Fearless (Mirrorworld 2)

The doorman in the entrance hall was the same man who had always dragged him and Will out of the lift when they were children, riding it up and down too many times. Mr Tomkins. He’d grown old and fat. On the counter where he kept the mail was the same jar of lollipops he’d used to bribe them to run his errands. At some point, Jacob had managed to convince Will that Tomkins was a man-eating Ogre, and for days his brother had refused to go to preschool because he was afraid to walk past the doorman on the way.

The past. It lurked in every corner of the old building: behind the pillars in the entrance hall, where he and Will used to play hide-and-seek; in the dark catacombs of the cellar, where he’d gone on his first (and unsuccessful) treasure hunts; and in the lift, which would transform into a spaceship or the cage of a Witch, whatever their adventures required. Strange, how the prospect of death brought back the past. It was as though every moment he’d lived was suddenly back, whispering, Maybe this is all you get, Jacob.

The lift door still jammed a little when it was pushed open.

Seventh floor.

Will had left a note for him on the door. WE’RE OUT SHOPPING. FOOD IN THE FRIDGE. WELCOME HOME! W.

Jacob tucked the paper into his coat pocket and unlocked the door. He was paying with his life for this welcome, and he would have done it again, just for the feeling of having his brother back. They hadn’t been this close since the time when Will used to crawl into his bed every night – when he still believed that doormen sometimes liked to eat human flesh. Love was lost so terrifyingly easily.

The darkness that met Jacob behind the door was strange and yet familiar. Will had painted the hall, and the smell of fresh paint mingled with the scents of their childhood. Jacob’s fingers still found the light switch, but the lamp was new, as was the sideboard by the door. The old family photographs had disappeared, and the yellowed wallpaper – which, even years later, had shown the spot where his father’s portrait had once hung – had been covered by white paint.

Jacob dropped his bag on the well-worn parquet floor.

Welcome home.

Could it really be home again, after all those years during which all he’d wanted from this place was the mirror? A vase with yellow roses stood on the sideboard. Clara’s signature. Before coming through the mirror, he’d felt slightly nervous at the prospect of seeing her again. He couldn’t be sure whether the Larks’ Water was still affecting him or whether it was just the memories that set his heart racing. But all was well. It had been good to see her, with Will, in the world Jacob hadn’t belonged to for an eternity. She had obviously not told Will about the Larks’ Water, but Jacob felt how the shared memory bonded them, as though they’d been lost in the woods and had found their way out together.

Their mother’s room, like their father’s study, was still mostly unchanged. Jacob hesitated before he opened the door. A few boxes full of Will’s books were piled up next to the bed, and the family photographs that had hung in the hallway leant against the wall beneath the window.

The room still smelled of her. She had sewn the patchwork quilt on the bed herself. The pieces of fabric used to be all over the apartment. Flowers, animals, houses, ships, moons and stars. Whatever the quilt said about his mother, Jacob had never been able to decipher it. The three of them had lain on it together many times, when she’d read to them. Their grandfather told them the fairy tales he’d grown up with in Europe, full of the Witches and Fairies whose kin Jacob would meet later behind the mirror. Their mother’s stories, however, were American. The Headless Rider, Johnny Appleseed, the Wolf Brother, the Magic Lady, and the Stone Giant of Seneca. Jacob hadn’t come across any of them behind the mirror yet, but he was sure they existed there, just as his grandfather’s fairy-tale folk did.

The photograph on the nightstand showed his mother with Will and him in the park across the street. She looked very happy. And so young. His father had taken the picture. He must have already known about the mirror back then.

Jacob wiped the dust off the glass. So young. And so beautiful. What had his father sought that he hadn’t been able to find with her? How often Jacob had asked himself that question as a child. He’d been certain she must have done something wrong, and he would get so angry. Angry at her weakness. Angry that she could never stop loving his father; that, against all better judgement, she had always waited for his return. Or maybe she’d just waited for the day her older son would find him and return him to her? Wasn’t that what Jacob had fantasised about all those years? That one day he’d return with his father and wipe all that sadness off her face?

Behind the mirror were hourglasses that stopped time. Jacob had long searched for one for the Empress. In Lombardy there was a carousel that could turn children into adults, and grown-ups back into children. And there was a Varangian count who owned a music box that, if you wound it up, would transport you back into your own past. Jacob had often wondered whether such items changed the course of events or whether one ended up doing things the very same way one had already done them: his father would still go through the mirror, and he’d still follow, and Will and his mother would be left behind again.

Heavens, Jacob! The prospect of his own death was making him sentimental.

He felt as though, for months now, someone had kept throwing his heart into a crucible over and over again, like a lump of ore refusing to take the right shape. If that bottle proved as useless as the apple and the well, then all of his efforts would have been in vain, and soon he’d be nothing but a picture in a dusty frame, like his mother. Jacob returned her photograph to the nightstand. Then he straightened the bed, as though at any moment she might step into her room.

Someone was unlocking the apartment door.

‘Jacob’s home, Will!’ Clara’s voice sounded nearly as familiar as his brother’s. ‘There’s his bag.’

‘Jake?’ Will’s voice had no trace of the stone that had tainted his skin. ‘Where are you?’

Jacob heard his brother walk down the hallway, and for an instant he was transported to another hallway, with Will’s rage-contorted face behind him. It’s over, Jacob! No, it would never be completely over, and that was a good thing. He didn’t want to forget how easily he might lose Will.

And there he was, standing in the doorway. No gold in his eyes, his skin as soft as Jacob’s, just a lot paler. After all, Will hadn’t spent most of the past weeks riding through a godforsaken desert.

Will hugged Jacob nearly as hard as he used to in the schoolyard as children, whenever his big brother had saved him from yet another bullying fourth grader. Yes, this was well worth paying for. As long as Will never learnt the true price.

Will’s memories of his time behind the mirror were fragments from which he desperately tried to assemble the whole picture. Nobody likes living with the knowledge that he can’t remember the most crucial weeks of his life. Whenever Will described places or faces to him and Clara, Jacob realised again how much his brother had lived through alone behind the mirror. It was as though Will had a second shadow, which followed him like a stranger and scared him every now and then.

Jacob couldn’t wait to go back, but Clara asked him to stay for dinner, and who knew whether he’d ever see her or Will again. So he sat down at the kitchen table, into which he’d once carved his initials with his first penknife, and he tried to act as carefree as possible. But he’d obviously lost his knack for peddling his stories to his brother as the truth. Jacob caught more than one pensive glance from Will as he tried to explain his trip to Chicago as merely some Schwanstein factory owner’s obsession for Djinns.

He wouldn’t have even tried that story on Fox. During their endless searches for the wrong objects, he’d often been close to telling her the truth, but he was stopped by the prospect of seeing his fear on her face. He loved Will, but he would always and foremost be the older brother to him. With Fox, Jacob could simply be himself. She saw so much of what he tried to hide from others, though he didn’t always like it, and they rarely spoke of what they knew of each other.

‘Will, do you know a Norebo Earlking?’

His brother frowned. ‘Short guy? With a strange accent?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Ma sold him some of Grandpa’s things when she needed money. I think he has a bunch of antique shops here and in Europe. Why?’