The hourglass that stopped time. Just a few weeks back, it had been all Jacob could think about. The talking mirror. The glass slipper. The spinning wheel that spun gold. There was always something he could hunt for in this world. And most of the time it helped him forget that he had never been able to find the one thing he really wanted.
Jacob took a piece of bread from the plate and offered it to Fox. "When did you last shift?" he asked as she greedily snapped at it.
She tried to scamper away, but he grabbed her fur. "Fox!"
She tried to bite his hand, but then the fox-shaped shadow, cast by the moonlight of the wall of the well, began to stretch, and Jacob felt himself being pushed away by the strong hands of a girl kneeling next to him.
Her hair was as red as the pelt she so much preferred to her human skin. It fell down her back so long and thick that it looked almost as though she were still wearing her fur. Even the russet dress that covered her freckled skin glistened in the moonlight like the coat of a fox. Its fabric seemed to have been woven from the same silky hair.
She had grown up in these past months, nearly as suddenly as a fox cub becomes a vixen. But Jacob still saw the ten-year-old girl he had found one night, crying at the bottom of the tower because he had stayed much longer in the world he had come from than he had promised. She had been following Jacob for nearly a year by then, without ever showing him her human form. He kept reminding her that she would one day lose her human form if she kept wearing her fur too long, even though he knew that, should Fox ever be forced to decide, she would always choose the fur. At the age of seven she had saved a wounded vixen from her two elder brothers and their sticks, and the next day she had found the furry dress on her bed It had given her the body she had come to regard as her true self, and Fox's greatest fear was that someday someone might steal the dress and take the fur away from her.
Jacob leaned back against the well. It will be all right, Jacob. But the night seemed endless. He felt Fox lean her head against his shoulder, and finally he fell asleep, next to the girl who did not want the skin that his brother had to fight for. He slept fitfully and even his dreams turned into stone. Chanute, the paperboy on the square, his mother, his father... they all froze into statues standing among the trees next to the dead Tailor.
"Jacob! Wake up!"
Fox was wearing her fur again. The first light of dawn was seeping through the pine trees. Jacob's shoulder ached so much, he barely managed to get to his feet. All will be well, Jacob. Chanute knows this world like no one else. Remember how he exorcised the Witch's spell from you? You were already half-dead. And the Stilt bite? And his recipe against Waterman venom?
His heart beat faster with every step he took toward the gingerbread house.
The sweet smell inside nearly choked him. It was probably the reason that Will and Clara were still fast asleep. She had her arms wrapped around Will, whose face was so peaceful, as if he were sleeping in the bed of a prince, not a child-eater. But his left cheek was speckled with jade, as if it had spilled onto his skin, and the nails on his left hand were nearly as black as the claws that had sown the petrified flesh into his shoulder.
How loud a heart could beat. Until it took your breath away.
All will be well.
Jacob was still standing there, staring at the stone, when Will finally stirred.
Jacob's eyes told him everything. Will put his hand to his neck and traced the stone up to his cheek.
Think, Jacob. But his mind had drowned in the fear that was flooding his brother's face.
They let Clara sleep. Will followed Jacob outside like a sleepwalker caught in a nightmare.
Fox backed away from him. The look she gave Jacob said only one thing.
Lost.
And that was how Will stood there. Lost. He touched his disfigured face, and for the first time Jacob no longer saw there any of the trust his brother usually gave so freely. Instead, he believed he saw all the blame he put on himself. All the If only you'd been more careful, Jacob... If you only hadn't taken him so far east... If only...
Will stepped to the window behind which the oven stood, and he stared at the image the dark panes threw back at him.
Jacob, however, was looking at the soot-blackened cobwebs under the sugared roof. They reminded him of other webs, just as dark, spun to catch the night.
What an idiot he was. What was he doing at a Witch's house? This was the curse of a Fairy. A Fairy!
Fox looked at him with apprehension.
"No!" she barked.
Sometimes she knew what he was thinking even before he did.
"She will definitely be able to help him. After all, she is her sister."
"You can't go back to her! Ever."
Will turned around.
"Go back to whom?"