she could give him children. All the words that meant so much to both Goyl and Men—sister, brother, daughter, son—meant nothing to her, and the water he feared so much had given birth to her and her sisters.

  It gave her a bittersweet satisfaction that his human princess couldn’t give Kami’en children either, unless he wanted to sire one of those crippled monsters some mortal women had borne his soldiers. How often had he told her by now: “I don’t care for Amalie of Austry, but I need to make peace with her mother.” He actually believed every one of his words, but she knew him better. Yes, he did want peace, but even more than that he yearned to caress Amalie’s human skin and to make a human his wife. His fascination with all things human had for a while amused her, but by now she understood far too well that it worried not only his people but even men as devoted to him as Hentzau.

  Where did the love come from? What was it made of? From stone, like Kami’en? From water, like her and her sisters?

  It had just been a game when she had first set out to find him. The lake often showed them the faces of men, the lake that had given birth to all of them. The ones they liked they lured to their island. But she hadn’t seen Kami’en in the water of the lake. She had seen him in her dreams: the Goyl smashing the world to pieces and disregarding its rules, just as she did. And so she had sent out her moths to find him, despite her sisters’ warnings. They didn’t intervene with human or Goyl affairs. Her sisters stayed away from the world of mortals; the last one to break that rule wore a skin of bark and the leaves of a willow. But she had left them all behind for him. The tent in which they first met smelled of blood and the death she didn’t understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had yearned to lay the world at his feet, sowing Petrified Flesh, giving his enemies a skin that resembled his. Too late had she realized what he was sowing in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.

  “You should wear human dresses more often.”

  How was it possible that she believed she had always known his voice? There was no “always” for him. Maybe for her, but not for him.

  Her dress rustled when she turned, as if it was made from leaves. Human women dressed like flowers, layers of petals around a mortal, wilting core. Her seamstress had copied the dress from a painting at the dead general’s castle. She had caught Kami’en a few times gazing at it, absentminded, as if it showed something he was yearning for. The green silk could have made ten dresses, but she loved its rustling and how smoothly it clung to her skin.

  Kami’en didn’t look tired, even though he had barely slept in days.

  “Still no news from Hentzau?” As if she didn’t know the answer. The jade Goyl… why hadn’t her moths found him yet? She could see him so clearly.

  “Hentzau will find him.” Kami’en moved behind her and kissed her neck. “If he exists.”

  He doubted her, but never his jasper shadow. Hentzau. Someone else she sometimes yearned to kill. But Kami’en would forgive his death even less than that of his future bride. He had killed his own brothers, as the Goyl often did, but Hentzau was closer to him than a brother. Maybe even closer than she was.

  The train window melted their reflections into one. Her breath still quickened whenever he stood near her. Where does love come from?

  “Forget the jade Goyl. Forget your dreams,” he whispered, undoing her hair. “I will give you new dreams. Just tell me what you want.”

  She had never told Kami’en that she had found him in her dreams. He wouldn’t have liked it. Neither Goyl nor men lived long enough to understand that yesterday was born of tomorrow, just as tomorrow was born of yesterday.

  23

  TRAPPED

  It felt like riding back into his own past. The creek running along the bottom, the spruces clawing into the steep slopes, the silence between the rocks… The gorge Jacob had passed three years ago to reach the Fairy valley hadn’t changed, but the pain in his shoulder wouldn’t allow him to forget how much had happened since. It was by now as fierce as if the Tailor were stitching seams through his skin.

  Jacob was sharing the mare’s back with Valiant. Having the Dwarf that close made it easier to watch him but had its disadvantages. Valiant had a close look at him as well, and the smile on his beardless face grew wider each time he turned around to glance at Jacob’s pain-ridden face.

  Here we go. Another turn.

