The Golden Yarn

by Cornelia Funke

  The Goyl waiting for Jacob in the last car probably didn’t feel at all comfortable between the forged walls. Hentzau hated everything these modern times had brought forth, and John was fairly certain that hadn’t changed. Hentzau’s left eye was now so clouded that Kami’en’s Bloodhound would probably soon be blind. Fear, hatred, helplessness... Seeing Hentzau brought back memories that threatened to drown John’s mind like water. Since his kidnappers had told him they were taking him to Flanders, John had feared that the jasper Goyl had sent them. He’d tried to dismiss the thought as paranoia, but reality had again outdone his worst nightmares.

  Hentzau’s skin was riddled with fine cracks. He was paying a high price for his loyalty. Few Goyl stayed above ground for more than one or two months, yet Hentzau was always up there for his King. The jasper face was as familiar to John as his own, or that of Kami’en. Had Hentzau’s King aged as much as his Bloodhound? The portraits the papers printed of the King and his wife showed him unchanged. The King of the Goyl was an attractive man, younger and much better-looking than the human rulers he was waging war against. Hentzau would’ve said it was the humans who’d been waging war against the Goyl—and for a long time.

  John felt his new face like a mask. Would it hold? He’d taught himself to speak with an Albian accent and had even learned to box to acquire a new body language. Nothing gave one away like a familiar gesture. The nervous tremor—the legacy of his years underground—still came back far too quickly. Hentzau would certainly recognize that. And more.

  “May I ask what the purpose of this abduction is?” Yes, John. That’s the way. Isambard Brunel has no fear, and he knows nothing about the Goyl, only that they are the enemies of Albion and that they fear open water.

  “Abduction? It was certainly not my intent that my invitation be interpreted that way. The Clifton Bridge, the rail line from Goldsmouth to Pendragon, the tunnel under Londra, the telegraph cable to New Amsterdam?” Hentzau rubbed his cracked skin. “Our King is a great admirer of your engineering skills, Mr. Brunel.”

  Yes, the mask was holding even under the milky stare of the man who for years had taken every opportunity to rob John of any delusions about himself. But why should he be surprised?

  “Too much honor. I am well aware that the Goyl have an engineer of at least similar accomplishments in their employ. It was his planes that sunk my best ship.” Oh, his fake face made him reckless. What are you doing, John? Still can’t get enough praise for your genius?

  Hentzau smiled. If that’s what one should call what was going on around that lipless mouth. “Oh yes, the planes...”

  The female soldier behind him handed Hentzau a flat leather pouch. From it, Hentzau pulled a mirror with such a delicate silver handle it all but disappeared in his massive jasper hand. “The first time I heard of the engineer who’d given Wilfred of Albion his much-admired horseless carriage, I had my spies give me a description of that Isambard Brunel. What I got sounded like I’d been mistaken. But then I heard about Brunel’s iron ship. Years ago, we had plans to build iron ships, but we lost our engineer before the construction drawings were completed.”

  Hentzau stepped to John’s side and held the mirror so they both could look into it. John stared at the image on the glass.

  He’d not seen his own face in over eight years.

  “Fabulous, isn’t it?” Hentzau put the mirror down. “The man whom I relieved of this magical device claimed he’d found it in one of the abandoned silver palaces. You’ve heard of them? Very unhealthy places to visit.”

  John looked around. The Man-Goyl was standing right behind him. Diego the Leonian was guarding the door. Say good-bye to the sun, John, to strolls in the cold morning air, to restaurants and theaters. “Ah, Mr. Brunel! Always an honor! George, take the gentleman to our best table.” His lover’s skin, as soft as the furs she so loved to wear. All for nothing. The endless weeks of hiding, sleepless in lightless tunnels, his skin scorched by fire-geckos, blistered by festering rat bites and poisonous spiders. He still washed himself obsessively, as if he could scrub the memories off his body. Where had he gotten the courage? He couldn’t remember. The first time he’d been truly brave, and he couldn’t tell anyone about it, for John Reckless had died in those tunnels.

  “Why Albion, John Reckless?” Hentzau dropped the mirror back into the pouch and handed it to the soldier. Goyl women were beautiful, and this one was no exception.

