The Golden Yarn

by Cornelia Funke

  Hentzau saw his own uneasiness reflected on the faces of his soldiers as they entered the cemetery from where, according to the icon painter, Brunel’s liberators were planning to sneak him out of Moskva. Why this cemetery of all places, Tchiourak hadn’t been able to explain, but he’d sworn that the Wolfling, who was in charge of the whole operation, had mentioned this cemetery several times.

  Hentzau suspected an underground escape route—a natural assumption for a Goyl—or a carriage sent by the Albian secret service. An automobile would have been too conspicuous. Yet all they’d found were graves.

  They’d already been hiding for two hours behind the amateurishly hewn stones and sentimental statues that would’ve made every Goyl sculptor destroy them in shame. Finally, a white dove settled on one of the gravestones. Tied to her leg was one of the gold capsules the Moskovites used to invite each other to balls and dinners.

  Nesser caught the dove and brought the capsule to Hentzau.

  The message inside was written in Goyl:

  The painter didnt know better. He is a gullible man and as clumsy in his spycraft as he is with his brushes. Leave him alive. Better luck next time, Lieutenant Hentzau.

  L. A.

  The basement workshop was, of course, empty, except for the trembling, useless icon painter.

  Hentzau left him alive, though Ashamed Tchiourak couldn’t even tell him who L.A. was.

  Lying Mountains

  Onyx skin offered little help in staying undetected when there was nothing for miles but grass. Nerron wished he had Seventeen’s mirror skin. He only dared follow the Pup within eyeshot during the night. The boy seemed to need as little sleep as a Goyl. He is a Goyl, Nerron, even if he looks like a glass of milk. All those days and nights of him playing nanny—forgotten. Betrayed by both brothers... But why was he more willing to forgive this one? Why was he still riding after the Pup even though the mere thought of his mirrored guardians sent silver shudders down his spine?

  Ah, to hell with the why.

  “Ah, the mirrors. Believe me, you’ll never see them, or those who are waiting on the other side.”

  Really? He wanted what was his. He’d been cheated out of his loot too many times these past months.

  Around him the grass finally began to give way to stone. Mountains began to rise, higher and higher, until they gathered snow on their flanks and cast shadows to finally make him invisible again. Through onyx-dark ravines, following a baby face who was trying to kill an immortal Fairy... If he could find her.

  What if he succeeded? Would Kami’en cry after his dead love? Would anyone miss her and her sisters? All the lovesick idiots who’d drowned themselves for them, princesses who’d slept themselves to death, their murderous swarms of moths...Let him kill her, Nerron. You can still have your revenge once his Elf task is completed. After that, the Mirrorlings would no longer protect him, and what would be lost with the Dark One?

  Yes, what?

  The jade.

  Nerron hated that he had to just think the word to feel its power—and his longing. For what?

  For what, damn it?

  Around him the slopes grew steeper, and the Pup’s progress slowed. His guardians wouldn’t like that, nor the ever-damper shade cast by the mountains. Yet Nerron had the feeling the Pup was closing in on the Fairy. Black blossoms filled the rocky crevices with a heavy scent. Birds circled the ravines in excited flocks. And then there was that trail of a stag... Nerron couldn’t make sense of it all, but that was usually a good indication of the presence of some powerful magic. What if he stole the crossbow before the Pup found the Fairy? Maybe he could cut him off in this rough terrain? Provoke him, call the jade. That the Pup didn’t want it was a lie, a damn lie! His skin would protect him from the Mirrorlings—for a few seconds, anyway. They’d noticed that, and they hadn’t liked it. Nerron pictured snapping their woody fingers, throwing their mirror eyes into the fire, grimacing at their faces as they turned to bark.

  “Bastard... Bastard... Bastard...”

  He reined in his horse.

  Voices. Stone voices.

  He heard them echo through underground streets, through malachite palaces, on plazas and stairs of deep green.

  Nerron dismounted.

