The Petrified Flesh

by Cornelia Funke

  “So her red sister can indeed bring back the Dead.” The jasper Goyl stepped out of the dark. “I admit that at first I didn’t believe it when the Dark Fairy told me you were still alive. I am a very good shot.” His Austrish was fluid, but he spoke it with a heavy accent. “You went for her net like a fly: it was her idea to spread the word your brother was with her. But, well, how could you know that her snakes aren’t fooled by wane-slime. You did much better than the two onyx Goyl who tried to break into Kami’en’s chambers. We had to scrape their remains from the roofs of the city.”

  Onyx—the Goyl’s former ruling class fought Kami’en even more passionately than his human enemies. Jacob usually tried to stay away from this world’s political schemes, though that wasn’t always easy while working for kings and empresses, but if the Goyl really thought his brother to be the jade Goyl of their legends, there would be no more staying away.

  “Where’s my brother?” The snakes had strangled him so fiercely that Jacob barely recognized the hoarse croak as his own voice.

  The Goyl ignored the question.

  “Where did you leave the girl?” he asked instead.

  He surely didn’t mean Fox, did he? But why should they be interested in Clara? What do you think, Jacob? Your brother is sleeping, and they can’t wake him. That was good news. And Valiant obviously did have a weak spot for Clara or he would have told them where she was.

  So… just play dumb, Jacob.

  “What girl?”

  That answer earned him another kick. The soldier who drove her boot into his stomach was a woman. She looked familiar. Of course: he’d shot her out of her saddle in the valley of the unicorns. No wonder she enjoyed kicking him.

  “Leave him, Nesser,” the jasper Goyl said. “It will take hours to get any answers from him that way. Get the scorpions.”

  Jacob had heard about them. The scorpions of the Goyl.

  Nesser let the first one crawl over her hand almost affectionately before she placed it on his chest. The creature was barely longer than his thumb and seemed to be made from breathing, moving crystal, including its pincers and stinger.

  “There’s not much they can do to our skin,” said the jasper Goyl, as the scorpion crawled under Jacob’s shirt, “but yours is so much softer. So… once again, where’s the girl?”

  The scorpion dug its pincers into Jacob’s chest. It felt as if it was cutting through his skin with shards of glass. He still managed to suppress a scream, but then the scorpion thrust its stinger into his flesh. The venom poured fire under his skin and made him gasp with pain.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  Nesser placed another scorpion on his shoulder.

  Where is the girl? The same question, over and over again. But Will would sleep as long as they didn’t find Clara, and Jacob wished for his brother’s jade skin, as he groaned and screamed.

  *

  He had no memory of what he’d told them, when he woke in another cell, its narrow window filled with a view of the Hanging Palace. The window was barred—obviously the Goyl didn’t trust the height to hold their prisoners as much as they trusted it to protect their King. Maybe too many of their captives had thrown themselves into the abyss below, after they had met their scorpions. Jacob managed to get to his knees. His whole body was aflame as if someone had scalded his skin. His weapons belt was gone and so were all the magical tools he’d had with him. They had only missed the handkerchief, but it wouldn’t help him much. Goyl soldiers were famous for their incorruptibility.

  His cell was separated from the neighboring one by nothing but iron bars. Jacob pressed his shoulder against the wall and hauled himself to his feet. The prisoner in the other cell was his brother.

  Will didn’t move, but he was breathing and there were still a few slight traces of human skin on his forehead. Miranda had kept her promise. She had stopped time and the completion of her sister’s spell.

  Jacob backed away from the bars that kept him separate from his brother when he heard footsteps on the corridor leading past the cells. The jasper Goyl was followed by two guards. Hentzau—by now Jacob knew his name. When he saw whom the Goyl were dragging with them, he wanted to smash his head against the bars.

  He had told them what they wanted to know.

  Clara had a bloody gash on her forehead and her eyes were wide with fear. Where’s Fox? Jacob wanted to ask her, but Clara didn’t even notice him. All she saw was Will.

  Hentzau pushed her into his brother’s cell. Clara took a step toward the bed Will was lying on—and stopped as if remembering that only a few hours earlier she’d kissed the other brother.

