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 gun. 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 always fancied 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 any more, eh? So long, Resa!’
She did not look round. 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 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 bumble bees 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 blood-stained 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 grey hair was as short as a marten’s fur, and had leaves and burrs clinging to it. Without a word, she came towards 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 gun,’ replied Resa. It felt strange to be speaking with her tongue again instead of her hands.
‘A gun?’ The old woman looked at her, shook her head, and bent over Mo again. ‘A gun. 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 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 knelt 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.
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 practised 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?
‘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 colourless, 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 round, and he began polishing up his feet.
‘Not bad? It’s a masterpiece, you maggot-coloured, 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 on to 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 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 any more! 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 amidst 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 colourful.
‘Just look at the crowds – they all want to go up to the castle today,’ said Fenoglio behind her. ‘Travelling pedlars, 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.’
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 Wayless 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 round 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 round. ‘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?’
‘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.’
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