Chapter 13 - Fenoglio

“I do practice remembering, Nain,” I said. “Writing and reading and remembering.”

“That you should!” said Nain sharply. “Do you know what happens each time you write a thing down? Each time you name it? You sap its strength.”

– Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Seeing Stone

It wasn’t easy to get past the guards at the gate of Ombra after dark, but Fenoglio knew them all.

He had written many love poems for the heavily built oaf who barred his way with his spear tonight – and very successful they were, he had been told. Judging by the fool’s appearance, he’d be needing to call on Fenoglio’s services again.

“But mind you’re back before midnight, scribbler!” the ugly fellow grunted before letting him pass. “That’s when the Ferret takes over from me, and he’s not interested in your poems, even though his girl can read.”

“Thanks for the warning!” said Fenoglio, giving the stupid fellow a false smile as he pushed past him. As if he didn’t know that the Ferret was not to be trifled with! His stomach still hurt when he remembered how that sharp-nosed fellow had dug the shaft of his spear into it, when he’d tried pushing past him with a couple of well-chosen words. No, there’d be no bribing the Ferret, not with poems or any other written gifts. The Ferret wanted gold, and Fenoglio didn’t have too much of that, or at least not enough to waste it on a guard at the city gates.

“Midnight!” he cursed quietly as he stumbled down the steep path. “As if that wasn’t just when the strolling players wake up!”

His landlady’s son carried the torch ahead of him. Ivo was nine years old and full of insatiable curiosity about all the wonders of his world. He was always fighting his sister for the honor of carrying the torch when Fenoglio went to visit the strolling players. Fenoglio paid Ivo’s mother a few coins a week for a room in the attic. The price included the washing, cooking, and mending that Minerva did for him, too. In return, Fenoglio told her children bedtime stories and listened patiently as she told him what a stubborn oaf her husband could be at times. The fact was, Fenoglio had struck lucky.

The boy scurried along ahead of him with increasing impatience. He could hardly wait to reach the brightly colored tents, where music played and firelight shone among the trees. He kept looking around reproachfully, as if Fenoglio were taking his time on purpose. Did he think an old man could go as fast as a grasshopper?

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The Motley Folk had pitched camp where the ground was so stony that nothing would grow on it, behind the cottages where the peasants who farmed the Laughing Prince’s land lived. Now that the prince of Ombra no longer wanted to hear their jests and songs, they came less often than before, but luckily the prince’s grandson wanted players to entertain him on his birthday, so this Sunday they would at last come streaming through the city gates: fire-eaters and tightrope-walkers, animal-tamers and knife throwers, actors, buffoons, and many a minstrel whose songs came from Fenoglio’s pen.

For Fenoglio liked writing for the Motley Folk: merry songs, sad songs, songs to make you laugh or weep, as the spirit moved him. He couldn’t earn more than a few copper coins for those songs; the strolling players’ pockets were always empty. If his words were to earn gold then he must write for princes or for a rich merchant. But when he made the words dance and pull faces, when he wanted to write tales of peasants and robbers, of ordinary folk who didn’t live in castles or eat from golden plates, then he wrote for the strolling players.

It had taken some time for them to accept him into their tents. Only when more and more wandering minstrels were singing Fenoglio’s songs, and their children were asking for his stories, did they stop turning him away. And now even their king invited Fenoglio to sit beside his fire, as he had tonight. Although not a drop of royal blood ran in his veins, this man was known as the Black Prince. The Prince took good care of his Motley subjects, and they had chosen him to lead them twice already. It was better not to ask where all the gold he gave so generously to the sick and crippled came from, but Fenoglio knew one thing: He himself had invented the Prince.

Oh yes, I made them all! he thought, as the music came more clearly through the night air. He had made up the Prince and the tame bear that followed him like a dog, and CloudDancer who, sad to say, fell off his rope, and many more, even the two rulers who believed that they laid down the law in this world. Fenoglio had not yet seen all his creations, but every time he suddenly met one in flesh and blood it made his heart beat faster – although he couldn’t always remember whether any particular one of them had really sprung from his own pen, or came from somewhere else. .

There were the tents at last, bright as windblown flowers in the black night. Ivo began running so fast that he almost fell over his own feet. A dirty boy with hair as unkempt as an alley cat’s fur came out to meet them, hopping on one leg. He grinned challengingly at Ivo – and ran away on his hands. Lord, these players’ children performed such contortions, you might think they had no bones in their bodies!

“Off you go, then!” growled Fenoglio when Ivo looked pleadingly at him. After all, he didn’t need the torch anymore. Several fires were burning among the tents, which often consisted of little more than a few grubby lengths of cloth stretched over ropes between the trees. Fenoglio looked around with a sigh of satisfaction as the boy raced away. Yes, this was just as he’d imagined the Inkworld as he wrote his story: bright and noisy, full of life. The air smelled of smoke, of roast meat, of rosemary and thyme, horses, dogs and dirty clothes, pine needles and burning wood.

Oh, he loved it! He loved the hurry and bustle, he even loved the dirt. He loved the way life here was lived before his very eyes, not behind locked doors. You could learn anything in this world: how the smith shaped the metal of a sickle in the fire, how the dyer mixed his dyes, how the tanner removed hair from leather and how the cobbler cut it to shape to make shoes. Nothing happened behind closed doors. It was all going on, in the alleyways, on the road, in the marketplace, here among shabby tents, and he, Fenoglio – still as curious as a boy – could watch, although the stench of the leather was mordant and the dye tubs sometimes took his breath 80

 

away. Yes, he liked this world of his. He liked it very much – although he couldn’t help seeing that not everything was working out the way he had intended.

It was his own fault. I should have written a sequel, thought Fenoglio, making his way through the crowd. I could still write one, here and now, and change everything, if only I had someone to read it aloud! Of course he had looked for another Silvertongue, but in vain. No Meggie, no Mortimer, not even someone like that man Darius who was more than likely to botch the job .. and Fenoglio could play only the part of a writer whose fine words didn’t exactly keep him in luxury, while the two princes he had invented ruled his world after their own fashion. Annoying, extremely annoying.

One of those princes above all gave him cause for concern the Adderhead.

He reigned to the south of the forest, high above the sea, sitting on the silver throne of the Castle of Night. As an invented character, not by any means a bad one. A bloodhound, a ruthless slave driver – but after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story. If you can keep them under control. It was for this purpose that Fenoglio had thought up the Laughing Prince, a ruler who would rather laugh at the broad jokes of the strolling players than wage war, and his magnificent son, Cosimo. Who could have guessed that Cosimo would simply die, and then his father would collapse with grief like a cake taken out of the oven too soon?

Not my fault! How often Fenoglio had told himself that. Not my idea, not my fault! But it had happened all the same. As if some diabolical scribbler had intervened, going on with the story in his place and leaving him, Fenoglio, the creator of this whole world, with nothing but the role of a poor writer!

Oh, stop that. You’re not so poor, Fenoglio, he thought as he stopped beside a minstrel sitting among the tents, singing one of Fenoglio’s own songs. No, he wasn’t poor. The Laughing Prince, who was now the Prince of Sighs, would hear only Fenoglio’s laments for his dead son, and Balbulus, the most famous illuminator far and wide, had to record the stories Fenoglio wrote for the prince’s grandson, Jacopo, in his own hand, on the most costly of parchment. No, he really wasn’t so poor!

And moreover, didn’t his words now seem to him better in a minstrel’s mouth than pressed between the pages of a book, to lie there gathering dust? He liked to think of them as free, owing no one allegiance. They were too powerful to be given in printed form to any fool who might do God knew what with them. Looked at that way, it was reassuring to think that there were no printed books in this world. Books here were handwritten, which made them so valuable that only princes could afford them.

Other folk had to store the words in their heads or listen to minstrels singing them.

A little boy tugged at Fenoglio’s sleeve. His tunic had holes in it, and his nose was running.

“Inkweaver!” He brought out a mask from behind his back, the kind of mask worn by the actors, and quickly put it over his eyes. There were feathers, light brown and blue, stuck to the cracked leather. “Who am I, Inkweaver?” “Hmm!” Fenoglio wrinkled his lined brow as if he had to think hard about it.

The mouth below the mask drooped in disappointment. “The Bluejay! I’m the Bluejay, of course!”

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“Of course!” Fenoglio pinched the child’s red little nose.

“Will you tell us another story about him today? Please!”

“Maybe! I must admit, I imagine his mask as rather more impressive than yours. What do you think? Shouldn’t you look for a few more feathers?”

The boy took off his mask and looked at it crossly. “They’re not very easy to find.”

“Take a look down by the river. Even blue jays aren’t safe from the cats that go hunting there.”

He was about to move away, but the boy held on tight. Thin as the children of the strolling players might be, they had strong little hands.

“Just one story. Please, Inkweaver!”

Two other children joined him, a girl and a boy. They looked expectantly at Fenoglio. Ah, yes, the Bluejay stories. He’d always told good robber tales – his own grandchildren had liked them, too, back in the other world. But the stories he thought up here were much better. You heard them everywhere these days: The Incredible Deeds of the Bravest of Robbers, The Noble and Fearless Bluejay. Fenoglio still remembered the night he had made up the Bluejay. His hand had been trembling with rage as he wrote. “The Adderhead’s caught another of the strolling players,” the Black Prince had told him that night. “It was Crookback this time. They hanged him at noon yesterday.”

Crookback – one of his own characters! A harmless fellow who could stand on his head longer than anyone else. “Who does this prince think he is?” Fenoglio had cried out into the night, as if the Adderhead could hear him. “I am lord of life and death in this world, I, Fenoglio, no one else!”

And the words had gone down on paper, wild and angry as the robber he created that night. The Bluejay was all that Fenoglio would have liked to be in the world he had made: free as a bird, subject to no lord, fearless, noble (sometimes witty, too), a man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and protected the weak from the tyranny of the strong in a world where there was no law to do it. .

Fenoglio felt another tug at his sleeve. “Please, Inkweaver! Just one story!” The boy was really persistent. He loved listening to stories and would very likely make a famous minstrel someday.

“They say the Bluejay stole the Adderhead’s lucky charm!” whispered the little boy. “The hanged man’s finger bone to protect him from the White Women. They say the Bluejay wears it around his own neck now.”

“Do they indeed?” Fenoglio raised his eyebrows, always a very effective move, thick and bushy as they were. “Well, I’ve heard of an even more daring deed, but I must have a word with the Black Prince first.”

“Oh, please, Inkweaver!” They were clinging to his sleeves, almost tearing off the expensive braid he’d had sewn on the coarse fabric for a few coins, so as not to look as poverty-stricken as the scribes who wrote wills and letters in the marketplace. “No!” he said sternly, freeing his sleeve.

“Later, maybe. Now go away!”

The boy with the runny nose looked at him so sadly that, for a moment, Fenoglio was reminded of his grandson. Pippo always used to look like that when he brought Fenoglio a book and put it on his lap with a hopeful expression. .

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Ah, children! thought Fenoglio, as he walked toward the fire where he had seen the Black Prince.

Children, they’re the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world –

any world. The very best of all.

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Chapter 14 – The Black Prince

“So bears can make their own souls … ,” she said. There was a great deal in the world to know.

– Philip Pullman, Northern Lights

 

The Black Prince was not alone. Of course not; his bear was with him, as usual. He was crouching by the fire behind his master, like a shaggy shadow. Fenoglio still remembered the words he had used when he first created the Prince at the very beginning of Inkheart. He recited them quietly to himself as he approached him: “An orphan boy with skin almost as black as his curly hair, as quick with his knife as his tongue, always ready to protect those he loved – his two younger sisters, a maltreated bear, or his best friend, his very best friend, Dustfinger…

” . . who would have died an extremely dramatic death if it had been left to me, all the same!”

added Fenoglio quietly as he waved to the Prince. “But luckily my black friend doesn’t know that, or I don’t suppose I’d be very welcome at his fireside!”

The Prince returned his greeting. He probably thought he was called the Black Prince because of the color of his skin, but Fenoglio knew better. He had stolen the name from a history book in his old world. A famous knight once bore it, a king’s son who was a great robber, too. Would he have been pleased to think that his name had been given to a knife-thrower, king of the strolling players? If not, there’s nothing he can do about it, thought Fenoglio, for his own story came to its end long ago.

On the Prince’s left sat the hopelessly incompetent physician who had almost broken Fenoglio’s jaw pulling out a tooth, and to the right of him crouched Sootbird, a lousy fire-eater who knew as little of his trade as the physician knew of drawing teeth. Fenoglio was not quite sure about the physician, but there was no way he had invented Sootbird. Heaven knew where he had come from! All who saw him inefficiently breathing fire, in terror of the blaze, instantly found another name springing to mind: the name of Dustfinger the fire-dancer, tamer of the flames. .

The bear grunted as Fenoglio sat down by the fire with his master and scrutinized him with little yellow eyes, as if to work out how much meat there was left to gnaw on such old bones. Your own fault, Fenoglio told himself: Why did you have to make the Prince’s companion a tame bear? A dog would have done just as well. The market traders told anyone who would listen that the bear was a man under a spell, bewitched by fairies or brownies (they couldn’t decide which), but Fenoglio knew better. The bear was just a bear, a real bear who loved the Black Prince for freeing him, years ago, from the ring through his nose and from his former master, who beat him with a thorny stick to make him dance in marketplaces.

Six more men were sitting beside the fire with the Black Prince. Fenoglio knew only two of them.

One was an actor whose name Fenoglio kept forgetting. The other was a professional strong man who earned his living performing in marketplaces: tearing apart chains, lifting grown men into the air, bending iron bars. They all fell silent as Fenoglio joined them. They tolerated his company, but he was not by any means one of them. Only the Prince smiled at him. “Ah, the Inkweaver!” he said. “Do you have a new song about the Bluejay for us?”

Fenoglio accepted the goblet of hot wine and honey that one of the men gave him at a sign from the Prince and sat down on the stony ground. His old bones didn’t really like hunkering down 84

 

there, even on a night as mild as this, but the strolling players did not care for chairs or other forms of seating.

“I really came to give you this,” he said, putting his hand into the breast of his doublet. He looked around before handing the Prince the sealed letter, but in this milling throng it was difficult to see if anyone who didn’t belong to the Motley Folk was watching them.

The Prince took the letter with a nod and tucked it into his belt. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome!” replied Fenoglio, trying to ignore the bear’s bad breath. The Prince couldn’t write, any more than most of his Motley subjects could, but Fenoglio was happy to do it for him, particularly when it was something like this he wanted. The letter was for one of the Laughing Prince’s head foresters. His men had attacked the strolling players’ women and children on the road three times. No one else seemed to mind, neither the Laughing Prince in his grief nor the men who were supposed to do justice in his place, for the victims were only strolling players. So the king of the players himself was going to do something about it: The forester would find Fenoglio’s letter on his doorstep that very night. Its contents would prevent him from sleeping in peace and with luck would keep him away from women wearing the brightly colored skirts of the Motley Folk in the future. Fenoglio was rather proud of his threatening letters, almost as proud as he was of his robber songs.

“Have you heard the latest, Inkweaver?” The Prince stroked his bear’s black muzzle. “The Adderhead has put a price on the Bluejay’s head.”

“The Bluejay?” Fenoglio swallowed his wine the wrong way, and the physician thumped him on the back so hard that he spilled the hot drink over his fingers. “That’s a good one!” he gasped, once he had his breath back. “Well, don’t let anyone say words are just noise and hot air! The Adder will have to search a long time for that particular robber!”

How oddly they were looking at him! As if they knew more than he did. But more about what?

“Haven’t you heard yet, Inkweaver?” said Sootbird quietly.

“Your songs seem to be coming true! The Adderhead’s tax gatherers have already been robbed twice by a man in a bird mask, and one of his game wardens, a man famous for enjoying every kind of cruelty, is said to have been found dead in the forest with a feather in his mouth. Guess what bird the feather came from?”

Fenoglio glanced incredulously at the Prince, but he was looking at the fire, stirring the embers with a stick.

“But .. but that’s astonishing!” cried Fenoglio – and then hastily lowered his voice as he saw the others looking anxiously around. “Astonishing news, I mean!” he went on in an undertone.

“Whatever’s going on – well, I’ll write another song this minute! Suggest something! Go on! What would you like the Bluejay to do next?”

The Prince smiled, but the physician looked at Fenoglio with scorn. “You talk as if it were all a game, Inkweaver!” he said.

“You sit in your own room, scribbling a few words on paper, but whoever’s playing the part of your robber risks his neck, for he’s certainly made of flesh and blood, not just words!”

“Yes, but no one knows his face, because the Bluejay wears a mask. Very clever of you, 85

 

Inkweaver. How is the Adderhead to know what face to look for? A mask like that is very useful.

Anyone can wear it.” It was the actor speaking. Baptista. Yes, of course, that was his name. Did I make him up? Fenoglio wondered. Well, never mind; no one knew more about masks than Baptista, perhaps because his face was disfigured by pockmarks. Many of the actors got him to make them leather masks showing laughter or tears.

“The songs give a detailed description of him, though.” Sootbird gave Fenoglio a searching look.

“So they do!” Baptista leaped to his feet, put his hand to his shabby belt as if he wore a sword there, and peered around as if looking for an enemy. “He’s said to be tall. That’s no surprise.

Heroes usually are.” Baptista began prowling up and down on tiptoe. “His hair,” he said, stroking his own head, “is dark, dark as moleskin, if we’re to believe the songs. Now, that’s unusual. Most heroes have golden hair, whatever you take golden hair to look like. We know nothing about his origins, but one thing’s for sure” – and here Baptista assumed a haughty expression “none but the purest princely blood flows in his veins. How else would he be so brave and noble?”

“No, you’re wrong there!” Fenoglio interrupted him. “The Bluejay is a man of the people. What kind of a robber gets born in a castle?”

“You heard the poet!” Baptista looked as if he were wiping the haughtiness right away from his brow with his hand. The other men laughed. “So let’s get to the face behind the feathered mask.”

Baptista ran his fingers over his own ruined face. “Of course he’s handsome and distinguished –

and pale as ivory! The songs don’t say so, but we know that a hero’s skin is pale. With due respect, Your Highness!” he added, bowing mockingly to the Black Prince.

“Oh, don’t mind me! I’ve no objection!” was all the Prince said, his expression unchanged. “Don’t forget the scar!” said Sootbird. “The scar on his left arm where the dogs bit him. It’s mentioned in every song. Come along, roll up your sleeves. Let’s see if the Bluejay is by any chance here among us!” He looked challengingly around him, but only the Strong Man, laughing, pushed up his sleeve. The others sat in silence.

The Prince smoothed back his long hair. He had three knives at his belt. The strolling players, even the man they called their king, were forbidden to carry arms, but why should they keep laws that failed to protect them? Folk said the Prince was so skillful with a knife that he could aim at the eye of a dragonfly and hit it. Just as Fenoglio had once written.

“Whatever he looks like, this man who’s making my songs come true, I drink to him. Let the Adderhead search for the man I described. He’ll never find him!” Fenoglio raised his goblet to the company. He was feeling in the best of moods, almost intoxicated, and certainly not with the terrible wine. Well, he thought, and who says so, Fenoglio? You do! You write something, and it comes true! Even without anyone to read it aloud…

But the Strong Man spoiled his mood. “To be honest, Inkweaver, I don’t feel like celebrating,” he growled. “They say the Adderhead is paying good silver these days for the tongue of every minstrel who sings songs mocking him. And they also say he has quite a collection of tongues already.”

“Tongues?” Instinctively, Fenoglio felt his own. “Does he mean my songs, too?”

No one answered him. The men said nothing. The sound of a woman singing came from a tent behind them – a lullaby as sweet and peaceful as if it came from another world – a world of 86

 

which one could only dream.

“I’m always telling my Motley subjects: Don’t go near the Castle of Night!” The Prince put a piece of meat dripping with fat in the bear’s mouth, wiped his knife on his trousers, and returned it to his belt. “To think that we’re just food for crows to the Adderhead – mere carrion! But since the Laughing Prince took to weeping instead of laughing, they’ve all had empty pockets and empty bellies. That’s what sends them over there. There are many rich merchants in Argenta, far more than on this side of the forest. It’s not for nothing they call it the Silver Land.”