  “Clara.”

  She turned, her face a torrent of emotions: horror, anxiety, despair—and still shame. She was shaking when she approached the bars.

  “We tried to escape,” she whispered, “but they were too many.”

  You told them, Jacob. How could he ever forgive himself for that?

  “Where is Fox?” That was all he wanted to know. Had they killed her? Did she escape? The vixen was fast. But Clara took that hope from him.

  “They caught her too. But I don’t know where they took her.”

  The Goyl who had brought her stood to attention. Even Hentzau straightened his shoulders, though his reluctance clearly showed. It wasn’t hard to guess who the woman coming down the corridor was.

  The Dark Fairy was indeed even more beautiful than her red sister. Her hair was, despite the name she was called by, much lighter than Miranda’s. It resembled dark amber and polished copper, and the luster of her skin put the Empress’s most precious pearl necklaces to shame.

  Clara shrank away as the Fairy stepped into Will’s cell, but Jacob clasped his fingers around the metal bars. “You need to touch her and while you do say her name!” Her red sister had made him repeat it twice. “But you have to be fast or she will kill you before you even stretch out your hand.”

  Touch her. How? Jacob wished for one of those magical nuts that shrank a human to the size of a Thumbling. The bars put the Dark Fairy as far out of his reach as if she were lying in Kami’en’s bed.

  She eyed Clara with the same disdain all her kind had for human women. Because they can’t give birth, people said. Maybe.

  The Dark Fairy moved to Will’s side and caressed his sleeping face.

  “You love him?”

  Clara took another step back, but her own shadow came alive and pulled her to the Fairy’s side.

  “Answer her, Clara!” Jacob said.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes. I love him.”

  The shadow let go of her and was once again nothing but a shadow, while the Dark Fairy smiled.

  “Good. Then you surely want him to wake up, don’t you? Kiss him! He is waiting for that kiss, can’t you see?”

  Clara cast a pleading glance at Jacob. No! he wanted to say. Don’t do it, Clara. But his lips were as numb, as if someone had sealed them. He could not even shake his head. Magic. The stale air seemed to smell of it. Of evergreen leaves, of water and wet soil.

  The Dark Fairy took Clara’s arm and gently pulled her to Will’s side.

  “Look at him!” she said. “If you don’t wake him, he’ll just sleep like that forever until all the love in his heart has become dust.”

  Clara tried to turn away, but the Fairy grabbed her arm once again.

  “Is that love?” Jacob heard her whisper. “To sentence him to death just because his skin is no longer as soft as yours? Look at him! My magic only made him strong. And so beautiful.”

  Clara looked down at Will.

  “Touch him,” the Fairy said. “Don’t you see he longs for it?”

  Clara hesitated but then lifted her hand and caressed Will’s jade face.

  The Dark Fairy stepped back with a smile.

  “Make him feel that love when you kiss him!” she said. “You will see. It doesn’t die as easily as you think.”

  Clara wiped a tear from her eyes. Then she bent over Will and kissed him. />
  39

  AWOKEN

  For a moment Jacob had the faint hope that Clara’s kiss would not only wake Will, but also remind him of the boy he had been before he had gone through the mirror, of the love he had felt for Clara…

  Who knows? Maybe it would have been that way if Clara had been the first thing Will saw when he opened his eyes. But the Fairy made sure it was her. She caught him with a smile, like a fly entangled in her amber hair, and Jacob watched the jade erase the last traces of human skin as Will rose from the bed, his golden eyes on the Fairy, as if only she made him live and breathe.

  Clara called his name, but what could a human voice do against the magic of a Fairy? Will could hear neither Clara’s nor Jacob’s voice. He only saw and heard what the Dark Fairy allowed him to see and hear, and all he felt was the skin she had given him. This wonderful skin of jade, that made him so strong and so happy.

