“To the HungryForest.”
Fox lifted her head.
Yes, Fox, I know. Not a very pleasant place.
His mare shoved her head into his back. Jacob had paid Chanute a whole year’s earnings for her, and she was worth every farthing. He tightened the strap on her saddle as Fox uttered a warning growl.
Steps. Hesitant. Then they stopped.
Jacob turned around.
“No matter what kind of place this is” — Clara was standing between the blackened columns — “I will not go back. Will needs me. And I want to know what happened.”
Fox eyed her incredulously, like a strange animal. The women in her world wore long dresses and kept their hair pinned up or plaited, like peasant girls. This one was wearing trousers, and her hair was as short as a boy’s.
The howl of a wolf pierced the darkness, and Will pulled Clara away. He talked at her, but she just took his arm and traced the stone veins in his skin with her fingers.
You’re no longer the only one looking after Will, Jacob.
Clara looked at him, and her face briefly reminded Jacob of his mother. Why hadn’t he ever told her about the mirror? What if the world behind it could have wiped at least some of the sadness off her face?
Too late, Jacob. Much too late.
Fox hadn’t taken her eyes off the girl. Jacob sometimes forgot she was one, as well.
A second wolf howled. They were usually quite peaceful, but there was always a chance that there was a brown one among them, and those did like to eat human flesh.
Will listened anxiously into the night; then he again pleaded with Clara.
Fox lifted her muzzle. “We should leave,” she whispered at Jacob.
“Not before he sends her back.”
Fox looked at him. Eyes of pure amber.
“Take her along.”
“No!”
She’d only slow them down. Fox knew as well as he that his brother was running out of time, though Jacob hadn’t explained that to Will yet.
Fox turned.
“Take her along!” she said again. “Your brother will need her. And you will, too. Or don’t you trust my nose anymore?”
With that, she disappeared into the night as if she was tired of waiting for him.
7
The House of The Witch
A thicket of roots, thorns, and leaves. Giant trees, and saplings stretching toward what scant light trickled through the thick canopy. Swarms of will-o’-the-wisps above putrid ponds, and clearings where toadstools drew their poisonous circles. Jacob had last been in the HungryForest four months earlier, to find a Man-Swan wearing a shirt of nettles over his feathers. But after three days he’d abandoned the search, for he had not been able to breathe under the dark trees.
It took them until midday to reach the edge of the forest, because Will had been in pain again. The stone had now spread all over his neck, though Clara pretended not to see it. Love makes you blind — she seemed intent on proving that proverb. She never budged from Will’s side; she wrapped her arms around him whenever the stone grew a little further and he doubled over in the saddle with pain. But when she felt unobserved, Jacob saw his own fear on her face. When she asked him what he knew about the stone, he gave her the same lies he had given his brother: that it was only Will’s skin that was changing, and that it would be simple enough to heal him in this world. She hadn’t taken much convincing. Both she and Will were only too happy to believe whatever comforting lies he told them.
Clara rode better than he’d expected. Jacob had bought her a dress from a market they had passed along the way, but she made him swap it for a man’s clothes after trying in vain to mount her horse in the wide skirt. A girl in men’s clothes, and the stone on Will’s skin — Jacob was glad when they finally left the villages and highways behind and could ride under the trees, even though he knew what would be awaiting there.
Barkbiters, Mushroom-Wights, Trappers, Crow-Men. The HungryForest had many unpleasant inhabitants, though the Empress had been trying for years to clear it of its terrors. Despite the dangers, there was a lively trade in horns, teeth, skins, and other body parts of the HungryForest’s creatures. Jacob had never earned his money that way, but there were many who made quite a decent living of it: fifteen silver dollars for a Mushroom-Wight (a two-dollar bonus if it spat real fly-agaric poison), thirty for a Barkbiter (not a lot, considering the hunt could easily leave the hunter dead), and forty for a Crow-Man (who at least only went for the eyes).