Devil take it. Fenoglio rubbed his aching knees. What had become of his good mood? Vanished –

like the fragrance of a flower trodden underfoot. Gloomily, he took another sip of honeyed wine.

The children came flocking around him again, begging for a story, but Fenoglio sent them away.

He couldn’t make up stories when he was in a bad temper.

“And there’s another thing,” said the Prince. “The Strong Man picked up a boy and a girl in the forest today. They told a strange story: They said Basta, Capricorn’s knife-man, was back, and they’re here to warn an old friend of mine about him Dustfinger. I expect you’ve heard of him?”

“Mmph?” Fenoglio nearly choked on his wine with surprise. “Dustfinger? Yes, of course, the fire-eater.”

“The best there’s ever been.” The Prince cast a quick glance at Sootbird, but he was just showing the physician a sore tooth. “He was thought to be dead,” the Prince went on, lowering his voice.

“No one’s heard anything of him for over ten years. There were countless tales of how and where he died, but luckily none of them seem to be true. However, Dustfinger’s not the only man the boy and girl are looking for. The girl was also asking about an old man, a writer with a face like a tortoise. You, by any chance?” Fenoglio couldn’t find a word in his head that would do for an answer. Saying no more, the Prince took his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Come along!” he added, as the bear lumbered along behind them, grunting. “The two of them were half-starved, said something about being deep in the Wayless Wood. The women are just feeding them now.”

A boy and a girl .. Dustfinger . . Fenoglio’s thoughts were racing, although unfortunately his head was not at its clearest after two goblets of wine.

More than a dozen children were squatting in the grass under a lime tree on the outskirts of the camp. Two women were ladling out soup for them. The children greedily spooned the thin brew up from the wooden bowls that had been put into their dirty hands.

“See how many they’ve rounded up again!” the Prince whispered to Fenoglio. “We shall all go hungry because of their soft hearts.”

Fenoglio just nodded as he looked at the thin faces. He knew how often the Black Prince himself picked up hungry children. If they turned out to have any talent for juggling, standing on their heads, or other tricks that would bring a smile to people’s faces and lure a few coins out of their pockets, then the Motley Folk took them in and let them join the company of the strolling players, going from market to market, from town to town. “There they are.” The Prince pointed to two heads bending particularly low over their bowls. When Fenoglio moved toward them, the girl raised her head as if he had called her name. Incredulously, she stared at him – and put down her spoon.

Meggie.

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Fenoglio returned her gaze with such astonishment that she had to smile. Yes, it really was Meggie. He remembered that smile very well, even if she hadn’t often had reason to show it when they were imprisoned together in Capricorn’s house.

She leaped up, pushed past the other children, and flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, I knew you were still here!” she cried, between laughter and tears. “Did you really have to write those wolves into your story? And then the Night-Mares and the Redcaps – they threw stones at Farid and went for his face with fingers like claws. It was a good thing Farid could make afire, but still. .”

Fenoglio opened his mouth – and closed it again, helplessly. His head was full of a thousand questions. How did she get here? What about Dustfinger? Where was her father? And what about Capricorn? Was he dead? Had her plan worked? If so, why was Basta still alive? The questions drowned each other out like humming insects, and Fenoglio dared not ask any of them while the Black Prince stood there, never taking his eyes off him.

“I see you know these two,” he remarked.

Fenoglio just nodded. Yes, where had he seen the boy sitting beside Meggie before? Wasn’t he with Dustfinger on that strange day when, for the first time, he met one of his own creations face to face?

“Er . . they’re relations of mine,” he stammered. What a pitiful lie for a storyteller!

The Prince’s mocking eyes sparkled. “Relations .. well, imagine that! I must say they don’t look very like you.”

Meggie unwound her arms from Fenoglio’s neck and stared at the Prince.

“Meggie,” said Fenoglio, “may I introduce the Black Prince?” With a smile, the Prince made her a bow.

“The Black Prince! Oh yes.” Meggie repeated his name almost reverently. “And that’s his bear!

Farid, come here. Look!” Farid, of course. Fenoglio remembered him now. Meggie had often talked about him. The boy stood up, but not before hastily swallowing the very last of the soup in his bowl. He kept well behind Meggie, at a safe distance from the bear.

“She absolutely insisted on coming!” he said, wiping his greasy mouth on his arm. “Really! I didn’t want to bring her, but she’s as obstinate as a camel.”

Meggie was obviously about to make some sharp retort, but Fenoglio put his arm around her shoulders. “My dear boy,” he told Farid, “you have no idea how glad I am to see Meggie here! I could almost say she’s all I needed in this world to make me happy!”

He hastily took his leave of the Prince and drew Meggie and Farid away with him. “Come with me!” he whispered, as they made their way past the tents. “We have a great deal to talk about, a very great deal, but we can do it better in my room without strange ears to overhear us. It’s getting late, anyway, and the guard at the gate won’t let us back into the city after midnight.”

Meggie just nodded abstractedly and looked at the hurry and bustle all around her, wide-eyed, but Farid pulled his arm away from Fenoglio’s grasp. “I can’t come with you. I have to look for Dustfinger!”

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Fenoglio looked disbelievingly at him. So it was really true? Dustfinger was “Yes, he’s back,” said Meggie. “The women said Farid might find him at the house of the minstrel woman he once lived with. She has a farm up there on the hill.”

“Minstrel woman?” Fenoglio looked the way Meggie’s finger was pointing. The hill she meant was only a black outline in the moonlit night. Of course! Roxane. He remembered her. Was she really as wonderful as he had described her?

The boy was shifting impatiently from foot to foot. “I have to go,” he told Meggie. “Where can I find you?”

“In Cobblers’ and Saddlers’ Alley,” replied Fenoglio, answering for Meggie. “Just ask for Minerva’s house.”

Farid nodded. He went on looking at Meggie.

“It’s not a good idea to start a journey by night,” said Fenoglio, although he had a feeling that this boy wasn’t interested in his advice. “The roads here aren’t what you’d call safe. Particularly not at night. There are robbers, vagabonds .. ”

“I can look after myself.” Farid took a knife from his belt. “Take care, Meggie.” He reached for her hand, then turned abruptly and disappeared among the strolling players. It did not escape Fenoglio that Meggie turned to look back at him several times.

“Heavens, poor lad!” he growled, shooing a couple of children out of the way as they came flocking up to beg him for a story again. “He’s in love with you, am I right?”

“Oh, don’t!” Meggie let go of his hand, but he had made her smile. “All right, I’ll hold my tongue!

Does your father know you’re here?”

That was the wrong question. Her guilty conscience was plain to see in her face.

“Dear me! Very well, you must tell me all about it. How you came here, what all this talk of Basta and Dustfinger means, everything! You’ve grown! Or have I shrunk? My God, Meggie, I’m so glad you’re here! Now we can get this story back under control! With my words and your voice –”

“Under control? What do you mean?” She suspiciously examined his face. She had often seen him look just like that in the past, when they were Capricorn’s prisoners – his brow wrinkled, his eyes as clear as if they could look straight into your heart. But this wasn’t the place for explanations.

“Later!” whispered Fenoglio and drew her on. “Later, Meggie. There are too many ears here.

Damn it, where’s my torchbearer now?”

89

Chapter 15 – Strange Sounds on a Strange Night

How silent lies the world

Within fair twilight furled,

Bringing such sweet relief!

A quiet room resembling,

Where, without fear or trembling,

You sleep away day’s grief.

– Matthias Claudius, Evening Song

Later, when Meggie tried to remember the way they went to Fenoglio’s room, she could see only a few blurred pictures in her mind’s eye – a guard who tried to bar their way with his spear, but sullenly let them pass when he recognized Fenoglio, dark alleys down which they followed a boy with a torch, then a steep flight of steps, creaking underfoot as it led them up the side of a gray wall. She felt so dizzy with weariness as she followed Fenoglio up these steps that he felt quite anxious and took her arm a couple of times.

“I think we’d better wait until morning to tell each other what’s happened since we last met,” he said, propelling her into his room. “I’ll ask Minerva to bring you up a straw mattress later, but you’ll sleep in my bed tonight. Three days and nights in the Wayless Wood. Inky infernos, I’d probably have died of sheer fright!”

“Farid had his knife,” murmured Meggie. The knife had indeed been a comfort when they were sleeping in the treetops by night, and those growling, grating noises came up to them from below. Farid had always kept it ready at hand. “And when he saw ghosts,” she said sleepily, as Fenoglio lit a lamp, “he made a fire.” “Ghosts? There aren’t any ghosts in this world, or at least none that I wrote into it. What did you eat all that time?” Meggie groped her way over to the bed.

It looked very inviting, even if it was only a straw mattress and a couple of coarse blankets.

“Berries,” she murmured. “Lots of berries, and the bread we took with us from Elinor’s kitchen –

and rabbits, but Farid caught those.”

“Good heavens above!” Fenoglio shook his head, incredulous.

It was really good to see his wrinkled face again, but right now all Meggie really wanted to do was sleep. She took off her boots, crept under the scratchy blankets, and stretched out her aching legs. “What gave you the crazy idea of reading yourself and Farid into the Wayless Wood?

Why not arrive here? Dustfinger must have told the boy a few things about this world.”

“Orpheus’s words.” Meggie couldn’t help yawning. “We only had Orpheus’s words, and 90

 

Dustfinger had gotten Orpheus to read him into the forest.”

“Of course. Sounds just like him.” She felt Fenoglio pulling the blankets up to her chin. “I’d better not ask you who this Orpheus is. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Sleep well. And welcome to my world!”

Meggie just managed to open her eyes once more. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“Don’t worry about me. A few of Minerva’s relations come in every night to share the family’s beds downstairs, and one more won’t make much difference. You soon get used to a little less comfort, I assure you. I only hope her husband doesn’t snore as loud as she says.”

Then he closed the door behind him, and Meggie heard him laboriously making his way down the steep wooden staircase, cursing quietly to himself. Mice scurried through the rafters over her head (at least, she hoped they were mice) and the voices of the sentries guarding the nearby city wall drifted in through the only window. Meggie closed her eyes. Her feet hurt, and the music from the strolling players’ camp was still ringing in her ears. The Black Prince, she thought, I’ve seen the Black Prince .. and the city gate of Ombra .. and I’ve heard the trees whispering to one another in the Wayless Wood. If she could only have told Resa all about it. Or Elinor. Or Mo. But more than likely Mo never wanted to hear another word about the Inkworld.

Meggie rubbed her tired eyes. Fairies’ nests clung to the beams in the roof above the bed, just as Fenoglio had always wanted, but nothing moved behind the dark entrance holes where the fairies flew into them. Fenoglio’s attic room was a good deal larger than the one where he and Meggie had been kept prisoner by Capricorn. As well as the bed he had so generously let her have, there was a wooden chest, a bench, and a writing desk made of dark wood, gleaming and adorned with carvings. It did not go with the rest of the furniture: the roughly made bench, the simple chest. You might have thought it had strayed here out of another story, just like Meggie herself. An earthenware jug stood on it, containing a whole set of quill pens, there were two inkwells ..

Fenoglio was looking happy. He really was.

Meggie passed her arm over her tired face. The dress Resa had made her still smelled of her mother, but now it smelled of the Wayless Wood, too. She put her hand inside the leather bag that she had almost lost twice in the forest and took out the notebook Mo had given her. The marbled binding was a mixture of deep blue and peacock green – Mo’s favourite colors. It was good to have your books with you in strange places. Mo had told her that so often, but did he mean places like this? On their second day in the forest Meggie had tried to read the book she had brought with her, while Farid went hunting for a rabbit. She couldn’t get past the first page, and finally she had forgotten the book and left it lying as she sat beside a stream with swarms of blue fairies hovering over it. Did your hunger for stories die down when you were in one yourself? Or had she just been too exhausted? I should at least write down what’s happened so far, she thought, stroking the cover of her notebook again, but weariness was like cotton wool in her head and her limbs. Tomorrow, she thought. And tomorrow I’ll tell Fenoglio that he must write me back home, too. I’ve seen the fairies, I’ve even seen the fire-elves, and the Wayless Wood and Ombra. Yes. Because, after all, it will take him a few days to find the right words. .

Something rustled in one of the fairies’ nests above her. But no blue face looked out.

It was chilly in this room, and everything was strange – so strange. Meggie was used to strange 91

 

places; after all, Mo had always taken her with him when he had to go away to cure sick books.

But she could rely on one thing in all those places: She knew he was with her. Always. Meggie pressed her cheek against the rough straw mattress. She missed her mother and Elinor and Darius, but most of all she missed Mo. It was like an ache tugging at her heart. Love and a guilty conscience didn’t mix. If only he had come, too! He’d shown her so much of her own world, how she would have loved to show him this one! She knew he’d have liked it all: the fire-elves, the whispering trees, the camp of the strolling players. .

Oh, she did miss Mo.

How about Fenoglio? Wasn’t there anyone he missed? Didn’t he feel at all homesick for the village where he used to live, for his children, his friends, and neighbours? What about his grandchildren? Meggie had often raced around his house with them! “I’ll show you everything tomorrow!” Fenoglio had whispered to her as they hurried after the boy ahead of them, carrying the torch that had almost burned down, and his voice had sounded as if he were a prince informing his guest that he would show him around the palace the next day. “The guards don’t like people roaming the streets by night,” he had added, and it was indeed very quiet among the close-crammed houses. They reminded Meggie of Capricorn’s village so much that she half expected to see one of the Black Jackets around some corner, leaning against the wall with a rifle in his hand. But all they met were a few pigs grunting as they wandered in the steep alleys, and a ragged man sweeping up the garbage that lay among the houses and shoveling it into a handcart.

“You’ll get used to the smell in time!”

Fenoglio had whispered, as Meggie put her hand over her nose. “Think yourself lucky I’m not lodging with a dyer, or over there with the tanners. Even I haven’t gotten used to the stink of their trades.”

No, Meggie felt sure that Fenoglio didn’t miss anything. Why would he? This was his world, born from his brain, as familiar to him as his own thoughts.

Meggie listened to the night. There was another sound as well as the rustle of the scurrying mice

– a faint snoring. It seemed to come from the desk. Pushing back her blanket, she made her way cautiously over to it. A glass man was sleeping beside the jug of quill pens, his head on a tiny cushion. His transparent limbs were spattered with ink. Presumably he sharpened the pens, dipped them in the bulbous inkwells, sprinkled sand over the wet ink . . just as Fenoglio had always wanted. And did the fairies’ nests above his bed really bring good luck and sweet dreams? Meggie thought she saw a trace of fairy dust on the desk. Thoughtfully, she ran her finger over it, looked at the glittering dust left clinging to her fingertip, and rubbed it on her forehead. Did fairy dust cure homesickness?

For she was still homesick. All this beauty around her, yet she kept thinking of Elinor’s house and Mo’s workshop .. Her heart was so stupid! Hadn’t it always beat faster when Resa told her about the Inkworld? And now that she was here, really here, it didn’t seem to know just what it ought to feel. It s because the others aren’t here, too, something inside her whispered, as if her heart were trying to defend itself. Because they’re none of them here.

If only Farid at least had stayed with her… How she envied him the way he had slipped from one world to another as if he were just changing his shirt! The only longing he seemed to know was for the sight of Dustfinger’s scarred face.

Meggie went to the window. There was only a piece of fabric tacked over it. Meggie pushed it 92

 

aside and looked down into the narrow alley. The ragged refuse collector was just pushing his cart past with its heavy, stinking load. It nearly got stuck between the buildings. The windows above it were almost all dark; a candle burned behind only one of them, and a child’s crying drifted out into the night. Roof stood next to roof like the scales of a fir cone, and the walls and towers of the castle rose dark above them to the starry sky.

The Laughing Prince’s castle. Resa had described it well. The moon stood pale above the gray battlements, outlining them in silver, them and the guards pacing up and down on the walls. It seemed to be the same as the moon that rose and set over the mountains behind Elinor’s house.

“The prince is holding festivities for his spoiled grandson,” Fenoglio had told Meggie, “and I’m supposed to go up to the castle with a new song. I’ll take you with me. We’ll have to find you a clean dress, but Minerva has three daughters. They’re sure to have a dress among them to fit you.”

Meggie took one last look at the sleeping glass man and went back to the bed under the fairies’

nests. After the celebrations, she thought as she pulled off her dirty dress over her head and slipped under the coarse blanket again, first thing after the celebrations I’ll ask Fenoglio to write me home. As she closed her eyes, she once again saw the swarms of fairies who had swirled around her in the green twilight of the Wayless Wood, pulling her hair until Farid threw fir cones at them. She heard the trees whispering in voices that seemed to be half earth, half air, she remembered the scaly faces she had seen in the water of dark pools, and the Black Prince, too, and his bear…

There was a rustling under the bed, and something crawled over her arm. Meggie sleepily brushed it off. I hope Mo isn’t too angry, was the last thing she thought before she fell asleep and dreamed of Elinor’s garden. Or was it the Wayless Wood?

93

Chapter 16 – Only a Lie

The blanket was there, but it was the boy’s embrace that covered and warmed him.

– Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee

 

Farid soon realized that Fenoglio was right. It had been stupid just to go off like that in the middle of the night. It was true that no robber leaped out at him from the darkness, and not even a fox crossed his path as he climbed the moonlit hill that the strolling players had pointed out to him, but which of the run-down farms lying among the black nocturnal trees was the right one?

They all looked the same: a gray stone house, not much bigger than a hut, surrounded by olive trees, a well, sometimes a cowshed, a few narrow fields. Nothing stirred in the farmhouses. Their inhabitants were asleep, exhausted by hard work, and with every wall and every gate that he crept past Farid’s hopes dwindled. Suddenly, and for the first time, he felt lost in this strange world, and he was about to curl up and go to sleep under a tree when he saw the fire.

It was burning brightly high up on the slope of the hill, red as a hibiscus flower opening and then fading even as it unfurls. Farid quickened his pace and hurried up the slope, his gaze fixed on the place where he had seen the blossoming flames. Dustfinger! It shone among the trees again, sulfur yellow this time, bright as sunlight. It must be Dustfinger! Who else would make fire dance by night?

Farid went faster, so fast that he was soon struggling for breath. He came upon a path winding uphill, past the stumps of trees that had been felled only recently. The path was stony and wet with dew, but his bare feet were glad to be spared the prickly thyme for a while. There, another red flower blossoming in the darkness! Above him, a house emerged from the night. Beyond it the hill climbed on, terraced fields rose up the slope like steps, with stones piled up along their edges. The house itself looked as poor and plain as all the others. The path ended at a simple gateway and a wall of flat stones just high enough to reach Farid’s chest. As he stood at the gate a goose went for him, flapping her wings and hissing like a snake, but Farid took no notice of her.

He had found the man he was looking for.

Dustfinger was standing in the yard, making flowers of flame blossom in the air. They opened at a snap of his fingers, spread their fiery petals, faded, put out stems of burning gold, and burst into flower yet again. The fire seemed to come out of nowhere; Dustfinger had only to call it with his hands or his voice, he fanned the flames with nothing but his breath – no torches now, no bottle from which he filled his mouth – Farid could see none of the aids he had needed in the other world. He just stood there setting the night ablaze. More and more flowers swirled around him in their wild dance, spitting sparks at his feet like golden seed corn, until he stood there bathed in liquid fire.

Farid had noticed often enough how peaceful Dustfinger’s face became when he was playing with fire, but he had never seen him look so happy before. Just plain happy. The goose was still cackling, but Dustfinger seemed not to hear her. Only when Farid opened the gate did she scold so shrilly that he turned – and the fiery flowers went out as if night had crushed them in black fingers. The happiness in Dustfinger’s face was extinguished, too. At the door of the house, a woman stood up; she had probably been sitting on the doorstep. There was a boy there, too; Farid hadn’t noticed him before. The boy’s gaze followed Farid as he crossed the yard, but Dustfinger still hadn’t moved from the spot where he was standing. He just looked at Farid as 94

 

the sparks went out at his feet, leaving nothing but a faint red glow behind.

Farid sought that familiar face for any welcome, any hint of a smile, but it showed only bewilderment. At last Farid’s courage failed him, and he just stood there, with his heart trembling in his breast as if it were freezing cold.

“Farid?”

Dustfinger was coming toward him. The woman followed.

