Fearless (4 page)

Alma’s practice was still closed when Jacob knocked on the back door. It was a while before she opened it. She’d obviously had an exhausting night, yet her face brightened immediately at the sight of him. On that early morning, she looked exactly as Jacob would have imagined a Witch would look like when he was a child, but he’d seen Alma with many different faces and in many different bodies.

‘I could have done with your help last night,’ she said. Her cat was purring a welcome at Jacob’s feet. ‘The Stilt from up by the ruins tried to steal a child. Can’t you get rid of him?’

The Stilt. The first creature he’d encountered behind the mirror. Jacob hands still bore the scars from its yellow teeth. He’d tried to catch it more than a dozen times, but Stilts were cunning, and masters at playing hide-and-seek.

‘I’ll try again. I promise.’ Jacob picked up the purring cat and followed Alma into the plain room where she practised both the old and the new kinds of medicine. As he took off his coat, she noticed the black blood on his shirt and shook her head wearily.

‘And what is this now?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t you just once come here with a cold or an upset stomach? Will I regret to my dying day that I didn’t stop you from apprenticing with that Albert Chanute?’

Alma had never liked the old treasure hunter. Too many times had she given shelter to Jacob after Chanute had beaten him. And like all Witches, she didn’t like treasure hunting. Jacob had first met her by the ruins. Alma swore by the herbs that grew there. ‘Cursed? Half the world is cursed,’ she had said when asked about the stories that surrounded the ruins. ‘And curses wear off faster than a bad smell. All that’s up there are burnt stones.’

She’d never asked what a twelve-year-old boy was doing all alone among the walls of a burnt-down castle. Alma never asked such questions, maybe, because she already knew the answers. She had taken Jacob home with her, given him clothes that wouldn’t attract curious stares, and warned him about Thumblings and Gold-Ravens. During his first years behind the mirror, he could always count on her for a warm meal or a place to sleep. Alma had patched him up after he’d first been bitten by a wolf; she’d put a splint on his arm after he’d tried to ride a hexed horse. And she’d instructed him on which of her world’s creatures were best given a wide berth.

She dabbed some of the black blood off his skin and sniffed it. ‘Northern Djinn blood.’ She looked at him, worried. ‘What do you need that for?’

She put her hand on his chest. Then she opened his shirt and ran her fingers over the imprint of the moth.

‘Fool!’ She punched her bony fist into his chest. ‘You went back to the Fairy. Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?’

‘I needed her help.’

‘And? Why didn’t you come to me?’ She opened the cupboard where she kept the instruments for the less modern part of her practice.

‘It was a Fairy’s curse! You couldn’t have done anything.’ Fairy magic was beyond the power of any Witch. ‘It was for my brother,’ he added.

‘And your brother’s worth sacrificing your own life for?’

‘Yes.’

Alma looked at him silently. Then she took a knife from the cupboard and cut a strand of Jacob’s hair. The hair caught fire as soon as she rubbed it between her fingers. Witches could set fire to almost anything with their touch.

Alma looked at the ash on her fingertips – then she looked at Jacob. Her fingers were white as snow. She didn’t have to explain what that meant. He’d cleansed himself of a curse before. Back then, the ash on Alma’s fingers had been black.

The Djinn’s blood had done nothing.

He buttoned up his shirt again.
You’re a dead man, Jacob.

Had the Red Fairy been watching him all these months, as he’d found hope after hope dashed? Was she watching him right now? The Fairies had many ways to see what they wanted to see. She’d probably been waiting for his death ever since she whispered her sister’s name to him.
No, Jacob. Ever since you left her.

‘How much longer?’ he asked.

The pity in Alma’s eyes was worse than her anger. ‘Two, three months, maybe less. How did she curse you?’

‘She got me to say her dark sister’s name.’

Alma’s cat was brushing against his legs as though she were trying to console him. One never would have guessed that she could become quite vicious to visitors she didn’t like.

‘I thought you knew more about Fairies than I. Did you forget how big a secret they make of their names?’ Alma went to her apothecary cabinet. Its drawers were filled with every remedy the Mirrorworld had to offer.

‘I said the Red One’s name countless times.’

‘And? Many things are different with the Dark One.’ Alma picked a root from one of the drawers. It looked like a pale spider with its legs drawn under its body. ‘She’s more powerful than the others, but, unlike them, she doesn’t live under the protective spell of their island. That makes her vulnerable. She cannot allow anyone to know her name. She probably hasn’t even told it to her lover.’ She ground up the root in a pestle and poured the powder into a pouch. ‘How long have you been carrying that moth on your chest?’

Jacob pushed his hand under his shirt. He could barely feel the imprint. ‘The Red first saved my life with it.’

Alma’s smile was full of bitterness. ‘She saved you only so she could give you the death she had planned for you. Fairies love playing with life and death . . . and I’m sure her revenge will be all the sweeter for having made her mighty sister her unwitting accomplice.’ Alma offered Jacob the pouch with the powder. ‘Here. This is all I can do. Take a pinch of this whenever the pain comes. And it
will
come.’

