Fox had spent so many months waiting for Jacob in the past that it seemed absurd to be so worried after three days. But during the fourth night of being kept awake by Chanute’s coughing, she found it easy to convince herself she had to find Jacob for the old man’s sake. The idea of going through the mirror by herself was not very enticing, but her fear was one more reason for Fox to do it. Fear was like a beast that only grew fiercer when one gave in to it.
She took Chanute’s horse. The old gelding was as ill-tempered as a stray dog, but he’d carried Jacob to and from the ruin so many times that Fox knew he’d be able to find his way back to the stable by himself. Chanute used to claim his gelding wasn’t afraid even of wolves, but when Fox let him loose by the ruin, he seemed very keen to gallop straight back to Schwanstein. Horses didn’t like the ruin. Alma thought it was because the place was haunted by the ghost of a stable boy who used to torment his master’s horses. There was no sign of a ghost on this misty morning, but Fox did find boot prints in the damp ground by the tower. She’d also seen prints when she returned, on the broken steps leading to the old stables. Wenzel had told her the mayor of Schwanstein was trying to sell the ruin and put an end to the rumors that it was cursed. The charred walls had so far deterred any potential buyers, but maybe it was time to start thinking about a new hiding place for the mirror.
The heavy silence in the tower reminded Fox of the many days she’d spent by the door waiting for Jacob, every day filled with the dread of his not returning.
The mirror was clear this morning, as if someone had polished it. Fox had stood in front of it many times, but she’d always turned away again, preferring to wait for Jacob in her world. She’d never followed him; that was the rule. His paths, her paths. But whose rule was it? More hers than his, if she was honest. Jacob had always wanted her to come with him.
She reached out and pressed her hand against the glass.
It was dark. That was strange. The tower had been bright with morning sunshine, and time was supposed to be more or less the same in both worlds. Fox reached for the edge of the desk, the window through which she’d seen Jacob’s city. Her eyes were already adjusting to the darkness, her fur sharpening her human senses even when she wasn’t wearing it. But there was no desk, and there was no window. The room she was standing in looked and smelled like the old stone barns she used to hide in as a child to avoid having to mend her stepfather’s fishing nets. In the murky light, she could just make out bricked-up windows and rows of crates along the walls, some of them as tall as a man, others small enough for her to carry.
What was the mirror doing here?
There were other mirrors leaning among the crates, most of them smaller than the one she’d come through, but of all shapes and sizes. The only thing they had in common was a silver frame. Fox felt like she’d strayed into a room with hundreds of glass doors, and now she had to figure out which one Jacob had disappeared through.
She put her ear to a wide gate that seemed to be the only exit. Voices. Car engines. Proof she was in Jacob’s world.
He’s fine.
The fur had taught Fox to ignore her fear, but it was harder when she feared for Jacob. She pulled the gate open, just wide enough so she could peer through.
It was as though she could see two places at once.
One place seemed deserted—a wide courtyard overgrown with thistles and nettles, a group of empty buildings surrounded by a dense forest. But superimposed on this place was a second place, blurred as though its reality was trying to push through to make itself invisible. Fox knew this kind of magic from her world: a place hidden to protect a secret. Bridges, castles, treasure caves ...sometimes they stayed invisible until they were touched, or until you spoke a magic formula, but they could never completely fool the shape-shifter. She was just surprised to find such magic in Jacob’s world.
The buildings hidden among the empty houses had towers and gables like the ones Fox knew from home but also the high glass facades and iron beams she knew only from Jacob’s world. Beyond them, among the trees, she could make out giant vats and silver chimneys. To the right of the overgrown courtyard were two basins, plumes of shimmering smoke hovering above them.
Where was she? And who was hiding behind magic in Jacob’s world?
No, Fox. This was not the time to find out.
Where was Jacob?