She was very beautiful, but Farid ignored her. Dustfinger was wearing the clothes he always carried with him in the other world but had never worn. Black and red .. Farid dared not look at him when he stopped a pace away. He just stood there with his head bent, staring at his toes.

Perhaps Dustfinger had never meant to take him along at all, perhaps he’d fixed it from the start that Cheeseface wouldn’t read those final sentences, and now he was angry because Farid had followed him from one world to another all the same. . Would he beat him? He’d never beaten him yet, although he’d come close to it once when Farid accidentally set fire to Gwin’s tail.

“How could I ever have believed that anything would stop you from chasing after me?” Farid felt Dustfinger’s hand raise his chin, and when he looked up, he saw at last what he had been hoping for in Dustfinger’s eyes: joy. “Where have you been hiding? I called you at least a dozen times, I looked for you .. The fire-elves must have thought me crazy!” He was scrutinizing Farid’s face anxiously, as if he wasn’t sure whether there was some change in it. It was so good to feel his concern. Farid could have danced for joy, the way the fire had danced for Dustfinger just now.

“Well, you seem to be the same as ever!” said Dustfinger at last. “A skinny dark-eyed little devil.

But wait – you’re so quiet! It didn’t cost you your voice, did it?”

Farid smiled. “No, I’m all right!” he said, glancing quickly at the woman, who was still standing behind Dustfinger. “But it wasn’t Cheeseface who brought me here. He simply stopped reading the moment you were gone! Meggie read me here, using Cheeseface’s words.” “Meggie?

Silvertongue’s daughter?”

“Yes, but what about you? You’re all right, aren’t you?” Dustfinger’s mouth twisted into the wry smile that Farid knew so well. “As you can see, the scars are still there. But there’s no more damage done, if that’s what you mean.” He turned around and looked at the woman in a way that Farid didn’t like at all. Her hair was black, and her eyes were almost as dark as his own. She really was very beautiful, even if she was old – well, much older than Farid – but he didn’t like her. He didn’t like either her or the boy. After all, he hadn’t followed Dustfinger to his own world just to share him.

The woman came up beside Dustfinger and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Who’s this?” she asked, sizing up Farid in much the same way as he had looked at her. “One of your many secrets?

A son I don’t know about?”

Farid felt the blood rise to his face. Dustfinger’s son. He liked the idea. Unobtrusively, he stole a look at the strange boy. Who was his father?

“My son?” Dustfinger affectionately caressed the woman’s face. “What an idea! No, Farid’s a fire-eater. He was my apprentice for a while, and now he thinks I can’t manage without him. Indeed, he’s so sure of it that he follows me everywhere, however far he has to go.”

95

“Oh, stop it!” Farid’s voice sounded angrier than he had intended. “I’m here to warn you! But I can go away again if you like.”

“Take it easy!” Dustfinger held him firmly by the arm as he turned to go. “Heavens above, I forgot how quickly you take offense. Warn me? Warn me of what?” “Basta.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth when he said that name – and Farid began to tell his story, describing everything that had happened since Dustfinger disappeared from that remote road in the mountains as if he had never existed. When he had finished, Dustfinger asked just one question. “So Basta has the book?”

Farid dug his toes into the hard earth and nodded. “Yes,” he muttered ruefully. “He put his knife to my throat. What was I to do?”

“Basta?” The woman reached for Dustfinger’s hand. “He’s still alive, then?”

Dustfinger just nodded. Then he looked at Farid again. “Do you believe he’s here now? Do you think Orpheus has read him here?”

Farid shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know! When I got away from him he shouted after me that he’d be revenged on Silvertongue, too. But Silvertongue doesn’t believe it, he says Basta was just in a rage. . ”

Dustfinger looked at the gate, which was still standing open.

“Yes, Basta says a lot of things when he’s in a rage,” he murmured. Then he sighed and trod out a few sparks that were still glowing on the ground in front of him.

“Bad news,” he said softly. “Nothing but bad news. All we need now is for you to have brought Gwin with you.”

Thank heaven it was dark. Lies weren’t nearly as easily spotted in the dark as by day. Farid did his best to sound as surprised as possible. “Gwin? Oh no! No, I didn’t bring him with me. You said he was to stay there. And Meggie said so, too – she said I mustn’t bring him.”

“Clever girl!” Dustfinger’s sigh of relief went to Farid’s heart. “You left the marten behind?”

The woman shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe it. “I always thought you loved that little monster more than any other living creature.”

“Oh, you know my faithless heart!” replied Dustfinger, but his light-hearted tone of voice couldn’t deceive even Farid. “Are you hungry?” he asked the boy. “How long have you been here?” Farid cleared his throat; his lie about Gwin was like a splinter lodged in it. “For four days,”

he managed to say. “The strolling players gave us something to eat, but I’m still hungry, all the same. . ”

“Us?” Dustfinger’s voice suddenly sounded distrustful. “Silvertongue’s daughter. Meggie. She came with me.”

“She’s here?” Dustfinger looked at him in astonishment.

Then he groaned and pushed the hair back from his forehead. “Oh, how pleased her father will 96

 

be! Not to mention her mother. Did you by any chance bring anyone else, too?” Farid shook his head.

“Where is she now?”

“With the old man.” Farid jerked his head back the way he had come. “He’s living near the castle.

We met him in the strolling players’ camp. Meggie was very glad to see him. She was going to look for him, anyway, to get him to take her back. I think she’s homesick…”

“What old man? Who the devil are you talking about now?” “Well, that writer! The one with the face like a tortoise – you remember, you ran away from him back then in –”

“Yes, yes, all right!” Dustfinger put his hand over Farid’s mouth as if he didn’t want to hear another word, and stared toward the place where, somewhere in the darkness, the walls of Ombra lay hidden. “Heavens above, what next?” he murmured. “Is t h a t .. is it more bad news?”

Farid hardly dared to ask. Dustfinger looked away, but all the same Farid had seen his smile. “Oh yes,” he said. “I suppose there never was a boy who brought so much bad news all at once. And in the middle of the night, too. What do we do with bearers of bad tidings, Roxane?” Roxane. So that was her name. For a moment Farid thought she would suggest sending him away. But then she shrugged. “We feed them, what else?” she said. “Even if this one doesn’t look too starved.”

97

Chapter 17 – A Present for Capricorn

 

“If he has been my father’s enemy, I like him still less!” exclaimed the now really anxious girl. “Will you not speak to him, Major Heyward, that I may hear his tones? Foolish though it may be, you have often heard me avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!”

– J. Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

 

Evening drew on, night fell, and no one came to unlock Elinor’s cellar. They sat there in silence among tubes of tomato puree, cans of ravioli, and all the other provisions stacked on the shelves around them – trying not to see the fear on one another’s faces.

“My house isn’t all that large!” said Elinor once, breaking the silence. “By now even that fool Basta should have realized that Meggie really isn’t here.”

No one replied. Resa was clinging to Mortimer as if that would protect him from Basta’s knife, and Darius was cleaning his already spotless glasses for the hundredth time. By the time footsteps finally approached the cellar door, Elinor’s watch had stopped. Memories flooded into her weary mind as she rose, with difficulty, from the container of olive oil on which she had been sitting – memories of blank, windowless walls and musty straw. Her cellar was a more comfortable prison than Capricorn’s sheds, let alone the crypt under his church, but the same man opened the door – and Elinor was just as much afraid of Basta in her own house.

When she had last seen him, he had been a prisoner himself, shut up in a cage by the master he adored. Had he forgotten that? How had Mortola persuaded him to serve her again in spite of it?

The stupid idea of asking Basta didn’t even cross Elinor’s mind. She gave herself the answer: because a dog needs a master. Basta had the man built like a wardrobe with him when he came to fetch them. There were four of them, after all, and Basta remembered only too well the day when Dustfinger had escaped him. “Well, Silvertongue, I’m sorry it’s taken some time,” he said in his soft, catlike voice, as he pushed Mortimer down the corridor to Elinor’s library. “But Mortola just couldn’t decide what kind of revenge to take, now that your witchy daughter really has run for it.”

“And what has she thought up?” asked Elinor, although she was afraid of the answer. Basta was only too willing to tell her. “Well, first she was going to shoot you all and sink you in the lake, although we told her just burying you somewhere under the bushes out there would do. But then she decided it would be too merciful to let you die knowing the little witch has gotten away from her. No, Mortola really didn’t fancy that idea.”

“Oh, didn’t she?” Fear made Elinor’s legs so heavy that she stopped walking until the wardrobe-man impatiently pushed her on. But before she could ask what Mortola was planning to do 98

 

instead of shooting them, Basta was already opening the door of her library and ushering them in with an ironic bow.

Mortola was sitting enthroned in Elinor’s favourite armchair. Scarcely a pace away from her lay a dog with running eyes and a head broad enough for you to rest a plate on it. Its forelegs were bandaged, like Mortola’s own legs, and there was a bandage around its belly, too. A dog! In her library! Elinor tightened her lips. This is probably the least of your worries right now, Elinor, she told herself. You’d better just ignore it.

Mortola’s stick was leaning against one of the glass cases in which Elinor kept her most valuable books. The moonfaced man stood beside the old woman. Orpheus – what did the fool think he was doing, claiming such a name for himself? Or had his parents in all seriousness given it to him? At any rate, he looked as if he, too, had passed a sleepless night, which gave Elinor a certain grim satisfaction.

“My son always said revenge was a dish best eaten cold,” observed Mortola, as she looked at her prisoners’ exhausted faces. There was a pleased expression on her own. “I admit I wasn’t in any mood to take that advice yesterday. I’d have liked to see you all dead there and then, but the little witch’s disappearing act has given me time to think, and I’ve decided to postpone my revenge for a while, so that I can enjoy it all the more, and in cold blood.”

“Hear, hear!” muttered Elinor, earning a thrust from the butt of Basta’s rifle. But Mortola turned her birdlike gaze on Mortimer. She seemed to be seeing no one else: not Resa, not Darius, not Elinor, just him.

“Silvertongue!” She spoke the name with scorn. “How many have you killed with your velvet voice? A dozen? Cockerell, Flatnose, and finally, your crowning achievement, my son.” The bitterness in Mortola’s voice was as raw as if Capricorn had died only last night, instead of over a year ago. “And you will die for killing him. You will die as sure as I’m sitting here, and I shall watch, as I had to watch the death of my son. But since I know from personal experience that nothing hurts more, in this or any other world, than the death of one’s own child, I want you to see your daughter die before you die yourself.”

Mortimer stood there and didn’t turn a hair. Usually you could see all his feelings in his face, but at this moment even Elinor couldn’t have said what was going on inside him.

“She’s gone, Mortola,” was all he said, hoarsely. “Meggie’s gone, and I don’t think you can bring her back, or you’d have done it long ago, wouldn’t you?”

“Who said anything about bringing her back?” Mortola’s narrow lips twisted into a joyless smile.

“Do you think I intend to stay in this stupid world of yours any longer now that I have the book?

Why should I? No, I’m going to look for your daughter in my own world, where Basta will catch her like a little bird. And then I’ll give the two of you to my son as a present. There’ll be more festivities, Silvertongue, but this time Capricorn will not die. Oh no. He’ll sit beside me and hold my hand while Death takes first your daughter, and then you. Yes, that’s how it will be!”

Elinor glanced at Darius and saw in his face the incredulous astonishment that she herself felt.

But Mortola was smiling superciliously.

“Why are you staring at me like that? You think Capricorn is dead?” Mortola’s voice almost cracked. “Nonsense. Yes, he died here, but what does that mean? This world is a joke, a 99

 

masquerade such as the strolling players perform in marketplaces.

In our world, the real world, Capricorn is still alive. That’s why I got the book back from that fire-eater. The little witch said it herself, the night you killed him: He’ll always be there as long as the book exists. Yes, I know she meant the fire-eater, but what’s true of him is most certainly true of my son! They’re still there, all of them: Capricorn and Flatnose, Cockerell and the Shadow!”

She looked triumphantly from one to another of them, but they all remained silent. Except for Mortimer. “That’s nonsense, Mortola!” he said. “And you know it better than anyone. You were in the Inkworld yourself when Capricorn disappeared from it, together with Basta and Dustfinger.”

“So? He went away, that’s all.” Mortola’s voice was shrill. “And then he didn’t come back, but that means nothing. My son was always traveling on business. The Adderhead sometimes sent him a messenger in the middle of the night when he needed his services, and then he’d be gone the next morning. But he’s back now. Back and waiting for me to bring his murderer to his fortress in the Wayless Wood.”

Elinor felt a crazy urge to laugh, but fear closed her throat. There’s no doubt about it, she thought, the old Magpie’s lost her wits! Unfortunately, that didn’t make her any less dangerous. “Orpheus!”

Mortola impatiently beckoned the moonface to her side. Very slowly, as if to show that he obeyed her by no means as willingly as Basta did, he strolled over to her, taking a sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket as he did so. With a self-important expression, he unfolded it and laid it on the glass case with Mortola’s stick leaning on it. The dog, panting, watched every movement he made.

“It won’t be easy!” observed Orpheus as he leaned over the dog, affectionately patting its ugly head. “I’ve never tried reading so many people over all at once before. Perhaps it would be a better idea to do it one by one –”

“No!” Mortola brusquely interrupted him. “No, you’ll read us all over at once, as we agreed.”

Orpheus shrugged. “Very well, just as you like. As I said, it’s risky because –”

“Be quiet! I don’t want to hear this.” Mortola dug her bony fingers into the arms of the chair. ( I’ll never be able to sit in it again without thinking of her, thought Elinor.) “May I remind you of that cell? I was the one who paid for its door to open. A word from me and you’ll end up back there, without books or so much as a single sheet of paper. And, believe me, I’ll make sure you do just that if you fail. After all, you read the fire-eater over without much trouble, according to Basta.”

“Yes, but that was easy, very easy! Like putting something back in its proper place.” Orpheus looked out of Elinor’s window as dreamily as if he were seeing Dustfinger vanish again, this time from the lawn outside. Frowning, he turned back to Mortola. “It’s different with him,” he said, pointing to Mortimer. “It’s not his story. He doesn’t belong in it.”

“Nor did his daughter. Are you saying she reads better than you?”

“Of course not!” Orpheus stood up very straight. “No one reads better than me. Haven’t I proved that? Didn’t you yourself say Dustfinger spent ten years looking for someone to read him back?”

“Yes, very well. No more talk, then.” Mortola picked up her stick and rose to her feet, with difficulty. “Wouldn’t it be amusing if a ferocious cat slipped out of the pages, like the one that came through when the fire-eater left? Basta’s hand hasn’t healed yet, and he had a knife and the 100

 

dog to help him.” She gave Elinor and Darius a nasty look.

Elinor took a step forward, ignoring the butt of Basta’s rifle. “What do you mean? I’m coming, too, of course!”

Mortola raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, and who do you think decides that? Why would I want you with us? Or that stupid bungler Darius? I’m sure my son would have no objection to feeding you two to the Shadow as well, but I don’t want to make things too difficult for Orpheus.” She pointed her stick at Mortimer. “We’re taking him with us. No one else.” Resa was clinging to Mortimer’s arm. Mortola went over to her, smiling. “Yes, little pigeon, I’m leaving you here, too!” she said, pinching her cheek hard. “It will hurt if I take him away from you again, won’t it? When you’ve only just gotten him back. After all those years .. ”

Mortola signed to Basta, who reached roughly for Resa’s arm. She struggled, still clinging to Mortimer, with a desperate expression on her face that went to Elinor’s heart. But as she went to try and help Resa, the wardrobe-man barred her way. And Mortimer himself gently removed Resa’s hand from his arm.

“It’s all right,” he said. “After all, I’m the only one in this family who hasn’t been to the Inkworld yet. And I promise you I won’t come back without Meggie.”

“Very true, because you won’t come back at all!” Basta mocked, as he pushed Resa hard toward Elinor. And Mortola was still smiling. Elinor would have loved to hit her. Do something, Elinor!

she thought. But what could she do? Hold on to Mortimer? Tear up the sheet of paper that the moonface was so carefully smoothing out on her glass case?

“Well, can we begin now?” asked Orpheus, licking his lips as if he could hardly wait to demonstrate his skill again.

“Of course.” Mortola leaned heavily on her stick and beckoned Basta to her side.

Orpheus looked at him suspiciously. “You’ll make sure he leaves Dustfinger alone, right?” he said to Mortola. “You promised!”

Basta passed a finger over his throat and winked at him.

“Did you see that?” Orpheus’s beautiful voice broke. “You promised! That was my one condition.

You leave Dustfinger in peace or I don’t read a single word!”

“Yes, yes, all right, don’t shout like that or you’ll ruin your voice,” replied Mortola impatiently.

“We have Silvertongue. Why would I be interested in that wretched fire-eater? Go on, start reading!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” This was the first time Elinor had heard the wardrobe-man’s voice. It was curiously high for a man of his size – as if an elephant were speaking in a cricket’s chirping voice.

“What happens to the others when you’re gone?”

“How should I know?” Mortola shrugged. “Let whatever comes here to replace us eat them.

Make the fat woman your maid and Darius your bootboy. Anything you like, it’s all the same to me. Just start reading!”

Orpheus obeyed. He went over to the glass case where the sheet of paper with his words on it 101

 

was waiting, cleared his throat, and adjusted his glasses.

“Capricorn’s fortress lay in the forest where the first tracks of giants could be found.” The words flowed over his lips like music. ” It was a long time since anyone had seen the giants, but other and more alarming beings haunted the walls by night Night-Mares and Redcaps, creatures as cruel as the men who had built the fortress. It was all of gray stone, as gray as the rocky slope behind it… ”

Do something! thought Elinor. Do something, it’s now or never. Snatch that piece of paper from the moonfaced man’s hand, kick the Magpie’s stick away … But she couldn’t move a muscle.

What a voice! And the magic of the words – they slowed her brain, making her drowsy with delight. When Orpheus read of prickly woodbine and tamarisk flowers, Elinor thought she could smell them. He really does read as well as Mortimer! That was the only thought of her own that would form in her head. And the others were no better off; they were all staring at Orpheus’s lips, as if they could hardly wait for the next word: Darius, Basta, the wardrobe-man, even Mortimer – why, even the Magpie. They listened motionless, caught up in the sound of the words. Only one of them moved. Resa. Elinor saw her struggling against the magic as you might struggle in deep water, finally coming up behind Mortimer and flinging her arms around him.

And then they had all disappeared: Basta, Mortola the Magpie – and Mortimer and Resa.

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Chapter 18 – Mortola’s Revenge

 

I do not dare,

I do not dare to write it, if you die.

– Pablo Neruda, “The Dead Woman,” The Captain’s Verses

It was as if a transparent picture, like stained glass, came down over what Resa had just been seeing – Elinor’s library, the backs of the books so carefully classified by Darius and arranged side by side – blurring it all, while the other picture itself became clearer. Stones eroded the books; soot-blackened walls replaced the bookshelves. Grass sprouted from Elinor’s wooden floorboards, and the white plaster of the ceiling gave way to a sky covered by dark clouds.

Resa’s arms were still wound around Mo. He was the only thing that didn’t disappear, and she wouldn’t let go of him for fear of losing him again after all, as she had lost him once before. So long ago.

“Resa?” She saw the alarm in his eyes as he turned and realized that she had come, too. Quickly, she put her hand over his mouth.

Honeysuckle climbed up the black walls on their left. Mo put out his hand to the leaves, as if his fingers must feel what his eyes had already seen. Resa remembered that she had once done the same, touching everything, bewildered to find the world beyond the letters on the page so real.

If she hadn’t heard the words Orpheus had spoken for herself, Resa wouldn’t have known where Mortola had made him read them all. Capricorn’s fortress had looked so different when she had last stood in its courtyard. There had been men everywhere, armed men on the flights of steps, at the gate, on the wall. Where the bakehouse had stood there was nothing now but charred beams, and it was by the stairway over there that she and the other maids used to beat the dust from the tapestry hangings, tapestries that Mortola placed on the walls of the bare rooms only on special occasions.

