Jacob pulled the medallion from his shirt and unhooked it from the chain around his neck. Miranda stirred as soon as he placed it next to her, and Jacob took a step back as she whispered his name in her dream. It wasn't a good dream, and she opened her eyes with a start.
So beautiful. Jacob's fingers sought the bite marks on his hand.
"Since when do you sleep away the night?"
For a moment she seemed to think he was still the dream that had woken her. But then she noticed the medallion lying next to her. She opened it and took out the petal.
"So that's how you hid yourself from me." Jacob wasn't sure what he saw on her face. Horror or joy. Love or hatred. Maybe something of it all. "Who told you how?"
"You did."
Her moths immediately swarmed at his face as he took a step toward her.
"You have to help me, Miranda."
She got up and brushed moss from her skin.
"I used to sleep away the nights because they reminded me too much of you," she said. "But that was a long time ago. Now it's just a bad habit."
The wings of her moths tinged the night air red.
"I see you haven't come alone," she said, crumbling the lily petal between her fingers. "And you brought a Goyl."
"He's my brother." This time the moths let him approach her. "It's a Fairy's curse, Miranda."
"But you've come to the wrong Fairy."
"You must know a way to break it."
She seemed to be made of the shadows that surrounded her, of the moonlight and the night's dew on the leaves. He'd been so happy when this was all he knew. But there was so much more.
"My sister isn't one of us anymore." Miranda turned her back to him. "She betrayed us for the Goyl."
"Then help me!"
Jacob reached out his hand, but she pushed it away.
"Why should I?"
"I had to leave! I couldn't stay here forever."
"That's what my sister said. But Fairies don't leave. We belong to the place that brought us into this world. You knew that as well as she did."
So beautiful. The memories spun a web in the darkness, entangling them both.
"Help him, Miranda. Please!"
She raised her hand and brushed her fingers over his lips.
"Kiss me!"
It felt as if he were kissing the night, or the wind. Her moths were piercing his skin, and all he had lost tasted like ashes in his mouth. When he let her go, he thought for a brief moment he could see his own death in her eyes.
A fox was barking outside. Fox always claimed she could feel when he was in danger.
Miranda turned her back to him.
"There is only one remedy against this spell," she said.
"What is it?"
"You will have to destroy my sister."
Jacob's heart stopped, for one beat, and he felt his own fear clammy on his skin.
The Dark Fairy.
"She turns her enemies into the wine she drinks or into the iron form which her lover builds his bridges." Even Chanute's voice had sounded hoarse when he'd spoken of her.
"But she can't be killed," he said. "Any more than you can."
"For a Fairy, there are far worse things than death."
For a moment, her beauty was like a poisonous flower.
"How long does your brother have left?" she asked.
"Two, maybe three days."
Voices came to them through the dark. The other Fairies. Jacob had never found out how many of them there were.
Miranda gazed at her bed as if remembering the times they had shared in it. "My sister is with the Goyl, in his main fortress."
That was a ride of at least six days.
It would be too late. Much too late.
Jacob wasn't sure which he felt more, the despair or the relief.
Miranda reached out. One of her moths perched delicately on her finger.
"You can still make it if I give you some time."
Fox began to bark again.
"One of us once cursed a princess to die on her fifteenth birthday. But we suspended that curse. With a deep sleep."
In his mind's eye, Jacob saw the castle, wrapped in thorns, and the sleeping beauty in the bedchamber at the top of the tower...
"She died anyway," he said. "Nobody ever woke her."
Miranda shrugged. "I'll make your brother sleep. It's up to you to make sure he is awoken. But not before you have broken my sister's power."
The moth on her hand was preening its wings.
"The girl who is with you. She belongs to you brother?" Miranda brushed her naked foot over the ground, and the moonlight drew Clara's face on the dark earth.
"Yes," Jacob replied — and he felt something he didn't quite comprehend.
"Does she love him?"
"Yes," he said. "I think so."
"She'd better, for should she not, he will sleep himself to death." Miranda wiped away the moonlight image. "Have you ever met my sister?"
Jacob shook his head. He had seen blurry photographs, a sketch in a newspaper — the Demon Lover, the Fairy Witch, who makes stone grow in the flesh of humans...
"She is the fairest of us all." Miranda's eyes traced the features of his face as if trying to recall the love she'd once felt. "Don't look at her for too long," she said softly. "And whatever she promises you, do exactly as I say, or your brother is lost."
Fox's bark rang through the night again. I'm fine, Fox, thought Jacob. All will be well. Even if he did not yet quite understand how.
He took Miranda's hand. Six fingers, as white as the flowers on the lake. She let him kiss her again. "What if the price for my help is that you come back to me?" she whispered. "Would you do it?"
"Is that your price?" he asked, though he was terrified of the answer.
She smiled. "No," she said. "My price will be paid when you destroy my sister."
27
So Far Away
Will had not once taken his eyes off the island. It was painful for Clara to see the fear on his face — fear of himself and of what Jacob would learn on the island but, first and foremost, fear that his brother wouldn't come back, that he would be left alone with his skin of stone.
He had forgotten Clara. But she still went to him. The stone didn't yet completely conceal the one she loved, and he was so alone.
"Jacob will be back soon, Will. I'm sure."
He didn't turn around.
"With Jacob, you never know when he'll come back," he said. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."
They were both here: the stranger from the cave, whose iciness she could still taste on her tongue like poison, and the other one, who had stood in the hospital corridor in front of his mother's room and smiled at her every time she walked past. Will. She missed him so much.
"He'll come back," she said. "I know it. And he'll find a way. He loves you. Even though he's not very good at showing it."
Will shook his head.
"You don't know him," he said, turning his back to the lake as though he was sick of seeing his reflection in the water. "Jacob has never been able to accept that not everything turns out right, that some things and some people just get lost."