  “Albion was the second stop. First I made my way to Sveriga.” John had tried to get some water—the only thing Goyl truly feared—between himself and the Goyl, but his ultimate goal had always been Albion, with the unlimited resources provided by its colonies, and the cheap labor they got from the slave trade. Both were indispensable for the inventions John wanted to sell there. It had taken him months to smuggle himself on to a freighter sailing from Birka to Goldsmouth.

  “And the new face?”

  “Tummetotts. They are quite generous with their magic if you’re desperate.” It had been November, deepest winter in Sveriga, and the gnomes were so shy he’d nearly died of cold trying to find them. He’d learned about them in the Goyl archives. There was some debate about whether Tummetotts were distant relatives of the Heinzel, Hobs, and follets or a separate species of Nordic Dwarf. In Sveriga, they were also called hjälpare i nöden—helpers in need. They had to believe you were desperate, or else they wouldn’t show themselves.

  “So it’s true they don’t expect anything for their help?”

  “Yes. It’s true.” It was bizarre to be having a conversation with a Goyl about Tummetotts, but John had accepted long ago that no word better described his life: bizarre. He tried to calculate the steps to the door of the car. And then what? Would he make it to the well shaft? No. The Man-Goyl might not be a good shot, but Hentzau could still shoot out the eyes of a Gold-Raven in flight, even though firearms just didn’t gel with his sense of good soldiership. He preferred his saber to a pistol.

  John felt a brief surge of homesickness for Albion, so strong it caused him a physical pain.

  “You needn’t have gone all the way to Sveriga to find selfless helpers,” Hentzau said. “We have stories of eyeless salamanders who fulfill wishes for free. Wagi Aniotiy. Scaly Angels. They supposedly live in caves with phosphorous stalactites. I’ve never seen one, but maybe that’s because I was just never desperate enough…or because I’ve never liked to ask for help.”

  “Can I, as a last request, get some fresh air? One final look at the sky?”

  Hentzau looked at John with scorn in his milky eyes.

  “Still that love for drama. I can assure you, you will be seeing the sky soon enough. Three, four days, and you’ll be back with your kind.”

  His kind. That didn’t necessarily make much of a difference, as his kidnappers had proven.

  Hentzau smiled as if he’d heard John’s thoughts. It had always been a myth that it was those who loved you who could see through you. It was those you feared who could see through you most clearly.

  “You should be grateful, John,” he said. “You so love to play the prophet of the New Magic. I will take you to a land that is still full of its enemies. Albion is already converted.”

  The stomping of the locomotive trembled through the metal floor beneath John’s feet. It was he who had shown them how to run trains underground.

  “Oh, and before I forget,” Hentzau continued while John wondered which land the Goyl could have meant, “I met your son.”

  And that.

  “Yes, I heard he stole one of my planes.” John tried valiantly to sound as casual as Hentzau. “He got his fearlessness from his mother’s side.” The stolen plane, Jacob’s role in the Blood Wedding... There hadn’t been much about all that in the Londra Illustrated News, but Albion’s King of course knew more than could be read in the papers, and whatever the Walrus knew, his valued chief engineer was sure to find out.

  The female soldier waved in a courier. The man handed a sealed message to the jasper
Goyl. It did not contain good news. The years of imprisonment had taught John to read that stone face like his own.

  “Bad news?”

  The Goyl’s glance was a warning. No familiarities. Kami’en’s Bloodhound didn’t like people forgetting they were at his mercy. Hentzau folded the paper carefully, as one did when lost in deep thought, and tucked it into his uniform.

  “Bad news for which you’re quite responsible,” he replied. “You’re here to make amends.”

  The Warning

  Compresses and a bitter broth to fight poisons. Alma drove the silver from Jacob’s eyes. He was mortified to learn from Fox that Alma had known about the mirror for a long time. But the old Witch just shrugged when he tried to apologize for all the years of lying. She listened in silence as he told her about Spieler, but when he asked whether she remembered the Alderelf, she shook her head and smiled. “Eight hundred years? You overestimate my age. Some of the child-eaters eat the mushrooms growing under the Silver-Alders to speak with Alderelves, but they give you a wooden tongue, quite literally, so I’ve never tried that.”

