1
Waiting
He still wasn’t back.
‘I won’t stay long.’ Fox wiped the rain off her face. With
Jacob, this could mean anything. Sometimes he stayed for
weeks. Sometimes months.
The ruin lay deserted as usual, and the silence between
the scorched walls made her shiver nearly as much as the
rain. The human skin warmed so much less, yet Fox now
shifted into the vixen ever more rarely. All too clearly she
had begun to feel how the fur stole the years from her—even
without Jacob reminding her.
He’d held her so close before he left, as if he wanted
to take her warmth with him into the world where he was
born. Something frightened him, though he didn’t admit
it, of course. He was still like a boy who thought he could
outrun his own shadow.
They’d been way up in the north, in Sveriga and Norga,
where even now the forests were still buried in thick snow
and where hunger drove the wolves into the towns. Before
that they’d traveled so far south that the vixen still found
desert sand in her fur. Thousands of miles… cities and countries
she’d never heard of before, and all supposedly to find
an Hourglass. But Fox knew Jacob too well to believe that.
At her feet, the first wild primroses were springing up
between the shattered flagstones. She snapped off one of the
delicate stalks, and the dew rolling off the flowers was still
cold. It had been a long winter, and Fox could feel the past
months like frost on her skin. So much had happened since
the previous summer. All that fear for Jacob’s brother…
and for Jacob. Too much fear. Too much love. Too much
of everything.
She tucked the pale yellow flower into her lapel. Hands…
they made up for the chilly skin her human body came in.
Whenever she wore her fur, Fox missed reading the world
with her fingers.
‘I won’t stay long.’ With a quick movement, she grabbed a Thumbling who’d
pushed his tiny hand into her jacket pocket. He only let go of
the gold coin after she shook him as hard as the vixen would
a captured mouse. The little thief bit at her fingers before
he dashed off, muttering insults. Jacob always tucked a few
coins into her pockets before he left. He hadn’t adjusted
to the fact that she now managed quite well in the human
world—even without him.
What was he afraid of?
Fox had asked him, after they’d ridden for days from one
wretched village to the next, only to end up standing beneath
some dead sultan’s dried-up pomegranate tree. She’d asked
him again, when Jacob had gotten himself drunk three nights
in a row after they’d found an overgrown garden with nothing
but a dried-up well in it.
‘It’s nothing. Don’t worry.’ A kiss on
the cheek and that careless smile she’d been able see right
through since she was twelve.
‘It’s nothing…’ She knew that he missed his brother, but this was something
else. Fox looked up at the tower. The charred stones
seemed to whisper a name. Clara. Was that it?
Her heart still tightened whenever she thought of the
brook and the two dead larks. Jacob’s hand in Clara’s hair,
his mouth on her mouth. So ravenous.
Maybe that was why she’d nearly gone with him—for
the first time. She’d even followed Jacob up into the tower,
but in front of that mirror her courage had deserted her. Its
glass seemed to her like dark ice that would freeze her heart.
Fox turned her back to the tower.
Jacob was going to come back.
He always came back.
Copyright © 2021 by Cornelia Funke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
