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Valiant gave him a pitying smile as he adjusted his hat in the glass of his front door. Like most Dwarfs, he was partial to black top hats, which added a fair number of inches to his stature.
"You seem to be desperate to get back to your old flame," he purred, "and the price always rises with the desperation of the customer."
In reply, Jacob tapped the muzzle of his gun against the Dwarf's hat. "Trust me," he said, "this customer is desperate enough to shoot you at a moment's notice."
20
Too Much
Fox smelled golden revulsion, petrified loathing, frozen love. The entrance of the cave exhaled it all, and her fur bristled when she found Clara's tracks not the grass in front of it. She had stumbled more than walked, and her tracks led toward the trees growing behind the cave. Fox had heard Jacob warn Clara about those trees, but she'd rushed toward them as if their ominous shadows were exactly what she was looking for.
Clara's scent was the same one Fox smelled on herself whenever she lost her fur. Girl. Woman. So much more vulnerable. Strong and yet weak. A heart that knew no armor. The scent told Fox about all the things she feared and from which the fur protected her. Clara's hasty steps wrote them onto the dark soil, and Fox didn't need her nose to know why Clara was running. She herself had tried to run away from pain before.
The hazel bushes and wild apple trees were harmless, but between them grew trunks with bark as spiny as the shell of a chestnut. Bird-trees. Under their branches the sunlight dissolved into a gloomy brown, and Clara had stumbled right into the wooden claws of one of them. She screamed for Jacob, but he was far away. The tree curled its roots around her arms and ankles, and its feathery servants already descended on her body, their plumage as white as virgin snow, birds with sharp beaks and eyes like red berries.
Fox jumped among them, her teeth bared, deaf to their angry cries. She snapped one of the birds in midjump, before it could escape to the safety of the branches. She felt its heart racing between her jaws, but she did not bite; she just held on firmly, very firmly, until the tree let go of Clara with an angry groan.
The roots slid off Clara like snakes, and as she struggled back to her feet, they were already slipping beneath the autumn-brown leaves, where they would be in wait for their next victim. The other birds chattered angrily from the branches, ghostly white creatures among the yellowing foliage. But Fox held on to her quarry until Clara staggered to her side.
Her face was as white as the feathers that stuck to her dress. Fox could smell not only the mortal fear on her body but also the pain in her heart, raw, like a fresh wound.
They barely spoke a word on their way back to the cave. At one point Clara stopped, 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 for having run away.
Fox didn't want her to leave. She shifted her shape and put her arms around Clara, who pressed her face against the furry dress that so much resembled the vixen's coat.
"He doesn't love me anymore."
"He doesn't love anybody anymore," Fox whispered back. "He's forgetting who he is."
She knew how it felt. Another skin, another person. But the fur she had grown was soft and warm. The stone was hard and cold.
Clara looked toward the cave. Fox picked a feather from her hair.
"Don't leave!" Fox whispered to her. "Jacob will help him. You'll see."
If only he were back already.
21
His Brother's Keeper
As Jacob rode toward the cave, Fox came running to him. Will and Clara were nowhere to be seen.
"Will you look at that! That mangy vixen still following you around?" Valiant jeered as Jacob lifted him from the horse. Jacob had tied him with a silver chain, the only metal that Dwarfs could not snap like thread.
Jacob would not have been surprised if Fox had replied to Valiant's remark with a bite, but she seemed not to have even noticed the Dwarf. Something had happened. Her fur was standing on end, and she had some white feathers stuck to her back.
"You have to talk to your brother," she said while Jacob tied the Dwarf to a nearby tree.
"What happened?" Jacob cast a worried glance at the cave where Will was hiding, but Fox pointed toward the horses. Clara was there, sleeping in the shade of a beech. Her shirt was torn, and Jacob could see blood on her throat.
"They had a fight," Fox said. "He no longer knows what he's doing."
The stone is faster than you, Jacob.
* * * * *
Jacob found Will in the darkest corner of the cave. He was sitting on the floor, his back against the rock.