  Silver-Alders. The nearest one was barely a day’s ride away. Jacob had always thought the custom of bribing a tree with coins, spoons, or rings to grant one’s darkest wishes was based on superstition. He was just considering a visit to the Silver-Alder despite Alma’s warnings, when Wenzel told Fox that Will had been to The Ogre.

  Will had come through the mirror? Why? To escape when Spieler took the mirror? But if so, where was Clara? Jacob couldn’t even think her name without seeing Sixteen standing at the bottom of those museum steps. Fox promised to find out where Will had gone after leaving the tavern, and Jacob decided to speak with Chanute. He hoped that among Albert’s endless trove of anecdotes was at least one about Alderelves, or about the child-eaters who communed with them.

  The girl who helped Wenzel in the tavern had washed Jacob’s clothes. He was embarrassed by how quickly he dropped the neatly folded shirt when he saw the card slip out from under the sleeve. The handwriting was all too familiar. At first he wanted to throw the card out the window, but then of course he read the words written in green ink:

  I am sorry you didn’t want to enjoy my hospitality any longer. Don’t try to find your brother. He’s delivering my present to the Dark Fairy. Call it a peace offering. She herself made sure she can’t harm him, so there should be no reason for you to play his guardian. On the contrary, your brother shall be richly rewarded. But I should take it very personally if someone tried to hinder him in this mission. So, meanwhile, should you be feeling bored (and don’t I know that feeling!), the hourglass you’ve been seeking for so long is in the country house of a Venetan count, not far from Calvino.

  It was unsettling to have an enemy who could read your most secret wishes, while you knew nothing about him. Jacob again wanted to dispose of the card, but then he tucked it into his pocket. He was sure Spieler had anticipated that as well.

  Chanute had been coughing all night. When Jacob got to his chamber door, though, he heard loud laughter. Chanute was not alone. Sylvain immediately stopped laughing when he saw Jacob. He looked at him like a schoolboy caught telling a dirty joke. He was seated in the chair that some upholsterer had sold Chanute with the promise it could cure the worst hangovers by simply sitting in it. A half-empty bottle of barley grog stood between Sylvain and Chanute. No prize for guessing where the other half had gone.

  “Grand!” Jacob said to Sylvain as he snatched the glass from Chanute’s hand. “He hasn’t drunk in years. Did he tell you how he lost his arm?”

  “You mean your version or mine?” Chanute snatched the glass back and filled it to the brim. “Be nice to Sylvain. He’s been through a lot. I was just telling him how I went looking for the magic lantern and caught borefleas. Before your time. My skin looked like I had woodworm!” Chanute’s laugh turned into coughing.

  But he still downed the liquor.

  “The Witch comes every day,” he slurred. “Every damn day. You think I don’t know what that means? And when were you going to tell me about the mirror? Before or after I join Snow-White in her coffin?”

  Sylvain tried hard to look as innocent as a doe, but his face was not the kind that let him do that.

  “We should’ve left you at the Elf’s until he’d put your face on all his golems!” Jacob barked at Sylvain. “Who else did you tell about the mirror?”

  Chanute spoke before his new friend could. “I’m from Albion—didn’t I always say you have a strange accent? But you always were a better liar than me, and that’s saying a lot. Shifty as a Greenstilt, aren’t you? I showed you everything, and you? You hide an entire world from me! How’s that for a thank-you? What were you thinking?”

  Sylvain gave Jacob an accusatory look, as though he too was owed an explanation. But what should he say? That he forgot all about his own world when he was here? That over there Chanute would be nothing but a crazy cripple who blabbered about Ogres and Witches? That he never wanted his friend to be seen like that? Or that he was worried Chanute would tell everyone on Fifth Avenue about the mirror? The truth was probably a dangerous mix of all that.

  “What?” Chanute persisted. “I’m waiting.”

  “You wouldn’t like it there.” That sounded feeble, even to Jacob’s ears.

  Chanute eyed him like a traitor. “I should damn well be allowed to decide that for myself, don’t you think?”

