Fearless (Mirrorworld) - By Cornelia Funke Page 0,35
dark magic, but the Witch Slayer’s head definitely had enough of that.
‘Did you ever find the wand?’ Fox turned away in disgust as Jacob pressed the shard against his skin.
‘Yes.’ What he didn’t tell her was that Chanute had nearly bled out. It was the worst kind of magic.
Just as he was just about to cut into his skin, a pain pierced his chest, unlike any Jacob had felt before. Something was digging its teeth into his heart. The shard dropped from his hand, and the scream that crossed his lips was so loud that a window opened on the other side of the street.
‘Jacob?’ Fox grabbed him by the shoulders.
He wanted to say something, anything reassuring, but all he could utter was a wheeze, and he could only manage to stay on his feet because Fox held him up. His old self wanted to hide himself from her, too proud to be seen in such a vulnerable state, so helpless. But the pain just wouldn’t go away.
Breathe, Jacob. Breathe. It’ll pass.
The Dark Fairy’s name had six letters, but he could recall only five of them.
He leant against the door and pressed his hand to his chest, certain that he’d see his own blood seep through his fingers. The pain subsided, but the memory of it still quickened his breath.
‘It’s not going to be pleasant.’ The understatement of the year, Alma.
Fox picked up the shard. It was broken, but there was no blood on it. Fox stared in disbelief at the clean glass. Then she pulled Jacob’s hand off his chest. The moth above his heart had a spot on its left wing now. It was shaped like a tiny skull.
‘The Fairy is claiming her name back.’ He could barely speak. He could still feel the scream in his throat.
Pull yourself together, Jacob. Oh, his damned pride. He held out his hand, even though it was trembling. ‘Give me the shard.’ Fox dropped it into her pocket and pulled his sleeve over his bare arm.
‘No,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think you have enough strength to take it off me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH
The Waterman turned out to tax Nerron’s nerves the least. Eaumbre – when his name crossed his scaly lips, you felt as though you had the mud of his pond in your ears. Even Louis was bearable, though he was constantly asking about their next meal or riding after every peasant girl. But Lelou! The Bug was talking all the time, at least whenever he wasn’t scribbling in his notebook. Every castle above the winter-bare vineyards, every collapsed church, every town name on a weathered signpost – each triggered a flood of commentary. Names, dates, royal gossip. His chatter was like the hum of a bumblebee in Nerron’s ear.
‘Lelou!’ he interrupted at some point as the Bug was explaining why the village they were riding through was certainly not the birthplace of Puss in Boots. ‘See this?’
Arsene Lelou fell silent as he cast a confused look at the three objects Nerron had poured into his hand from a leather pouch. It took him a few moments to realise what they were.
‘You’re seeing right!’ Nerron said. ‘A finger, an eye, a tongue. They all annoyed me. What do you think I’ll cut out of you?’
Silence. Delicious silence.
Nerron had picked up the Three Souvenirs, as he lovingly called them, in one of the onyx’s torture chambers. The objects never failed to work. Maintaining a bad reputation was hard work, especially if, like Nerron, you didn’t actually find pleasure in cutting off fingers or scooping out eyes.
Lelou’s silence held until they saw the walls of the abbey of Fontevaud appear ahead of them. One glance at the rotten wooden gate and they knew that the abbey was deserted. The cloisters were overgrown with nettles, and the sparse cells housed no more than mice. The only cemetery they could find consisted of merely eight crosses with the names and dates of deceased monks. None of the graves were older than Sixty years, but yet, if the Bug was right, the hand would have been buried here more than three hundred years ago.
Nerron felt the urge to cut Lelou into thin, moonstone-pale slices. The Bug saw it in his eyes and quickly hid behind Eaumbre. Lelou had not forgotten the Three Souvenirs.
‘The farmer,’ he stammered, pointing a trembling finger at an old man who was digging up potatoes from a fallow field behind the abbey. ‘Maybe he knows something.’