Reckless

"He's in the palace. In the Fairy's quarters. And he's fallen into a deep sleep from which not even the Fairy has managed to wake him. I assume you know what that's about?"



"Yes." Jacob looked up at the huge stalactite.



"Forget it!" the Dwarf hissed. "Your brother might as well have dissolved into thin air. The Fairy's chambers are right at the very tip there. You'd have to fight your way through the entire palace. Not even you can be crazy enough to try that."



Jacob studied the dark windows in the shimmering stony façade.



"Can you get an appointment with the officer you do business with?"



"And then what?" Valiant shook his head and sneered. "The slaves in the palace all have the King's mark burnt into their foreheads. Even if your brotherly love extends to doing that to yourself, none of them is allowed to leave the upper parts of the palace."



"What about the bridges?"



"What about them?"



Two of them were directly linked to the palace. One was a railway bridge that vanished into a tunnel in the upper part of the cave. The second was one of the bridges with houses, and it connected to the stalactite halfway down. There were no buildings near where it entered the palace, and Jacob got a clear view of an onyx-black gate and a double line of sentries.



"That expression on your face!" Valiant muttered. "I don't like it at all."



Jacob ignored him. He was looking at the metal trusses that held up the bridge. They looked from a distance as if they had been added later to support an older stone structure, and they stuck like claws into the side of the hanging palace.



Jacob ducked into an entrance and pointed his spyglass at the stalactite. "The windows have no bars," he whispered.



"Why would they?" Valiant whispered back. "Only the birds and the bats can get anywhere near them."



The Dwarf fell silent as a group of children filed past the alley. Jacob had never seen a Goyl child before, and for a moment he thought he recognized his brother in one of the boys. Once they'd passed, Valiant looked back up at the bridge.



"Hold on!" he hissed. "Now I know what you're planning to do! It's insane! Even you aren't that stupid!"



Jacob pushed the spyglass back into his coat. "If you want that gold tree, you'd better get me on that bridge!"



He would find Will. Even though he had kissed his girl.



36



The Wrong Name



"Fox?" There. She was calling her again. Fox fantasized about the Waterman dragging Clara down into his pond, the wolves tearing at her skin, or the Dwarf selling her to the highest bidder at some slave market. The Red Fairy had never made Fox feel that way; neither had the Witch into whose hut Jacob had vanished every night some years ago, nor the Empress's maid whose sweet flowery perfume she had once smelled on his clothes for weeks.



"Fox? Where are you?"



Shut up!



Fox ducked under the bushes. She couldn't tell anymore whether she was wearing fur or skin. She no longer wanted her fur. She wanted skin, and lips, so he could kiss them as he had kissed Clara's lips. She couldn’t stop picturing Clara in his arms, again and again.



Jacob.



What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry.



It must have some other name, just as there couldn’t be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun.



Jacob. Even his name suddenly tasted different. And Fox felt a cold breeze on her human skin.



"Fox?" Clara knelt down on the damp moss in front of her.



Her hair was like gold. Fox's hair was always red, red like the fur of a vixen. She couldn’t remember whether it had ever been different.



She shoved Clara away and stood up. It felt good to be the same size as her.



"Fox." Clara reached for her arm as she pushed past her. "I don't even know your name. Your real name, I mean."



Real? What was real about it? And how was it any of her business? Not even Jacob knew her human name. "Celeste, wash your face. Celeste, comb your hair."



"Do you still feel it?" Fox stared into her blue eyes. Jacob could look you in the eye and lie. He was very good at it, but not even he could fool the vixen.



Clara averted her gaze, but Fox could smell what she was feeling, all the fear and shame. "Have you ever drunk Larks' Water?"



"No," Fox answered disdainfully. "No vixen would ever be so stupid." Who cared that it was a lie?



Clara stared at the stream. The dead larks were still stuck between the stones. Clara. Her name sounded like glass and cool water, and Fox had liked her so much until Jacob kissed her.



It still stung.



Call back the fur, Fox. But she couldn’t. She wanted to feel her skin, her hands, and the lips that could kiss. Fox turned her back to Clara, fearful that her human face could give her away. She didn't even know anymore what it looked like. She had never cared. Was it pretty? Ugly? Her mother had been pretty, and her father had beaten her nevertheless. Or because of it.



"Why do you prefer being a fox?" The night had tinted Clara's eyes black. "Does it make the world easier to understand?"



"Foxes don't try to understand it."



Clara rubbed her arms as if she could still feel Jacob's hands on them. And Fox could see she wished for a fur of her own.



37



At The Dark Fairy's Windows



Butchers, tailors, bakers, jewelers. The bridge leading to the hanging palace was like a dizzyingly high shopping street. The windows displayed gems and minerals next to lizard meat and the black-leaved cabbage that grew without sunlight. There was bread, and there were fruits from the various provinces above the ground, and the dried bugs that were considered a delicacy by the Goyl. But all Jacob cared about was the palace beyond the storefronts.



It hung from the roof of the cave like a sandstone chandelier. Jacob felt quite dizzy as he leaned over the balustrade between two shops to look down at where the stalactite ended in a crystal crown, with its shimmering points reaching into the void.



"Which are the windows of the Dark Fairy's chambers?"



"The malachite ones." Valiant looked around nervously.



There were a lot of soldiers on the bridge — not just the sentries by the palace gate, but also among the crowds strolling past the shops. Many of the Goyl women wore dresses embroidered with stones that matched the color of their skin. The stones were so finely cut that the fabric glistened like snakeskin, and Jacob caught himself wondering what Clara would look like in such a dress. How long will this last?



The Fairy's windows gaped like green eyes from the light sandstone. Barely twenty yards above them was the point where the bridge's metal joists were bolted to the palace wall, but the façade, in contrast to that of the other stalactites, was shiny-smooth and afforded no purchase.



And yet he had to try. Behind him, Valiant was muttering something about the limitations of the human mind. Jacob pulled the snuffbox from his pocket. It contained one of the most useful magical items he'd ever found: a very long single golden hair. The Dwarf fell silent as Jacob began to rub the hair between his fingers. It began to sprout more fibers, each as fine as the silk of a spider. Soon the hair was as thick as Jacob's middle finger and stronger than any rope in this or the other world. But it wasn't just its strength that made it such a useful tool. It had other, even more wondrous properties. The rope could grow to any length you desired, and it could attach itself to the exact spot you looked at when you threw it.