Inkspell (15 page)

“Isn’t it lucky he told me about everything in such detail?” Meggie saw Farid’s bare feet. He was swinging through the leaves at a dizzy height. “Dustfinger often couldn’t sleep at night. He was afraid of his dreams. I used to wake him up when they were bad, and then we sat by the fire and I asked him questions. I do that very well. I’m brilliant at asking questions. You bet I am!”

Meggie couldn’t help smiling at the pride in his voice. She looked up at the canopy of foliage and saw that the leaves were turning color, as they had been in Elinor’s garden, too. Did the two worlds keep time with each other? And had they always kept time, or did their stories become inextricably linked only on the day when Mo brought Capricorn, Basta, and Dustfinger from one into the other? She would never find out the answer, for who could know?

There was a rustling under one of the bushes, a thorny shrub, heavy with dark berries. Wolves and bears, cats with dappled fur – Resa had told her about them, too. Involuntarily, Meggie stepped back, but her dress caught on some tall thistles white with their own downy seed heads.

“Farid?” she called, angry with herself when she heard the fear in her voice. “Farid!”

But he didn’t seem to hear her. He was still chattering away to himself high among the branches, carefree as a bird in the sunshine, while she, Meggie, was down here among the shadows.

Shadows that moved, had eyes, growled .. Was that a snake? She freed her dress with such a violent tug that it tore, and stumbled farther back until she came up against the rough trunk of an oak tree. The snake slid past quickly, as if the sight of Meggie had made it mortally afraid, too, but there was still something moving under the bush, and finally a head pushed out from the
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prickly twigs. It was furry and round-nosed, and it had tiny horns between its ears.

“No!” whispered Meggie. “Oh no!”

Gwin stared at her almost reproachfully, as if he thought it was her fault that his fur was full of fine prickles.

Farid’s voice above her was more distinct now. Obviously, he was finally coming down from his lookout post. “No hut, no castle, nothing in sight!” he called. “It’ll be a few days before we get out of this forest, but that’s how Dustfinger wanted it. He wanted to take his time coming back to the world of humans. I think he was almost more homesick for the trees and fairies than for other people. Well, I don’t know about you – and the trees are beautiful, very beautiful – but personally I’d like to see the castle, too, and the other strolling players, and the men-at-arms.”

He jumped down on the grass, hopped on one leg through the carpet of blue flowers – and let out a cry of delight when he saw the marten. “Gwin! Oh, I knew you’d heard me! Come here, you son of a devil and a snake! Won’t Dustfinger be surprised to see we’ve brought him his old friend after all!”

Oh, won’t he just!
thought Meggie.
Fear will take his breath away – he’ll go weak at the knees.

The marten jumped onto Farid’s knee as the boy crouched down in the grass, and affectionately licked his chin. He would have bitten anyone else, even Dustfinger, but with Farid he acted like a young kitten.

“Shoo him away, Farid!” Meggie’s voice sounded sharper than she had intended. “Shoo him away?” Farid laughed. “What are you talking about? Hear that, Gwin? What have you done to offend her? Left a dead mouse on one of her precious books?”

“Shoo him away, I said! He’ll be all right on his own, you know he will. Please!” she added, seeing his horrified expression as he looked at her.

Farid straightened up, the marten in his arms. His face was more hostile than she had ever seen it before. Gwin jumped up on his shoulder and stared at Meggie as if he had understood every word she said. Very well, then, she’d just have to tell Farid – but how?

“Didn’t Dustfinger tell you?”

“Tell me what?” He looked at her as if he’d like to hit her. Above them, the wind blew through the leaf canopy like a menacing whisper.

“If you don’t shoo Gwin away,” said Meggie, although each word was difficult to utter, “then Dustfinger will. And he’ll chase you away, too.” The marten was still staring at her.

“Why would he do a thing like that? You don’t like him, that’s what it is. You never liked Dustfinger, and you don’t like Gwin, either.”

“That’s not true! You don’t understand!” Meggie’s voice was loud and shrill. “He’s going to die because of Gwin! Dustfinger dies, that’s how Fenoglio wrote the story! Perhaps it’s been changed, perhaps this is a new story we’re in and everything in the book is just a pile of dead words, but all the same .. ” Meggie hadn’t the heart to go on. Far id stood there shaking his head again and again, as if her words were like needles digging into it, hurting him.