  “Bastard Bastard Bastard....”

  Where did they come from?

  The malachite voices.

  He climbed one of the rocks until he could see the mountains lining the horizon. Did they come from there? The voices grew louder, like a chorus carried by the wind. They came from far away. Ah, to the south was a mountain range, green like a hem of emeralds against the endless sky. The lost cities. Impossible. They were way north of here.

  “Bastard Bastard Bastard...”

  Nerron thought he saw the distant mountains take on the color of his skin. He saw them sprout pillars, towers, saw the Bastard on the throne, Hentzau kneeling in front of him, Crookback, the Walrus, and by his side four princesses, each as beautiful as the Fairy. He climbed higher, slipped, grazed his skin, climbed on.

  “What took you so long, Bastard? What kept you? What kept you?”

  It would be a five-day ride, maybe less.

  Wait.

  Wait, Nerron.

  Stop, damn it!

  He leaned against the craggy rock, panting.

  What was he, a bat-brain? That wasn’t the mountains whispering; it was the wind. The wind!

  A siren song for the stray dog who was so impertinent to follow them. And he’d fallen for it.

  He pulled the looking glass from his belt.

  Of course. No sign of the Pup.

  Oh, he should hang himself from the nearest tree, feed himself to the vultures circling above!

  Pull yourself together, Nerron.

  He slapped himself. Once. Twice. Until his stone skin burned with pain.

  He would find him again. Yes.

  The Pup couldn’t have gone far.

  He would find him. The angrier they made him, the better.

  The Right Place

  A clear night gave way to a cloudy morning. Behind them lay the wide steppes that stretched from Moskva toward the east. A firebird attacked them over the old monasteries of Novgorod. Maybe their carpet had cast a threatening shadow over its nest. But it let them go when Fox shifted and bared her teeth. Brunel couldn’t take his eyes off her as he helped her gather the feathers the firebird lost on the carpet. Maybe he’d never seen a shape-shifter. The feathers were worth more than the advance the Tzar had paid to Jacob.

  When Orlando finally asked about their route, Jacob lied about some storm that had made a more westerly course impossible. Fox’s presence distracted the Barsoi so much that he accepted the flimsy explanation without question. His eyes hung on her with such insistence it made Jacob wish he could make her invisible. Fox stayed away from both of them. Unlike Orlando, Jacob knew this mood—far away and by herself, in her own world. There was no reaching her when she went there, deep into the landscape of her own heart, formed from memories only she knew.

  Beneath them the green of a cool summer turned into the brown of plowed fields and wide rivers. They flew over monasteries, churches, grand estates, and poor villages. The Tzar had banned the import of sugarcane because it was harvested by slaves, but most of Varangia’s peasants were barely more free than the men, women, and children who were dragged from Oyo or Dahomey and onto Arabian slave ships.

  By midday, the wind freshened and darkening clouds began to bulge above them. The carpet curled its edges up like a protective railing, but soon it began to rise and drop so abruptly that the horses shied and Jacob started looking for a spot to land. They couldn’t risk asking for shelter in one of the large estates. Orlando was sure they were still over Varangian territory, and he was convinced the Tzar’s couriers were faster than the wind. They must have already carried the news of Brunel’s escape into the remotest corners of the empire. But the clouds looked like rain, and rain was something flying carpets could not tolerate. After all, they c
ame from desert lands.

  The first drops were landing on their faces when Fox pointed out some strangely-shaped hills. They turned out to be a Dragon’s skeleton. The three skulls between which Jacob landed the carpet were each bigger than a train carriage. The neck vertebrae that had once supported those heads were so overgrown with dense grass that one could barely spot them, and they no longer indicated whether they’d been severed from the skulls. But there was an ominous hole in the rib cage. Varangia’s Dragons had been famous for their strong urge for freedom—as much as those in Zhonghua. Some had developed an appetite for royal daughters; others had hoarded treasure to build their nests and to give their young scales of gold and silver. Only a rare few had ever died peacefully.

