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?’
‘He asked me to send you his regards.’
‘Me?’ Will shrugged. ‘Ma didn’t sell him everything he was interested in. Maybe he wants to try his luck with us. He’s a strange bird. I could never figure out whether Ma liked him.’ Will rubbed his arm. He often touched his skin, as if to make sure the jade was really gone. Clara noticed it as well. Spirits . . .
Will got up and poured himself a glass of wine.
‘What should I do if he makes an offer? The cellar is full of old junk. It looks like our family hasn’t thrown anything away since this house was built. There’s barely enough space for the pictures we took off the walls. But Clara needs an office and . . .’ Will left the sentence unfinished, as though their parents’ spirits were listening from their empty rooms. Jacob ran his fingers over the initials he’d once carved into the tabletop. That knife had been his first secret possession.
‘Sell whatever you want,’ he said. ‘You can also use my room, if you like. I’m here so rarely, I can just sleep on the couch.’
‘Nonsense. You’ll keep your room.’ Will pushed a glass of wine towards him. ‘When are you going back?’
‘Tonight.’ Ignoring his brother’s disappointment was no longer as easy as it used to be. He was going to miss Will.
‘Is everything all right?’ Will looked at him anxiously. Fooling him definitely wasn’t as easy as it used to be.
‘Sure. It’s just hard work, living in two worlds.’ Jacob tried to make it sound like a joke, but Will’s face was still serious. He looked so much like their mother. Will even frowned the way she used to.
‘You should stay here. It’s too dangerous.’
Jacob looked down so his brother wouldn’t see him smile. Oh, little brother, it only became dangerous because of you. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. ‘Definitely.’
He still was a decent enough liar. The odds were a thousand to one that the bottle’s inhabitant would kill him rather than save him. A thousand to one against you, Jacob. He’d beaten worse odds.
CHAPTER FOUR
DANGEROUS MEDICINE
Back. The rain that whipped into Jacob’s face as he stepped out of the tower seemed to be the same rain that had been running down his mother’s window. His eyes scanned the crumbled walls for the outline of a vixen, but all they spotted was a Heinzel, hungry and haggard, as they always were towards the end of winter. Where was she?
It was rare for Fox not to be waiting for him. She often sensed his return days in advance. Jacob, of course, immediately thought of traps, or the shotgun of a farmer protecting his chickens. Nonsense, Jacob. She was good at looking after herself, better than he was. And he wouldn’t have wanted her around when he opened the bottle, anyway.