  Jacob kept his eyes on Will, as he followed the Fairy into the corridor. He knew far too well what his brother felt. Hadn’t he fallen under the same spell once? There was only her, nothing else. The pain Jacob felt was also far too familiar. It cut as deep as the pain he had felt after their father had disappeared. The same void opened in his heart, so wide and dark and empty that no word could describe the feeling. It was so much more than pain. It was a black ocean swallowing everything—who he was, what he cared and lived for… Will followed the Dark Fairy and Jacob felt as lost as he had last felt at the age of twelve, lost and helplessly angry, at himself, at the world… and at his brother for bringing back that pain.

  Where was Fox? That was all he now still cared about. The vixen… he needed her by his side. She was the only one who could fill the abyss. The only one who never forgot who he was, even when he himself couldn’t remember. But she was gone, like his brother.

  Clara turned around and looked at him. What have I done? her eyes asked him. Why didn’t you stop me? But maybe he was just reading his own thoughts into her stare.

  “What about this one? Shall we shoot him?” one of Hentzau’s guards asked, pointing his rifle at Jacob.

  “No, not yet.”

  The pistol Hentzau drew from his belt was Jacob’s own. The Goyl opened the chamber and scrutinized it as though it was the core of a foreign fruit.

  “This is an interesting weapon,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  Jacob turned his back on him. Just shoot me, he thought. The cell, the Goyl, the Hanging Palace. Everything around him seemed so unreal. The Fairies, and the enchanted forests, even the vixen—all nothing but the feverish dreams of a twelve-year-old. Jacob saw himself standing in the doorway of his father’s study, Will inquisitively staring past him at the dusty model planes, the antique revolvers. And the mirror.

  “Turn around.” Hentzau’s voice was impatient. The Goyl rage was so easily stirred, constantly burning just beneath their stone skin. Will had been one of them for quite a while. One day Clara would realize that it hadn’t been her who had made his brother a Goyl.

  Jacob still didn’t move.

  He heard the Goyl laugh behind him.

  “The same arrogance as your father, but his was shaken so much more easily, and he isn’t half as good at hiding his fear. Your brother doesn’t look like him at all; that’s why I didn’t realize right away whose sons you are, although your face seemed so familiar.”

  Oh, he was such an idiot. The Goyl have better engineers. How often had Jacob heard that behind the mirror—be it in Schwanstein or from the lips of a despairing imperial officer—and he had never thought twice about it.

  He turned around.

  “Where did you meet him? Is he here?”

  Hentzau twisted his narrow lips into a mocking smile. “Here? No. Not anymore. I’d hoped you’d tell me where he is. John Reckless… We caught him five years ago in Blenheim. As far as I remember he’d been hired to build a bridge because the townspeople had grown tired of being eaten by the Lorelei. The river has always been teeming with them, although the Slugskins in Blenheim claim that the Dark Fairy put them in there. Funny. Your father always carried a photo of his sons, but I never looked at it. Kami’en had him build a camera after he saw the picture, long before the Empress’s engineers came up with a similar device. John Reckless taught us many things. But who would’ve thought that a son of his would one day grow a skin of jade.”

  The Goyl ran his fingers along the barrel of the pistol. “As I said, he wasn’t half as stubborn as you when it came to answering our questions. What he taught us turned out to be very useful in the war. And then he escaped. We searched for him for months. We still do, but no trace of him. What does it matter? Now we have caught his sons.”

  He turned to the guards. “Keep him alive until I get back from the wedding. There are a lot of questions I want to ask him.”

  “And the girl?” The guard pointing at Clara had a carnelian skin like his King.

  “Keep her alive as well,” Hentzau replied. “And the fox girl too. They will loosen his tongue much faster than the scorpions.”

  The fox girl too… Jacob felt nauseous with relief. She was alive.

  Hentzau’s steps died away down the corridor and through the barred windows came the sounds of the underground city.

  Fox was alive.

  And his brother was gone.

  40

  THE STRENGTH OF DWARFS

  Jacob heard Clara sobbing in the darkness, but his tears wouldn’t come. The Larks’ Water madness, the Fairy island, the bullet that had shattered his heart… none of it mattered anymore. His brother had a skin of jade.

  Jacob wondered whether the Fairy lake had shown Miranda how miserably he had failed his brother. And that her dark sister had won.

