chapter NINE
GODFORSAKEN MOUNTAINS
Ten days’ ride. After studying the route on Chanute’s grimy map, Jacob decided to take the train. Valiant’s castle was so inaccessible that any horse would have broken its legs on the way up there, but luckily the Dwarfs had spent the past years blasting tunnels with such abandon that there was actually a railway station nearby.
The train took four days and nights. A long journey with death as your luggage. Every tunnel made breathing harder, as though someone was already shovelling dirt on to his chest. He tried to distract himself with the memoirs of a treasure hunter who’d scoured Varangia for firebirds and emerald nuts for his prince. Yet while Jacob’s eyes were trying to hold on to the printed letters, his mind saw other images: the blood on his shirt after the Goyl shot through his heart; Valiant standing by a freshly dug grave; and, over and over again, the Red Fairy whispering the name of her sister. Four days . . .
A cable car took him from the sleepy railway station where he’d stepped off the train up to the rocky peak on which Valiant’s castle stood. Its high walls rose from the deep snow, and Jacob only cursed the Dwarf even more after having to pay a farmer one gold coin for the use of his snappish donkey.
The castle didn’t make a very impressive sight. The left tower was collapsed, and the others were also nearly shot to pieces, yet when Valiant greeted Jacob by the decayed gates, the Dwarf wore as proud a grin as if he’d acquired the Empress’s palace itself.
‘Not bad, is it?’ Valiant called out towards Jacob while a grouchy Dwarf servant took his bag. ‘I’m the lord of my castle! Yes, I know, the renovations are stagnating a little,’ he added as Jacob eyes went over the hole-riddled towers. ‘Not easy getting materials up here. And also’ – he shot a quick glance at the servant and lowered his voice – ‘the tree is giving me some trouble. It’s taken to shedding nothing but slimy pollen.’
‘Really?’ Jacob had to try hard not to show his pleasure. He’d never had much luck with the tree himself.
Valiant stroked the moustache he’d been growing. It sat on his upper lip like a caterpillar, but a Dwarf with any more beard than that would have been considered hopelessly old-fashioned. ‘And how are you? Hunting for something?’ He leered at Jacob. ‘You’re looking pale.’
Great. Pull yourself together, Jacob. The last thing he needed was the Dwarf guessing how bad things stood with him.
‘No. Feeling fine,’ Jacob answered. ‘I was looking for something, but I didn’t find it.’ The best lie was always the one closest to the truth.
The servant who opened the castle door for them was a human. No Dwarf could have reached the handle, and of course nothing showed off Valiant’s wealth better than a human servant. While the man took Jacob’s snow-encrusted coat, Valiant named the price of every piece of furniture in the draughty entrance hall. They were, without exception, made for humans. Dwarfs were prone to ignoring their own size. But Jacob had no time for Mauretanian vases or tapestries depicting the enthronement of the last Dwarf King.
‘She’s upstairs,’ Valiant said as he finally noticed Jacob’s impatience. ‘I had a doctor look at her yesterday, even though she would have none of it. You two spend too much time together. She’s already just as bull-headed as you. Mind you, she did bring me a gorgeous feather. You couldn’t have got me a better one yourself.’
Valiant had put up Fox in the best-preserved tower of his castle. She was asleep when Jacob entered her room – on a bed that would have been big for a Dwarf but that was barely long enough for her. She’d been lucky. The swan had only given her a flesh wound. Jacob picked up a bloody shirt from the floor next to the bed. It had once been his. Fox had learnt from Clara that men’s clothes could be much more practical.
Jacob pulled the blanket over her bandaged shoulder. She’d changed so much in the past months. There wasn’t much left of the girl who’d first shown him her human form nearly five years ago. The vixen made her age so fast that he had to keep warning her not to shift too often. One day soon she was going to have to choose between the fur and the chance of a long human life. He’d always believed he’d be there when she made that decision, but now it didn’t look as though he would.
