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"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.