  The Dragon’s ribs formed a spacious cave big enough even for the horses. They’d just dragged the carpet inside when the clouds broke. The bushes and trees that had covered the skeleton over centuries were so dense that the cave stayed perfectly dry.

  Brunel was obviously fascinated by the skeleton. He soon began to explore it in more detail. When Jacob explained that the more valuable parts had probably found new owners already, Brunel just smiled enigmatically.

  “I may have hunted treasure with my children,” he said, “but my real interests are purely scientific.”

  Fox followed Brunel. A Dragon could, even after centuries, pose some serious dangers: Poisonous barbs, fire bones. Fox would know when to warn Albion’s famous engineer. She was fascinated by Dragons, and she, like Jacob, dreamed of someday finding a Dragon’s egg that still contained a spark of life.

  Orlando’s eyes followed her—Jacob wondered if his own face showed his desire for her as clearly.

  “Why are we still not flying westward?”

  So, the Barsoi’s head was not only full of Fox.

  “You saw the clouds.”

  Orlando smiled, but his eyes were alert. “Stop it. Where are we flying?”

  “Not westward.”

  “Good. I assume this is about treasure? You think that can make the Tzar forget you freed his prisoners? Not likely, if you ask me.”

  “This has nothing to do with treasure.”

  Jacob didn’t want to talk to him, just as he didn’t want the Windhound staring at Fox or holding her hand. If only Alma were here. She knew some excellent recipes against jealousy.

  “You do realize we’ll all end up in the ice dungeons of Sakha when they catch us?”

  “I never volunteered to be part of your rescue commando. You let yourself be caught like an amateur, and I got you out of there only for Fox. I warned you about the knife-wire, but you knew better, and then I had to risk my neck for you.”

  “Did she ask you to?”

  “No.”

  The rain pummeled the old Dragon bones as though to provide the rhythm to the song of their mortality, but death was not what they had on their minds—or wasn’t love sometimes called the small death?

  “We have to take Brunel to safety!”

  Of course. Politics. Always a much safer topic.

  “The reward you’ll get from Albion will be worth more than any treasure.”

  “I seriously doubt that. Don’t explain my business to me. But as I said, this is not about treasure.”

  Ridiculous how argumentative Orlando’s mere presence made him. Love made him foolish.

  “Then what is it about? Is it so important you’d risk even Fox’s safety?”

  “She’s used to it. Has been for years.” Heavens! Just listen to yourself, Jacob!

  “I assume appealing to your patriotic duty would also be in vain.”

  “I’m not even from Albion. That was a lie.”

  Orlando was about to reply, but he stopped himself when Brunel appeared from behind the bones. His hair and clothes were soaked with rain.

  “She shifted,” he said. “I’m to let you know she’ll be back soon.”

  The vixen didn’t mind the rain. She loved feeling it on her fur, and the scents it coaxed from the earth.

  The Witch’s comb Orlando pulled from his pocket was a particularly beautiful specimen. The teeth were shaped like feathers, which meant it could turn its user into any bird of their choice. Why was Jacob even surprised? Shape-shifting was perfect for spying.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he warned. “She wants to be alone.”

  Orlando went anyway.

  Idiot.

  But what did he know? Orlando had made her his lover, while Jacob couldn’t even take her hand without fretting over the consequences. Jacob envied the other man for having met Fox at a ball, instead of when her bloody leg was stuck in the metal jaws of a trap. And how he wished it could have been Orlando who’d had to ask the Elf to save her from the Bluebeard.

  But that was you, Jacob.

  Brunel looked up to where the Dragon’s heart would have been. Eating the heart supposedly made you fearless for life. Many Dragons had been killed for their hearts.

  “We’re not flying westward.” Yes, in this world it was safe to assume most people knew their compass directions. “What’s our destination?”

  “Only the carpet knows that,” Jacob said. “It looks like it’s somewhere to the southeast.”

