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And you, John, will show them how to build tanks and rockets. No, it wasn’t quite true that John had no conscience at all. Everyone had one. But there were many voices in his head that had an easier time reaching him: his ambition, his desire for fame and success—and for revenge. For four stolen years. Admittedly, the Goyl didn’t treat their prisoners as badly as the Walrus or Crookback did. Still, he wanted revenge.
His Home
The building in which Jacob had grown up rose into the sky higher than any of the castle towers that had intimidated Fox as a child. He looked different in this world. Fox had no words to describe the difference, but she felt it as clearly as she felt the difference between skin and fur. These past weeks had helped explain much of what she’d never understood.
Above her, the stone faces stared from the walls like fossils from a Goyl city, but among all this piled-up steel, the walls of glass, the haze of exhaust fumes, and the ceaseless noise, Fox felt the other world like a piece of clothing she and Jacob wore hidden from sight. People, houses, streets—there was too much of everything in this world. And too little forest that could have offered shelter from it all. It hadn’t been easy to reach the city where Jacob had grown up. The borders in his world were more tightly guarded than the island of the Fairies. Forged papers, with her photographed face showing all the lostness she couldn’t hide. Train stations, airports, so many new words. Fox had seen clouds from above and nighttime streets that looked like fiery snakes. She would never forget any of it, but she was glad the mirror that had brought her here was not the only one and that she’d soon be going home.
That’s what they’d come here for, to go back, and to see Will and Clara, of course. Jacob had talked by phone with Will a few times since they’d come to his world. He’d driven the jade from his brother’s skin, but Jacob was aware he could never undo all the things Will had lived through behind the mirror. How much had it changed his brother? Jacob never asked this aloud, but Fox knew the question preoccupied him.
For now, though, she was wondering how Jacob must feel seeing Clara again, even though the past months had made them feel so close it seemed almost immaterial if he kissed others. Almost.
Jacob held open a heavy door that must have been impossible for him to open as a child. Fox squeezed past him, feeling his warmth like a home. A home even in this world. She could tell that Jacob was glad she was here. His two lives brought together. For years he’d asked her to come with him. Now she felt sorry she’d always said no.
Fox looked around while Jacob exchanged polite words with the wheezing doorman. Compared to the shabby house she’d spent her childhood in, Jacob had grown up in a palace. The grilled door of the elevator he now waved her toward reminded her a little too much of a cage, but Fox did her best not to let Jacob see her uneasiness, just as she’d done in the airplane that had brought them here. Only the sight of the clouds had made up for the metal confinement.
“Just one more night.” Even in this world Jacob read her thoughts. “We’re going back as soon as I’ve gotten rid of this thing.”
Jacob carried the swindlesack that concealed the crossbow under his shirt. The sack’s magic still worked. Jacob couldn’t explain why. So far, all objects he’d brought through the mirror had lost their magical powers. He claimed it was because of the crossbow, but her fur dress also still worked. Fox had been very relieved. Being able to shift into the vixen’s body had helped her not to become completely lost in this strange world, though it hadn’t been easy to find places where she could shift unobserved.
The dizziness she felt as she stepped out of the elevator reminded her of her childhood, of climbing trees that were always a bit too tall. A window framed Jacob’s city: trees of glass, chimney reeds, rusty water-tank flowers.
Fox hadn’t seen Will in almost a year. In her memory, he still had a skin of stone, but the joy on his face as he opened the door made those memories disappear like bad dreams. She did think Will looked tired. The mirror had given the brothers very different gifts, and wasn’t that just the way magic objects worked? One sister’s gold was the other one’s pitch.
Will barely seemed to notice how much Fox had changed. Clara, on the other hand, looked at her as though she couldn’t believe this was the same girl she’d known in another world. Fox wanted to tell her, I’ve always been older than you; that’s how the fur works. The vixen was always young and old at the same time. Fox remembered the closeness she’d shared with Clara—and the feeling of betrayal when she’d caught her kissing Jacob. And Clara remembered, too. Fox could see it in her eyes.
Jacob had made Fox promise not to tell Clara or his brother how he’d nearly paid with his life for getting Will his human skin back. And so Fox had kept quiet about their race against death and instead answered their questions about how she liked this world. Oh, the things we never talk about...
At some point, she asked Clara to point her in the direction of the bathroom. On her way back, she stepped into what she immediately recognized from Jacob’s stories as his room. A shelf with tattered books, photographs of Will and their mother on a desk into which he’d carved his initials. He’d carved something else into the wood: the profile of a fox. Fox ran her fingers over the carving, which was stained with red ink.
“Everything all right?” Jacob was standing in the doorway.
Once more Fox noticed how different he looked in the clothes of this world. There was no point in trying to pretend she felt all right. Jacob had told her how on his first trips through the mirror Alma had to feed him medicines for days. But in this world there was no Witch who could help the body adjust to the strangeness.
“Why don’t you go back now? I’ll join you tomorrow evening.”
There were photographs above his bed—not the sepia pictures of Fox’s world but fully colored images of faces that meant nothing to her. She’d been so ce
rtain she knew every crevice of his heart, but Jacob was like a country she’d only traveled through halfway. She wanted to visit the places he loved in this world, where he came from... But for now this was probably enough. Her body yearned for her world, as if she’d been breathing the wrong air for too long.
“Yes,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Will and Clara will understand, won’t they?”
“Absolutely.” He stroked her forehead, which ached. The noises of this world had settled behind it like a swarm of wasps.
Fox had imagined the room with the mirror almost exactly: Jacob’s father’s dusty desk, and above it the models that looked so like the plane they’d used to escape from the Goyl fortress. The pistols that looked like they came from her world...and maybe they did.
“You’re not leaving because of her, are you?” Jacob tried to sound casual, but Fox could hear that the question had been on his mind for hours.
“Her?” They both knew who he meant, but Fox couldn’t resist. “The girl in the chocolate shop? Or the girl who sold you the flowers for Clara?”
Jacob smiled, relieved to hear the sarcasm in her voice.
“When you get to Schwanstein, send a telegram to Robert Dunbar.” His glance toward the mirror told Fox how much he wanted to come with her. “Ask him what he knows about Alderelves. I want to know how many there were, and how you’d recognize one. Also their enemies, allies, weaknesses... Anything he can find.”
Robert Dunbar was one of Albion’s most renowned historians. His knowledge had helped Jacob on many of his treasure hunts. He was also half Fir Darrig, hiding his rat tail under his coats,and he owed Jacob his life.
“Alderelves? Have you smelled blood? Are you going to look for more of their magic weapons?”
“No, I think one is enough.” Jacob’s voice sounded serious. Fox knew he had something on his mind that he didn’t yet want to talk about.
