Reckless (Free Preview) (5 page)

But Jacob had already reached the bottom of the rope ladder
by the time his brother finally caught up with him.
 
Will climbed so slowly, it seemed he never
wanted to reach the bottom.
 
Then he
stood there, looking at the elven dust on his hands.
 
Deep sleep, enchanting dreams
—
not the worst gift, but
Will
wiped
the dust from his fingers as Jacob had shown him.
 
Then he touched his neck.
 
The first traces of pale green were already
showing there, too.

“You don’t need anybody, right, Jake?”
 
His voice nearly sounded envious.
 
“You were always like that.”

Jacob pushed aside the ivy.

“If you need her so much, you should leave her where she’s
safe.”

“I just wanted to give her a call.
 
She hadn’t heard from me in weeks.
 
I didn’t think she’d follow me.”

“Really?
 
And what
were you waiting for then up there?”

Will had no answer for that.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Fox was waiting by the horses, and she didn’t like it at all
that Jacob had brought
Will
back.
 
Nobody can help him.
 
Her gaze still said it.

We’ll see, Fox.

The horses were agitated.
 
Will soothingly
patted
their nostrils.
 
His
gentle brother.
 
Will would always
bring home every stray dog and cry bitter tears over the poisoned rats in the
park.
 
But what was growing in his flesh
was anything but gentle.

“Where are we riding to?”

He looked up at the tower.

Jacob gave him one of the rifles from the panniers of the
packhorse.

“To the
Hungry
Forest
.”

Fox lifted her head.

Yes, Fox, I know.
 
Not
a very pleasant place.

His mare shoved her head into his back.
 
Jacob had paid Chanute a whole year’s earnings
for her, and she was worth every farthing.
 
He tightened the strap on her saddle as Fox
uttered a warning growl.

Steps.
 
Hesitant.
 
Then they
stopped.

Jacob turned around.

“No matter what kind of place this is
”
—
Clara was standing between the blackened columns
—
“
I will not go back.
 
Will needs me.
 
And I want to know what happened.”

Fox eyed her incredulously, like a strange animal.
 
The women in her world wore long dresses and
kept their hair pinned up or plaited, like peasant girls.
 
This one was wearing trousers, and her hair
was as short as a boy’s.

The howl of a wolf pierced the darkness, and Will pulled
Clara away.
 
He talked at her, but she
just took his arm and traced the stone veins in his skin with her fingers.

You’re no longer the only one looking after Will, Jacob.

Clara looked at him, and her face briefly reminded Jacob of
his mother.
 
Why hadn’t he ever told her
about the mirror?
 
What if the world
behind it could have wiped at least some of the sadness off her face?

Too late, Jacob.
 
Much too late.

Fox hadn’t taken her eyes off the girl.
 
Jacob sometimes forgot she was one, as well.

A second wolf howled.
 
They
were usually quite peaceful, but there was always a chance that there was a
brown one among them, and those did like to eat human flesh.

Will listened anxiously into the night; then he again pleaded
with Clara.

Fox lifted her muzzle.
 
“We should leave,” she whispered at Jacob.

“Not before he sends her back.”

Fox looked at him.
 
Eyes of pure amber.

“Take her along.”

“No!”

She’d only slow them down.
 
Fox knew as well as he that his brother was
running out of time, though Jacob hadn’t explained that to Will yet.

Fox turned.

“Take her along!” she said again.
 
“Your brother will need her.
 
And you will, too.
 
Or don’t you trust my nose anymore?”

With that, she disappeared into the night as if she was tired
of waiting for him.

7

The House of
The
Witch

A thicket of roots, thorns, and leaves.
 
Giant
trees,
and
saplings stretching toward what scant light trickled through the thick canopy.
 
Swarms of will-o’-the-wisps above putrid
ponds, and clearings where toadstools drew their poisonous circles.
 
Jacob had last been in the
Hungry
Forest
four months earlier, to find a Man-Swan wearing a shirt of nettles over his
feathers.
 
But after three days he’d
abandoned the search, for he had not been able to breathe under the dark trees.

It took them until midday to reach the edge of the forest,
because Will had been in pain again.
 
The
stone had now spread all over his neck, though Clara pretended not to see it.
 
Love makes you blind
—
she seemed intent on proving that proverb.
 
She never budged from Will’s side; she wrapped
her arms around him whenever the stone grew a little further and he doubled
over in the saddle with pain.
 
But when
she felt unobserved, Jacob saw his own fear on her face.
 
When she asked him what he knew about the
stone, he gave her the same lies he had given his brother:
 
that it was only
Will’s
skin that was changing, and that it would be simple enough to heal him in this
world.
 
She hadn’t taken much convincing.
 
Both she and Will were only too happy to
believe whatever comforting lies he told them.

Clara rode
better
than he’d
expected.
 
