The Golden Yarn (Mirrorworld 3)

All Lost

She was made all of colors. They patterned her skin, her bones. Red. Green. Yellow. Blue. Fox opened her eyes. The fabric on her skin felt almost as warm as her fur.

Someone was leaning over her.

Chanute. What was he doing here? Where was she?

Sylvain was standing next to Chanute. “Your servant, ma jolie.” ...her thoughts took strange paths, as though they weren’t her own.

“Welcome back!” Chanute stroked her face so gently that for a moment she felt like a child again. He had tears in his eyes, which was a very unusual sight. What had happened? She felt like she’d been sleeping for a hundred years.

“Bring her clothes, Sylvain!” said Chanute. “There are some in her saddlebag.”

Her clothes... Only now did Fox realize she was naked beneath the colorful cloth. She drew it closer around her and sat up. Sylvain looked very embarrassed and averted his eyes as he handed her the spare clothes. What had happened to her normal ones? And where was Jacob? She looked around. He’d been with her, hadn’t he? And then the images came. Terrible images: a figure, human and not, beautiful and terrible, the hand on her face, like hot metal, Jacob’s scream.

Where was he?

“Albert,where’s Jacob?”

Chanute grunted and began to load his revolver. Not an easy task with just one hand.

“Accouche qu’on baptise!” Sylvain grabbed the weapon and the bullets. “Tell her already. She’s going to find out. She’s smarter than the three of us combined.”

Fox looked down at the cloth. She saw the birds, the flowers. The magic embroidery of a rushnyk. Hard to find, and even harder to afford.

“Where is he, Albert?”

Chanute always looked like a schoolboy when he was called by his first name.

“Albert!”

“Yes, yes, fine,” he grumbled, taking the loaded pistol from Sylvain. “I’ll go and look. But you wait here.”

Sylvain shot a glance at Fox’s horse. Fox knew, even before she reached into the saddlebag. The fur dress and Jacob... The two things in her life she could never lose. Gone. The woods surrounding her seemed like the darkest place she’d ever seen.

“He went back to her?” There it was, that familiar fear, love’s terrible price. “How could you let him go?” she screeched at Chanute.

“And how should we have stopped him?” he barked back. Sylvain looked like a whipped dog. Like someone who knew how it felt to lose his most precious possession.

***

Jacob had covered his tracks so they couldn’t follow him. But Fox had watched him do it often enough. She no longer felt any of the silver inside her. To the contrary, she felt reborn, which she probably owed to the cloth. The slope soon became so steep that the horses refused to go on. They let the horses go, for they couldn’t be certain they’d be coming back the same way. The carpet of pine needles made way to rotting leaves and black earth. Fox was following Jacob’s trail so swiftly she soon heard Chanute panting behind her. Sylvain, however, kept up easily, as though he’d known these woods since childhood.

“Ah, merveilleuse!” Fox heard him whisper. Even she’d never seen woods older than this one. Some of the trees could’ve housed whole villages in their crowns, and it soon grew so dark under the leafy canopy that Chanute and Sylvain had to follow their ears more than their eyes.

A scream.

Fox stopped. She couldn’t be sure if it came from a woman or a bird.

&nbs

p; “Ah, she’s angry!” Chanute whispered behind her. “That is good. Or very bad.”

When Fox asked him whether he’d ever met a Baba Yaga, he spat. “A Witch is a Witch,” he growled. “I know how to handle them.”

But Fox had heard differently. If Jacob was to be believed, whenever they’d had to deal with a Witch, Chanute had sent Jacob on ahead.

The fence of skulls appeared behind the trees. They were glowing like lanterns.