He brushed the red hair from her forehead. A feather lay on the nightstand next to the bed. Jacob picked it up and smiled. She’d kept one for herself. Just as Chanute had taught him: ‘Whatever you find for a client, always make sure you keep some of it for yourself.’ It was a flawless specimen. Jacob had never seen a more beautiful Man-Swan feather. The easiest way to get one was to steal it from the nest, but even that was dangerous. Man-Swans were very combative. Unbearable sorrow had turned them into swans, and only a blood relative could release them and give them back their human form. Jacob had once nearly paid with his life for finding the feathered son of a baker’s wife. Anything a Man-Swan feather touched disappeared immediately and reappeared only when the feather was put down again. Chanute had transported many treasures that way. It didn’t always work, though. Some things got lost along the way.
‘Don’t even think about it. That feather’s mine.’ Sleep was clinging to Fox’s eyes. She flinched as she propped herself up on her injured arm.
Jacob returned the feather to the nightstand. ‘Since when do you go treasure hunting without me?’ I missed you, he wanted to add, but her eyes were cold, as they always were when he’d been gone too long.
‘It wasn’t a difficult job. And I was tired of waiting.’
She’d become a woman without his really noticing. In his eyes she’d always been beautiful, even when she was the scrawny little thing that only reluctantly picked the burrs from her hair. Beautiful like all wild and free things. But now she wore the vixen’s beauty on her human skin.
‘You’re still shifting too much,’ he said. ‘If you don’t watch it, you’ll soon end up older than me.’
She pushed the blanket off her. ‘And?’ She was wearing her fur dress. She always wore it in her sleep, for fear someone might steal it off her. ‘Stop worrying about me all the time. You never used to do that.’ Yes, Jacob, what are you doing? You’ll see; she’ll get along just fine without you. Except that he wouldn’t see.
From his backpack he pulled the package Chanute had given him. ‘You never told me you had a rich suitor in Schwanstein.’
Fox opened the paper and smiled. It was a shawl. She stroked the green velvet and put it next to the feather.
‘What about you?’ She gave him an enquiring look. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘What does that mean?’ She pulled the sleeve over her bandaged shoulder. ‘Will you now finally tell me what you’re looking for?’
Spit it out, Jacob. You want to tell her. She’s the only one you want to tell. He’d missed her so much. And he was tired of hiding his fear.
He unbuttoned his shirt.
‘I was looking for a cure.’
The moth’s red outline looked as though someone had traced it with fresh blood.
Fox took a deep breath. ‘What does it mean?’ Her voice sounded even more gravelly than usual.
She read the answer on his face.
‘So that was the price.’ She was trying to sound composed. ‘I knew your brother didn’t just get his skin back for free.’ Her eyes filled with tears. The vixen’s eyes. Brown, like tarnished gold. She couldn’t remember whether they were the colour she’d been born with or whether they’d come with the fur. ‘Which Fairy was it?’
Tell her something, Jacob. Something to console her. But what?
He stepped closer and wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘You always have to pay with your life for crossing one of them. And I managed to get on the wrong side of two of them.’
Fox wrapped her arms around him.
‘How long?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more.’ It was only half a lie. Jacob buried his face in her hair. He didn’t want to think any more. What he wanted were the times when he’d go searching for lost magic with her, when he’d lived believing he was immortal, that he could own a whole world. He wanted to dream of what he’d do when he became as old as Chanute, of buying a castle in Etruria, of fishing for pirate gold in the White Sea. Childish dreams. He’d hoped he’d still be dreaming them on his hundredth birthday. Instead, he was going to have to think about which world he wanted to be buried in.
There was a knock on the door.
Valiant didn’t wait for a reply. Fox quickly stepped out of Jacob’s embrace as the Dwarf came through the door. That probably just fired up Valiant’s imagination even more, but Jacob wasn’t planning on telling him the real reason for her tears.
‘How about some dinner?’ Valiant gave them a sleazy smile. ‘We’re having mountain goat. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I have a cook from Vena who can turn even a donkey into a feast.’ He nodded at Fox. ‘Ask her if you don’t believe me.’
Fox forced a smile on her lips. ‘You really should try the mountain goat,’ she said.