Mo stopped. He stared ahead of him as if lost in his own thoughts.
"What?" whispered Meggie. "What happened, Mo?"
Her father looked at her. "They came out, " he said. "There they were, all of a sudden, standing in the doorway to the corridor outside the room, as if they'd just come in from outdoors. There was a crackling noise when they turned to us – like someone slowly unfolding a piece of paper. I still had their names on my lips: Basta, Dustfinger, Capricorn. Basta was holding Dustfinger by the collar, as if he were shaking a puppy for doing something forbidden. Capricorn liked to wear red even then, but he was nine years younger and not quite as gaunt as he is today. He wore a sword, something I'd never seen at close range before. Basta had one hanging from his belt, too, while Dustfinger…" Here Mo shook his head. "Well, of course the poor fellow had nothing but the horned marten whose tricks earned him a living. I don't think any of the three of them realized what had happened. Indeed, I didn't understand it myself until much later. My voice had brought them slipping out of their story like a bookmark forgotten by some reader between the pages. How could they understand what had happened? Basta pushed Dustfinger away so roughly that he fell down, then he tried to draw his sword, but his hands were white as paper and they obviously didn't yet have the strength for it. The sword slipped from his fingers and fell on the rug. Its blade looked as if there was dried blood on it, but perhaps it was only the reflection of the fire. Capricorn stood there, looking around. He seemed dizzy; he was staggering on the spot like a dancing bear that has been made to turn around too often. And that may well have saved us, or so Dustfinger has always claimed. If Basta and his master had been in full command of their powers, they'd probably have killed us outright, but they hadn't fully arrived in this world yet, and I picked up the terrible sword lying on the rug among my books. It was heavy, much heavier than I'd expected. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous holding the thing. I probably clutched it like a vacuum cleaner or a walking stick, but when Capricorn staggered toward me and I held the blade between us he stopped. I stammered something, tried to explain what had happened, not that I understood it myself, but Capricorn just stared at me with those pale eyes, the color of water, while Basta stood beside him with a hand on the hilt of his dagger. He seemed to be waiting for his master to tell him to cut all our throats."
"And what about Dustfinger?" Elinor's voice sounded hoarse, too.
"He was still where he'd fallen on the rug, sitting there as if paralyzed, not making a sound. I didn't stop to think about
Dustfinger. If you open a basket and see two snakes and a lizard crawl out, you're going to deal with the snakes first, right?"
"What about my mother?" Meggie could only whisper. She wasn't used to saying that word.
Mo looked at her. "I couldn't see her anywhere. You were still kneeling among your books, staring wide-eyed at the strange men standing there with their heavy boots and their weapons. I was terrified for you, but to my relief both Basta and Capricorn ignored you. 'That's enough talk,' Capricorn said finally as I became more and more entangled in my own words. 'Never mind how we arrived in this miserable place. Just send us back at once, you accursed magician, or Basta here will cut the talkative tongue out of your mouth.' Which didn't sound exactly reassuring, and I'd read enough about those two in the first chapters of the book to know that Capricorn meant what he said. I was so desperately wondering how to end the nightmare that I felt quite dizzy. I picked up the book. Perhaps if I read the same passage again, I thought… I tried. I stumbled over the words while Capricorn glared at me and Basta drew the knife from his belt. Nothing happened. The two of them just stood there in my house, showing no sign of going back into their story. And suddenly I knew for certain that they meant to kill us. I put down the fatal book and picked up the sword I'd dropped on the rug. Basta tried to get to it before me, but I moved faster. I had to hold the wretched thing with both hands; I still remember how cold the hilt felt. Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to drive Basta and Capricorn out into the hallway. There were several breakages because I was brandishing the sword so clumsily. You began to cry, and I wanted to turn around and tell you it was all just a bad dream, but I was fully occupied with keeping Basta's knife away from me with Capricorn's sword. So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected. The two of them would certainly have killed me if they hadn't still been rather weak at the knees. Capricorn cursed me, his eyes almost bursting out of his head in fury. Basta swore and threatened, giving me a nasty cut on my upper arm, but then, suddenly, the front door was thrown open and they both disappeared into the night, still reeling like drunks. My hands were trembling so much I could hardly manage to bolt the door. I leaned against it and listened for sounds outside, but all I heard was my own racing heart. Then I heard you crying in the living room and remembered that there had been a third man. I staggered back, still holding the sword, and there stood Dustfinger in the middle of the room. He had no weapon, just the marten sitting on his shoulders. He flinched, face white as a sheet, when I came toward him. I must have been a terrible sight with the blood running down my arm, and I was shaking all over, whether from fear or anger I couldn't have said. 'Please,' he kept whispering, 'don't kill me! I have nothing to do with those two. I'm only a juggler, just a harmless fire-eater. I can show you.' And I said, 'Yes, yes, all right, I know who you are, you're Dustfinger – I even know your name, you see.' At which he cowered in awe before me – a magician, he thought, who seemed to know all about him and who had plucked him out of his world as easily as picking an apple off a tree. The marten scampered along his arm, jumped down on the carpet, and ran toward you. You stopped crying and put out your hand. 'Careful, he bites,' said Dustfinger, shooing him away from you. I took no notice. I suddenly realized how quiet the room was, that was all. How quiet and how empty. I saw the book lying open on the carpet where I had dropped it, and I saw the cushion where your mother had been sitting. And she wasn't there. Where was she? I called her name again and again; I ran from room to room. But she had gone. "
Elinor was sitting bolt upright, staring at him in horror. "For heaven's sake, Mortimer, what are you saying?" she cried. "You told me she went away on some stupid adventure holiday and never came back!"
