Reckless

Jacob managed to get to his knees. Metal bars separated his cell from the neighboring one, and what he saw through those bars made him forget his pain.



Will.



He pushed his shoulder against the wall and slowly got to his feet. His brother lay as if dead, but he was breathing. There were still traces of human skin on his forehead. The Red Fairy had kept her promise. She had stopped time.



Footsteps echoed down the dark corridor, and Jacob backed against the bars behind which his brother was sleeping. The jasper Goyl. Hentzau — Jacob now knew his name. He was coming toward their cells with two guards, and when Jacob saw whom they were dragging with them, he wanted to smash his head against the metal bars.



He had told them what they wanted to know.



Clara had a bloody gash on her forehead. Her eyes were wide with fear. Where's Fox? Jacob wanted to ask her, but she didn't even seem to notice him. All she could see was his brother.



Hentzau pushed her into Will's cell, and Clara took a step toward him, but then she stopped, as if remembering that only a few hours earlier she'd kissed the other brother.



"Clara."



She turned, her face a torrent of emotions: horror, anxiety, despair — and shame.



She approached the iron bars and touched the red marks on Jacob's throat. "What did they do to you?" she whispered.



"It's nothing. Where is Fox?"



"They caught her, too."



She took his hand as the Goyl snapped to attention in front of the cell. Even Hentzau straightened his shoulders, though his reluctance clearly showed. Jacob knew immediately who that woman was who was coming down the corridor.



The Dark Fairy's hair was lighter than that of her sister; but Jacob didn't wonder how she had earned her name. He felt her darkness like a shadow on his skin, though it wasn't fear that made his heart beat faster.



You don't have to find her anymore, Jacob. She came to you!



Clara shrank away as the Dark Fairy stepped into Will's cell, but Jacob clasped his fingers around the metal bars that separated him from her. Come closer! Come on! he thought. Just one touch, and the three syllables her sister had taught him. But the bars put her as far out of his reach as if she were lying in her royal lover's bed. Her skin seemed to be made of pearl, and her beauty surpassed even that of her sister. She eyed Clara with the same disdain all her kind had for human women.



"You love him?" The Dark Fairy caressed Will's sleeping face. "Go on, tell me."



Clara stumbled back, but her own shadow came alive and wrapped its black fingers around her ankles.



"Answer her, Clara," Jacob said.



"Yes," she stuttered. "Yes. I love him."



Clara's shadow became once again nothing but a shadow, and the Fairy smiled.



"Good. Then you surely want to wake him up. All you have to do is kiss him."



Clara cast a pleading glance at Jacob.



"No! he wanted to say. Don't do it! But his tongue no longer obeyed him. His lips were numb, as if the Fairy had sealed them, and he could but watch helplessly as she took Clara's arm and gently led her to Will's side.



"Look at him!" she said. "If you don't wake him, he'll just lie like that forever, neither dead nor alive, until even his soul has turned to dust in his withered body."



Clara wanted to turn away, but the Fairy held her.



"Is that love?" Jacob heard her whisper. "To betray him like that, just because his skin is no longer as soft as yours? Let him go."



Clara lifted her hand and stroked Will's stone face.



The Dark Fairy let go of her arm and stepped back with a smile.



"Put all your love in that kiss!" she said. "You will see; it doesn't die as easily as you think."



And Clara closed her eyes as though she wanted to forget Will's petrified face, and she kissed him.



39



Awoken



For a moment, Jacob hoped against all reason that the person stirring in the neighboring cell was still his brother. But Clara's face quickly set him straight. She stumbled over the hem of her dress as she backed away, and the look she gave Jacob was so full of despair it even made him forget his own pain.



His brother was gone.



Any trace of human skin had vanished, and he was nothing but breathing stone, his familiar body now cast in jade like a dead insect in amber.



Goyl.



Will didn't see Jacob or Clara as he rose from the sandstone bench on which he had lain. His eyes sought only one face — that of the Fairy. Jacob felt the pain tear through all those protective shells he had fastened around his heart for so many years. It was, once again, just as raw and defenseless as he had last felt as a child in his father's deserted study, and, as then, there was no comfort, just love. And pain.



"Will?" Clara whispered her brother's name like that of a dead man. She took a step toward him, but the Fairy stepped into her path.



"Let him go," she said.



The guards opened the cell, and the Fairy led Will out.



"Come with me," she said to him. "It's time to wake up. You've slept far too long."



Clara looked after them until they disappeared down the dark corridor. Then she turned to Jacob. Blame, anguish, guilt turned her eyes as dark as the Fairy's. What have I done? they asked him. Why did you not stop me? Didn't you promise to protect him?



Or maybe he was just reading his own thoughts into her glance.



* * * * *



"Shall we shoot this one?" asked one of the guards, pointing his rifle at Jacob.



Hentzau drew the pistol they had taken from Jacob. He opened the chamber, scrutinizing it like the core of some strange fruit.



"This is an interesting weapon," he said. "Where did you get it?"



Jacob turned his back to him. Just shoot already, he thought.



The cell, the Goyl, the hanging palace. Everything around him seemed so unreal. The whole underground city. Fairies, enchanted forests, a vixen who was a girl — nothing but the feverish dreams of a twelve-year-old. He saw himself standing in the doorway of his father's study, Will inquisitively staring past him at the dusty model planes, the old revolvers. And the mirror.



"Turn around." Hentzau's voice was impatient. Their rage was so easily stirred, constantly burning just beneath their stone skin.



Jacob still didn't move. Then he heard the Goyl laugh out loud.



"The same arrogance! Your brother doesn't look like him. That's why I didn't realize right away why your face looks so familiar. The same eyes. The same mouth. But your father never could hide his fear as well as you do."



Jacob turned around. You're such an idiot, Jacob Reckless.



"The Goyl have better engineers." How often Jacob had heard that sentence in the mirror — be it in Schwanstein or uttered by a despairing imperial officer — and he had never thought twice about it.



The father found, the brother lost.



"Where is he?" he asked.



Hentzau raised his eyebrows. "I had hoped you'd tell me. We caught him five years ago in Blenheim. He'd been hired to build a bridge because the townspeople had grown tired of being eaten by the Lorelei. The river has always been teeming with them. It's a lie that the Fairy put them in there. John Reckless. That's what he called himself. Always had a photograph of his sons with him. The King had him build us a camera, long before the Empress's scientists came up with anything like that. He built many things for us. Who would’ve thought that one of his sons would become the jade Goyl."

*** Copyright: Novel12.Com