Reckless (Free Preview) (6 page)

The wrought-iron fence that surrounded her house still had
some colorful candy stuck to it.
 
Jacob’s
mare trembled as he led her through the gate.
 
The fence of a gingerbread house would admit
anyone but would not let anybody out.
 
During
their visit, Chanute had taken care to leave the gate wide open, but now Jacob
was more worried about what was following them than about the abandoned house.
 
As he closed the gate behind Will, the
snipping could again be heard clearly, and this time it sounded almost angry.
 
But at least it didn’t come any closer.
 
Fox shot Jacob a relieved glance.
 
It was just as they had hoped:
 
Their pursuer had been no friend of the Witch.

“But what if he waits for us?
”
Fox
whispered.

Yes, what then, Jacob?
 
He did not
care, just as long as the bush Chanute had described to him was still growing
behind the house.

Will had led the horses to the well and lowered the rusty
pail to draw water for them.
 
He eyed the
gingerbread house as if it were a poisonous plant.
 
Clara, however, was running her fingers over
the icing as if she could not believe what she saw.

Nibble, nibble, little mouse, who’s been nibbling
at my house?

Which version of the story had Clara heard?

Then she took hold of Hansel
with her bony hand, carried him away to a little hutch with a barred door, and
shut him up there.
 
He could shout all he
liked, but it did him no good.

"Take
care she doesn't eat any of the cakes," Jacob said to Fox.
 
Then he set off in search of the berries.

Behind the
house the nettles were growing so high, it looked as if they were standing
guard over the Witch's garden.
 
They
burnt Jacob's skin, but he beat a path through their poisonous leaves until he
found what he was looking for between the hemlock and the deadly
nightshade:
 
a nondescript little bush
with feathered leaves.
 
Jacob was filling
his hand with its black berries when he heard footsteps.

Clara was
standing between the overgrown plots.

"Monkshood, May lilies, hemlock."
 
She looked at him
,
 
puzzled
.
 
"These are all poisonous plants."

She had
obviously learned a few useful things as a premed student.
 
Will had already told Jacob a dozen times how
he met her at the hospital, in the ward where their mother had been treated.
 
When you were not there, Jacob.

He got to his
feet.
 
Out in the forest, the sound of
snipping could be heard again.

"Sometimes
it takes a poison to heal," he said.
 
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.
 
Though I doubt you’ve ever
learned about these berries."

He filled her
hands with the shiny black fruit.

"Will
must eat at least a dozen of them.
 
They
should have done their work by the time the sun rises.
 
Persuade him to lie down in the house; he
hasn't slept in days."

Goyl didn't
need much sleep.
 
One of the many
advantages they had over humans.

Clara looked
at the berries in her hand.
 
She had a
thousand questions on her tongue, but she didn't ask them.
 
What had Will told her about him?
 
"Yes,
I do have a brother.
 
But he's been a
stranger to me for a long time now."

She turned
around now and listened to the forest.
 
This time she'd heard the snipping as well.

"What is
that?" she asked.

"They
call him the Tailor.
 
He doesn't dare to
cross the Witch's fence, but we cannot leave as long as he's there.
 
I'll try to drive him off."
 
From
 
his
pocket he pulled the key he had
taken from the chest in Chanute's tavern.
 
"The fence won't let you leave.
 
But this key opens every door.
 
I'll throw it over the gate once I'm out, just in case I don't come
back.
 
Fox will lead you back to the
tower.
 
But don't unlock the gate before
it gets light."

Will was still
standing by the well.
 
He stumbled with
fatigue as he walked toward Clara.

"Don't
let him sleep in the room with the oven," Jacob muttered into Clara's
ear.
 
"The air there gives bleak
dreams.
 
And make sure he doesn't try to
follow me."

Will
ate
the berries without hesitation.
 
The magic that would heal
everything.
 
Even as a child he
had believed in such things much more readily than Jacob.
 
It was obvious how tired he was, and he
didn’t protest when Clara led him toward the gingerbread house.
 
The sun was setting behind the trees, and the
red moon hung above the treetops like a bloody fingerprint.
 
When the sun returned, the stone in his
brother's skin would be nothing but a bad dream.
 
If the berries worked.

If.

Jacob went to
the fence and stared out into the forest.

Snip-snap.

Their pursuer
was still there.

Fox's eyes
followed Jacob anxiously as he walked toward the mare and pulled Chanute's
knife from the saddlebag.
 
Bullets were
useless against the one who was waiting for him outside.
 
It was said they even made the Tailor
stronger.

A thousand
shadows filled the forest, and Jacob believed he could see a dark figure standing
among the trees.
 
He'll at least help pass the time until sunrise, Jacob
.
 
He pushed the knife into his belt and took
the flashlight from his knapsack.
 
Fox
ran after him as he approached the fence.

"You
can't go out there.
 
It's getting
dark."

"And?"

"Maybe
he'll be gone by morning!"

"Why
should he?"

The gate
sprang open as soon as Jacob pushed the key into the rusty lock.

So many
desperate children must have rattled this gate in vain.

"Stay
here, Fox," he said.

But as he
closed the gate behind him, she quietly slipped out by his side.

8

Clara

The first room
was the one with the oven, but Clara pulled Will along as he looked through the
door.
 