“He’s going to die?” His voice was barely audible. “He dies in the book?”

How lost he looked standing there with the marten still perched on his shoulder! He looked at the trees around them with horror, as if they were all intent on killing Dustfinger. “But but if I’d known that,” he stammered, “I’d have torn up Cheeseface’s wretched piece of paper! I’d never have let him read Dustfinger back!”

Meggie just looked at him. What could she say? “Who kills him? Basta?”

Two squirrels were chasing around overhead. They had white spots as if someone had shaken a paintbrush over them. The marten wanted to go after them, but Farid seized his tail and held it tight.

“One of Capricorn’s men. That’s all Fenoglio wrote!” “But they’re all dead!”

“We don’t know that.” Meggie would have been only too glad to comfort him, but she didn’t know how. “Suppose they’re still alive in this world? And even if they aren’t – Mo and Darius didn’t read all of them out. Some are still sure to be here. Dustfinger tries to save Gwin from them, and they kill him. That’s what it says in the book, and Dustfinger knows it. That’s why he left the marten behind.”

“Yes, so he did.” Farid looked around as if seeking some solution, a way he could send the marten back again. Gwin nuzzled his cheek with his nose, and Meggie saw the tears in Farid’s eyes. “Wait here!” he said, and he turned abruptly and went off with the marten. He had gone only a few paces before the forest swallowed him up like a frog swallowing a fly, and Meggie stood there on her own among the flowers. Some of them grew in Elinor’s garden, too, but this wasn’t Elinor’s garden. This wasn’t even the same world. And this time she couldn’t just close the book and be back again: back in her own room, on the sofa that smelled of Elinor. The world beyond the words on the page was wide – hadn’t she always known it? – wide enough for her to be lost there forever. Only one person could write her out of it again – an old man – and Meggie didn’t even know where he lived in this world he had created. She didn’t even know if he was still alive. Could this world live if its creator was dead? Why not? Books don’t stop existing just because their authors have died, do they?

What have I done?
thought Meggie as she stood there waiting for Farid to come back.
Oh Mo,
what have I done? Can’t you fetch me back again?

Chapter 11 – Gone

I woke up and knew he was gone. Straightaway I knew he was gone. When you love
somebody you know these things.

– David Almond,
Skellig

Mo knew at once that Meggie was gone. He knew it the moment he knocked on her door and only silence replied.

Resa was down in the kitchen with Elinor, laying the table for breakfast. The clink of the plates made its way upstairs to him, but he hardly heard it, he just stood there outside the closed door, listening to his own heart. It was beating far too loudly, far too fast. “Meggie?” He pressed down the handle, but the door was locked. Meggie never locked her door, never.

His heart beat even faster, as if to choke him. The silence behind the door sounded terribly familiar. Just such a silence had met his ears once before, when he had called Resa’s name again and again. He had waited ten years for an answer.

Not again, please God, not again. Not Meggie.

It seemed as if he heard the book whispering on the other side of the door: Fenoglio’s accursed story. He thought he heard the pages rustling, greedy as pale teeth.

“Mortimer?” Elinor was standing behind him. “The eggs are getting cold. Where are you and Meggie? Oh heavens!” She looked at his face with concern and reached for his hand. “What’s the matter with you? You’re pale as death.”

“Do you have a spare key for Meggie’s door, Elinor?”

She understood at once. Just like Mo, she guessed what had happened behind that locked door, presumably last night when they were all asleep. She pressed his hand. Then she turned without a word and hurried downstairs. But Mo just stood there leaning against the locked door, heard Elinor call Darius and begin to search for the key, cursing, and he stared at the books standing side by side on her shelves all down the long corridor. Resa came running upstairs, pale-faced.

Her hands fluttered like frightened birds as she asked him what had happened. What was he to say?

“Can’t you imagine? Haven’t you told her about the place often enough?” He tried the handle again, as if that could change anything. Meggie had covered the whole door with quotations.