  “Ah. You fed it your memories. Such interesting magic. I once tried to utilize it for airplane navigation, but it seems to work only on old-fashioned materials such as sheep’s wool.”

  Jacob heard no irritation in Brunel’s voice. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to return to Albion. The Walrus was dying, and his daughter was next in line to the throne. Maybe she was not as passionate about New Magic as her father?

  “A friend of mine has a theory that this kind of magic is created not so much by the material but by the skill of the craftsman,” Jacob said.

  “Interesting. Which would mean that in this world, even a master mechanic could imbue his contraptions with magic.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure what gave him more pause—that Brunel had spoken of “this world” or how he’d pushed his hair back from his eyes. So familiar...

  Brunel was still looking up toward where the Dragon’s heart had beaten. But then he turned. He did so slowly, like someone who’d decided to finally face down his fears.

  “It won’t last much longer,” he said. “You can already see it, can’t you? The Goyl took the last of my frost-fern juice. I had a few seeds sown into my shirt for emergencies, but even those are now gone. I hadn’t planned for such a long trip.”

  Brunel’s nose, the chin, his eyebrows, his whole face was shifting—not like it did on Spieler’s creatures. No, Brunel’s features were changing as if being kneaded by an impatient potter.

  Tummetott magic. Therese of Austry had used it so she could mingle incognito among her ministers and listen to their intrigues. But the magic could leave permanent marks, and in the end Therese’s vanity had proven stronger than her hunger for power.

  The man into whom Isambard Brunel was changing was all too familiar to Jacob, even though he hadn’t seen him in more than fourteen years. He felt hot and cold, was five, twelve, twenty-five years old. He’d imagined this reunion too many times to fully comprehend it was actually happening.

  “So you recognized me in Goldsmouth.” Jacob wished him away, far away, like his father had always been.

  “Of course. But I had to keep my cover. Isambard Brunel guarantees my survival. Of course, I considered revealing myself to you, but after the sinking of the fleet, I had to assume you were dead.”

  His father. You are talking to your father, Jacob. How many times had he argued with him, screamed at him, ignored him in his mind? Years of searching for excuses for his betrayal, for answers to why he’d left them, him, Will, their mother. And now Jacob realized he no longer wanted to know.

  He felt his mouth twist into a bitter smile, but his scorn was directed at himself. The yearning, the rage, the waiting, just to be standing there like an actor who for years had memorized the wrong lines. The heartless skeleton of a Dragon. What a stage for thei
r meeting. Couldn’t be more perfect.

  “Drowned by the planes his own father built,” he said. “That would’ve been ironic.”

  How he avoided his eyes. He seemed smaller. Of course.

  “I assume it’s too late for an explanation?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Jacob was going to leave him here. Orlando could stay with him if he wanted. For King, country, whatever. Maybe that’s why Jacob had never understood the concept…because he’d never had a father. And he still didn’t. Typical for John Reckless to steal the name of a famous nineteenth-century engineer to hide behind. “John Reckless likes to stand tall—on the shoulders of others.” His mother’s father used to say that, but Jacob had never wanted to believe it.

  He turned around a little too abruptly (oh, he was so angry!) and stumbled out from under the petrified bones into the pouring rain. Brunel called after him. Jacob wasn’t going to think of him by any other name. A year ago he might still have had some questions, words he’d wanted to say, but too much had happened. And finding Will now was more important. Much more.

  He walked faster, through the rain that blurred heaven and earth into a gray haze. He found it hard to breathe—as though the stranger with the two faces was stealing the world he’d called his own for so long.

  “Jacob?”

  The vixen appeared through the rain and shifted so quickly it looked like the woman’s body was growing out of her fur. “What happened?”

  He pulled her into his arms, just like when he’d nearly drowned without her. He sought her lips as if he needed to breathe through her, as if only she could keep him from choking on his rage. Never, Jacob. He let her go, stammered an excuse.