Reckless (Free Preview)

Reckless

by

C o r n e l
i
a
 
 
F u n k e

1

Once Upon a Time

The night
breathed through the apartment like a dark animal.
 
The ticking of a clock.
 
The groan of a floorboard
as he slipped out of his room.
 
All was drowned by its silence.
 
But Jacob loved the night.
 
He
felt it on his skin like a promise.
 
Like
a cloak woven from freedom and danger.

Outside the
stars were paled by the glaring lights
of
 
the
city, and the large apartment was
stale with his mother’s sorrow.
 
She did not wake as Jacob stole into her room,
even when he carefully opened the drawer of her nightstand.
 
The key lay right next to the pills that let
her sleep.
 
Its cool metal nestled in his
hand as he stepped back out into the dark corridor.

There was still a
light burning in his brother’s room
—
Will was afraid of
the dark
—
and Jacob made sure he was fast asleep before unlocking the
door to their father’s study.
 
Their
mother had not entered there since his disappearance, but for Jacob this was
not the first time he had snuck into the empty room to search for the answers
she did not want to give.

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

Come back!
 
Jacob wrote
it with his finger on the fogged-up window, on the dusty desk, and on the glass
panels of the cabinet that still held the old pistols his father had collected.
 
But the room remained silent
—
and empty.
 
He was
twelve and no longer had a father.
 
Jacob
kicked at the drawers he had searched in vain for so many nights.
 
In a silent rage, he yanked the books and
magazines from the shelves, tore down the model airplanes that hung above the
desk, ashamed at how proud he had once been when his father had allowed him to
paint one with red 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.

The sheet of paper slipped out of a book on airplane
propulsion.
 
Jacob only picked it up
because he thought he recognized his father’s handwriting on it, 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.

Jacob turned around
—
and his glance was
met by his own reflection.

The mirror.
 
He still
remembered very well the day his father had mounted it on the wall.
 
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
old pistols, his books
—
and his elder son.

The glass was so uneven one could barely recognize one’s own
reflection, and it was darker than other mirrors, but the rose tendrils winding
across the silver frame looked so real they seemed ready to wilt at any moment.

THE MIRROR WILL OPEN ONLY FOR HE WHO CANNOT SEE HIMSELF.

Jacob closed his eyes.

He turned back to the mirror.

Felt behind the frame for some kind of lock or latch.

Nothing.

Only his reflection was looking him straight in the eye.

It took quite a while before Jacob 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 he saw in the mirror was no longer his father’s study.

Jacob turned around.

Moonlight fell through two narrow windows onto gray walls,
and his naked feet stood on wooden floorboards covered with acorn shells and
the gnawed bones of birds.
 
The room was
bigger than his father’s study, and above him cobwebs hung like veils from the
rafters of a roof.

Where was he?
 
He
stepped toward one of the windows, the moonlight painting patterns on his skin.
 
The bloody feathers of a bird stuck to
the rough ledge, and far below he saw scorched walls and black hills with a few
lost lights glimmering in the distance.
 
He
was in a tower.
 
Gone were the sea of
houses, the bright streets
—
everything 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, and in it he saw the fear on
his face.
 
But fear was an emotion he had
grown to like.
 
It lured him to dark
places, through forbidden doors, and away from himself, and 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 the
remains of a burnt staircase melting into the darkness below, and for a moment
he thought he spotted a tiny figure climbing up the stones.
 
But a sudden rasp made him wheel around.

Cobwebs fell down on him as something jumped onto his neck
with a hoarse growl.
 
It sounded like an
animal, but the contorted face flashing its teeth at his throat looked as pale
and wrinkled as an old man’s.
 
It was
much smaller than Jacob, and as spindly as an insect.
 
Its clothes seemed to be made of cobwebs, its
white hair hung down to its hips, and when Jacob grabbed for its thin neck, the
creature sank its yellow teeth deep into his hand.
 
Screaming, he punched the attacker off his
shoulder and stumbled toward the mirror.
 
The spidery creature got to its feet again,
licking his blood from its lips, but before it could reach him Jacob was
already pressing his hand on the reflection of his scared face.
 
Immediately, the scrawny figure disappeared,
together with the gray walls, and behind him Jacob could once again see his
father’s desk.

“Jacob?”

His brother’s voice barely registered over the beating of his
heart.
 
Jacob gasped for air and backed
away from the mirror.

“Jake?
 
Are you in
there?”

He pulled his sleeve over his mauled hand and quietly opened
the door.

Will’s eyes were wide with fear.
 
He’d had another bad dream.
 
Little brother.
 
Will always followed him like a puppy, and
Jacob protected him in the schoolyard and in the park.
 
Sometimes he even managed to forgive Will that
their mother loved him more.

“Mom says we shouldn’t go in there.”

“Since when do I do what Mom says?
 
If you tell on me, I won’t take you to the
park ever again.”

Jacob thought he could feel the glass of the mirror like ice
on the back of his neck.
 
Will peered
past him, but he quickly lowered his head as Jacob pulled the door shut behind
them.
 
Will.
 
Careful where Jacob was rash, tender where he
was
short-tempered,
and calm where he was restless.
 
Jacob took his hand.
 
Will noticed the blood on his fingers and gave
him a quizzical look, but Jacob just quietly pushed him into his room.

What the mirror had shown him was his.
 
His alone.

2

Twelve Years Later

The sun already stood low over the burnt walls of the ruin,
but Will was still asleep, exhausted from the pain that had been shaking him
for days.

One mistake, Jacob, after all those years of
caution.

He got up and covered Will with his coat.

All the years in which Jacob had a whole world to
himself.
 
All the years during
which that strange world had become home.
 
By the time Jacob was fifteen, he had already
snuck behind the mirror for weeks at a time.
 
When he was sixteen, he no longer even counted
the months, and still he had kept his secret.
 
Until the one time when he
had been in too much of a rush.
 
Stop
it, Jacob!
 
It can’t be changed.

The wounds on his brother’s throat had healed well, but the
stone was already showing on his left forearm.
 
The pale green veins were spreading toward his
hand, shimmering in Will’s skin like polished marble.

Just one mistake.

Jacob leaned against one of the sooty columns and looked up
toward the tower that housed the mirror.
 
He had never gone through it without first
making sure Will and his
mother were
asleep.
 
But since she had died there had just been one
more empty room on the other side, and he had been keen to press his hand
against the dark glass again and get away.
 
Far away.

Impatience, Jacob.
 
Say
it as it is.
 
After all, it’s one of your
most prominent character traits.

He could still see Will’s face appear behind him in the
mirror, distorted by the dark glass.
 
“Where
are you going, Jacob?”
 
A late flight
to
Boston
, a trip to
Europe
;
there had been so many excuses over the years.
 
Jacob was just as creative a liar as his
father had been.
 
But this time his hand
had already pressed against the cool glass
—
and
Will
had, of course, followed his example.

Little brother.

“He already smells like them.”
 
Fox appeared out of the shadows cast by the
crumbled walls.
 
Her fur was as red as if
autumn itself had lent her its colors, except where the trap had streaked the
hind leg with pale scars.
 
It had been
five years since Jacob had freed her, and the vixen had not left his side
since.
 
She guarded his sleep, warned him
of dangers that his dull human senses could not detect, and she gave advice
that was best followed.