  Clara leaned her head against the wall. And started crying again. Jacob wished he could comfort her but the Larks’ Water had made even an embrace suspicious. Would they ever manage to just be friends again? Even that seemed so unimportant now. They hadn’t been able to save Will.

  Jacob stared at the barred window and the Hanging Palace behind it. Was Will in there with the Dark Fairy?

  From outside the window came a dull scraping sound, as if something was climbing up the wall. Jacob rose to his feet. A hairy face appeared outside behind the bars. It took Jacob a moment to recognize it. Valiant’s beard was sprouting almost as luxuriantly as in the old days, when he’d still worn it with pride.

  “You’re lucky the Goyl haven’t had many Dwarf prisoners yet!” he whispered, while his short fingers bent the iron apart as effortlessly as if they were pipe cleaners. “The Empress has added silver to all the bars in her cells.”

  He squeezed through the warped iron and dropped down from the window as nimbly as a weasel.

  “What are you looking at?” He grinned at Jacob. “It was too funny when the snakes grabbed you. Absolutely priceless.”

  “I’m sure the Goyl paid you well for that show.” Jacob glanced down the corridor, but there were no guards in sight. “Where did you sell me out? While I spent hours waiting in front of the jeweler’s shop? Or was it at the tailor’s, whom you just had to see for the tear in your vest?”

  Valiant shook his head while he opened Clara’s handcuffs as easily as he’d bent the window bars. “Will you listen to that!” he whispered to her. “He has such a tough time trusting anybody. I told him it was an imbecile idea to climb up to the Fairy’s window like a roach. Did he listen to me? No.”

  He bent the bars between the two cells until he could slip through.

  “I suppose it was also my fault that they found the girls?” he said as he looked up at Jacob. “May I remind you that it wasn’t my idea to leave them in the wilderness? And it was definitely not Evenaugh Valiant who told the Goyl where to find them.” He winked at Jacob. “They put the scorpions on you, didn’t they? Oh, I wish I had seen that.”

  Somebody shouted insults at the Goyl in another cell. A guard yelled back, but no one came their way.

  “I saw your brother,”
Valiant whispered, as he forced open Jacob’s handcuffs. “If you can still call him that. Every inch of his skin is now Goyl, and he follows the Dark Fairy like a dog. She took him with her to the wedding of her beloved. Half the garrison went. That’s why I could risk coming here.”

  Clara stared at the stone bench where Will had lain. Valiant grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the window.

  “Up with you, Snow White!” he whispered, while he helped her up to the window ledge as effortlessly as if she weighed no more than a child. “There’s a rope out there that does almost all the climbing for you, and luckily this building isn’t guarded by snakes.”

  “What about Fox?” Jacob hissed. “We can’t leave without her! Do you know where she is?”

  Valiant pointed to the ceiling. “Right above us. And yes, I know you wouldn’t leave without her. But just one step at a time.”

  In contrast to the palace, the prison stalactite’s façade was as fissured as dripstone, and offered plenty of footholds, but Clara’s hands trembled after she had pushed herself through the window. She held on tight to the balustrade, while her feet sought purchase between the stones. Valiant, however, clung to the wall like an insect.

  “Just don’t look down!” he whispered to Clara, as he grabbed her arm. “It’s easier than you think.”

  Clara cast a doubtful glance at the rope. The Dwarf hadn’t climbed down from the main bridge like Jacob but from a narrow bridge barely wider than a footpath. The Rapunzelrope stretched up ten steep yards to the bridge’s girders.

  “Valiant’s right!” Jacob said, closing Clara’s hands around the rope. “Just look straight up. And stay under the bridge until we get back with Fox.”

  The golden rope seemed little more than a spider’s thread in the huge cavern and Clara climbed painfully slowly. Jacob followed her with his eyes until she finally pulled herself onto a metal strut of the bridge and hid in its shadow. Then he followed Valiant up the prison wall. Dwarfs and Goyl were well-known for their climbing skills. Jacob, however, didn’t even like hiking up a mountain, let alone free climbing on the inwardly tapering façade of a building that was hanging hundreds of feet above a hostile city. Luckily they didn’t have to climb far. Valiant had told the truth. Fox was imprisoned in the cell right above theirs.