  Chanute was so hurt, his answer to Jacob’s question about Alderelves was uncharacteristically terse and to the effect that they were nothing but ancient tales, kept alive by old shrews who bribed trees with silver spoons. And Sylvain didn’t have anything to add beyond what he’d already told Jacob in Spieler’s warehouse. Jacob decided to give up and come back when both men were sober. His secrecy over the mirror was not going to be forgiven for a long time to come.

  “I’ll have Sylvain show it to me,” Chanute growled as Jacob went to the door. He was right to be offended.

  “I will show it to you myself,” Jacob replied. “But the mirror isn’t safe anymore. Your new friend can explain it to you. Let me know if you remember anything else about the Elves.”

  And then he went to search for Wenzel.

  ***

  Chanute’s cook was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for The Ogre’s lunchtime soup offering.

  “Fox isn’t back yet,” he said when Jacob poked his head through the door. The previous night’s excesses still clouded his pale brown eyes. “Did she tell you about the Goyl who came looking for you? Onyx skin, speckled green?”

  Great! Jacob knew only one Goyl who matched that description, and that one had shot an arrow through his chest. Upon which, of course, Jacob had snatched one of the most precious pieces a treasure hunter could find. Of course the Bastard had not simply accepted this, and of course he’d managed to follow Jacob’s trail to Schwanstein. Now all Jacob could hope was that nobody had told the Goyl that Jacob Reckless rode up to the old ruin all the time.

  “You’re quite in demand these days, you know?” Wenzel threw some celery into the soup, which already smelled so much more palatable than the meals Chanute used to cobble together. “A Dwarf came by here several times to ask after you. Evenaugh Valiant…He spelled his name so I wouldn’t forget it. I’m supposed to tell you he plans to cut off your nose. And some other parts.”

  Valiant. The Alderelf. The Goyl. Two Fairies. The former Empress of Austry. And don’t forget Louis, the crown prince of Lotharaine. More enemies, more honor, Jacob.

  When Jacob asked whether Will had said anything beyond asking for him, Wenzel shrugged. “I was a bit distracted by the Goyl. No, wait. He wanted to know where he could find the Dark Fairy.”

  Jacob’s stomach cramped tight.

  “Call it a peace offering.”

  What could possibly inspire peace if the feud was as strong as the curse suggested? Spieler had never said why the Fairies had punished his kind. But he’d given away why Will was the perfect messenger. “
She herself made sure she can’t harm him.” Whoever survived a Witch’s curse was forever immune to their powers. Why shouldn’t the same apply to Fairies? And, no, Jacob didn’t want to think about any other reasons why the Elf used his brother: Spieler was not Will’s father, just as he wasn’t Jacob’s. Both brothers were too human. He’d just have to keep repeating that to himself.

  “Ludovik Rensman dropped off more flowers for Fox,” Wenzel said. “He turns up with presents every time he hears she might be in town. Otherwise he just stands on the square and stares up at her window.”

  Ludovik Rensman. His father was one of the richest men in Schwanstein. Jacob! Focus! What is Will taking to the Fairy?

  “Tell Ludovik that’s my window he’s staring at.”

  Wenzel didn’t like that. “It’s not right that she sleeps in your room,” he said without looking up from his chopping board. “The whole town is bad-mouthing her. I know she doesn’t care what people say, but you should protect her from all the gossip.”

  How? She was a shape-shifter. Sooner or later, all of Schwanstein was going to know about that as well. Definitely after Ludovik Rensman put a ring on her finger and discovered the fur dress she wore beneath her human clothes. He’s probably seen it already, Jacob. Not a good thought for his aching head. He suddenly had a vision of Fox crossing the square with a child’s hand in each of her own. No, that wasn’t the life she wanted. Or was it? Maybe not, but what she definitely didn’t want was her firstborn claimed by an Alderelf.

  Wenzel stirred his soup in silence. He was probably as much in love with her as Rensman was. How could one not be in love with her?

  “Your brother took the road to Hinterberg.” Fox was standing in the kitchen doorway so suddenly Jacob felt caught.

  “Was Clara with him?”

  “No.” She brushed the rain from her red hair. So beautiful. Set her free! She is free! No, she was not, they were just both quite good at pretending otherwise.