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He brushed the red hair from her forehead. A feather lay on the nightstand next to the bed. Jacob picked it up and smiled. She’d kept one for herself. Just as Chanute had taught him: ‘Whatever you find for a client, always make sure you keep some of it for yourself.’ It was a flawless specimen. Jacob had never seen a more beautiful Man-Swan feather. The easiest way to get one was to steal it from the nest, but even that was dangerous. Man-Swans were very combative. Unbearable sorrow had turned them into swans, and only a blood relative could release them and give them back their human form. Jacob had once nearly paid with his life for finding the feathered son of a baker’s wife. Anything a Man-Swan feather touched disappeared immediately and reappeared only when the feather was put down again. Chanute had transported many treasures that way. It didn’t always work, though. Some things got lost along the way.
‘Don’t even think about it. That feather’s mine.’ Sleep was clinging to Fox’s eyes. She flinched as she propped herself up on her injured arm.
Jacob returned the feather to the nightstand. ‘Since when do you go treasure hunting without me?’ I missed you, he wanted to add, but her eyes were cold, as they always were when he’d been gone too long.
‘It wasn’t a difficult job. And I was tired of waiting.’
She’d become a woman without his really noticing. In his eyes she’d always been beautiful, even when she was the scrawny little thing that only reluctantly picked the burrs from her hair. Beautiful like all wild and free things. But now she wore the vixen’s beauty on her human skin.
‘You’re still shifting too much,’ he said. ‘If you don’t watch it, you’ll soon end up older than me.’
She pushed the blanket off her. ‘And?’ She was wearing her fur dress. She always wore it in her sleep, for fear someone might steal it off her. ‘Stop worrying about me all the time. You never used to do that.’ Yes, Jacob, what are you doing? You’ll see; she’ll get along just fine without you. Except that he wouldn’t see.
From his backpack he pulled the package Chanute had given him. ‘You never told me you had a rich suitor in Schwanstein.’
Fox opened the paper and smiled. It was a shawl. She stroked the green velvet and put it next to the feather.
‘What about you?’ She gave him an enquiring look. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’ She pulled the sleeve over her bandaged shoulder. ‘Will you now finally tell me what you’re looking for?’
Spit it out, Jacob. You want to tell her. She’s the only one you want to tell. He’d missed her so much. And he was tired of hiding his fear.
He unbuttoned his shirt.
‘I was looking for a cure.’
The moth’s red outline looked as though someone had traced it with fresh blood.
Fox took a deep breath. ‘What does it mean?’ Her voice sounded even more gravelly than usual.
She read the answer on his face.
‘So that was the price.’ She was trying to sound composed. ‘I knew your brother didn’t just get his skin back for free.’ Her eyes filled with tears. The vixen’s eyes. Brown, like tarnished gold. She couldn’t remember whether they were the colour she’d been born with or whether they’d come with the fur. ‘Which Fairy was it?’
Tell her something, Jacob. Something to console her. But what?
He stepped closer and wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘You always have to pay with your life for crossing one of them. And I managed to get on the wrong side of two of them.’
Fox wrapped her arms around him.
‘How long?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’ It was only half a lie. Jacob buried his face in her hair. He didn’t want to think any more. What he wanted were the times when he’d go searching for lost magic with her, when he’d lived believing he was immortal, that he could own a whole world. He wanted to dream of what he’d do when he became as old as Chanute, of buying a castle in Etruria, of fishing for pirate gold in the White Sea. Childish dreams. He’d hoped he’d still be dreaming them on his hundredth birthday. Instead, he was going to have to think about which world he wanted to be buried in.
There was a knock on the door.
Valiant didn’t wait for a reply. Fox quickly stepped out of Jacob’s embrace as the Dwarf came through the door. That probably just fired up Valiant’s imagination even more, but Jacob wasn’t planning on telling him the real reason for her tears.
‘How about some dinner?’ Valiant gave them a sleazy smile. ‘We’re having mountain goat. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I have a cook from Vena who can turn even a donkey into a feast.’ He nodded at Fox. ‘Ask her if you don’t believe me.’
Fox forced a smile on her lips. ‘You really should try the mountain goat,’ she said.
CHAPTER TEN
DIGGING DEEP