They looked to him now like magic spells written on the white paint in a childish hand.
Take me
to another world! Go on! I know you can do it. My father has shown me how.
Odd that your heart didn’t simply stop when it hurt so much. But his heart hadn’t stopped ten years ago, either, when the words on the page swallowed up Resa.

Elinor pushed him aside. She was holding the key in her trembling fingers, and she impatiently put it in the lock. Crossly, she called Meggie’s name, as if she, too, hadn’t guessed long ago that nothing but silence waited behind that door: the same silence as on the night that had taught Mo to fear his own voice.

He was the last to enter the empty room, and he did so hesitantly. There was a letter on Meggie’s
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pillow.
Dearest Mo
. . He didn’t read on; he didn’t want to see the words that would only pierce him to the heart. As Resa picked up the letter he looked around the room – his eyes searching for another sheet of paper, the one the boy had brought with him – but it was nowhere to be found.

Well, of course not, you fool
, he told himself.
She’s taken it with her; after all, she must have been
holding it while she read.

Only years later would he discover from Meggie that the original sheet of paper with Orpheus’s writing on it had been there in her room all the time, hidden between the pages of a book –

where else? Her geography book. Suppose he had found it? Would he have been able to follow Meggie? No, probably not. The story had another path in store for him, a darker and more difficult path.

“Perhaps she’s only gone off with the boy! Girls of her age do that kind of thing. Not that I know much about it, but .. ” Elinor’s voice reached him as if from very far away. In answer, Resa handed her the letter that had been waiting on the pillow.

Gone. Meggie was gone.

He had no daughter anymore.

Would she come back, like her mother? Fished out of the sea of words again by some other voice? If so, when? In ten years’ time, like Resa? She’d be grown-up by then. Would he even recognize her? Everything was blurred before his eyes: Meggie’s school things on the desk in front of the window, her clothes, carefully hanging over the back of the chair as if she really meant to come back, her soft toys beside the bed, their furry faces kissed threadbare, although it was a long time since Meggie had needed them to help her get to sleep. Resa began crying without a sound, one hand pressed to her mute mouth. Mo wanted to comfort her, but how could he with such despair in his own heart?

He turned, pushed aside Darius, who was standing there in the open doorway with a sad, owl-like gaze, and went to his study, where those damned notebooks were still stacked among his own papers. He swept them off the desk one by one, as if he could silence the words that way –

all the accursed words that had bewitched his child, luring her away like the Pied Piper in the story, to a place where he had already been unable to follow Resa. Mo felt as if he were dreaming the same nightmare all over again, but this time he didn’t even have a book whose pages he could have searched for Meggie.

Later, he couldn’t say how he had gotten through the rest of that day without going crazy. All he remembered was wandering for hours through Elinor’s garden, as if he might find Meggie somewhere there among the old trees where she liked to sit and read. When darkness fell and he set out to look for Resa, he found her in Meggie’s room. She was sitting on the empty bed, staring at three tiny creatures circling just below the ceiling, as if they were looking for the door they had come through. Meggie had left the window open, but they didn’t fly out, perhaps because the strange, black night frightened them.

“Fire-elves,” said Resa’s hands when he sat down beside her. “If they settle on your skin you must shake them off, or they’ll burn you.”

Fire-elves. Mo remembered reading about them in the book. Something always came back in return. There seemed to be just that one book in the whole world.

“Why three of them?” he asked. “One for Meggie, one for the boy .. ”

“I think the marten went, too,” said Resa’s hands.

Mo almost laughed out loud. Poor Dustfinger, he obviously couldn’t shake off his bad luck – but Mo could feel no sympathy for him. Not this time. Without Dustfinger the words on the sheet of paper would never have been written, and he would still have a daughter.

“Do you think at least she’ll like it there?” he asked, laying his head in Resa’s lap. “After all, you liked it, didn’t you? Or, at any rate, you told her so.”

“I’m sorry,” said her hands. “So very sorry.”

But he held her fingers tight. “What are you talking about?” he said softly. “I was the one who brought the damned book into the house, remember?” And then they were both silent. In silence, they watched the poor, lost elves. At some point they did fly through the window, and into the strange night. As their tiny red bodies disappeared into the blackness like sparks going out, Mo wondered whether Meggie was wandering through an equally black night at this moment. The thought pursued him into his dark dreams.