A van pulled into the courtyard. The two men who climbed out and started to unload were so unmistakably from this world that they made the glass buildings seem even more unreal. One of them had hold of a huge dog the size of a calf, and Fox was glad she hadn’t shifted shape yet. Neither of the men looked in her direction as she squeezed through the gate. But the dog spotted her. “She’s a fox!” his bark warned. The man holding the leash silenced the dog with a sharp command, but he looked around. Fox barely managed to find cover behind a few barrels. She scented water—maybe a river.
Fox shifted as soon as the dog and his master had disappeared into one of the abandoned buildings with the other man. As a vixen she could see even more clearly what the magic was trying to hide: plants that to the human eye were mere silvery shadows, swarms of Grass-Elves in bushes with blossoms that yielded elven dust. All of that didn’t belong here. Who had brought it across? She rolled in the grass to mask her own scent. The vixen could smell that there was more than one dog.
Rotting crates, rusting barrels, mounds of broken glass between overgrown brick walls. A wretched smell surrounding the hidden buildings made the vixen’s fur stand on end. She recognized it neither from this nor her own world. She avoided them, as she did the basins with the shimmering smoke.
He is fine.
Another building appeared between the trees. It was from this world and, at first glance, appeared to be empty, but the windows had bars that grew from the brickwork like silver vines. Jacob was behind those—the vixen knew it. Her instinctive knowledge rarely had an explanation, but Fox never had to regret relying on it.
He is fine. No. The vixen told her differently. Even if the scent of sickness and death around the building was so stale it only carried echoes of long-past misery, beneath it was the scent of life, weak, like from a wounded animal—or a wounded human.
The vixen couldn’t reach up to the window, so Fox shifted again. But that brought her human fears back, with all those useless questions: What’s happening? How did the mirror get to this bewitched place? She had no time to search for answers, lest there’d be only one question left: Why didn’t you save him, Fox?
She’d pushed her way through nettles and dead wood to one of the barred windows when she heard steps behind her. She tried to call the fur, but it was too late, and she cursed her big human body while she sought cover behind a tree. Luckily, the man approaching the building with a plate of food was less vigilant than the dogs who were barking in the distance. He nearly stepped on Fox’s hand as he walked past her. His face looked strange, as though someone had shaped it from clay and hadn’t taken much care doing it. The sight made Fox’s heart beat faster, but from relief rather than fear. Food was brought to the living. Now she could only hope it was for Jacob.
The man disappeared around the back of the building, and Fox heard him unlocking a door. It was hard to resist the temptation to follow him right away. She probably could’ve overpowered him easily, but she’d once thought the same thing about a servant of a Catalonian vampire who’d then turned into a bat and alerted his master with a bloodcurdling scream before she could grab hold of him.
It felt like days had passed before Clay-face appeared again. He was talking to someone, and when he turned the corner, Fox saw the phone in his hand. Another reminder of which world she was in.
The lock in the door was as strange as this world, but her fingers had opened the tombs of kings and the living strongbox of a Troll, and this lock proved no harder. As she squeezed through the door, she wondered whether the invisibility spell was to fool the two men unloading the van. Clay-face had to be part of it, or his first step would have triggered an alarm. In between the filthy floorboards were silver threads, which probably announced any uninvited guest who was clumsy enough to step on them.
Fox was also wary of the flowers growing from the cracked plaster. They looked too much like the ones on the frame of the mirror that had brought her here, and their scent filled the musty air like a lullaby. They, like the mirrors, the Grass-Elves, and the cloaked buildings, clearly did not belong in this world.
Everything around her seemed dangerously beautiful, like a Venus flytrap trying to snatch its prey amid mildewed stones and rat droppings. Every step increased her fear that Jacob had been caught by that very trap. But the first rooms she checked were empty. She followed footprints across the dusty floor to a staircase leading down into a basement. Fox listened, thought she could hear the scraping of shoes and then a suppressed curse. It wasn’t Jacob’s voice, but he was there. She could feel it like the touch of a familiar hand. She heard an engine in the distance, the slapping of water against wood or stone, voices and steps, worryingly clear. But they weren’t coming closer.