one mistake.
Jacob leaned against one of the sooty columns and looked up toward the tower that housed the mirror. He had never gone through it without first making sure Will and his mother were asleep. But since she had died there had just been one more empty room on the other side, and he had been keen to press his hand against the dark glass again and get away. Far away.
Impatience, Jacob. Say it as it is. After all, it’s one of your most prominent character traits.
He could still see Will’s face appear behind him in the mirror, distorted by the dark glass. “Where are you going, Jacob?” A late flight to Boston, a trip to Europe; there had been so many excuses over the years. Jacob was just as creative a liar as his father had been. But this time his hand had already pressed against the cool glass — and Will had, of course, followed his example.
Little brother.
“He already smells like them.” Fox appeared out of the shadows cast by the crumbled walls. Her fur was as red as if autumn itself had lent her its colors, except where the trap had streaked the hind leg with pale scars. It had been five years since Jacob had freed her, and the vixen had not left his side since. She guarded his sleep, warned him of dangers that his dull human senses could not detect, and she gave advice that was best followed.
One mistake.
Jacob stepped through the arched doorway in which the scorched remnants of the castle’s main door were still hanging on the warped hinges. On the steps in front, a Heinzel was collecting acorns from the cracked stones. He quickly scampered off as Jacob’s shadow fell on him. Red eyes above a pointy nose, pants and shirt sewn from stolen human clothes. The ruin was swarming with them.
“Send him back! That’s what we came here for, isn’t it?” The impatience in Fox’s voice was hard to miss.
But Jacob shook his head. “Bringing him here was a mistake. There’s nothing on the other side that can help him.”
Jacob had told Fox about the world he came from, but she never really wanted to hear about it. What she knew was enough: that it was the place to which he disappeared far too often, only to bring back memories that followed him like shadows.
“And? What do you think will happen to him here?”
Fox did not say it, but Jacob knew what she was thinking. In her world, fathers killed their own sons as soon as they discovered the stone in their skin.
He looked down toward the foot of the castle hill, where the red roofs were fading into the twilight. The first lights were coming on in Schwanstein. From a distance, the town looked like one of the pictures printed on gingerbread tins, but over the past years, railway tracks had begun to cut through the hills beyond, and gray smoke rose from the smokestacks of factories into the evening sky. The world behind the mirror wanted to grow up. However, the petrified flesh growing in his brother had not been sown by mechanical looms or any of the other modern achievements but by the old magic that still dwelled in its hills and forests.
A Gold-Raven landed next to Will on the cracked tiles. Jacob shooed it away before it could croak one of its sinister spells into his brother’s ear.
Will groaned in his sleep. The human skin did not yield to the stone without a fight. Jacob felt the pain as his own. Only his love for his brother had made him return to the other world, even though he’d done so less and less frequently over the years. His mother had threatened him with social services, she had cried, but she had never suspected where he vanished to. Will, however, had always wrapped his arms around Jacob, eagerly asking what he had brought for him. The shoes of a Heinzel, the cap of a Thumbling, a button made of elven glass, a piece of scaly Waterman skin — Will had hoarded Jacob’s gifts under his mattress, and soon he began to regard the stories Jacob told him as fairy tales his brother invented only for him.
Now he knew how true they had all been.
Jacob pulled the coat over his brother’s disfigured arm. The two moons were already in the sky.
“Keep an eye on him, Fox.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll be back soon.”
“And where are you going? Jacob!” The vixen jumped into his path. “Nobody can help him.”
“We’ll see.” He pushed her aside. “Don’t let Will climb into the tower.”
She looked after him as he walked down the steps. The only footprints on the mossy steps were his own. No human ventured up here. The ruin was thought to be cursed, and Jacob had heard dozens of stories about its demise, but after all these years he still didn’t know who had left the mirror in its tower, just as he had never found out where his father had vanished to.
A Thumbling jumped at his collar. Jacob managed to grab him before he could steal the medallion he was wearing around his neck. On any other day, Jacob would have followed the little thief at once. Thumblings could hoard considerable treasures in the hollow trees where they built their nests. But he had already lost too much time.
One mistake, Jacob.
He would make it right again. But Fox’s words followed him as he climbed down the steep hill.
Nobody can help him.
If she was right, soon he would no longer have a brother. Neither in this world nor in the other.
One mistake.
3
Goyl