Cornelia Funke - Reckless I: The Petrified Flesh

The night was breathing in the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock, the groan of a floorboard when Jacob slipped out of his room everything drowned in its silence. But Jacob loved the night. It was like a black cloak woven from freedom and danger, its darkness filling the rooms with the whisper of forgotten stories, of people who had lived in them long before he and his brother were born. The Kingdom thats what Will had named the apartment they called home, probably inspired by the yellowed pages of their grandfathers fairy-tale books filled with German words and images of castles and peasant houses that looked so different from the skyscrapers and apartment blocks outside. It had been easy to convince Will that the apartment was enchanted because it had seven rooms and was on the seventh floor. Two years ago Jacob had even made him believe that the whole building had been built by a Giant who lived in the basement. He could make Will believe anything.

Outside the stars were paled by the glaring lights of the city, and inside the large apartment was stale with their mothers sorrow. For Jacob sadness smelled like his mothers perfume, which defined the vast rooms as much as the faded photographs in the hallway and the old-fashioned furniture and wallpaper.

As usual she did not wake when Jacob stole into her room. They had fought once again, and for a moment he yearned to caress her sleeping face. Sometimes he dreamed of finding something that would wipe all that sadness off her facean enchanted handkerchief or a glove that enabled his fingers to paint a smile onto her lips. It wasnt just Will who had spent too many afternoons listening to their grandfathers tales.

Jacob opened the drawer of his mothers nightstand. The key lay under the pills that let her sleep. You again? It seemed to mock him when he took it out. Foolish boy. Do you nourish the hope that one day Ill unlock more than an empty room for you?

Maybe. At the age of twelve one could still imagine such miracles.

There was still a light burning in Wills roomhis brother was afraid of the dark. Will was afraid of many things in contrast to his older brother. Jacob made sure he was fast asleep before he unlocked the door of their fathers study. His mother hadnt opened it since his disappearance more than a year ago, but Jacob couldnt count the times he had sneaked into the empty room to search for the answers she didnt want to give.

The room was untouched as if John Reckless had last sat in his desk chair less than an hour ago. The sweater he had worn so often still hung over the chair, and a used tea-bag was desiccating on a plate next to his calendar, which still showed the last year.

Come back! Jacob wrote with his finger on the fogged-up window, on the dusty desk, and on the glass panels of the cabinet that held the antique pistols his father had collected. But the room remained silentand empty. He was twelve and no longer had a father.

Vanished.

As if he had never existed. As if he had been nothing but one of the childish stories Jacob and Will made up. Jacob kicked at the drawers he had searched in vain for so many nights, drowning in the helpless rage he felt each time he saw his fathers empty chair in front of the desk. Gone. He yanked the books and magazines from their dusty shelves and tore down the model airplanes hanging above the desk, ashamed at how proudly he had painted them with red and white varnish.

Come back! He wanted to scream it through the streets that cut their gleaming paths through the city blocks seven stories below, scream it at the thousand windows that punched squares of light into the night. But instead he just stood between the shelves listening to his own heartbeat, so loud in the silent room.

The sheet of paper slipped out of a book on airplane propulsion. Jacob only picked it up because he thought he recognized his fathers handwriting, though he quickly realized his error. Symbols and equations, a sketch of a peacock, a sun, two moons. None of it made any sense. Except for the one sentence he spotted on the reverse side:

The mirror will open only for he who cannot see himself.

The mirror. Jacob turned aroundand met his own reflection. He and his father had found it in one of the buildings huge basement rooms, shrouded in a dusty sheet, amongst old-fashioned furniture and suitcases filled with the forgotten belongings of his mothers family. Once the whole building had belonged to them. One of his mothers ancestors had built it, manifesting a sinister imagination when designing it his father would have added. The sculpted faces above the main entrance still frightened Will, staring at every visitor with gold-encrusted eyes.

Jacob moved closer to the mirror. It had been too heavy for the elevator. He could still see the scratches that the frame had left on the walls when three men had carried it up to the seventh floor, swearing and cursing all the way. Jacob had always believed the mirror to be older than anything he had ever seen, despite his fathers explanation that mirrors of that size could only be produced after the fifteenth century.

Its glass was as dark as if the night had leaked into it and so wavy one could barely recognize ones own reflection. Jacob touched the thorny rose stems winding across the silver frame, so real the blossoms seemed ready to wilt at any moment. In contrast to the rest of the room the mirror seemed never to gather dust. It hung between the shelves like a shimmering eye, a glassy abyss that cast back a warped reflection of everything John Reckless had left behind: his desk, the antique pistols, his booksand his elder son.

The mirror opens only for he who cannot see himself.

What was the meaning of that?

Jacob closed his eyes. He turned back to the mirror, and felt behind the frame for some kind of lock or latch.

Nothing.

Only his reflection looking him straight in the eye.

It took quite a while before he understood. His hand was barely large enough to cover the distorted reflection of his face. But the cool glass clung to his fingers as if it had been waiting for them, and suddenly the room the mirror showed him was no longer his fathers study.

Jacob turned around.

Moonlight fell through a narrow, glassless window onto walls built from gray stone roughly cut. The room they enclosed was round and much bigger than his fathers study. The dirty floorboards were covered with acorn shells, and the gnawed bones of birds, and cobwebs hung like veils from the rafters of a pointed roof.

Where was he?

The moonlight painted patterns on Jacobs skin when he walked toward the window. The bloody feathers of a bird stuck to its ledge, and far below he saw scorched walls and black hills with a few lost lights glimmering in the distance. Gone was the sea of houses, the bright streetseverything he knew was gone. And high among the stars were two moons, the smaller one as red as a rusty coin.

Jacob looked back at the mirror, the only thing that hadnt changed. And saw the fear on his face. But fear was an emotion Jacob almost enjoyed. It lured him to dark places, through forbidden doors, and far away from himself. Even the yearning for his father could be drowned in it.

There was no door in the gray walls, just a trapdoor in the floor. When Jacob opened it, he saw what was left of a burned staircase melting into the darkness below, and for a moment he thought he spotted a tiny figure climbing up the soot-covered remains. But before he could lean through the opening to have a closer look, a rasping sound made him wheel around.