The narrow corridor smelled of
cakes and roasted almonds, and in the next room a shawl, embroidered with a
pattern of black birds, was draped over the back of a tattered armchair.
 
The bed was in the last room.
 
It was barely big enough for both of them,
and the blankets were moth-eaten, but Will was already fast asleep by the time
Jacob pulled the gate shut outside.

The growing
stone traced patterns on Will's neck, just as the dappled sun had in the
forest.
 
Clara carefully touched the pale
green.
 
So cool and
smooth.
 
So
beautiful, yet so terrible.

What would
happen if the berries didn't work?
 
Will's brother knew the answer, and it frightened him, though he was
very good at hiding it.

Jacob.
 
Will had told Clara about him, but he had
only ever shown her one photograph, and in it they had both still been
children.
 
Even back then Jacob's gaze
had been different from his brother's.
 
There was none of Will's gentleness to be found there.
 
None of his stillness.

Clara
extricated herself from Will's embrace and covered him with the Witch's
blanket.
 
A moth had landed on his
shoulder, black, like an imprint of the night.
 
It fluttered away as Clara bent over Will to kiss him.
 
He did not wake up, and she left him alone
and stepped outside.

The house
covered in cakes, the red moon over the trees — everything she saw seemed so
unreal that she felt like a sleepwalker.
 
Everything she knew was gone.
 
Everything she remembered seemed lost.
 
Will was the only familiar thing, but the strangeness was already
growing on his skin.

The vixen
wasn't there.
 
Of
course.
 
She'd gone with
Jacob.
 
The key was right next to the
gate, just as he had promised.
 
Clara
picked it up and ran her fingers over the engraved metal.

The voices of
the will-o’-the-wisps filled the air like the hum of bees.
 
A raven cawed somewhere in the trees.
 
But Clara was listening for another sound:
 
the sharp snipping that had darkened Jacob's
face with worry that had made him go back into the forest.
 
What was waiting out there, turning even the
house of a child-eater into a safe haven?

Snip-snap.
 
There it
was again.
 
Like the
snapping of metallic teeth.
 
Clara
backed away from the fence.
 
Long shadows
were growing toward the house, and she felt the same fear she'd felt as a child
when she was alone and heard steps in the hallway.

She should
have told Will what his brother was planning.
 
He would never forgive her if Jacob didn't come back.

He would come
back.

He had to come
back.

They'd never
find their way home without him.

9

The Tailor

Was he coming
after them?
 
Jacob walked slowly, so the
hunter he was trying to lure could follow.
 
But all he heard was his own steps, rotting twigs snapping under his boots,
leaves rustling as he pushed through the undergrowth.
 
Where was he?
 
Jacob was beginning to fear that their pursuer had forgotten his
wariness of the Witch and was sneaking through the gate behind his back, when
suddenly he heard the snipping again, coming through the forest to his
left.
 
It was just as everybody
said:
 
The Tailor loved to play a little
cat and mouse with his victims before commencing his bloody work.

Nobody could
say who or what exactly the Tailor was.
 
The stories about him were just about as old as the
Hungry
Forest
itself.
 
There was only one thing
everybody knew for certain:
 
that the
Tailor had earned his name by tailoring his clothes from human skin.

Snip-snap, clip-clip.
 
The trees opened into a clearing.
 
Fox gave Jacob a warning look as a murder of crows fluttered up from the
branches of an oak.
 
The snip-snap grew
so loud that it drowned out their squawks, and under an oak the beam of Jacob's
flashlight found the outline of a man.

The Tailor did
not like the probing finger of light.
 
He
uttered an angry grunt and swatted at it as if it were an annoying bug.
 
But Jacob let the light explore further, over
the bearded, dirt-caked face, the gruesome clothes, which at first sight simply
looked like poorly tanned leather, and on to the gross hands with which the
Tailor plied his bloody trade.
 
The
fingers on his left hand ended in broad blades, each as long as a dagger.
 
The blades on the right were just as long and
lethal, though these were slender and pointed, like giant sewing needles.
 
Both hands were missing a finger — obviously
other victims had tried to defend their skins — though the Tailor did not seem
to miss them much.
 
He let his murderous
fingernails slice through the air as if he were cutting a pattern from the
shadows of the trees, taking measurements for the clothes he would soon fashion
from Jacob's skin.

Fox bared her
teeth and retreated with a growl to Jacob's side.

Jacob shooed
her behind him.
 
He drew his saber with
his left hand and Chanute's knife with his right.

His opponent
moved clumsily, like a bear, though his hands cut through the thickets of
thistles with terrifying zeal.
 
His eyes
were blank, like those of a dead man, but the bearded face was contorted into a
mask of bloodlust, and he bared his yellow teeth as if he wanted to peel the
skin off Jacob's flesh with them.

At first the
Tailor hacked at him with the broad blades.
 
Jacob deflected them with his saber while he slashed at the needle hand
with his knife.
 
He'd fought a half dozen
drunk
soldiers, the guards of enchanted castles,
highwaymen, and even a pack of trained wolves, but this was far worse.
 
The Tailor's hacking and stabbing were so
relentless, Jacob felt as if he were caught in a threshing machine.