Those rooms were gone. The walls of the fortress were crumbling and black from fire. Soot covered the stones as if someone had painted them with a black brush, and yarrow grew all over the once bare courtyard. Yarrow loved burned earth; it grew everywhere. Where a narrow stairway had once led up to the watchtower, the forest was now making its way into Capricorn’s den. Young trees had taken root among the ruins, as if they had been just waiting to reclaim the 103

 

place occupied by this human abode. Thistles grew in the gaping cavities of the windows, moss covered the ruined stairs, and ivy climbed to the charred wooden stumps that had once been Capricorn’s gallows. Resa had seen many men hanging on them.

“What’s this?” Mortola’s voice echoed from the dead walls. “What are these miserable ruins?

This isn’t my son’s fortress!”

Resa drew closer to Mo’s side. He still seemed numbed, almost as if he were waiting for the moment when he would wake up and see Elinor’s books again instead of the stones. Resa knew only too well how he was feeling. It was not so bad for her this second time; after all, she wasn’t alone now, and she knew what had happened. But Mo seemed to have forgotten everything: Mortola, Basta – and why they had brought him here. Resa, however, had not forgotten, and she watched with a thudding heart as Mortola stumbled through the yarrow to the charred walls and felt the stones, as if she were running her fingers over her dead son’s face.

“I’ll cut that man Orpheus’s tongue out with my own hands and serve it for supper!” she exclaimed. “With chopped foxglove! Is this supposed to be my son’s fortress? Never!”

Her head moved frantically back and forth like a bird’s as she looked around her. But Basta just stood there in silence, pointing his rifle at Resa and Mo.

“Well, say something!” shouted the Magpie. “Say something, you fool!”

Basta bent down and picked up a rusty helmet lying at his feet. “What do you expect me to say?”

he growled, throwing the helmet back into the grass with a gloomy expression and giving it a kick that sent it clattering against the wall. “Of course it’s our castle. Didn’t you see the figure of the goat on the wall there? Even the carved devils are still standing, though they wear ivy crowns now – and look, there’s one of the eyes that Slasher liked to paint on the stones.”

Mortola stared at the red eye to which Basta was pointing. Then she hobbled over to the remains of the wooden gate, now splintered, torn off its hinges, and barely visible under the brambles and tall stinging nettles. She stood there in silence, looking around her. As for Mo, he had finally come back to his senses.

“What are they talking about?” he whispered to Resa. “Where are we? Was this where Capricorn used to hide out?” Resa just nodded. However, the Magpie turned at the sound of Mo’s voice and stared at him. Then she came over to him, stumbling as if she felt dizzy.

“Yes, this is his castle, but Capricorn isn’t here!” she said in a dangerously low voice. “My son is not here. So Basta was right after all. He’s dead, here and in the other world, too, dead, and what killed him? Your voice, your accursed voice!” There was such hatred in her face that Resa instinctively tried to draw Mo away, somewhere, anywhere he would be safe from that glance.

But there was nothing behind them but the sooty wall with the figure of Capricorn’s goat still displayed on it, a red-eyed goat with burning horns.

“Silvertongue!” Mortola spat out the word as if it were poison. “Killertongue suits you better.

Your daughter couldn’t bring herself to utter the words that killed my son, but you – oh, you didn’t hesitate for a moment!” Her voice was little more than a whisper as she went on: “I can still see you before me, as if it had happened only last night – taking the piece of paper from her hand and putting her aside. And then the words came out of your mouth, fine-sounding as everything you say, and when you’d finished my son lay dead in the dust.” For a moment she put 104

 

her fingers to her mouth as if to suppress a sob. When she let her hand drop again, her lips were still quivering.

“How – how can this be?” she went on, in a trembling voice. “Tell me, how is it possible? He didn’t belong in your false world at all. So how could he die there? Was that the only reason you lured him over with your wicked tongue?” And again she turned and stared at the burned walls, her bony hands clenched into fists.

Basta bent down again. This time he picked up an arrow point. “I’d really like to know what happened!” he muttered. “I always said Capricorn wasn’t here, but what about the others?

Firefox, Pitch-Eater, Humpback, the Piper, Slasher . . Are they all dead? Or are they in the Laughing Prince’s dungeon?” He looked uneasily at Mortola. “What are we going to do if they’re all gone?” Basta sounded like a boy afraid of the dark. “Do you want us to live in a cave like brownies until the wolves find us? Have you forgotten the wolves? And the Night-Mares, the fire-elves, all the other creatures crawling around the place .. I for one haven’t forgotten them, but you would come back to this accursed spot where there are three ghosts lurking behind every tree!” He reached for the amulet dangling around his neck, but Mortola did not deign to look at him.

“Oh, be quiet!” she said, so sharply that Basta flinched.

“How often must I tell you that ghosts are nothing to be afraid of? As for wolves, that’s why you carry a knife, isn’t it? We’ll manage. We managed in their world, and we know our way around in this one a good deal better. And, don’t forget, we have a powerful friend here. We’re going to pay him a visit, yes, that’s what. But first I have something else to do, something I should have done long ago.” And again her eyes were on Mo. On him and no one else. Then she turned, walked steadily up to Basta, and took the rifle from his hand.

Resa reached for Mo’s arm and tried to pull him aside, but Mortola was too quick on the draw.

The Magpie had some skill with a rifle. She had often shot at the birds who pecked the seed from her garden beds, back in Capricorn’s yard. Blood spread over Mo’s shirt like a flower blossoming, red, crimson. Resa heard herself scream as he fell and suddenly lay there motionless, while the grass around him turned as red as his shirt. She flung herself down on her knees, turned him over, and pressed her hands to the wound, as if she could hold back the blood, all the blood carrying his life away. .

“Come along, Basta!” she heard Mortola say. “We have a long way to go, and it’s time we found safe shelter before it gets dark. This forest is not a pleasant place by night.”

“You’re going to leave them here?” That was Basta’s voice. “Why not? I know you were always attracted to her, but the wolves will take care of them. The fresh blood will bring them this way.”

The blood. It was still flowing so fast, and Mo’s face was white as a sheet. “No. Oh, please, no!”

whispered Resa. Aloud, in her own voice. She pressed her fingers to her shaking lips.

“Well, what do you know? Our little pigeon can speak again!” Basta’s mocking voice hardly penetrated the rushing in her ears. “What a pity he can’t hear you anymore, eh? So long, Resa!”

She did not look around. Not even when their footsteps died away. “No!” she heard herself whispering again and again. “No!” like a prayer. She tore a strip of fabric from her dress – if only her fingers weren’t shaking so badly – and pressed it to the wound. Her hands were wet with his 105

 

blood and her own tears.

Resa, she told herself sternly, crying won’t do him any good. Try to remember! What did Capricorn’s men do when they were wounded? They cauterized the wound, but she didn’t want to think of that. There had been a plant, too, a plant with hairy leaves and pale mauve flowers, tiny bells into which bumblebees flew, buzzing. She looked around, through the veil of tears over her eyes, as if hoping for a miracle. .

Two blue-skinned fairies were hovering among the twining honeysuckle. If Dustfinger had been here now, he’d surely have known how to entice them. He’d have called to them softly, persuaded them to give him some of their fairy spit, or the silvery dust that they shook out of their hair.

She heard her own sobbing again. She lifted the dark hair back from Mo’s brow with her bloodstained fingers, called him by name. He couldn’t be gone, not now, not after all those years. .

Over and over she called his name, put her fingers on his lips, felt his breath, shallow and irregular, coming with difficulty as if someone were sitting on his chest. Death, she thought, it’s Death….

A sound made her jump. Footsteps on soft leaves. Had Mortola changed her mind? Had she sent Basta back to fetch them? Or were the wolves coming? If only she at least had a knife. Mo always carried one. Feverishly, she put her hands in his trouser pockets, feeling for the smooth handle. .

The footsteps grew louder. Yes, they were human footsteps, no doubt about it. And then suddenly all was still. Menacingly still. Resa felt the handle in her fingers. She quickly removed the knife from Mo’s pocket and snapped it open. She hardly dared to turn, but at last she did.

An old woman was standing in what had once been Capricorn’s gateway. She looked as small as a child among the pillars that still stood erect. She had a sack slung over her shoulder and was wearing a dress that looked as if she had woven it from nettles. Her skin was burned brown, her face furrowed like the bark of a tree. Her gray hair was as short as a marten’s fur, and had leaves and burrs clinging to it. Without a word, she came toward Resa. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t seem to mind the nettles and thistles growing in the courtyard of the ruined fortress. Her face expressionless, she pushed Resa aside and bent over Mo. Unmoved, she lifted the bloody scraps of fabric that Resa was still pressing to the wound.

“I never saw a wound like that before,” she remarked, in a voice that sounded hoarse, as if it wasn’t often used. “What did it?”

“A rifle,” replied Resa. It felt strange to be speaking with her tongue again instead of her hands.

“A rifle?” The old woman looked at her, shook her head, and bent over Mo again. “A rifle. What may that be?” she murmured as her brown fingers felt the wound. “Dear me, these days they go inventing new weapons faster than a chick hatches from its egg, and I have to find out how to mend what they stab and cut.” She put her ear to Mo’s chest, listened, and straightened up again with a sigh. “Are you wearing something under that dress?” she asked abruptly, without looking at Resa. “Take it off and tear it up. I need long strips.” Then she put her hand into a leather bag at her belt, took out a little bottle, and used its contents to soak one of the strips of fabric that Resa was offering her. “Press that down on it!” she said, handing the fabric back to Resa. “This is a bad 106

 

wound. I may have to cut or cauterize it, but not here. The two of us can’t carry him on our own, but the strolling players have a camp not far off, for their old and sick people. I may find help there.” She dressed the wound with fingers as nimble as if she had never done anything else.

“Keep him warm!” she said as she rose to her feet again and slung the sack over her shoulder.

Then she pointed to the knife that Resa had dropped in the grass. “Keep that with you. I’ll try to be back before the wolves get here. And if one of the White Women turns up, make sure she doesn’t look at him or whisper his name.”

Then she was gone, as suddenly as she had come. And Resa kneeled there in the courtyard of Capricorn’s fortress, her hand pressed down on the blood-soaked dressing, and listened to Mo’s breathing.

“Can you hear me? My voice is back,” she whispered to him. “Just as if it had been waiting for you here.” But Mo did not move. His face was as pale as if the stones and grass had drunk all his blood.

Resa didn’t know how much time had passed when she heard the whispering behind her, incomprehensible and soft as rain. When she looked around, there stood the figure on the ruined stairway. A White Woman, blurred as a reflection on water. Resa knew only too well what such an apparition meant. She had told Meggie about the White Women often enough. Only one thing lured them, and faster than blood lured the wolves: failing breath, a heart beating ever more feebly . .

“Be quiet!” Resa shouted at the pale figure, bending protectively over Mo’s face. “Go away, and don’t you dare look at him. He isn’t going with you, not today!” They whisper your name if they want to take you with them, so Dustfinger had told her. But they don’t know Mo’s name, thought Resa. They can’t know it, because he doesn’t belong here. All the same, she held her hands over his ears.

The sun was beginning to set. It sank inexorably behind the trees. Darkness fell between the charred walls, and the pale figure on the stairs stood out more clearly all the time. It stood there motionless, waiting.

107

Chapter 19 – Birthday Morning

 

“Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city … Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills …”

– Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

 

Meggie woke with a start. She had been dreaming, and her dreams had been bad, but she didn’t remember what they were about, only the fear they left behind like a knife wound in the heart.

Noise came to her ears, shouting and loud laughter, children’s voices, the barking of dogs, the grunting of pigs, hammering, sawing. She felt sunlight on her face, and the air she was breathing smelled of dung and freshly baked bread. Where was she? Only when she saw Fenoglio sitting at his writing desk did she remember. Ombra – she was in Ombra.

“Good morning!” Fenoglio had obviously slept extremely well. He looked very pleased with himself and the world in general. Well, who should be pleased with it if not the man who made it up? The glass man Meggie had seen last night, asleep beside the jug of quill pens, was standing beside him.

“Say hello to our guest, Rosenquartz!” Fenoglio told him.

The glass man bowed stiffly in Meggie’s direction, took Fenoglio’s dripping pen, wiped it on a rag, and put it back in the jug with the others. Then he bent to look at what Fenoglio had written.

“Ah. Not a song about this Bluejay for a change!” he snapped. “Are you taking this one up to the castle today?”

“I am indeed,” said Fenoglio loftily. “Now, do please make sure the ink doesn’t run.”

The glass man wrinkled his nose, as if he had never allowed such a thing to happen, put both hands into the bowl of sand standing next to the pens, and scattered the fine grains over the freshly written parchment with practiced energy. “Rosenquartz, how often do I have to tell you?”

snapped Fenoglio. “Too much sand, too much energy. That way you’ll smudge everything.”

The glass man brushed a couple of grains of sand off his hands and folded his arms, looking injured. “Then you do better!” His voice reminded Meggie of the noise you make tapping a glass with your fingernails. “I’d certainly like to see that!” he added sharply, examining Fenoglio’s clumsy fingers with such scorn that Meggie had to laugh.

“Me, too!” she said, pulling her dress on over her head. A few withered flowers from the Wayless Wood still clung to it, and Meggie couldn’t help thinking of Farid. Had he found Dustfinger?

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“Hear that?” Rosenquartz cast her a friendly glance. “She sounds like a clever girl.”

“Oh yes, Meggie’s very clever,” replied Fenoglio. “The two of us have been through a lot together.

It’s thanks to her that I’m sitting here now, trying to tell a glass man the right way to scatter sand over ink.”

Rosenquartz looked curiously at Meggie, but he didn’t ask what Fenoglio’s mysterious comment meant. Meggie went up to the desk and looked over the old man’s shoulder. “Your handwriting’s easier to read these days,” she said.

“Thank you very much,” murmured Fenoglio. “You should know. But look – do you see that smudged P?”

“If you are seriously suggesting that I’m to blame for it,” said Rosenquartz in his ringing little voice, “then this is the last time I hold your pens for you, and I’m going straight off to look for a scribe who won’t expect me to work before breakfast.”

“All right, all right, I’m not blaming you. I smudged the P myself!” Fenoglio winked at Meggie.

“He’s easily offended,” he whispered confidentially to her. “His pride is as fragile as his limbs.”

The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio without a word, picked up the rag he had used to clean the pen, and tried to wipe a still-damp inkspot off his arm. His limbs were not entirely colorless, like those of the glass people who had lived in Elinor’s garden. Everything about him was pale pink, like the flowers of a wild rose. Only his hair was slightly darker.

“You didn’t say anything about my new song,” Fenoglio pointed out. “Wonderful, don’t you agree?”

“Not bad,” replied Rosenquartz without turning around, and he began polishing up his feet.

“Not bad? It’s a masterpiece, you maggot-colored, ink smudging pen-holder!” Fenoglio struck the desk so hard that the glass man fell over on his back like a beetle. “I’m going to market today to get a new glass man, one who knows about these things and will appreciate my robber songs, too!” He opened a longish box and took out a stick of sealing wax. “At least you haven’t forgotten to get a flame for the wax this time!” he growled. Rosenquartz snatched the sealing wax from his hand and held it in the flame of the candle that stood beside the jug. His face expressionless, he placed the melting end of the wax on the parchment roll, waved his glass hand over the red seal a couple of times, and then cast Fenoglio an imperious glance, whereupon Fenoglio solemnly pressed the ring he wore on his middle finger down onto the soft wax.

“F for Fenoglio, F for fantasy, F for fabulous,” he announced. “There we are.”

“B for breakfast would sound better just now,” said Rosenquartz, but Fenoglio ignored this remark.

“What did you think of the song for the prince?” he asked Meggie.

“I… er . . I couldn’t read it all because you two were quarrelling,” she said evasively. She didn’t want to make Fenoglio even gloomier by saying that the lines struck her as familiar. “Why does the Laughing Prince want such a sad poem?” she asked instead.

“Because his son is dead,” replied Fenoglio. “One sad song after another, that’s all he wants to 109

 

hear since Cosimo’s death. I’m tired of it!” Sighing, he put the parchment back on his desk and went over to the chest standing under the window.

“Cosimo? Cosimo the Fair is dead?” Meggie couldn’t conceal her disappointment. Resa had told her so much about the Laughing Prince’s son: Everyone who saw him loved him, even the Adderhead feared him, his peasants brought their sick children to him because they believed anyone as beautiful as an angel could cure all sicknesses, too. .

Fenoglio sighed. “Yes, it’s terrible. And a bitter lesson. This story isn’t my story anymore! It’s developed a will of its own.” “Oh no, here we go again!” Rosenquartz groaned. “His story! I’ll never understand all this talk. Maybe you really ought to go and see one of those physicians who cure sick minds.”

“My dear Rosenquartz,” Fenoglio replied, “all this talk, as you call it, is above your transparent little head. But believe me, Meggie knows just what I’m talking about!” He opened the chest, looking cross, and took out a long, dark blue robe. “I ought to get a new one made,” he muttered.

“Yes, I definitely ought to. This is no robe for a man whose words are sung up and down the land, a man commissioned by a prince to put his grief for his son into words! Just look at the sleeves!

Holes everywhere. In spite of Minerva’s sprigs of lavender, the moths have been at it.”

“It’s good enough for a poor poet,” remarked the glass man in matter-of-fact tones.

Fenoglio put the robe back in the chest and let the lid fall into place with a dull thud. “One of these days,” he said, “I am going to throw something really hard at you!”

This threat did not seem to bother Rosenquartz unduly. The two went on wrangling about this and that; it seemed to be a kind of game they played, and they had obviously forgotten Meggie’s presence entirely. She went to the window, pushed aside the fabric over it, and looked out. It was going to be a sunny day, although mist still lingered above the hills surrounding the city.

Which was the hill where the house of the minstrel woman stood, the place where Farid hoped to find Dustfinger? She had forgotten. Would he come back if he actually found the fire-eater, or would he just go off with him, like last time, forgetting that she was here, too? Meggie didn’t even try to work out just how that idea made her feel. There was enough turmoil in her heart already, so much turmoil that she’d have liked to ask Fenoglio for a mirror, just to see herself for a moment – her own familiar face amid all the strangeness surrounding her, all the strange feelings in her heart. But instead she let her gaze wander over the misty hills.

How far did Fenoglio’s world go? Just as far as he had described it? “Interesting!” he had whispered, back when Basta had dragged the two of them off to Capricorn’s village. “Do you know, this place is very like one of the settings I thought up for Inkheart?” It must have been Ombra he meant. The hills around Ombra really did look like those over which Meggie had escaped with Mo and Elinor when Dustfinger set them free from Capricorn’s dungeons, except that these seemed even greener, if that was possible, and more enchanted. As if every leaf suggested that fairies and fire-elves lived under the trees. And the houses and streets you could see from Fenoglio’s room might have been in Capricorn’s village, if they hadn’t been so much noisier and more colorful.

“Just look at the crowds – they all want to go up to the castle today,” said Fenoglio behind her.

“Traveling peddlers, peasants, craftsmen, rich merchants, beggars, they’ll all be going there to celebrate the birthday, to earn or spend a few coins, to enjoy themselves, and most of all to stare at the grand folk.”

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Meggie looked at the castle walls. They rose above the russet rooftops almost menacingly. Black banners on the towers flapped in the wind.

“How long has Cosimo been dead?”

“Hardly a year yet. I’d just moved into this room. As you can imagine, your voice took me straight to where it plucked the Shadow out of the story: the middle of Capricorn’s fortress.

Fortunately, all was hopeless confusion there because the monstrous Shadow had disappeared, and none of the fire-raisers noticed an old man suddenly standing among them looking foolish. I spent a couple of dreadful days in the forest, and unfortunately I didn’t, like you, have a clever companion who could use a knife, catch rabbits, and kindle fire with a couple of dry twigs. But the Black Prince himself finally picked me up imagine how I stared when he was suddenly there in front of me. I didn’t think I knew any of the men who were with him, but I’ll admit that I could never remember the minor characters in my stories very clearly – only vaguely, if at all.