  “Oh, you really look terrible, Jacob!” the Dwarf stated with undisguised glee. “And that poor girl… she is watching you. Do you see how worried she is? She’s terrified that you’ll fall off your horse before her beloved can get his skin back. But don’t you worry. After you’re dead and your brother has turned into a Goyl, Evenaugh Valiant will console her in person. I have a weakness for human women, did I ever tell you that?”

  Jacob was too dazed by fever to reply. He longed for the healing air of the Fairies almost as much for his own sake as for his brother’s now.

  You just have to get through the gorge, Jacob. And then past the unicorns. The unicorns. His back hurt at the mere thought of them. What if the Dwarf should betray him once again?

  Will was riding next to Clara, trying to make her forget what he had said in the cave. But she couldn’t forget. Jacob saw it in her face. She rarely looked at his brother. When she did though, Jacob saw love—and fear.

  The sun was already quite low, and the shadows in the ravine were darkening the water of the foaming creek, as if it was carrying the night into the gorge. They were halfway through it when Will suddenly reined in his horse.

  “What is it?” Valiant asked anxiously.

  “There are Goyl here.” There was not a trace of doubt in Will’s voice. “They are close.”

  “Goyl? Excellent!” Valiant cast them all a mocking glance. “I get on great with the Goyl. I guess that can’t be said of the other members of this expedition?”

  Jacob slowed the mare down and listened, but the rush of the water drowned out all other sounds.

  “Pretend you are watering your horses,” he whispered to Clara and Will, while getting off his own.

  The vixen slipped to his side.

  “Will is right,” she hissed. “I smell them. They’re ahead of us.”

  Will shuddered, like a wolf catching the scent of its pack. “Why are they hiding?”

  Valiant eyed him as if he saw him for the first time.

  “You cunning dog!” he hissed at Jacob. “The stone in his skin… it’s jade!”

  “So what?”

  “So what? Your brother. Right!” Valiant gave Jacob a conspiratorial wink. “The Goyl are offering two pounds of red moonstone for a Man-Goyl with jade skin! Well played. But why, in the name of all child-eating Witches, are you taking him to the Fairies?”

  Two pounds of red moonstone… Jacob stared at Will’s pale green skin. Of course. That’s why the Goyl had shown up at the deserted farm. The wound had indeed fogged his brain. The jade Goyl who would make their King invincible. Chanute had once fantasized about finding him and selling him to the Empress. But nobody could seriously mistake his brother for him?

  They could already see the end of the gorge and behind it the mist-shrouded valley. So close.

  “Let’s turn around and take him to one of their fortresses!” Valiant hissed. “The reward is lost if they capture him here themselves. Two pounds of moonstone! Come on!”

  Will once again shuddered. He searched the steep
slopes with his eyes. Golden eyes.

  “Is there another way into the valley?” Jacob asked the Dwarf.

  “Sure,” Valiant replied with a smirk, “if you think your so-called brother has time to go the long way around… not to mention yourself. If you ask me, you look like you’ll be dead in your boots by tomorrow.”

  Will looked around like a trapped animal.

  Clara steered her horse next to Jacob’s.

  “Get him away from here!” she whispered. “Please! We have to turn around!”

  And then what? The Fairy was Will’s only hope.

  A few yards to their left a group of pine trees grew in front of the rocks. It was so dark under their branches that even as close as they were Jacob couldn’t see beneath them. He waved Will to his side.

  “Follow me, when I lead my horse to those pine trees,” he whispered.

  Will hesitated but finally he did as told.

  The shade under the pines was as black as soot. Jacob walked close to the trees and grabbed Will’s arm. “Remember how we fought when we were kids?”

  “You always let me win.”

  “Exactly. That’s what we’ll do now.”

  “What’s this?” The vixen had followed them. “We need to go back! Or do you want them to come and get him!”

  “They won’t, if you do as I tell you—” Oh, she would be so angry once she realized what he was going to do. Jacob tied his horse to one of the trees. “Whatever happens, Fox,” he whispered, “I want you to stay with Will. Promise! If you don’t, we’ll all end up in a Goyl prison.”