Mo leaned his head against the wall. "I had to think up something, Elinor, " he said. "I mean, I could hardly tell the truth, could I?"
Meggie stroked his arm where his shirt hid the long, pale scar. "You always told me you'd cut your arm climbing through a broken window. "
"Yes, I know. The truth would have sounded too crazy, don't you think?"
Meggie nodded. He was right; she would just have thought it was another of his stories. "So she never came back?" she whispered, although she knew the answer already.
"No, " replied Mo softly. "Basta, Capricorn, and Dustfinger came out of the book and she went into it, along with our two cats who were curled up on her lap as usual while I read aloud. I expect some creature from here changed places with Gwin, too, maybe a spider or a fly or a bird that happened to be flying around the house. Oh, I don't know…" Mo fell silent.
Sometimes, when he had made up such a good story that Meggie thought it was true, he would suddenly smile and say, "You fell for that one, Meggie!" Like the time on her seventh birthday when he'd told her he'd seen fairies among the crocuses in the garden. But the smile didn't come this time.
"I searched the whole house for your mother. No sign of her, " he went on. "And when I came back to the living room, Dustfinger had vanished and so had his friend with the horns. But the sword was still there, and it felt so real that I decided not to doubt my sanity. I put you to bed – I think I told you your mother had already gone to sleep – then I began reading Inkheart out loud again. I read the whole damn book until I was hoarse and the sun was risi
ng, but nothing came out of it except a bat and a silken cloak, which I used later to line your book box. I tried again and again during the days and nights that followed, until my eyes were burning and the letters danced drunkenly on the page. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I kept making up different stories for you to explain where your mother was, and I took good care you were never in the room with me when I was reading aloud, in case you disappeared, too. I wasn't worried about myself. Oddly enough, I had a feeling that the person reading the book ran no risk of slipping into its pages. I still don't know whether I was right. " Mo flicked a midge off his hand. "I read until I couldn't hear my own voice anymore, " he went on, "but your mother didn't come back, Meggie. Instead, a strange little man as transparent as if he were made of glass appeared in my living room on the fifth day, and the mailman disappeared just as he was putting the mail into our mailbox. I found his bike out in the yard. After that I knew that neither walls nor locked doors would keep you safe – you or anybody else. So I decided never to read aloud from a book again. Not from Inkheart nor from any other book. "
"What happened to the little glass man?" asked Meggie.
Mo sighed. "He broke into pieces only a few days later when a heavy truck drove past the house. Obviously, very few creatures move easily from one world to another. We both know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all. It broke Dustfinger's heart. "
"Oh, he has a heart, does he?" inquired Elinor bitterly.
"It would be better for him if he didn't, " replied Mo. "More than a week passed before he was back at my door again. It was night, of course. He prefers night to day. I was just packing. I'd decided it was safer to leave, since I didn't want to be driving Basta and Capricorn out of my house at sword point again. Dustfinger's reappearance showed that I was right to feel anxious. It was well after midnight when he turned up, but I couldn't sleep anyway. " Mo stroked Meggie's hair. "You weren't sleeping well then either. You had bad dreams, however much I tried to keep them away with my stories. I was just packing the tools in my workshop when there was a knock on the front door, a very soft, almost furtive knock. Dustfinger emerged from the dark as suddenly as he did when he came to our house four days ago – heavens, was it really only four days? Well, when he came back that first time he looked as if it had been too long since he'd eaten. He was thin as a stray cat and his eyes were dull, 'Send me back,' he begged, 'send me back! This world will be the death of me. It's too fast, too crowded, too noisy. If I don't die of home sickness I shall starve to death. I don't know how to make a living. I don't know anything. I'm like a fish out of water,' he said. And he refused to believe that I couldn't do it. He wanted to see the book and try for himself, even though he could scarcely read, but there was no way I could let him have it. It would have been like giving away the very last part I still had of your mother. Luckily, I'd hidden it well. I let Dustfinger sleep on the sofa, and came down the next morning to find him still searching the bookshelves. Over the next few years he kept on turning up, following us wherever we went, until I got sick and tired of it and made off with you in secret like a thief in the night. After that I saw no more of him for five years. Until four days ago."