“Well, be that as it may, one of them took me to Ombra, ragged and destitute as I was. But luckily I had a ring that I could sell. A goldsmith gave me enough for it to allow me to rent this room from Minerva, and all seemed to be going well. Very well indeed, in fact. I thought up stories, and stories about stories, better than any I’d made up for a long time. The words came pouring out of me, but when I’d only just made my name with the first songs I wrote for the Laughing Prince, when the strolling players had just begun to find that they liked my verses, Firefox goes and burns down a few farms by the river – and Cosimo the Fair sets out to put an end to Firefox and his gang once and for all. Good, I thought, why not? How was I to guess that he’d get himself killed? I had such plans for him! He was to be a truly great prince, a blessing to his subjects, and my story was going to give them a happy ending when he freed this world from the Adderhead.

But instead he gets himself killed by a band of fire-raisers in the Way less Wood!” Fenoglio sighed.

“At first his father wouldn’t believe he was dead. For Cosimo’s face was badly burned, like those of all the other dead who were brought back. The fire had done its work, but when months passed, and still he didn’t return .. ” Fenoglio sighed again, and once more looked in the chest where the moth-eaten robe lay. He handed Meggie two long, pale blue woollen stockings, a couple of leather straps, and a much-washed, dark blue dress. “I’m afraid this will be too big for you – it belongs to Minerva’s second daughter, and she’s the same size as her mother,” he said,

“but what you’re wearing now urgently needs a wash. You can keep the stockings up with those garters – not very comfortable, but you’ll get used to it. Good Lord, you really have grown, Meggie,” he said, turning his back to her as she changed her clothes. “Rosenquartz! You turn around, too!”

It was true that the dress didn’t fit particularly well, and Meggie suddenly felt almost glad that Fenoglio had no mirror. At home she had been studying her reflection quite often recently. It was odd to watch your own body changing, as if you were a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis.

“Ready?” asked Fenoglio, turning around. “Ah well, that’ll do, although such a pretty girl really deserves a prettier dress.” He looked down at himself and sighed. “I think I’d better stay as I am; at least this robe doesn’t have any holes in it. And what does it matter? The castle will be swarming with entertainers and fine folk today, so no one will take any notice of the two of us.”

“Two? What do you mean?” Rosenquartz put down the blade he had been using to sharpen a pen. “Aren’t you going to take me with you?”

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“Are you crazy? Just for me to carry you back in pieces? No. Anyway, you’d have to listen to that bad poem I’m taking to the prince.”

Rosenquartz was still grumbling as Fenoglio closed the door behind them. The wooden staircase that Meggie had hardly been able to climb last night, exhausted as she was, led down to a yard surrounded by houses, with pigsties, woodsheds, and vegetable plots competing for what little space was left. A narrow little stream wound its way through the yard, two children were shooing a pig away from the vegetable beds, and a woman with a baby in her arms was feeding a flock of skinny hens.

“A wonderful morning, isn’t it, Minerva?” Fenoglio called to her, as Meggie hesitantly followed him down the last steep steps.

Minerva came to the foot of the stairs. A girl of perhaps six was clinging to her skirt and stared suspiciously at Meggie. She stopped, feeling unsure of herself. Perhaps they can see it, she thought, perhaps they can see I don’t belong here…

“Watch out!” the little girl called, but before Meggie realized what she meant, something was pulling her hair. The little girl threw a clod of earth, and a fairy fluttered away empty-handed, scolding crossly.

“Good heavens, where are you from?” asked Minerva, helping Meggie down from the steps.

“Aren’t there any fairies there? They’re crazy for human hair, particularly when it’s as pretty as yours. If you don’t pin it up you’ll soon be bald. And anyway, you’re too old to wear it loose, not unless you want to be taken for one of the strolling players.”

Minerva was small and stocky, not much taller than Meggie. “My word, how thin you are!” she said. “That dress is almost slipping off your shoulders. I’ll take it in for you this evening. Has she had any breakfast?” she asked and shook her head at the sight of Fenoglio’s baffled expression.

“Dear Lord, surely you didn’t forget to give the girl something to eat?”

Fenoglio helplessly raised his hands. “I’m an old man, Minerva!” he cried. “I do forget things!

What’s the matter with everyone this morning? I was in such a good mood, but you all keep going on like this. Rosenquartz has already been infuriating me.”

By way of answer Minerva dumped the baby in his arms and led Meggie off with her.

“And whose baby is this?” inquired Fenoglio, following her. “Aren’t there enough children running around the place already?”

“It’s my eldest daughter’s,” was all Minerva replied, “and you’ve seen it a couple of times before.

Are you getting so forgetful that I’ll have to introduce my own children to you?”

Minerva’s younger children were called Despina and Ivo; Ivo was the boy who had been carrying Fenoglio’s torch last night. He smiled at Meggie as she and his mother came into the kitchen.

Minerva made Meggie eat a plate of polenta and two slices of bread spread with a paste that smelled of olives. The milk she gave her was so rich that Meggie’s tongue felt coated with cream after the first sip. As she ate, Minerva pinned up her hair for her. Meggie scarcely recognized herself when Minerva pushed a bowl of water over to her so that she could see her reflection.

“Where did you get those boots?” asked Ivo. His sister was still inspecting Meggie like some strange animal that had lost its way and wandered into their kitchen. Where indeed? Meggie 112

 

hastily tried to pull down the dress to hide her boots, but it was too short.

“Meggie comes from far away,” explained Fenoglio, who had noticed her confusion. “Very far away. A place where there are people with three legs and others whose noses grow on their chins.”

The children stared first at him and then at Meggie.

“Oh, stop it! What nonsense you do talk!” Minerva lightly cuffed the back of his head. “They believe every word you say. One of these days they’ll be setting off to look for all the crazy places you tell them about, and I’ll be left childless.”

Meggie almost choked on the rich milk. She had quite forgotten her homesickness, but Minerva’s words brought it back – and her guilty conscience, too. She had been away from home five days now, if she’d been keeping count correctly. “You and your stories!” Minerva handed Fenoglio a mug of milk. “As if it wasn’t enough for you to keep telling them those robber tales. Do you know what Ivo said to me yesterday? When I’m grown-up I’m going to join the robbers, too! He wants to be like the Bluejay! What do you think you’re doing, pray? Tell them about Cosimo for all I care, tell them about the giants, or the Black Prince and his bear, but not another word about that Bluejay, understand?”

“Yes, yes, not another word,” muttered Fenoglio. “But don’t blame me if the boy picks up one of the songs about him from somewhere. Everyone’s singing them.”

Meggie had no idea what they were talking about, but in her mind she was already up at the castle, anyway. Resa had told her that the birds’ nests clustered together on its walls so thickly that sometimes the twittering drowned out the minstrels’ songs. And fairies nested there, too, she said, fairies who were pale gray like the stone of the castle walls because they often nibbled human food, instead of living on flowers and fruits like their sisters in the wild. And there were said to be trees in the Inner Courtyard of the castle that grew nowhere else except in the very heart of the Way less Wood, trees with leaves that murmured in the wind like a chorus of human voices and foretold the future on moonless nights – but in a language that no one could understand. “Would you like anything else to eat?”

Meggie started and came down to earth again.

“Inky infernos!” Fenoglio rose and handed the baby back to Minerva. “Do you want to fatten her up until she fits into that dress? We must be off, or we’ll miss half of it. The prince has asked me to bring him the new song before midday, and you know he doesn’t like people to be late.”

“No, I don’t know any such thing,” replied Minerva grumpily, as Fenoglio propelled Meggie toward the door. “Because I don’t go in and out of the castle the way you do. What does our fine prince want from you this time – another lament?” “Yes, I’ve had enough of them, too, but he pays well. Would you rather I was penniless and you had to look for a new lodger?” “Very well, very well,” grumbled Minerva, clearing the children’s empty bowls off the table. “I tell you what, though: This prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death, and then the Adderhead will send his men-at-arms. They’ll settle here like flies on fresh horse dung, on the excuse of just wanting to protect their master’s poor fatherless grandson.”

Fenoglio turned so abruptly that he almost sent Meggie flying. “No, Minerva. No!” he said firmly.

“That won’t happen. Not as long as I live – which I hope will be a very long time yet!”

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“Oh yes?” Minerva removed her son’s fingers from the tub of butter. “And how are you going to prevent it? With your robber songs? Do you think some fool with a feathered mask, playing the hero because he’s listened to your songs too often, can keep the men-at-arms away from our city? Heroes end up on the gallows, Fenoglio,” she continued, lowering her voice, and Meggie could hear the fear behind her mockery. “It may be different in your songs, but in real life princes hang them, and the finest of words don’t change that.”

The two children looked uneasily at their mother, and Minerva stroked their hair as if that would wipe away her own words. But Fenoglio merely shrugged. “Oh, come on, you see everything in such dismal hues!” he said. “You underestimate the power of words, believe me!

They are strong, stronger than you think. Ask Meggie!”

But before Minerva could do just that, he was pushing Meggie out of the house. “Ivo, Despina, do you want to come?” he called to the children. “I’ll bring them home safe and sound. I always do!”

he added, as Minerva’s anxious face appeared in the doorway. “The best entertainers far and wide will be at the castle today. They’ll have come from very far away. Your two can’t miss this chance!”

As soon as they stepped out of the alley, they were caught up in the crowd streaming along.

People came thronging up from all sides: shabbily dressed peasants, beggars, women with children, and men whose wealth showed not only in the magnificence of their embroidered sleeves but most of all in the servants who roughly forced a path through the crowd for them.

Riders drove their horses through the throng without a thought for those they pushed against the walls, litters were jammed in the crush of bodies, however angrily the litter-bearers cursed and shouted. “Devil take it, this is worse than a market day!” Fenoglio shouted to Meggie above the heads around them. Ivo darted through the crowd, quick as a herring in the sea, but Despina looked so alarmed that Fenoglio finally put her up on his shoulders before she was squashed between baskets and people’s bellies. Meggie felt her own heart beat faster, what with all the confusion, the pushing and shoving, the thousands of smells and the voices filling the air.

“Look around you, Meggie! Isn’t it wonderful?” cried Fenoglio proudly.

It was indeed. It was just as Meggie had imagined it on all those evenings when Resa had told her about the Inkworld. Her senses were quite dazed. Eyes, ears .. they could scarcely take in a tenth of all that was going on around her. Music came from somewhere: trumpets, jingles, drums ..

and then the street widened, spewing her and all the others out in front of the castle walls. They towered among the other buildings, tall and massive, as if they had been built by men larger than those now flocking to the gateway. Armed guards stood in front of the gate, with their helmets reflecting the pale morning light. Their cloaks were dark green, like the tunics they wore over their coats of mail.

Both bore the emblem of the Laughing Prince. Resa had described it to Meggie: a lion on a green background, surrounded by white roses – but it had changed. The lion wept silver tears now, and the roses twined around a broken heart.

The guards let most of the crowd pass, only occasionally barring someone’s way with the shaft of a spear or a mailed fist. No one seemed troubled by that, they went on pressing in, and Meggie, too, finally found herself in the shadow of those foot wide walls. Of course she had been in castles before, with Mo, but it felt quite different to be going in past guards armed with spears instead of a kiosk selling picture postcards. The walls seemed so much more threatening and forbidding. Look, they seemed to say, see how small you all are, how powerless and fragile.

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Fenoglio appeared to feel none of this; he was beaming like a child at Christmas. He ignored both the portcullis above their heads and the slits through which hot pitch could be tipped out on the heads of uninvited guests. Meggie, on the contrary, instinctively looked up as they passed and wondered why the traces of pitch on the weathered stone looked so fresh. But finally the open sky was above her again, clear and blue, as if it had been swept clean for the princely birthday –

and Meggie was in the Outer Courtyard of Ombra Castle.

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Chapter 20 – Visitors from the Wrong Side of the Forest

Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes – if necessary – brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.

– Clive Barker, Abarat

 

First of all Meggie looked for the birds’ nests that Resa had described, and sure enough, there they were, clinging just below the battlements like blisters on the walls. Birds with yellow breasts shot out of the entrance holes. Like flakes of gold dancing in the sun, Resa had said, and she was right. The sky above Meggie seemed to be covered with swirling gold, all in honor of the princely birthday. More and more people surged through the gateway, although there was already a milling crowd in the courtyard. Stalls had been set up within the walls, in front of the stables and the huts where the blacksmiths, grooms, and everyone else employed in the castle lived and worked. Today, as the prince was inviting his subjects to celebrate with him the birthday of his grandson and royal heir, food and drink was free.

“Very generous, I’m sure,” Mo would probably have whispered. “Food and drink from their own fields, won by the labor of their own hands.” Mo did not particularly like castles. But that was the way of Fenoglio’s world: The land on which the peasants toiled belonged to the Laughing Prince who was now the Prince of Sighs, so a large part of the harvest was his, too, and he dressed in silk and velvet, while his peasants wore much-mended smocks that scratched the skin.

Despina had wound her thin arms around Fenoglio’s neck when they passed the guards at the gate, but at the sight of the first entertainers she quickly slipped off his back. One of them had stretched his rope between the battlements, and was walking high up there in the air, moving more lightly than a spider on its silver thread. His clothes were blue as the sky above him, for blue was the color of the tightrope-walkers; Meggie’s mother had told her that, too. If only Resa had been here! The Motley Folk were everywhere among the stalls: pipers and jugglers, knife-throwers, strong men, animal-tamers, contortionists, actors, clowns. Right in front of the wall Meggie saw a fire-eater, yes, black and red was their costume, and for a moment she thought it was Dustfinger, but when the man turned he was a stranger with an unscarred face, and the smile with which he bowed to the people around him was not at all like Dustfinger’s.

But he must be here, if he’s really back, thought Meggie, as she looked around for him. Why did she feel so disappointed? As if she didn’t know. It was Farid she really missed. And if Dustfinger wasn’t here, she supposed it would be no use looking for Farid, either.

“Come along, Meggie!” Despina pronounced her name as if it was going to take her tongue some time to get used to it. She pulled Meggie over to a stall selling sweet cakes dripping with honey.

Even today those cakes had to be paid for. The trader selling them was keeping a close eye on his wares, but luckily Fenoglio had a few coins on him. Despina’s thin fingers were sticky when she put them into Meggie’s hand again. She looked around, wide-eyed, and kept stopping, but Fenoglio impatiently waved them on, past a wooden platform decked with flowers and evergreen branches, rising above the stalls. The black banners flying from the castle battlements and towers overhead hung here as well, to the right and left of three thrones on the platform.

The backs of the seats were embroidered with the emblem of the weeping lion.

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“Why three thrones, I ask myself?” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he urged her and the children on. “The Prince of Sighs himself won’t be showing his face, anyway. Come along, we’re late already.” With a firm step, he turned his back on the busy scene in the Outer Courtyard and made his way to the Inner Ring of the castle walls. The gate toward which he was moving was not quite as tall as the one in the Outer Ring, but it, too, looked forbidding, and so did the guards who crossed their spears as Fenoglio approached them. “As if they didn’t know me!” he whispered crossly to Meggie. “But we have to play the same game every time.

Tell the prince that Fenoglio the poet is here!” he said, raising his voice, as the two children pressed close to him and stared at the spears as if looking for dried blood on their points.

“Is the prince expecting you?” The guard who spoke seemed to still be very young, judging by what could be seen of his face under his helmet.

“Of course he is!” snapped Fenoglio. “And if he has to wait any longer I’ll blame it on you, Anselmo. What’s more, if you want me to write you a few fine-sounding words, as you did last month” – here the guard cast a nervous glance at his fellow sentry, but the latter pretended not to have heard and looked up at the tightrope-walker – “then,” Fenoglio concluded, lowering his voice, “I shall keep you waiting in your own turn. I’m an old man, and God knows I have better things to do than cool my heels here in front of your spear.”

All that could be seen of Anselmo’s face turned as red as the sour wine that Fenoglio had drunk beside the strolling players’ fire. However, he did not move his spear aside. “The fact is, Inkweaver, we have visitors,” he said in an undertone.

“Visitors? What are you talking about?”

But Anselmo wasn’t looking at Fenoglio anymore.

The gate behind him opened, creaking, as if its own weight were too heavy for it. Meggie drew Despina aside; Fenoglio took Ivo’s hand. Soldiers rode into the Outer Courtyard, armed horsemen, their cloaks silvery gray, like the greaves they wore on their legs, and the emblem on their breasts was not the Laughing Prince’s. It showed a viper’s slender body rearing up in search of prey, and Meggie recognized it at once. This was the Adderhead’s coat of arms.

Nothing moved in the Outer Courtyard now. All was silent as the grave. The entertainers, even the blue-clad tightrope-walker high above on his rope, were all forgotten. Resa had told Meggie exactly what the Adderhead’s emblem looked like; she had seen it often enough at close quarters. Envoys from the Castle of Night had been welcome guests in Capricorn’s fortress. Many of the farms set on fire by Capricorn’s men, so rumor said at the time, had been burned down on the Adderhead’s orders.

Meggie held Despina close as the men-at-arms rode by them.

Their breastplates glinted in the sun. It looked as if not even a bolt from a crossbow could pierce that armor, let alone a poor man’s arrow. Two men rode at their head: one was a redhead, in armor like the soldiers following him but resplendent in a cloak of foxtails, while the other was wearing a green robe shot with silver that was fine enough for any prince. However, what everyone noticed about him first was not that robe but his nose; unlike ordinary noses of flesh and blood, it was made of silver.

“Look at that couple! What a team!” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie, as the two men rode side by 117

 

side through the silent crowd. “Both of them my creations, and both once Capricorn’s men. Your mother may have told you about them. Firefox was Capricorn’s deputy, the Piper was his minstrel. But the silver nose wasn’t my idea. Nor the fact that they escaped Cosimo’s soldiers when he attacked Capricorn’s fortress and now serve the Adderhead.”

It was still eerily silent in the courtyard. There was no sound but the clatter of hooves, the snorting horses, the clank of armor, weapons, and spears – curiously loud, as if the sounds were caught between the high walls like birds.

The Adderhead himself was one of the last to ride in. There was no mistaking him. “He looks like a butcher,” Resa had said. “A butcher in princely clothes, with his love of killing written all over his coarse face.” The horse he rode was white, heavily built like its master, and almost entirely hidden by a caparison patterned with the snake emblem. The Adderhead himself wore a black robe embroidered with silver flowers. His skin was tanned by the sun, his sparse hair was gray, his mouth curiously small a lipless slit in his coarse, clean-shaven face. Everything about him seemed heavy and fleshy: his arms and legs, his thick neck, his broad nose. Unlike those richer subjects of the Laughing Prince who were now standing in the courtyard, he wore no jewelry, no heavy chains around his neck, no rings set with precious stones on his fat fingers.

But gems sparkled in the corners of his nostrils, red as drops of blood, and on the middle finger of his left hand, over his glove, he wore the silver ring he used for sealing death warrants. His eyes, narrow under lids folded like a salamander’s, darted restlessly around the courtyard. They seemed to linger for a split second, like a lizard’s sticky tongue, on everything they saw: the strolling players, the tightrope-walker overhead, the rich merchants waiting beside the empty, flower-decked platform, submissively bowing their heads when his glance rested on them.

Nothing seemed to escape those salamander eyes, nothing at all: no child pressing his face into his mother’s apron in alarm, no beautiful woman, no man glaring up at him with hostility. Yet he reined in his horse in front of only one person in the crowd.

“Well, well, so here’s the king of the strolling players! Last time I saw you, your head was in the pillory in my castle courtyard. And when are you going to honor us with another visit?”

The Adderhead’s voice rang out through the silent courtyard. It sounded very deep, as if it came from the black interior of his stout body. Meggie instinctively moved closer to Fenoglio’s side.

But the Black Prince bowed, so deeply that the bow turned to mockery. “I’m sorry,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “but I’m afraid my bear didn’t care for your hospitality. He says the pillory was rather tight for his neck.”

Meggie saw the Adderhead’s mouth twist into an unpleasant smile. “Well, I could keep a rope ready for your next visit – a rope that will fit perfectly, and a gallows of oak strong enough even for such a fat old bear as yours,” he said.

The Black Prince turned to his bear and pretended to discuss it with him. “Sorry again,” he said, as the bear threw its paws around his neck, grunting, “the bear says he likes the south, but your shadow lies too dark over it. He won’t come until the Bluejay pays you the honor of a visit, too.”

A soft whisper ran through the crowd – and was silenced when the Adderhead turned in his saddle and let his lizard-like gaze move over those standing around him.

