The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

“You don’t like trees?” he said, pointing at Seventeen’s brow. The bark even stained Jacob Reckless’s stolen face.

“Looks like you’ll be one yourself soon enough. Your mirror-sister is also looking a little...bark-y?”

The fingers that gripped his arm felt like blades slicing into his stone skin.

“Careful,” Seventeen whispered. “If Milk-face knows where the Fairy is, what do we need you for, Stone-man?”

Yes, he’d been aware they might be having that thought. But offense was still his best defense.

“What do you need the Bastard for? To keep your precious messenger alive! Or are you going to turn everything into silver that stands in his way? That could attract quite a bit of attention.” Nerron picked up the silver caterpillar Seventeen had dropped. “You can’t leave these things lying around. You’re right. This world is full of irritating things, and something so irresistibly shiny could attract a number of them.”

Seventeen took the caterpillar from Nerron. He studied it as though he’d only now realized how perfect it was. “You’re right. I shall start collecting them.” The belt pouch into which he dropped the dead grub showed a perfect reflection of Nerron’s lizard-skin shirt.

“Why do you show yourselves to me

but not to him?” Nerron asked.

“The Fairy cannot see us!” Sixteen replied curtly. She really didn’t like him. Don’t worry, my pretty one, the feeling is entirely mutual. It seemed like she was going to melt every time she looked at Will. Actually melt. Was that how they reacted to their own feelings? An interesting thought...

***

When Nerron returned with a bloody rabbit, he found Will rubbing down the horses. They should’ve had one of those newfangled photographs made before they left: the Pup and the Bastard. He could’ve left a print at The Ogre for Jacob.

“So, where do you think the Fairy is really headed?”

Will hesitated, as though he wasn’t convinced Nerron believed him. Then he pointed southeast.

That wasn’t very precise.

But it was definitely not where Moskva was.

The Other Sister

The silver days, running from the Baba Yaga... Jacob couldn’t remember ever having been more tired. He felt as though he’d left the best of himself in that dark hut. But Fox was alive, and he’d gotten her fur dress back. Why did he still feel defeated? Of course, he knew the answer. They’d lost Will’s trail, and he had no idea how he was going to find his brother and the Bastard again.

“I don’t know,” Chanute grumbled as they were purchasing new horses in a village across the Varangian border. “Maybe we’re in over our heads. Challenging an immortal never gets you anywhere, and your brother is grown up enough to look after himself. How about we show Sylvain l’Arcadie and Ontario? Manitoba and Saskatchewan also sound nice. I’ve heard they’re full of treasure, and I’d rather be turned into a bug by some savage than die in my bed in Schwanstein.”

Give up?

Chanute had never had a problem with quitting. A hunt became too dangerous, or it took them to a place the old hunter didn’t like? For Albert, there was always a point of return.

Jacob looked at Fox. Sylvain was having her explain the carvings on the houses in the village. Almost all of Varangia’s magic creatures were represented there: Wolflings, Bearskins, the Birds of Pain and Pleasure, Flying Horses, Dragons (long gone here, like everywhere else), Baba Yagas, and Rusalkas.

Sylvain whispered something to Fox, and she responded with the sort of carefree laugh Jacob hadn’t heard from her in a long time. It had been close, oh so close. Without the Baba Yaga’s rushnyk, Jacob would’ve lost her, despite all his oaths to never let happen again what had almost happened in the Bluebeard’s castle.

He’d telegraphed Robert Dunbar from the border station. A phone, a kingdom for a phone! His father had brought iron ships and airplanes to this world; why not phones? While he’d waited at the telegraph office, he suddenly remembered events he’d forgotten about for years: an evening in which he and his father (if it had in fact been his father) had taken apart a plane engine; a fight with his mother after she’d caught him in his room with torn clothes. She’d never suspected anything about the mirror—or had she?

Jacob guessed it was still the Elf mirror that was washing up these memories. Did Seventeen remember them when he wore his face? Did Sixteen know about the Larks’ Water when she wore Clara’s face? So many questions…and not a single answer.

Chanute had arranged for a room in the village’s only tavern. In return, he’d promised the landlord to take care of his cellar sprites. But the interval with the Baba Yaga had taken its toll on Chanute more than he cared to admit, and when Jacob saw how much fun Fox was having with Sylvain, he decided to take care of the cellar sprites himself. Fox had even stopped being annoyed by Sylvain’s attempts to act as her protector. Just that morning, the old Canadian had picked a fight with a Troll who’d accidentally bumped into Fox. Trolls were infamous for their tempers and violence, but that Troll had ended up apologizing to Fox and offering her a wooden flower he’d carved himself.

To the left of the unpaved road leading to the tavern was a meadow with a wide pond. A few willows brushed their summer-green branches across the water, and from the opposite shore, a swan and a couple of ducks were launching into the pale blue afternoon sky. Varangia’s Tzars supposedly had tiny spies, Bolysoj, who rode on eagles and wild geese.

Jacob decided the cellar sprites could wait, and he walked over to sit down on the damp grass between the willows. He felt so tired and worn that he probably couldn’t have handled a sprite right then, anyway. Sprites dwelled in cellars all over this world, just like mice, and were of similar size. Jacob had once given Will one of the tiny pickaxes the sprites used to dig through cellar walls to build their rooms and larders.

Where was Will?

As children, the brothers had been convinced each could sense whether the other was all right. Maybe Jacob still believed that, but no matter how hard he listened, his heart wouldn’t tell him how Will was, where he was, or what he was doing. Something seemed to have separated them, even though they were in the same world. A wall of silver and glass. Or was this one made of jade?