Meggie looked at him. "You still feel sorry for him, " she said.
Mo was silent. At last, he said, "Sometimes. "
Elinor's comment on that was a snort of contempt. "You're even crazier than I thought, " she said. "It's that idiot's fault we're in this hole, it's his fault if they cut our throats, and you still feel sorry for him?"
Mo shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling, where a few moths were fluttering around the naked lightbulb. "No doubt Capricorn has promised to take him back, " he said. "Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!"
"Well, that's no different from real life, " remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end. "
Meggie sat with her arms clasped around her legs, her chin on her knees, staring at the dirty white walls. In her mind's eye she saw the N in front of her, the N with the horned marten sitting on it, and she felt as if her mother were looking out from beyond the big capital letter, her mother as she was in the faded photograph under Mo's pillow. So she hadn't run away after all. Did she like it in that other world? Did she still remember her daughter? Or were Meggie and Mo just a fading picture for her, too? Did she long to be back in her own world, just as Dustfinger did?
And did Capricorn long to be back in his own world, as well? Was that what he wanted – for Mo to read him back again? What would happen when Capricorn realized that Mo simply couldn't do it? Meggie shuddered.
"It seems Capricorn has someone else to read aloud to him now, " Mo went on, as if he had guessed her thoughts. "Basta told me about the man, probably to show me I'm not by any means indispensable. Apparently, he's read several useful assistants for Capricorn out of a book already."
"Oh yes? Then why does he want you?" Elinor sat up, rubbing her behind and groaning. "I don't understand any of this. I just hope it's all a bad dream, the kind you wake up from with a stiff neck and a bad taste in your mouth."
Meggie doubted whether Elinor really had any such hope. The damp straw felt too real, and so did the cold wall behind them. She leaned against Mo's shoulder again and closed her eyes. She was very sorry she had scarcely read a line of Inkheart. She knew nothing at all about the story into which her mother had disappeared. All she knew was Mo's other stories, about the fabulous exploits that had kept her mother away, tales of the adventures she was having in distant lands, of fear some enemies who kept preventing her from coming home, and of a box she was filling for Meggie, putting something new and wonderful in it at every enchanted place she visited.
"Mo, " she asked, "do you think she likes being in that story?
It took Mo quite a long time to answer. "She'd certainly like the fairies, " he said at last, "although they're deceitful little things. And if I know her she'll be putting out bowls of milk for the goblins. Yes, I think she'd like that part of it…"
"So… so, what wouldn't she like?" Meggie looked at him anxiously.
Mo hesitated. "The evil in it, " he finally said. "So many bad things happen in that book, and she never found out that it all ends reasonably well – after all, I never finished reading her the whole story. That's what she wouldn't like. "
"No, of course not, " said Elinor. "But how do you know the story hasn't changed anyway? After you read Capricorn and his friend out of it. And now we're stuck with them here. "
"Yes, " said Mo, "but they're still in the book, too. Believe me, I've read it often enough since they came out of it, and the story's still about them: Dustfinger, Basta, and Capricorn. Doesn't that mean everything is still the way it was? Capricorn is still there, and we're only up against a shadow of him in this world?"
"He's pretty frightening for a shadow, " said Elinor.
"Yes, you're right, " agreed Mo. "Perhaps things have changed there after all. Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on – developing and changing like our own world,"
Elinor groaned. "For heaven's sake, Mortimer!" she said.
Stop it, please. You're giving me a headache. "
"It made my own head ache when I tried to make sense of it all, " replied Mo gloomily.
After that they said nothing for quite a long time, all three of them absorbed in their own thoughts. Elinor was the first tospeak again, although it sounded almost as if she were talki
ng to herself. "Heavens above, " she murmured, taking off hershoes. "To think of all the times I've wished I could slip right into one of my favorite books. But that's the advantage of reading – you can shut the book whenever you want. "
Groaning, she wriggled her toes and began walking up and down. Meggie had to suppress a giggle. Elinor looked so funny hobbling from the wall to the door and back again with her aching feet, back and forth like a clockwork toy.
"Elinor, you're driving me bonkers! Please sit down again, " said Mo.
"No, I won't!" she snapped back. "I'll go mad myself if l stay sitting down. "
Mo made a face and put his arm around Meggie's shoulders. "All right, let's leave her to it!" he whispered. "By the time she's covered ten kilometers she'll fall down exhausted. But you ought to get some sleep now. You can have my bed. It's not as bad as it looks. If you close your eyes very tight you can imagine you're Wilbur the pig sleeping comfortably in his sty… "
"Or Wart sleeping in the grass with the wild geese. " Meggie couldn't help yawning. How often she and Mo had played this game! "Which book can you think of? Which part have we forgotten? Oh yes, that one! It's ages since I thought about that story…!" Wearily, she lay down on the prickly straw.
Mo pulled off his sweater over his head and covered her up with it. "You need a blanket all the same, " he said. "Even if you're a pig or a goose."
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