“And furthermore,” the Prince continued in a loud voice, “the bear would like to know why you 118

 

don’t make the Piper trot along behind your horse on a silver chain, as such a good, tame minstrel should?”

The Piper wrenched his horse around, but before he could urge it toward the Black Prince the Adderhead raised a hand. “I will let you know just as soon as the Bluejay is my guest!” he said, while the silver-nosed man reluctantly rode back to his place. “And believe me, that will be before long. I’ve already ordered the gallows to be built.” Then he spurred his horse, and the men-at-arms rode on again. It seemed an eternity before the last of them had disappeared through the gateway.

“Yes, off you ride!” whispered Fenoglio, as the castle courtyard gradually filled with carefree noise again. “Viewing this place as if it would all soon be his, thinking he can spread his power through my world like a running sore and play a part I never wrote for him. . ”

The guard’s spear abruptly silenced him. “Very well, poet!” said Anselmo. “You can go in now. Off with you!”

“Off with you?” thundered Fenoglio. “Is that any way to speak to the prince’s poet? Listen,” he told the two children, “you’d better stay here. Don’t eat too much cake. And don’t go too close to the fire-eater, because he’s useless at his job, and leave the Black Prince’s bear alone.

Understand?”

The two of them nodded and ran straight to the nearest cake stall. But Fenoglio took Meggie’s hand and strode past the guards with her, his head held high.

“Fenoglio,” she asked in a low voice as the gate closed behind them and the noise of the Outer Courtyard died away, “who is the Bluejay?”

It was cool behind the great gate, as if winter had built itself a nest here. Trees shaded a wide courtyard, the air was fragrant with the scent of roses and other flowers whose names Meggie didn’t know, and a stone basin of water, round as the moon, reflected the part of the castle in which the Laughing Prince lived.

“Oh, he doesn’t exist!” was all Fenoglio would say, as he impatiently beckoned her on. “But I’ll explain all that later. Come along now. We must take the Laughing Prince my verses at last, or I won’t be his court poet anymore.”

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Chapter 21 – The Prince of Sighs

 

The man couldn’t very well tell the king, “No, I won’t go,” for he had to earn his bread.

– Italo Calvino, “The King in the Basket,” Italian Folk Tales

The windows of the hall where the Prince of Sighs, once the Laughing Prince, received Fenoglio were hung with black draperies. The place smelled like a crypt, of dried flowers and soot from the candles. The candles were burning in front of statues that all had the same face, sometimes a good likeness, sometimes less good. Cosimo the Fair, thought Meggie. He stared down at her from countless pairs of marble eyes as she walked toward his father with Fenoglio.

The throne in which the Prince of Sighs sat enthroned stood between two other high-backed chairs. The dark green upholstery of the chair on his left was occupied only by a helmet with a plume of peacock feathers, its metal brightly polished as if it were waiting for its owner. A boy of about five or six sat in the chair on his right. He wore a black brocade doublet embroidered all over with pearls as if it were covered in tears. This must be the birthday boy: Jacopo, grandson of the Prince of Sighs, but the Adderhead’s grandson, too.

The child looked bored. He was swinging his short legs restlessly, as if he could hardly prevent himself from running outside to the entertainers, and the sweet cakes, and the armchair waiting for him on the platform adorned with prickly bindweed and roses. His grandfather, on the other hand, looked as if he never intended to rise from his chair again. He sat there as powerless as a puppet, in black robes that were too large for him now, as if hypnotized by the eyes of his dead son. Not particularly tall but fat enough for two men, that was how Resa had described him; seldom seen without something to eat in his greasy fingers, always rather breathless because of the weight his legs, which were not especially strong, had to carry, and yet always in the best of tempers.

The prince whom Meggie saw now, sitting in his dimly lit castle, was nothing like that. His face was pale and his skin hung in wrinkled folds, as if it had once belonged to a larger man. Grief had melted the fat from his limbs, and his expression was fixed, as if it had frozen on the day when they brought him the news of his son’s death. Only his eyes still showed his horror and bewilderment at what life had done to him.

Apart from his grandson and the guards standing silent in the background, there were only two women with him. One kept her head humbly bent like a maidservant, although she wore a dress fit for a princess. Her mistress stood between the Prince of Sighs and the empty chair on which the plumed helmet lay. Violante, thought Meggie. The Adderhead’s daughter and Cosimo’s widow.

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Her Ugliness, as people called her. Fenoglio had told Meggie about her, emphasizing the fact that she was indeed one of his creations, but that he had never intended her to be more than a minor character: the unhappy child of an unhappy mother and a very bad father. “It’s absurd to marry her to Cosimo the Fair!” Fenoglio had said. “But as I told you, this story is getting out of hand!”

Violante wore black, like her son and her father-in-law. Her dress, too, was embroidered with pearly tears, but their precious luster didn’t suit her particularly well. Her face looked as if someone had drawn it on a stained piece of paper with a pencil too pale for the purpose, and the dark silk of her dress made her look even plainer. The only thing you noticed about her face was the purple birthmark, as big as a poppy, disfiguring her left cheek.

When Meggie and Fenoglio came across the dark hall, Violante was just bending down to her father-in-law, speaking to him quietly. The prince’s expression did not change but finally he nodded, and the boy slipped down from his chair in relief. Fenoglio signaled to Meggie to stay where she was. His head respectfully bent, he stepped aside, and unobtrusively signaled to Meggie to do the same. Violante nodded to Fenoglio as she passed him, her head held high, but she didn’t even look at Meggie. She ignored the stone statues of her dead husband, too.

Her Ugliness seemed to be in a hurry to escape this dark hall in almost as much of a hurry as her son. The maid who followed her passed so close to Meggie that the servant girl’s dress almost touched her. She didn’t seem much older than Meggie herself. Her hair had a reddish tinge, as if firelight were falling on it, and she wore it loose, as only the women among the strolling players usually did in this world. Meggie had never seen lovelier hair.

“You’re late, Fenoglio!” said the Prince of Sighs as soon as the doors had closed behind the women and his grandson. His voice still came out of his mouth with an effort, like a very fat man’s. “Did you run short of words?”

“I won’t run short of words until my last breath, My Prince,” replied Fenoglio, with a bow.

Meggie wasn’t sure whether to copy him. In the end she decided on a clumsy curtsy.

At close quarters the Prince of Sighs looked even more fragile. His skin resembled withered leaves, the whites of his eyes like yellowed paper. “Who’s the girl?” he asked, bending his weary gaze on her. “Your maid? Too young to be your lover, isn’t she?” Meggie felt the blood rise to her face.

“Your Grace, what an idea!” said Fenoglio, dismissing it and putting an arm around her shoulders. “This is my granddaughter who’s come to visit me. My son hopes I shall find her a husband, and what better place for her to look for one than at the wonderful festivities you’re holding today?”

Meggie blushed more than ever, but she forced herself to smile.

“You have a son, do you?” The voice of the Prince of Sighs sounded envious, as if he begrudged any of his subjects the luck of having a living son. “It’s not wise to let your children go too far away,” he murmured, without taking his eyes off Meggie. “Only too likely that they may never come back!”

Meggie didn’t know where to look. “I’ll be going home soon,” she said. “My father knows that.” I hope, she added in her mind.

“Yes. Yes, of course. She’ll be going back. When the time comes.” Fenoglio’s voice sounded 121

 

impatient. “But now we come to the reason for my visit.” He took the roll of parchment so carefully sealed by Rosenquartz from his belt and climbed the steps to the princely chair with his head respectfully bent. The Prince of Sighs seemed to be in pain. He tightened his lips as he leaned forward to take the parchment, and cool though it was in the hall, sweat stood out on his forehead. Meggie remembered what Minerva had said: This prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death. Fenoglio seemed to think so, too.

“Aren’t you feeling well, My Prince?” he asked with concern. “No, I am not!” snapped the prince, annoyed. “Unfortunately, the Adderhead noticed it today, too.” He leaned back, sighing, and struck the side of his chair with his hand. “Tullio!” A servant clad in black, like the prince, shot out from behind the chair. He would have looked like a rather short human being but for the fine fur on his face and hands. Tullio reminded Meggie of the brownies in Elinor’s garden who had turned to ashes, although he clearly had more of the human being about him.

“Go and get me a minstrel – one who can read!” ordered the prince. “He can sing me Fenoglio’s song.” And Tullio scurried off, as willing as a puppy.

“Did you send for Nettle, as I advised?” Fenoglio’s voice sounded urgent, but the prince just waved away the idea angrily.

“Nettle? What for? She wouldn’t come, or if she did it would probably just be to poison me, because I had a couple of oaks felled for my son’s coffin. How can I help it if she’d rather talk to trees than human beings? None of them can help me, not Nettle nor any of the physicians, stonecutters, and bone-knitters whose evil-smelling potions I’ve swallowed. No herb grows that can cure grief.” His fingers trembled as he broke Fenoglio’s seal, and all was so still in the darkened hall as he read that Meggie heard the candle flames hiss as the wicks burned down.

Almost soundlessly, the prince moved his lips as his clouded eyes followed Fenoglio’s words. ” He will awake no more, oh nevermore.” Meggie heard him whisper. She looked sideways at Fenoglio, who flushed guiltily when he noticed her glance. Yes, he had stolen the lines, and certainly not from any poet of this world.

The Laughing Prince raised his head and wiped a tear from his clouded eyes. “Fair words, Fenoglio,” he said bitterly, “yes, you know all about those. But when will any of you poets find the words to open the door through which Death takes us?”

Fenoglio looked around at the statues. He stared at them, lost in thought, as if he were seeing them for the first time. “I am sorry, but there are no such words, My Prince,” he said. “Death is all silence. Even poets have no words once they have passed the door Death closes behind us. If I may, then, I would humbly beg your leave to go. My landlady’s children are waiting outside, and if I don’t catch them again soon they may well run off with the strolling players, for like all children they dream of taming bears and dancing between heaven and hell on a tightrope.”

“Yes, yes, go away!” said the Prince of Sighs, wearily waving his beringed hand. “I’ll send to let you know when I want words again. They are sweet-tasting poison, but still, they’re the only way to make even pain taste bittersweet for a few moments.”

He will awake no more, oh nevermore .. Elinor would certainly have known who wrote those lines, thought Meggie as she walked back down the dark hall with Fenoglio. The herbs scattered on the floor rustled under her boots. Their fragrance hung in the cool air as if to remind the sad prince of the world waiting for him out there. But perhaps it reminded him only of the flowers in 122

 

the crypt where Cosimo lay.

At the door, Tullio came to meet them with the minstrel, hopping and leaping in front of the man like a trained, shaggy animal. The minstrel wore bells at his waist and had a lute on his back. He was a tall, thin fellow with a sullen set to his mouth and so garishly clothed that he would have put a peacock’s tail to shame.

“That fellow can actually read, can he?” Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he pushed her through the door. “I don’t believe it! What’s more, his singing sounds as sweet as the cawing of a crow.

Let’s be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!”

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Chapter 22 – Ten Years

 

Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse/Without a rider on a road at night. The mind sits listening and hears it pass.

– Wallace Stevens, “The Pure Good of Theory”

 

Dustfinger was leaning against the castle wall, behind the stalls where people were crowding.

The aroma of honey and hot chestnuts rose to his nostrils, and high above him went the tightrope-walker whose blue figure, from a distance, reminded him so much of CloudDancer.

He was holding a long pole with tiny birds sitting on it, birds as red as drops of blood, and when the dancer changed direction – stepping lightly, as if standing on a swaying rope was the most natural thing in the world – the birds flew up and fluttered around him, twittering shrilly. The marten on Dustfinger’s shoulder looked up at them and licked his lips. He was still very young, smaller and more delicate than Gwin, not half as likely to bite, and most important of all he didn’t fear fire. Absently, Dustfinger tickled his horned head. He had caught him behind the stable soon after his arrival at Roxane’s house, when the marten was trying to stalk her chickens, and had called him Jink, because of the way he jinked as he moved, dodging and darting before jumping up at Dustfinger so suddenly that he almost knocked him over. Are you crazy? he had asked himself when he lured the animal to him with a fresh egg. He’s a marten. How do you know that it makes any difference to Death what name he bears? But he’d kept Jink all the same.

Perhaps he had left all his fears behind in the other world: his fears, his loneliness, his ill fortune. .

Jink learned fast; he was soon leaping through the flames as if he’d been doing it all his life. It would be easy to earn a few coins with him at the markets – with him and the boy.

The marten nuzzled Dustfinger’s cheek. Some acrobats were building a human tower in front of the empty platform that still awaited the birthday boy. Farid had tried persuading Dustfinger to perform, too, but he didn’t want people staring at him today. He wanted to stare himself, see his fill of all he’d missed for so long. So he was not in fire-eater’s costume, either, but wore Roxane’s 124

 

dead husband’s clothes, which she had given him. They had obviously been almost the same size.

Poor fellow: Neither Orpheus nor Silvertongue could bring him back from where he was now.

“Why don’t you earn the money today for a change?” he had asked Farid. The boy had turned first red and then white as chalk with pride – and shot away into the turmoil. He was a quick learner. Only a tiny morsel of the fiery honey, and Farid was talking to the flames as if he’d been born with their language on his tongue. Of course, they didn’t yet spring from the ground when the boy snapped his fingers as readily as for Dustfinger himself, but when Farid called to the fire in a low voice it would speak to him – condescendingly, sometimes with mockery, but still it answered him.

“Oh, but he is your son!” Roxane had said when Farid had drawn a bucket of water from the well early in the morning, cursing, to cool his burned fingers. “He’s not,” Dustfinger had replied – and had seen in her eyes that she didn’t believe him. Before they set off for the castle, he had practiced a couple of tricks with Farid, and Jehan had watched. But when Dustfinger beckoned the boy closer, he ran away. Farid had laughed out loud at him for it, but Dustfinger put his hand over Farid’s mouth. “The fire devoured his father, have you forgotten?” he had whispered, and Farid bowed his head, ashamed.

How proudly he stood there among the other entertainers! Dustfinger pushed his own way past the stalls to get a better view. Farid had taken off his shirt as Dustfinger himself sometimes did –

burning cloth was more dangerous than a small burn on the skin, and you could easily protect your naked body against the licking tongues of fire with grease. The boy put on a good act, such a good one that even the traders stared at him spellbound, and Dustfinger took his chance to free a few fairies from the cages where they had been imprisoned, to be sold to some fool as lucky charms. No wonder Roxane suspects you of being his father, he told himself. Your chest swells with pride when you look at him. Next to Farid, a couple of clowns were exchanging broad jokes, to his right the Black Prince was wrestling with his bear, but all the same more and more people stopped to look at the boy standing there playing with fire, oblivious of all around him.

Dustfinger watched as Sootbird lowered his torches and looked enviously their way. He’d never learn. He was still as poor a fire-eater as he’d been ten years ago.

Farid bowed, and a shower of coins fell into the wooden bowl that Roxane had given him. He glanced proudly at Dustfinger, as hungry for praise as a dog for a bone, and when Dustfinger clapped his hands he flushed red with delight. What a child he still was, even though he had proudly shown Dustfinger the first stubble on his chin a few months ago!

Dustfinger was making his way past two farmers haggling over a couple of piglets when the gate to the Inner Castle opened again – this time not, as before, for the Adderhead, when Dustfinger himself had only just managed to hide from the Piper’s searching glance behind a cake stall. No.

Obviously, the birthday boy himself was finally appearing at his own festivities – and his mother would accompany the child, with her maidservant. How fast his foolish heart was suddenly beating! “She has your hair,” Roxane had said, “and my eyes.”

The prince’s pipers made the most of their big scene. Proud as turkey-cocks they stood there, long-stemmed trumpets held aloft in the air. The strolling players, being their own masters, disapproved without exception of musicians who sold their art to a single lord. In exchange, the pipers were better dressed, not in Motley array like the players on the road, but in their prince’s colors. For the pipers of the Prince of Sighs, that meant green and gold. His daughter-in-law wore black. Cosimo the Fair had been dead for barely a year, but his young widow would 125

 

certainly have been courted by several suitors already, in spite of the mark, dark as a burn, that disfigured her face. The crowd came thronging around the platform as soon as Violante and her son had taken their seats. Dustfinger had to climb on an empty barrel to catch a glimpse of her maidservant beyond all those heads and bodies.

Brianna was standing behind the boy. Despite her bright hair, she was like her mother. The dress she wore made her look very grown-up, yet Dustfinger still saw in her face traces of the little girl who had tried to snatch burning torches from his hand or stamped her foot angrily when he wouldn’t let her catch the sparks he brought raining down from the sky.

Ten years. Ten years he’d spent in the wrong story. Ten years in which Death had taken one of his daughters, leaving behind nothing but memories as pale and indistinct as if she had never lived at all, while his other daughter had grown up, laughing and weeping through all those years, and he had not been there. Hypocrite! he told himself, unable to take his eyes from Brianna’s face. Are you trying to tell yourself you were a devoted father before Silvertongue lured you into his story?

Cosimo’s son laughed out loud. His stubby finger pointed first at one, then at another of the entertainers, and he caught the flowers that the women players threw him. How old was he?

Five? Six? Brianna had been the same age when Silvertongue’s voice had enticed him away. She had only come up to his elbow, and she’d weighed so little that he scarcely noticed when she climbed up on his back. When he forgot time yet again and stayed away for weeks on end, in places with names she had never heard, she used to hit him with her little fists and throw the presents he brought her at his feet. Then she would slip out of bed the same night to retrieve them after all: colored ribbons as soft as rabbit fur, fabric flowers to put in her hair, little pipes that could imitate the song of a lark or the hoot of an owl. She had never told him so, of course, she was proud – even prouder than her mother – but he always knew where she put the presents – in a bag among her clothes. Did she still have it?

She had kept his presents, yes, but they could never bring a smile to her face when he had stayed away for a long time. Only fire could do that, and for a moment – a seductive moment Dustfinger was tempted to step out of the gaping crowd, take his place among the other entertainers performing tricks for the prince’s grandson, and summon fire just for his daughter’s sake. But he stood where he was, invisible behind the throng, watching her smooth back her hair with the palm of her hand in the same way as her mother did so often, unobtrusively rubbing her nose and shifting from foot to foot, as if she’d much rather be dancing down there than standing stiffly here.

“Eat him, bear! Eat him up this minute! So he really is back, but do you think he’s planning to go and see an old friend?”

Dustfinger spun around so suddenly that he almost fell off the barrel where he was still standing.

The Black Prince was looking up at him, with his bear behind him. Dustfinger had hoped to meet him here, surrounded by strangers, rather than in the strolling players’ camp, where there were too many who would ask where he had been. . The two of them had known each other since they were the same age as the prince’s grandson enthroned in his chair on the platform – the orphaned sons of strolling players, adult before their time, and Dustfinger had missed that black face almost as much as Roxane’s.

“So will he really eat me if I get off this barrel?”

126

The Prince laughed. His laughter sounded almost as carefree as in the old days. “Maybe. After all, he’s noticed that I really do have a grudge against you for not coming to see me. And didn’t you scorch his fur last time you two met?”

Jink crouched on Dustfinger’s shoulder as he jumped off the barrel, chattering excitedly in his ear. “Don’t worry, the bear doesn’t eat your sort!” Dustfinger whispered to him – and hugged the Prince as hard as if a single embrace could make up for ten years.

“You still smell more of bear than man.”

“And you smell of fire. Now tell me, where’ve you been?” The Black Prince held Dustfinger at arm’s length and looked at him as if he could read in his face everything that had happened during his friend’s absence. “So the fire-raisers didn’t string you up, then, as many folk say. You look too healthy for that. What about the other story – that the Adderhead locked you up in his dankest dungeon? Or did you turn yourself into a tree for a while, as some songs say, a tree with burning leaves deep in the Wayless Wood?” Dustfinger smiled. “I’d have liked that. But I assure you, even you wouldn’t believe the real story.”

A whisper ran through the crowd. Looking over all the heads, Dustfinger saw Farid, red in the face, acknowledging their applause. Her Ugliness’s son was clapping so hard that he almost fell off his chair. But Farid was searching the throng for Dustfinger’s face. He smiled at the boy – and sensed that the Black Prince was looking at him thoughtfully.