Jacob had bought her a dress
from a market they had passed along the way, but she made him swap it for a man’s
clothes after trying in vain to mount her horse in the wide skirt.
 
A girl in men’s clothes, and the stone on
Will’s skin
—
Jacob was glad when they finally left the villages and
highways behind and could ride under the trees, even though he knew what would
be awaiting there.

Barkbiters, Mushroom-Wights, Trappers, Crow-Men.
 
The
Hungry
Forest
had many
unpleasant inhabitants, though the Empress had been trying for years to clear
it of its terrors.
 
Despite the dangers,
there was a lively trade in horns, teeth, skins, and other body parts of the
Hungry
Forest
’s
creatures.
 
Jacob had never earned his
money that way, but there were many who made quite a decent living of it:
fifteen silver dollars for a Mushroom-Wight (a two-dollar bonus if it spat real
fly-agaric poison), thirty for a Barkbiter (not a lot, considering the hunt
could easily leave the hunter dead), and forty for a Crow-Man (who at least
only went for the eyes).

Many trees were already shedding their leaves, but the canopy
above them was still so dense that the day beneath it dissolved into a
checkered autumnal twilight.
 
They soon
had to start leading the horses on foot, for they kept getting caught in the
thorny undergrowth.
 
Jacob had instructed
Will and Clara not to touch the trees.
 
However,
the shimmering pearls that a Barkbiter had left sprouting as bait on an oak
limb made Clara forget his warnings.
 
Jacob barely managed to pluck the foul
creature from her wrist before it could crawl up her sleeve.

“This here,” he said, holding the Barkbiter in front of
Clara’s face,
close
enough for her to see the sharp
teeth above the scabbed lips, “is just one of the reasons why you shouldn’t
touch the trees.
 
His first bite will
make you drowsy.
 
A second
one,
and you’ll be completely paralyzed.
 
But you will still be fully conscious while
his entire clan starts to gorge itself on your blood.
 
Trust
me,
it’s not a
pleasant way to die.”

Do you see now that you should have sent her back?
 
Will read the reproach on
Jacob’s face as he pulled Clara to his side.
 
But from then on she was careful.
 
It was Clara who pulled back Will in time when
she saw the glistening net of a Trapper stretched across their path, and it was
she who shooed away the Gold-Ravens trying to squawk dark curses into their
ears.

And yet —
She belonged here even less than his brother did.

Fox gave him a look.

Stop it,
her eyes said.
 
She
is here, and I am telling you again:
 
He
will need her.

Fox.
 
His furry shadow.
 
The
will-o’-the-wisps, drifting in thick iridescent swarms among the trees, had
often led even Jacob astray with their alluring hum.
 
But Fox just shook them from her fur like
troublesome flies and ran on unwaveringly.

After three hours, the first Witch’s tree appeared between
the oak and ash trees, and Jacob was just about to warn Will and Clara about
their branches and how they loved to poke at human eyes, when Fox suddenly
stopped.

The faint sound was nearly drowned out by the hum of the
will-o’-the-wisps.
 
It sounded like the
snip-snap of a pair of scissors.
 
Not a terribly threatening sound, and Will and Clara didn’t even
notice it.
 
But the vixen’s fur
bristled, and Jacob put his hand on his saber.
 
He knew of only one creature in this forest
that made such a sound, and it was the only one he definitely did not want to
run into.

“Let’s get a move on,” he whispered to Fox.
 
“How much farther to the
house?”

Snip-snap.
 
It was
coming closer.

“It’s going to be tight,” Fox whispered back.

The snipping stopped, but the sudden silence was no less
ominous.
 
No bird sang.
 
Even the will-o’-the-wisps had vanished.
 
Fox cast a worried glance at the trees before
she scampered ahead again, so briskly that the horses barely managed to keep up
with her through the dense undergrowth.

The forest was growing darker, and Jacob pulled from his
saddlebag the flashlight he had brought from another world.
 
More and more often they now had to skirt
around Witch’s trees.
 
Hawthorn took the
place of ash and oak.
 
Pines sucked up
the scant light with their black-green needles, and the horses shied when they
saw the house appear between the trees.

When Jacob had come here some years earlier with Chanute, the
red roof tiles had shone through the undergrowth so
brightly,
it had looked as if the Witch had painted them with cherry juice.
 
Now they were covered in moss, and the paint
was peeling off the window frames.
 
But
there were still a few pieces of gingerbread stuck to the walls and the steep
roof.
 
Sugary icicles hung from the
gutters and the windowsills, and the whole house smelled of honey and cinnamon
—
as befitted a trap for children.
 
The Witches had tried many times to banish the
child-eaters from their clans, and two years ago they had finally declared war
on them.
 
The Witch who had plagued the
Hungry
Forest
was now supposedly living out her life as a warty toad in some silty pool.