“In the labyrinth.” He couldn’t speak the name. Not the name, not the place. Of course, she didn’t need to ask which labyrinth he meant.
“You made a magical trade for a way out?” Fox turned as pale as the forgetyourself blossoms the Bluebeard used on his victims. “Of course,” she whispered. “What did I think? I didn’t think anything.”
And? Who could think in a Bluebeard’s house? Jacob wanted to embrace her, but Fox evaded him.
“What was his price?”
“Nothing we should think about now. We should go.”
“What was his price, Jacob?”
“It has nothing to do with you.” He’d sworn to himself it would never have anything to do with her. Never. But it was the wrong answer.
“Everything that concerns you concerns me.”
How right she was. No lies, Jacob.
“It’s the usual price.”
The Witches took it, Stilts, Sable-Fairies, Nightmares... Back in the labyrinth, it hadn’t even occurred to him that the Alderelf might have the same price. He’d been too afraid for her, so terribly afraid.
“ Today I bake, tomorrow brew, the next I’ll have the young Queen’s firstborn child.” Fox recited the verse as though she were sleep-talking, caught in a very bad dream.
They were the same words in her world as in his, but here they were real. Fox turned her back to Jacob, but he’d already seen the despair on her face. They’d met women who’d made the trade and had tried to keep their firstborn children. Fox probably remembered, as he did, the lace-maker for whom they’d retrieved her daughter, only to witness the girl run away screaming. Or the child who’d turned out to be a changeling and had melted in the father’s arms like wax.
Jacob touched Fox’s arm until she turned around.
“It’s my debt,” he said. “Mine alone. And nobody else will pay, least of all you.”
She wanted to say something, but he put his finger on her lips. “Friends. That is all we shall be. It’s more than enough, is it not? It has been so far.”
She shook her head, averted her face so he wouldn’t see her tears.
“I want you to be happy,” he said. “There’s nothing I want more. I want you to hold a child in your arms one day without fear of losing it. Fox! He’s an Alderelf. He is immortal. He can wait; you can’t. Please. You will find someone else.”
He wiped the tears from her eyes, from the face he so wanted to kiss, now more than ever. But he didn’t, for her. He would do anything to save her, and nothing would ever be harder.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“No.” He said for himself, and for her.
No, Jacob.
She was silent as she mounted her horse, and she was silent all the rest of the day.
A Heinzel's Woe
Alma rode to the ruin at daybreak, as she always did, to collect herbs. The morning mist covered Schwanstein’s roofs, and the world looked deceptively young and untouched. Jacob and Fox had been gone for days. Chanute told her they were looking for Jacob’s brother.
Alma had seen Will only briefly, after he’d followed his brother through the mirror. Jacob had always known Will was looking for something, but he had never really wanted to know what. Jacob didn’t trust many people, but he trusted this world, like the twelve-year-old who’d looked under every stone and gone into every cave expecting to find treasure, even though he’d only found Ogres. Jacob never worried about whether what he found might surprise him. But Alma had gotten the impression Will Reckless knew exactly what he would find, and it scared him. If she’d known him better, she might’ve tried to explain to Will that life never lets you hide. Plant, animal, or human—life forced them all to grow and learn. The more you tried to run, the harder your path got, and you’d still have to travel it.
The kitchen gardens were surrounded by walls, though the fire had collapsed most of the rest of the castle. Rusty hoes and shovels still lay on the paths, showing how the fire had surprised the gardeners as much as their lords. The trellises were brittle and the beds overgrown, but Alma found everything growing in this abandoned garden to be surprisingly potent, and she could even find herbs that usually only grew deep in the forest.
She was harvesting the leaves of a rare thistle when she heard the sobs. Kneeling among the herbs was a Heinzel woman. There were more than two hundred Heinzel living around the ruin. Alma often cared for them, splinting their broken limbs, administeri
ng to rat bites and bee stings, all of which could be very dangerous to their tiny bodies. The Heinzel trusted her more than their own doctor. They also had their own priest, mayor, and two teachers. Their houses were hidden among the crumbled walls of the ruin and in the cemetery behind the old castle chapel. They lived and dressed just like the people of Schwanstein, but the locals scorned the Heinzel who lived there among the humans, who let themselves be sold by them like chicken or geese, just to live under their protection.
Only a few weeks earlier, Alma had removed a thorn from the tiny foot of this Heinzel woman. She looked up, full of hope, when she noticed the Witch, but Alma shuddered when she saw the stiff body of a boy in her tiny arms. He looked like he’d been cast in silver. The Heinzel saw Alma’s puzzled face and buried her face in her boy’s chest. The first Gold-Raven of the morning had landed on the wall, and the first Thumblings would also be there soon. It was not easy to convince the Heinzel mother that the body of her boy would be safer in a Witch’s house, but finally she relented and let Alma take him away in her soft frock pocket.