“So the boy really is yours?” he said. “No, don’t worry, I’ll ask no more questions. I know you like to have your secrets, and I don’t suppose that has changed much. All the same, I want to hear the story you spoke of, sometime. And you owe us a performance, too. We can all do with something to cheer us up. Times are bad, even on this side of the forest, though it may not seem so today. . ”

“Yes, so I’ve heard already. And the Adderhead obviously doesn’t love you any better than before. What have you done, to make him threaten you with the gallows? Did the bear take one of his stags?” Dustfinger stroked Jink’s bristling fur. The marten never took his eyes off the bear.

“Oh, believe me, the Adderhead scarcely guesses half of what I do, or I’d have been dangling from the battlements of the Castle of Night long ago!”

“Oh yes?” The tightrope-walker was sitting on his rope above them, surrounded by his birds and swinging his legs, as if the milling crowd down below had nothing to do with him. “Prince, I don’t like that look in your eye,” said Dustfinger, looking up at the men walking the rope.

“You’d do better not to provoke the Adderhead anymore, or he’ll have you hunted down just as he’s hunted others. And then you won’t be safe on this side of the forest, either!”

Someone was pulling at his sleeve. Dustfinger turned so abruptly that Farid flinched back in alarm. “I’m sorry!” he stammered, nodding rather uncertainly to the Prince. “But Meggie’s here.

With Fenoglio!” He sounded as excited as if he had met the Laughing Prince in person.

“Where?” Dustfinger looked around, but Farid had eyes only for the bear, who had affectionately placed his muzzle on the Black Prince’s head. The Prince smiled and pushed the bear’s muzzle away.

“Where?” Dustfinger repeated impatiently. For Fenoglio was the very last person he wanted to 127

 

meet.

“Over there, just behind the platform!”

Dustfinger looked the way Farid’s finger was pointing. Sure enough, there was the old man, with two children, just as he had first seen him. Silvertongue’s daughter stood beside him. She had grown tall – and even more like her mother. Dustfinger uttered a quiet curse. What were those two after, here in his story? They had as little to do with it as he had to do with theirs. Oh yes?

mocked a voice inside him. The old man won’t see it that way. Did you forget he claims to have created everything here?

“I don’t want to see him,” he told Farid. “Bad luck clings to that old man, and worse than bad luck, too, mark my words.”

“Is the boy talking about the Inkweaver?” The Prince came so close to Dustfinger’s side that the marten hissed at him. “What do you have against him? He writes good songs.”

“He writes other things as well.” And who knows what he’s already written about you, Dustfinger added in his mind. A few well-chosen words, Prince, and you’re a dead man!

Farid was still looking at the girl. “What about Meggie? Don’t you want to see her, either?” His voice sounded husky with disappointment. “She asked how you were.”

“Give her my regards. She’ll understand. Off you go, then! I can see you’re still in love with her.

How was it you once described her eyes? Little pieces of the sky!”

Farid blushed scarlet. “Stop it!” he said angrily.

But Dustfinger took him by the shoulders and turned him around. “Go on!” he said. “Give her my regards, but tell her to keep my name out of her magic mouth, understand?”

Farid cast a last glance at the bear, nodded – and strolled back to the girl very slowly, as if to show that he wasn’t in any hurry to reach her. She was going to great pains herself not to look his way too often, as she fidgeted awkwardly with the sleeves of her dress.

She looked as if she belonged here, a maidservant from a not particularly prosperous home, perhaps the daughter of a farmer or a craftsman. Well, her father was indeed a craftsman, wasn’t he? If one with special talents. Perhaps she was looking around rather too freely. Girls here usually kept their heads bent – and sometimes they were already married by her age. Did his daughter Brianna have anything like that in mind? Roxane hadn’t said so.

“That boy’s good. Better than Sootbird already.” The Prince put out his hand to the marten – and withdrew it when Jink bared his tiny teeth.

“That’s not difficult.” Dustfinger let his eyes wander to Fenoglio. So they called him Inkweaver here. How contented he looked, the man who had written Dustfinger’s death. A knife in the back, plunged so deep that it found his heart, that was what Fenoglio had planned for him. Dustfinger instinctively reached to touch the spot between his shoulder blades. Yes, he had read them already, after all, Fenoglio’s deadly words, one night in the other world when he had been lying awake, trying in vain to conjure up Roxane’s face in his memory. You can’t go back! He had kept hearing Meggie’s voice saying those words. ” One of Capricorn’s men is waiting for you in the book.

They want to kill Gwin, and you try to help him, so they kill you instead. ” He had taken the book 128

 

out of his backpack with trembling fingers, had opened it and searched the pages for his death.

And then he’d read what it said there in black and white, over and over again. After that he had decided to leave Gwin behind if he should ever come back here. . Dustfinger stroked Jink’s bushy tail. No, perhaps it had not been a good idea to catch another marten.

“What’s the matter? You look as if the hangman had given you the nod all of a sudden.” The Black Prince put an arm around his shoulders, while his bear sniffed curiously at Dustfinger’s backpack. “The boy must have told you how we picked him up in the forest? He was in a state of great agitation, said he was here to warn you. And when he said of whom, many of my men’s hands went to their knives.”

Basta. Dustfinger ran a finger over his scarred cheek. “Yes, he’s probably back, too.” “With his master?”

“No, Capricorn’s dead. I saw him die myself.”

The Black Prince put his hand in his bear’s mouth and tickled its tongue. “Well, that’s good news.

And there wouldn’t be much for him to come back to, just a few charred walls. Only old Nettle sometimes goes there. She swears you can’t find better yarrow anywhere than in the fire-raisers’ old fortress.”

Dustfinger saw Fenoglio glancing his way. Meggie was looking in the same direction, too. He quickly turned his back on them.

“We have a camp near there now – you’ll remember the old brownies’ caves,” the Prince went on, lowering his voice. “Since Cosimo smoked out the fire-raisers those caves have made a good shelter again. Only the strolling players know about them. The old and frail, cripples, women tired of living on the road with their children – they can all stay and rest there for a while. I tell you what, the Secret Camp would be a good place for you to tell me your story! The one you say is so hard to believe. I’ve often been there for the bear’s sake. He gets grouchy when he spends too long between city walls. Roxane can tell you how to find the place; she knows her way around the forest almost as well as you by now.”

“I know the old brownie caves,” said Dustfinger. He had hidden from Capricorn’s men there many times, but he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to tell the Prince about the last ten years.

“Six torches!” Farid was beside him again, wiping soot off his fingers on his trousers. “I juggled with six torches and I didn’t drop one. I think she liked it.”

Dustfinger suppressed a smile. “Very likely.” Two of the strolling players had drawn the Prince aside. Dustfinger wasn’t sure whether he knew them, but he turned his back, to be on the safe side.

“Did you know everyone’s talking about you?” Farid’s eyes were round as coins with excitement.

“They’re all saying you’re back. And I think some of them have recognized you.”

“Oh, have they?” Dustfinger looked uneasily around. His daughter was still standing behind the little prince’s chair. He hadn’t told Farid about her. It was bad enough having the boy jealous of Roxane.

“They say there was never a fire-eater to match you! The other one there, Sootbird they call him”

– Farid put a piece of bread in Jink’s mouth – “he asked about you, but I didn’t know if you 129

 

wanted to meet him. He’s really bad at it, he doesn’t know how to do anything – but he says he knows you. Is that right?”

“Yes, but all the same I’d rather not meet him.” Dustfinger turned. The tightrope-walker had come down from his rope at last. CloudDancer was talking to him and pointing Dustfinger’s way. Time to disappear. He would be happy to see them all again, but not here, and not today. .

“I’ve had enough of this,” he told Farid. “You stay and earn us a few more coins. I’ll be at Roxane’s if you want me.”

Up on the platform, Her Ugliness was handing her son a gold-embroidered purse. The child put his plump hand into it and threw the entertainers some coins. They hastily bent to pick them out of the dust. But Dustfinger cast a last look at the Black Prince and went away.

What would Roxane say when she heard that he hadn’t exchanged a single word with his daughter? He knew the answer. She would laugh. She knew only too well what a coward he could be.

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Chapter 23 – Cold and White

I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night

Just so I can extend pain

Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada’s wing.

– Xi Murong, “Poetry’s Value,” Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry

There they were again. Mo felt them coming closer, he saw them even though his eyes were closed – White Women, their faces so pale, their eyes colorless and cold. That was all there was in the world, white shadows in the dark and the pain in his breast, red pain. Every breath brought it back. Breathing. Hadn’t it once been perfectly easy? Now it was difficult, as difficult as if they had buried him already, heaping earth on his breast, on the pain burning and throbbing there. He couldn’t move. His body was useless, a burning prison. He wanted to open his eyes, but his lids weighed down as heavily as if they were made of stone. Everything was lost. Only words remained: pain, fear, death. White words. No color in them, no life. Only the pain was red.

Is this death? Mo wondered. This void, full of faint shadows? Sometimes he thought he felt the fingers of the pale women reaching into his agonized breast as if to crush his heart. Their breath wafted over his hot face, and they were whispering a name, but it was not the name he remembered as his own. Bluejay, they whispered.

Their voices seemed to be made of cold yearning, nothing but cold yearning. It’s easy, they whispered, you don’t even have to open your eyes. No more pain, no darkness. Stand up, they whispered, it’s time to go, and they entwined their white fingers with his. Their fingers were wonderfully cool on his burning skin.

But the other voice wouldn’t let him go. Indistinct, barely audible, as if it came from far, far away, it penetrated the whispering. It sounded strange, almost discordant among the whispering shadows. Be quiet, he wanted to tell it with his tongue of stone. Be quiet, please, let me go! For nothing but that voice kept him imprisoned in the burning house that was his body. But the voice went on.

He knew it, but where from? He couldn’t remember. It was long ago that he had last heard it, too long ago. .

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Chapter 24 – In Elinor’s Cellar

The lofty bookshelves sag

Under thousands of sleeping souls

Silence, hopeful

Every time I open a book, a soul is awakened.

– Xi Chuan, “Books”, New Generation

 

I ought to have furnished my cellar more comfortably, thought Elinor, watching Darius pump up the air mattress he had found behind one of the storage shelves for her. But how could she have guessed that some dreadful day she’d have to sleep down here, while a bespectacled, moonfaced man sat up in her wonderful library with his slobbering dog, playing master of the house?

The wretched animal had almost eaten the fairy who had slipped out of Orpheus’s words. A blue fairy and a lark fluttering in panic against the windowpanes, that was all that had come out of the book – to replace four people! “Look at that!” Orpheus had triumphantly announced. “Two for four! There are fewer and fewer coming out, and one day I’ll manage not to let anything out of a book at all.” Conceited pig! As if anyone was interested in who or what came out of the book, when Resa and Mortimer had gone! And Mortola and Basta .. Quick, Elinor, think of something else!

If only she could have hoped that someone useful would soon come knocking on her front door!

But unfortunately, such a visitor was highly improbable. She had never had much to do with her neighbors, certainly not since Darius had taken over the care of her books and Mo, Resa, and Meggie had moved in. What more did she need in the way of company?

Her nose began to prickle ominously. That’s the wrong way to think, Elinor, she warned herself–

as if she’d been able to think of anything else these last few hours. They’re all right! she kept telling herself. You’d have sensed it if anything had happened to them. Wasn’t that what all the stories said? You felt it, like pang in your heart, when something happened to someone you loved?

Darius smiled hesitantly at her as his foot went tirelessly up and down on the pump. The air mattress already looked like a caterpillar, a huge, squashed caterpillar. How was she supposed to sleep on that thing? She’d roll off and land on the cold cement floor.

“Darius!” she said. “We must do something! We can’t simply let them shut us up here while Mortola .. ”

Oh God, how that old witch had looked at Mortimer. Don’t think about it, Elinor! Just don’t think about it! Or about Basta and his rifle. Or Meggie wandering through the Wayless Wood all alone.

I’m sure she’s alone! A giant will have stepped on that boy and crushed him by now. … It was a good thing Darius didn’t know the silly way her thoughts were getting all mixed up, making the tears start to come all the time. .

“Darius!” Elinor whispered, for the man built like a wardrobe would certainly be on guard outside the door. “Darius, it’s all up to you! You must read them back!”

Darius shook his head so vigorously that his glasses almost slipped off his nose. “No!” His voice was trembling like a leaf in the wind, and his foot began pumping again as if that stupid mattress were the most important thing in the world. Then, very suddenly, he stopped and hid his face in 132

 

his hands. “You know what will happen!” Elinor heard him say in a stifled voice. “You know what will happen to them if I read while I’m afraid.”

Elinor sighed.

Yes, she knew. Distorted faces, stiff legs, a lost voice . . and of course he was afraid. Probably even more afraid than she was, for Darius had known Mortola and Basta considerably longer…

“Yes. Yes, I know. All right,” she murmured and began abstractedly straightening a few cans on the shelves – tomato sauce, ravioli (not a particularly nice brand), red kidney beans Mortimer loved red kidney beans. There it came again, that prickling in her nose.

“Very well!” she said, turning around resolutely. “Then that Orpheus will have to do it.” How composed and sure of herself she sounded! She was obviously a gifted actress, thought Elinor; she’d realized that before, back in Capricorn’s church when all had seemed lost .. indeed, now that she came to think of it, everything had seemed gloomier then, if anything.

Darius stared at her, bewildered.

“Don’t look at me like that, for God’s sake!” she hissed. “I don’t know how we can make him do it, either. Not yet.” She began pacing up and down, up and down, between the shelves full of cans and preserving jars.

“He’s vain, Darius!” she whispered. “Very vain. Did you see how he changed color when he realized that Meggie had done something he’s tried and failed to do for years? I’m sure he’d like to ask her –” She stopped suddenly and looked at Darius. “– how she managed it.” Darius stopped pumping.

“Yes! But Meggie would have to be here herself to tell him that.” They looked at each other.

“That’s how we’ll do it, Darius!” Elinor whispered. “We’ll get Orpheus to bring Meggie back, and then she can read Mortimer and Resa back, too, with the same words he used for her! That ought to work!” She began pacing up and down again like the caged panther in the poem she liked so much .. except that the look in her eyes was no longer hopeless. She must lay her plans well.

That man Orpheus was clever. And so are you, Elinor, she told herself. Just try it!

She couldn’t help it, she started thinking of the way Mortola had looked at Mortimer again.

Suppose it was much too late by the time she . . ?

Oh, stop it!

Elinor thrust out her chin, pulled back her shoulders – and marched firmly toward the cellar door. She hammered on the white-painted metal with the flat of her hand. “Hey!” she called.

“Hey, you, wardrobe-man! Open this door! I have to speak to that man Orpheus! At once.”

But nothing stirred on the other side of the door – and Elinor let her hand drop again. For a moment she entertained the dreadful thought that the two men had gone and left them alone down here, locked in .. and without so much as a can opener, thought Elinor. What a ridiculous way to die. Starving among piles of canned food. She was just raising both hands to hammer on the door again when she heard footsteps outside. Footsteps going away, up the stairs leading from the cellar to the entrance hall.

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“Hey!” she shouted, so loudly that Darius, standing behind her, jumped. “Hey, come back, you hulking great wardrobe! Open this door! I want to talk to Orpheus!”

But all was quiet on the other side of the door. Elinor fell to her knees in front of it. She felt Darius come up beside her and put a hand hesitantly on her shoulder. “He’ll be back,” he said quietly. “At least they’re still here, aren’t they?” Then he returned to the air mattress.

But Elinor sat there, her back against the cold cellar door, listening to the silence. You couldn’t even hear the birds down here, not the smallest chirp of a cricket. Meggie will fetch them back, she thought. Meggie will fetch them back! But suppose by now her mother and father are both …

Not the way to think, Elinor. Not the way to think.

She closed her eyes and heard Darius begin pumping again.

I’d have sensed it, she thought. Yes, I would. I’d have sensed it if anything had happened to them. It says so in all the stories, and surely they can’t all be lying!

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Chapter 25 – A Camp in the Forest

 

I thought it said in every tick: I am so sick, so sick, so sick; O death, come quick, come quick, come quick.

– Frances Cornford, “The Watch,” Collected Poems

Resa didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, just .sitting in the dimly lit, dark cave where the strolling players slept, holding Mo’s hand. One of the women players brought her something to eat, and now and then one of the children crept in, leaned against the cave wall, and listened to what she was telling Mo in a quiet voice – about Meggie and Elinor, Darius, the library and its books, the workshop where he cured books of sickness and wounds as bad as his own .. How strange the strolling players must find her stories of another world that they had never seen. And how very strange they must think her, to talk to someone who lay so still, his eyes closed as if he would never open them again.

Just as the fifth White Woman appeared on the steps, the old woman had returned to Capricorn’s fortress with three men. It had not been so very far for her to go. Resa had seen guards standing among the trees as they entered the camp. The people these men were guarding were the cripples and the old folk, women with small children, and obviously there were also some in the camp who were simply resting from the stress and strain of life on the open road.

When Resa asked where food and clothing for all these people came from, one of the strolling players who had come to fetch Mo replied, “From the Prince.” And when she asked what prince he meant, he had put a black stone into her hand by way of answer.

She was known as Nettle, the old woman who had so suddenly appeared at the gate of Capricorn’s fortress. Everyone treated her with respect, but a little fear was mingled with it, too.

Resa had to help her when she cauterized Mo’s wound. She still felt sick when she thought of it.

Then she had helped the old woman to bind up the wound again and memorized all her directions. “If he’s still breathing in three days’ time he may live,” she had said before leaving them alone again, in the cave that offered protection from wild beasts, the sun, and the rain, but not from fear or from black, despairing thoughts.

Three days. It grew dark and then light again outside, light and then dark again, and every time Nettle came back and bent over Mo, Resa sought her face desperately for some sign of hope. But the old woman’s features remained expressionless. The days went by, and Mo was still breathing, but he still wouldn’t open his eyes.

The cave smelled of mushrooms, the brownies’ favorite food. Very likely a whole pack of them 135

 

had once lived here. Now the mushroom aroma mingled with the scent of dead leaves. The strolling players had strewn the cold floor of the cave with them: dead leaves and fragrant herbs

– thyme, meadowsweet, woodruff. Resa rubbed the dry leaves between her fingers as she sat there cooling Mo’s forehead, which was not cold anymore but hot, terribly hot. . The scent of thyme reminded her of a fairy tale he had read to her long, long ago, before he found out that his voice could bring someone like Capricorn out of the words on the page. Wild thyme should not be brought indoors, the story had said, bad luck comes with it. Resa threw away the hard stems and brushed the scent off her fingers onto her dress.

One of the women brought her something to eat again, and sat beside her for a while in silence, as if hoping that her presence would bring a little comfort. Soon after that three of the men came in, too, but they stayed standing at the entrance of the cave, looking at her and Mo from a distance. They whispered to one another as they glanced at the pair of them.

“Are we welcome here?” Resa asked Nettle on one of her silent visits. “I think they’re talking about us.”

“Let them!” was all the old woman said. “I told them you were attacked by footpads, but of course that doesn’t satisfy them. A beautiful woman, a man with a strange wound, where do they come from? What happened? They’re curious. And if you’re wise, you won’t let too many of them see that scar on his arm.”

“Why not?” Resa looked at her, baffled.

The old woman scrutinized her as if she wanted to see into her heart. “Well, if you really don’t know, then that’s just as well,” she said at last. “And let them talk. What else are they to do?

Some come here to wait for death, others for life to begin at last, others again live only on the stories they are told. Tightrope-walkers, fire-eaters, peasants, princes – they’re all the same, flesh and blood and a heart that knows it will stop beating one day.”

Fire-eaters. Resa’s heart leaped when Nettle mentioned them. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

“Please!” she said, when the old woman reached the entrance of the cave again. “You must know many strolling players. Is there one who calls himself Dustfinger?”

Nettle turned as slowly as if she were still deciding whether to answer this. “Dustfinger?” she finally replied, in unforthcoming tones. “You’ll scarcely find one of the strolling players who doesn’t know of him, but no one’s seen him for years. Although there are rumors that he’s back…”

Oh yes, he’s back, thought Resa, and he will help me just as I helped him in the other world.

“I must send him a message!” She heard the desperation in her own voice. “Please!”

Nettle looked at her without any expression on her brown face. “CloudDancer is here,” she said at last. “His leg is aching again, but as soon as it’s better he’ll be on his way. See if he’ll ask around for you and deliver your message.”

