That was a ride of at least six days.
It would be too late. Much too late.
Jacob wasn't sure which he felt more, the despair or the relief.
Miranda reached out. One of her moths perched delicately on her finger.
"You can still make it if I give you some time."
Fox began to bark again.
"One of us once cursed a princess to die on her fifteenth birthday. But we suspended that curse. With a deep sleep."
In his mind's eye, Jacob saw the castle, wrapped in thorns, and the sleeping beauty in the bedchamber at the top of the tower...
"She died anyway," he said. "Nobody ever woke her."
Miranda shrugged. "I'll make your brother sleep. It's up to you to make sure he is awoken. But not before you have broken my sister's power."
The moth on her hand was preening its wings.
"The girl who is with you. She belongs to you brother?" Miranda brushed her naked foot over the ground, and the moonlight drew Clara's face on the dark earth.
"Yes," Jacob replied — and he felt something he didn't quite comprehend.
"Does she love him?"
"Yes," he said. "I think so."
"She'd better, for should she not, he will sleep himself to death." Miranda wiped away the moonlight image. "Have you ever met my sister?"
Jacob shook his head. He had seen blurry photographs, a sketch in a newspaper — the Demon Lover, the Fairy Witch, who makes stone grow in the flesh of humans...
"She is the fairest of us all." Miranda's eyes traced the features of his face as if trying to recall the love she'd once felt. "Don't look at her for too long," she said softly. "And whatever she promises you, do exactly as I say, or your brother is lost."
Fox's bark rang through the night again. I'm fine, Fox, thought Jacob. All will be well. Even if he did not yet quite understand how.
He took Miranda's hand. Six fingers, as white as the flowers on the lake. She let him kiss her again. "What if the price for my help is that you come back to me?" she whispered. "Would you do it?"
"Is that your price?" he asked, though he was terrified of the answer.
She smiled. "No," she said. "My price will be paid when you destroy my sister."
27
So Far Away
Will had not once taken his eyes off the island. It was painful for Clara to see the fear on his face — fear of himself and of what Jacob would learn on the island but, first and foremost, fear that his brother wouldn't come back, that he would be left alone with his skin of stone.
He had forgotten Clara. But she still went to him. The stone didn't yet completely conceal the one she loved, and he was so alone.
"Jacob will be back soon, Will. I'm sure."
He didn't turn around.
"With Jacob, you never know when he'll come back," he said. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
They were both here: the stranger from the cave, whose iciness she could still taste on her tongue like poison, and the other one, who had stood in the hospital corridor in front of his mother's room and smiled at her every time she walked past. Will. She missed him so much.