She filled a bowl with the cold water from the well behind her house so Jacob could wash off the Djinn’s blood before it burnt into his skin. The water soon turned as grey as the spirit.

On Jacob’s last birthday, he’d filled a sheet of paper with a list of the treasures he still wanted to find. He’d turned Twenty-five.
You’ll never get any older, Jacob.

Twenty-five.

The towel Alma handed him smelled of mint. He didn’t want to die. He loved his life. He didn’t want a different one, just more of this.

‘Can you tell me how it will happen?’

Alma pushed open the window to pour out the water. It was getting light. ‘The Dark One will use her sister’s seal to reclaim her name. The moth on your heart will come alive. It won’t be pleasant. Once it tears free from your skin and flies off, you will be dead. You may have a few more minutes, maybe an hour . . . but there can be no salvation.’ She quickly turned away. Alma hated for others to see her cry. ‘Jacob, I wish there was something I could do,’ she added quietly, ‘but the Fairies are more powerful than I. It comes with their immortality.’

The cat looked at him. Jacob stroked her black fur. Nine lives. He always believed he’d have at least that many.

CHAPTER SIX

WHAT NOW?

M
any of the graves in the cemetery behind Alma’s house dated from when large numbers of Trolls had migrated to Austry to escape the cold winters of their homeland. Their magical woodworking skills had earned most of them large fortunes, and a number of their grave markers were covered with gold. Jacob had no idea how long he’d been standing there, staring at a masterfully carved frieze depicting the deeds of a long-dead Troll. Around him, men, women, and children were going to work. Carts rumbled over the rough cobblestones in front of the cemetery gate. A dog barked at a junk man who was doing his rounds among the simple cottages. And Jacob just stood there and stared at the graves, unable to think.

He’d been so sure he would find a way to save himself. After all, there was nothing he couldn’t find. He’d firmly believed that, ever since he became Chanute’s apprentice. Since his thirteenth birthday, his only ambition had been to become the best treasure hunter of all time – it was the only name he’d wanted to make for himself. But now it seemed that the only things he could find were the ones other people desired. What were they to him? The glass slipper that brought never-ending love; the cudgel that slew every foe; the goose that laid golden eggs; or the conch that let you listen to your enemies. He’d wanted to be the man who found them, nothing else. And he had found all of them. Yet as soon as he sought something for himself, he searched in vain. That’s how it had been with his father, and that’s how it was now with the magic that might save his life.

Rotten luck, Jacob.

He turned away from the grave markers and their gilded carvings. Most of them depicted tavern brawls or drinking games – the deeds that Trolls were proudest of were not always the honourable ones – yet some also showed the things the dead had crafted from wood: living puppets, singing tables, ladles you could leave to stir on their own.
What will your gravestone say about you, Jacob?
Jacob Reckless, born of another world, killed by the curse of a Fairy. He leant down and propped up the tiny gravestone of a Heinzel.

Enough self-pity.

His brother had his skin back.

Suddenly, the wish that Will had never come through the mirror became so overwhelming that it made him sick.
Find yourself an hourglass, Jacob. Turn back time; do not ride to the Fairy. Or just smash the mirror before Will can follow you.

A woman opened the rusty gate in the cemetery wall. She placed a few flowering branches on a grave. Maybe it was the sight of her that made him think of Fox, for that was what she would do. Though it was more likely she’d put a bunch of wild flowers on his grave. Violets or primroses. Those were her favourites.

He turned around and walked towards the gate.

No. He would not search for an hourglass. Even if he turned back time, everything would just happen again, exactly the same way. And things had turned out well, at least for his brother.

Jacob opened the gate and looked up at the hill where the tower stood out against the morning sky. Should he go back and tell Will how things were standing with him?

No. Not yet.

First he had to find Fox.

It was to her he owed the truth, more than to anyone else.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN VAIN

T
he Dark Fairy flinched. Jacob Reckless. She didn’t want to see his face any more. All the fear on it, the pain . . . she could feel death, drawn to him by her name, like a wound on his white skin.

This was not her revenge. Even though the pond that showed her his fear was the same one where he had turned her skin to bark.

Her red sister was probably seeing the same images, on the lake that had spawned them both. What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn’t know much about love.

The pond turned dark, like the sky it reflected, and then her face was all she saw trembling on the waves. They distorted it, as though her beauty was dissolving. So? Kami’en no longer saw her anyway. All he saw was the swollen belly of his human wife.

The sounds of the city drifted into the nocturnal garden.

The Dark One turned around. She no longer wanted to see; not herself, nor her sister’s unfaithful lover. At times she even longed for the leaves and the bark he’d put on her.

He looked nothing like his brother.

The moth that landed on her shoulder was like a sliver of night on her white skin. Yet even the night now belonged to the other. Kami’en now slept more and more often by the side of his doll-faced princess.

What did her sister want with all that fear and pain? They would never bring back the love.