Then she had gone.

CloudDancer.

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Darkness was falling again outside, and with the fading light men, women, and children came into the cave and lay down on the dead leaves to sleep – away from her, as if Mo’s stillness might be catching. One of the women brought her a torch. It cast quivering shadows on the rocky walls, shadows that made faces and passed black fingers over Mo’s pallid face. The fire did not keep the White Women away, although it was said that they both desired and feared it. They appeared in the cave again and again, like pale reflections with faces made of mist. They came closer and disappeared again, presumably driven away by the sharp and bitter smell of the leaves that Nettle had scattered around the place where Mo was lying. “It will keep them off,” the old woman had said, “but you must watch carefully all the same.”

One of the children was crying in his sleep. His mother stroked his hair to comfort him, and Resa couldn’t help thinking of Meggie. Was she alone, or was the boy still with her? Was she happy, sad, sick, in good health .. ? How often she had asked herself these questions, as if she hoped for an answer sometime, from somewhere. .

A woman brought her fresh water. She smiled gratefully and asked the woman about CloudDancer. “He prefers to sleep in the open,” she said, pointing. It was some time since Resa had seen any more White Women, but all the same she woke one of the women who had offered to relieve her during the night. Then she climbed over the sleeping figures and went out.

The moon was shining through the dense canopy of leaves, brighter than any torch. A few men were sitting around a fire. Unsure of herself, Resa went toward them, in the dress that wasn’t right for this place at all. It ended too far above her ankles even for one of the strolling players, and it was torn, too.

The men stared at her, both suspicious and curious. “Is one of you CloudDancer?”

A thin little man, toothless and probably not nearly as old as he looked, nudged the man sitting next to him in the ribs. “Why do you ask?” This man’s face was friendly, but his eyes were wary.

“Nettle says he might carry a message for me.”

“A message? Who to?” He stretched his left leg, rubbing the knee as if it hurt him.

“To a fire-eater. Dustfinger is his name. His face .. ” CloudDancer drew one finger over his cheek.

“Three scars. I know. What do you want with him?”

“I want you to take him this.” Resa kneeled down by the fire and put her hand into the pocket of her dress. She always had paper and a pencil with her; they had done duty as her tongue for years. Now her voice was back, but a wooden tongue was more useful for sending Dustfinger a message. Fingers trembling, she began to write, taking no notice of the suspicious eyes following her hand as if she were doing something forbidden.

“She can write,” remarked the toothless man. There was no mistaking the disapproval in his tone. It was a long, long time ago that Resa had sat in the marketplaces of towns on the far side of the forest, dressed in men’s clothes and with her hair cut short, because writing was the only way she knew to earn her living and writing was a craft forbidden to women in this world.

Slavery was the punishment for it, and it had made her Mortola’s slave. For it was Mortola who had discovered Resa’s disguise, and as a reward she was allowed to take her away to Capricorn’s fortress.

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“Dustfinger won’t be able to read that,” pointed out CloudDancer equably. “Yes, he will. I taught him how.”

They looked at her incredulously. Letters. Mysterious things, rich men’s tools, not meant for strolling players and certainly not for women. .

Only CloudDancer smiled. “Well, imagine that. Dustfinger can read,” he said softly. “Fine, but I can’t. You’d better tell me what you’ve written, so that I can tell him the words even if your note gets lost. Which can easily happen with written words, much more easily than with words in your head.”

Resa looked CloudDancer straight in the face. You trust people far too easily . . How often Dustfinger had told her that, but what choice did she have now? In a low voice, she repeated what she had written. ” Dear Dustfinger, I am in the strolling players’ camp with Mo, deep in the Wayless Wood. Mortola and Basta brought us here, and Mortola” – her voice failed as she said it –

” Mortola shot Mo. Meggie is here, too, I don’t know exactly where, but please look for her and bring her to me! Protect her as you tried to protect me. But beware of Basta. Resa. ”

“Mortola? Wasn’t that what they called the old woman who lived with the fire-raisers?” The man who asked this question had no right hand. A thief– you lost your left hand for stealing a loaf, your right hand for a piece of meat.

“Yes, they say she’s poisoned more men than the Adderhead has hairs on his head!” CloudDancer pushed a log of wood back into the fire. “And it was Basta who slashed Dustfinger’s face all that time ago. He won’t like to hear those two names.”

“But Basta’s dead!” remarked the toothless minstrel. “And they’ve been saying the same about the old woman, too!”

“That’s what they tell the children,” said a man with his back to Resa, “so they’ll sleep better. The likes of Mortola don’t die. They only bring death to others.”

They’re not going to help me, thought Resa. Not now that they’ve heard those two names. The only one looking at her in anything like a friendly way was a man wearing the black and red of a fire-eater. But CloudDancer was still inspecting her as if he wasn’t sure what to make of her –

her and her mysterious message. Finally, however, and without a word, he took the note from her fingers and put it in the bag he wore at his belt. “Very well, I’ll take Dustfinger your message,” he said. “I know where he is.”

He was going to help her after all. Resa could hardly believe it.

“Oh, thank you.” Swaying with exhaustion, she straightened up again. “When do you think he’ll get the message?”

CloudDancer patted his knee. “My leg must get better first.”

“Of course.” Resa bit back the words she wanted to shout, begging him to hurry. She mustn’t press him too hard, or he might change his mind, and then who would find Dustfinger for her? A piece of wood broke apart in the flames, spitting out glowing sparks at her feet. “I have no money to pay you,” she said, “but perhaps you’ll accept this.” And she took her wedding ring off her finger and offered it to CloudDancer. The toothless man looked at the gold ring as avidly as if he would like to put his own hand out for it, but CloudDancer shook his head.

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“No, forget it,” he said. “Your husband is sick. It’s bad luck to give away your wedding ring, I’ve heard.”

Bad luck. Resa was quick to put the ring back on her finger. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes, you’re right. Thank you. Thank you with all my heart!”

She turned to go.

“Hey, you!” The minstrel whose back had been turned to her was looking at her. He had only two fingers on his right hand. “Your husband – he has dark hair. Dark as the fur of a mole. And he’s tall. Very tall.”

Bewildered, Resa looked at him. “So?”

“And then there’s the scar. Just where the songs say. I’ve seen it. Everyone knows how he got it: The Adderhead’s dogs bit him there when he was poaching near the Castle of Night, and he took a stag, one of the White Stags that only the Adderhead himself may kill.”

What on earth was he talking about? Resa remembered what Nettle had said: And if you’re wise, you won’t let too many of them, see that scar on his arm.

The toothless man laughed. “Listen to Twofingers, will you! He thinks it’s the Bluejay lying there in the cave. Since when did you believe in old wives’ tales? Was he wearing his feathered mask?”

“How should I know?” snapped Twofingers. “Did I bring him here? But I tell you, that’s him!”

Resa sensed that the fire-eater was examining her thoughtfully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I don’t know any Bluejay.”

“You don’t?” Twofingers picked up the lute lying on the grass beside him. Resa had never before heard the song that he now sang in a soft voice:

Bright hope arises from the dark

And makes the mighty tremble.

Princes can’t fail to see his mark,

Nor can they now dissemble.

With hair like moleskin smooth and black,

And mask of blue jay feathers,

He vows wrongdoers to attack,

Strikes princes in all weathers.

He hunts their game He robs their gold

And him they would have slain.

But he’s away, he will not stay,

They seek the Jay in vain.

How they were all looking at her! Resa took a step backward. “I must go to my husband,” she said. “That song .. it has nothing to do with him. Believe me, it doesn’t.”

She felt their eyes on her back as she returned to the cave. Forget them, she told herself.

Dustfinger will get your message, that’s all that matters, and he’ll find Meggie and bring her here.

The woman who had taken her place rose without a word and lay down with the others again.

Resa was so exhausted that she swayed as she kneeled on the dead leaves covering the floor.

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And the tears came once more. She wiped them away with her sleeve, hid her face in the fabric of her dress that smelled so familiar . . of Elinor’s house, of the old sofa where she used to sit with Meggie – telling her about this world. She began to sob, so loudly that she was afraid she might have woken one of the sleeping company. Alarmed, she pressed her hand to her mouth.

“Resa?” It was hardly more than a whisper.

She raised her head. Mo was looking at her. Looking at her. “I heard your voice,” he whispered.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep first. She leaned over him and covered his face with kisses. And then she both laughed and wept.

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Chapter 26 – Fenoglio’s Plan

 

All I need is a sheet of paper

and something to write with, and then

I can turn the world upside down.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Weisse und die Schwarze Kunst

 

Two days had passed since the festivities at the castle, two days that Fenoglio had spent showing Meggie every nook and cranny of Ombra. “But today,” he said, before they set off again after eating breakfast with Minerva, “today I’ll show you the river. It’s a steep climb down, not very easy for my old bones, but there’s nowhere better to talk in peace. And what’s more, if we’re in luck you may see some water-nymphs down there.” Meggie would have loved to see a water-nymph. She had come upon only one so far, in a rather muddy pond in the Wayless Wood, and as soon as Meggie’s reflection had fallen on the water the nymph had darted away. But what exactly did Fenoglio want to talk about in peace? It wasn’t hard to guess.

What was he going to ask her to read here this time? Or, rather, who was he going to ask her to read here – and where from? From another story written by Fenoglio himself?

The path, down which he led her wound its way along steeply sloping fields where farmers were working, bent double in the morning sun. How hard it must be growing enough to eat to allow you to survive the winter. And then there were all the creatures who secretly attacked your few provisions: mice, mealworms, maggots, wood lice. Life was much more difficult in Fenoglio’s world, yet it seemed to Meggie that with every new day his story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as spiders’ webs, and enchantingly beautiful, too. .

Everything around her seemed so real by now. Her homesickness had almost disappeared.

“Come on!” Fenoglio’s voice startled her out of her thoughts. The river lay before them, shining in the sun, with faded flowers drifting on the water by its banks. Fenoglio took her hand and led her down the bank, to a place where large rocks stood. Meggie hopefully leaned over the slowly flowing water, but there were no river-nymphs in sight.

“Well, they’re timid. Too many people around!” Fenoglio looked disapprovingly at the women doing their washing nearby. He waved to Meggie to walk on until the voices died away and only 141

 

the rippling of the water could be heard. Behind them the roofs and towers of Ombra rose against the pale blue sky. The houses were crowded close inside the walls, like birds in a nest too small for them, and the black banners of the castle fluttered above them as if to inscribe the Laughing Prince’s grief on the sky itself.

Meggie clambered up onto a flat rock over the water’s edge. The river was not broad but seemed to be deep, and its water was darker than the shadows on the opposite bank.

“Can you see one?” Fenoglio almost slipped off the wet rock as he joined her. Meggie shook her head. “What’s the matter?” Fenoglio knew her well after the days and nights they had spent together in Capricorn’s house. “Not homesick again, are you?”

“No, no.” Meggie kneeled down and ran her fingers through the cold water. “I just had that dream again.”

The previous day, Fenoglio had shown her Bakers’ Alley, the houses where the rich spice and cloth dealers lived, and every gargoyle, every carved flower, every richly adorned frieze with which the skillful stonemasons of Ombra had ornamented the buildings of the city. Judging by the pride Fenoglio displayed as he led Meggie past every corner of Ombra, however remote, he seemed to consider it all his own work. “Well, perhaps not every corner,” he admitted, as she once tried getting him to go down an alley she hadn’t seen yet. “Of course Ombra has its ugly sides, too, but there’s no need for you to bother your pretty head about them.”

It had been dark by the time they were back in his room under Minerva’s roof, and Fenoglio quarreled with Rosenquartz because the glass man had spattered the fairies with ink. Even though their voices rose louder and louder, Meggie nodded off on the straw mattress that Minerva had sent up the steep staircase for her and that now lay under the window – and suddenly there was all that red, a dull red, shining, wet red, and her heart had started beating faster and faster, ever faster, until its violent thudding woke her with a start. .

“There, look!” Fenoglio took her arm.

Rainbow scales shimmered under the watery surface of the river. At first Meggie almost took them for leaves, but then she saw the eyes looking at her, like human eyes yet very different, for they had no whites. The nymph’s arms looked delicate and fragile, almost transparent. Another glance, and then the scaly tail flicked in the water, and there was nothing left to be seen but a shoal of fish gliding by, silvery as a snail track, and a flock of fire-elves like the elves she and Farid had seen in the forest. Farid. He had made a fiery flower blossom at her feet, a flower just for her. Dustfinger had certainly taught him many wonderful things.

“I think it’s always the same dream, but I can’t remember. I just remember the fear – as if something terrible had happened!” She turned to Fenoglio. “Do you think it really has?”

“Nonsense!” Fenoglio brushed aside the thought like a troublesome insect. “We must blame Rosenquartz for your bad dream. I expect the fairies sat on your forehead in the night because he annoyed them! They’re vengeful little things, and I’m afraid it makes no difference to them who they avenge themselves on.”

“I see.” Meggie dipped her fingers in the water again. It was so cold that she shivered. She heard the washerwomen laugh, and a fire-elf settled on her wrist. Insect eyes stared at her out of a human face. Meggie quickly shooed away the tiny creature. “Very sensible,” Fenoglio said. “You 142

 

want to be careful of fire-elves. They’ll burn your skin.”

“I know. Resa told me about them.” Meggie watched the elf go. There was a sore, red mark on her arm where it had settled.

“My own invention,” explained Fenoglio proudly. “They produce honey that lets you talk to fire.

Very much sought after by fire-eaters, but the elves attack anyone who comes too close to their nests, and few know how to set about stealing the honey without getting badly burned. In fact, now that I come to think of it, probably no one but Dustfinger knows.”

Meggie just nodded. She had hardly been listening. “What did you want to talk to me about? You want me to read something, don’t you?”

A few faded red flowers drifted past on the water, red as dried blood, and Meggie’s heart began beating so hard again that she put her hand to her breast. What was the matter with her?

Fenoglio undid the bag at his belt and tipped a domed red stone out into his hand. “Isn’t it magnificent?” he asked. “I went to get it this morning while you were still asleep. It’s a beryl, a reading stone. You can use it like spectacles.”

“I know. What about it?” Meggie stroked the smooth stone with her fingertips. Mo had several like it, lying on the windowsill of his workshop.

“What about it? Don’t be so impatient! Violante is almost as blind as a bat, and her delightful son has hidden her old reading stone. So I bought her another, even though it was a ruinous price. I hope she’ll be so grateful that in return she’ll tell us a few things about her late husband! Yes, yes, I know I made up Cosimo myself, but it was long ago that I wrote about him. To be honest, I don’t remember that part particularly well, and what’s more .. who knows how he may have changed, once this story took it into its head to go on telling itself?”

A horrible foreboding came into Meggie’s mind. No, he couldn’t be planning to do that. Not even Fenoglio would think up such an idea. Or would he?

“Listen, Meggie!” He lowered his voice, as if the women doing their washing upstream could hear him. “The two of us are going to bring Cosimo back!”

Meggie sat up straight, so abruptly that she almost slipped and fell into the river. “You’re crazy.

Totally crazy! Cosimo’s dead!”

“Can anyone prove it?” She didn’t like Fenoglio’s smile one little bit. “I told you – his body was burned beyond recognition. Even his father wasn’t sure it was really Cosimo! He waited six months before he would have the dead man buried in the coffin intended for his son.”

“But it was Cosimo, wasn’t it?”

“Who’s going to say so? It was a terrible massacre. They say the fire-raisers had been storing some kind of alchemical powder in their fortress, and Firefox set it alight to help him get away.

The flames enveloped Cosimo and most of his men, and later no one could identify the dead bodies found among the ruins.” Meggie shuddered. Fenoglio, on the other hand, seemed greatly pleased by this idea. She couldn’t believe how satisfied he looked.

“But it was him, you know it was!” Meggie’s voice sank to a whisper. “Fenoglio, we can’t bring 143

 

back the dead!”

“I know, I know, probably not.” There was deep regret in his voice. “Although didn’t some of the dead come back to life when you summoned the Shadow?”

“No! They all fell to dust and ashes again only a few days later. Elinor cried her eyes out – she went to Capricorn’s village, even though Mo tried to persuade her not to, and there wasn’t anyone there, either. They’d all gone. Forever.”

“Hmm.” Fenoglio stared at his hands. They looked like the hands of a farmer or a craftsman, not hands that wielded only a pen. “So we can’t. Very well!” he murmured. “Perhaps it’s all for the best. How would a story ever work if anyone could just come back from the dead at any time? It would lead to hopeless confusion; it would wreck the suspense! No, you’re right: The dead stay dead. So we won’t bring Cosimo back, just – well, someone who looks like him!”

“Looks like him? You are crazy!” whispered Meggie. “You’re a total lunatic!” But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. “So what? All writers are lunatics! I promise you, I’ll choose my words very carefully, so carefully that our brand-new Cosimo will be firmly convinced he is the old one. Do you see, Meggie? Even if he’s only a double, he mustn’t know it. On no account is he to know it! What do you think?”

Meggie just shook her head. She hadn’t come here to change this world. She’d only wanted to see it!

“Meggie!” Fenoglio placed his hand on her shoulder. “You saw the Laughing Prince! He could die any day, and then what? It’s not just strolling players that the Adderhead strings up! He has his peasants’ eyes put out if they catch a rabbit in the forest. He forces children to work in his silver mines until they’re blind and crippled, and he’s made Firefox, who is a murderer and arsonist, his own herald!”

“Oh yes? And who made him that way? You did!” Meggie angrily pushed away his hand. “You always did like your villains best.”

“Well, yes, maybe.” Fenoglio shrugged, as if he were powerless to do anything about it. “But what was I to do? Who wants to read a story about two benevolent princes ruling a merry band of happy, contented subjects? What kind of a story would that be?” Meggie leaned over the water and fished out one of the red flowers. “You like making them up!” she said quietly. “All these monsters.”

Even Fenoglio had no reply to that. So they sat in silence while the women upstream spread their washing on the rocks to dry. It was still warm in the sun, in spite of the faded flowers that the river kept bringing in to the bank.

Fenoglio broke the silence at last. “Please, Meggie!” he said. “Just this once. If you help me to get back in control of this story I’ll write you the most wonderful words to take you home again –

whenever you like! Or if you change your mind because you like my world better, then I’ll bring your father here for you, and your mother . . and even that bookworm woman, though from all you tell me she sounds like a frightful person!”

That made Meggie laugh. Yes, Elinor would like it here, she thought, and she was sure Resa would like to see the place again. But not Mo. No, never.

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She suddenly stood up and smoothed down her dress.

Looking up at the castle, she imagined what it would be like if the Adderhead with his salamander gaze ruled up there. She hadn’t even liked the Laughing Prince much.

“Meggie, believe me,” said Fenoglio, “you’d be doing something truly good. You’d be giving a son back to his father, a husband back to his wife, a father back to his child – yes, I know he’s not a particularly nice child, but all the same! And you’d be helping to thwart the Adderhead’s plans.

Surely that’s an honorable thing to do? Please, Meggie!” He looked at her almost imploringly.

“Help me. It’s my story, after all! Believe me, I know what’s best for it! Lend me your voice just once more!”

Lend me your voice . . Meggie was still looking up at the castle, but she no longer saw the towers and the black banners. She was seeing the Shadow, and Capricorn lying dead in the dust. “All right, I’ll think about it,” she said. “But now Farid is waiting for me.”

Fenoglio looked at her with as much surprise as if she had suddenly sprouted wings. “Oh, is he indeed?” There was no mistaking the disapproval in his voice. “But I was going to go up to the castle with you to take Her Ugliness the beryl. I wanted you to hear what she has to say about Cosimo. . ”

“I promised him!” They had agreed to meet outside the city gates so that Farid wouldn’t have to pass the guards.

“You promised? Well, never mind. You wouldn’t be the first girl to keep a suitor waiting.”

“He is not my suitor!”

“Glad to hear it! Since your father isn’t here, it’s up to me to keep an eye on you, after all.”

Fenoglio looked at her gloomily. “You really have grown! The girls here marry at your age. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Minerva’s second daughter has been married for five months, and she was just fourteen. How old is that boy? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

Meggie did not reply, but simply turned her back on him.

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