Inkdeath ti-3

by Cornelia Funke

  "It will dream of flying," Silvertongue replied. Just as the bookbinder dreamed of the robber, and the robber of the bookbinder, and the Fire-Dancer dreamed of the flames and the minstrel woman who could dance like them. Perhaps, after all, this world was made of dreams, and an old man had merely found the words for them.

  Resa wept when they came to the cave and found it empty, but Dustfinger discovered the Strong Man's sign outside the entrance, drawn on the rocks in soot, and buried underneath was a message obviously left by Doria for his big brother. Dustfinger had heard of the tree with the nests in it that Doria described, but he had never seen it with his own eyes.

  It took them two days to find the tree, and Dustfinger was the first to see the giant. He took Silvertongue's reins, and Resa put her hand to her mouth in alarm. But Violante stared at the giant like an enchanted child.

  He was holding Roxane in his hand as if she, too, were a bird. Brianna turned pale at the sight of her mother between those mighty fingers, but Dustfinger dismounted and went up to the giant.

  The Black Prince was standing between the giant's vast legs, with the bear beside him. He was limping as he went to meet Dustfinger, but he looked happier than he had for a long time.

  "Where's Meggie?" asked Silvertongue as the Prince hugged him, and Battista pointed up into the tree. Dustfinger had never seen such a tree before, not even in the wild heart of the Wayless Wood, and he wanted to climb up to the nests at once and see the branches covered with frost-flowers where the women and children perched like birds.

  Meggie's voice called her father's name, and Silvertongue went to meet her as she let herself down the trunk on a rope, as naturally as if she had always lived in the trees. But Dustfinger turned and looked up at Roxane. She whispered something to the giant, who put her down on the ground as carefully as if he believed she were made of glass. Roxane. He vowed never to forget her name again. He would ask the fire to write its letters in his heart so that not even the White Women could wash it away. Roxane. Dustfinger held her in his arms, and the giant looked down at them with eyes that seemed to reflect all the colors in the world.

  "Look around," Roxane whispered to him, and Dustfinger saw Silvertongue embracing his daughter and wiping the tears off her face. He saw the bookworm woman running to Resa – how in the name of all the fairies did she come to be here? – Tullio burying his furry face in Violante's skirt, the Strong Man almost smothering Silvertongue in his bear hug… and…

  Farid.

  He stood there digging his toes into the newly fallen snow. He still went barefoot, and surely he'd grown taller?

  Dustfinger went up to him. "I see you've taken good care of Roxane," he said. "Did the fire obey you while I was gone?"

  "It always obeys me!" Yes, he had grown olden "I fought Sootbird."

  "Imagine that!"

  "My fire ate his fire."

  "Did it indeed?"

  "Yes! I climbed up on the giant and made fire rain down on Sootbird. And then the giant broke his neck."

  Dustfinger couldn't help smiling, and Farid returned his smile. "Do you… do you have to go away again?" He looked as anxious as if he feared the White Women were already waiting.

  "No," said Dustfinger, smiling again. "No, not for a while, I think."

  Farid. He'd ask the fire to write that name in his heart as well. Roxane. Brianna. Farid. And Gwin, of course.

  80. OMBRA

  What if this road, that has held no surprises

  These many years, decided not to go

  Home after all; what if it could turn

  Left or right with no more ado

  Than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin

  Were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

  That is shaken and rolled out, and takes

  A new shape from the contours beneath?

  And if it chose to lay itself down

  In a new way; around a blind corner,

  Across hills you must climb without knowing

  What's on the other side; who would not hanker

  To be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

  A story's end, or where a road will go?

  Sheenagh Pugh, "What If This Road"

  When the Black Prince took the children back to Ombra, snow lay on the battlements above the city wall, but the women threw flowers they had made out of scraps of fabric cut from old clothes. The lion emblem waved from the city towers again, but now his paw was laid on a book with blank pages, and his mane was made of fire. The Milksop had gone. He had fled from the giant, not to Ombra, but straight to the Castle of Night and his sister's arms, and Violante had returned to take possession of the city and prepare it for the return of its children.

  Meggie was standing with Elinor, Darius, and Fenoglio in the square outside the castle gates as the mothers hugged their sons and daughters, and Violante, speaking from the battlements, thanked the Black Prince and the Bluejay for saving them.

  "You know what, Meggie?" Fenoglio whispered to her, as Violante had provisions from the castle kitchens distributed to the women. "Maybe Her Ugliness will fall in love with the Black Prince someday. After all, he was the Bluejay before your father took the part, and Violante was more in love with the role than the man anyway!"

  Oh, Fenoglio! He was just the same as ever. Although the giant had gone back to his mountains, he had completely restored the old man's self-confidence.

  The Bluejay had not come to Ombra. Mo and Resa had stayed behind at the farm where they had once lived. "Let the Bluejay go back to where he came from," he had told the Prince. "Into the strolling players' songs." They were singing them everywhere already: how the Jay and the Fire-Dancer, all by themselves, had defeated the Adderhead and the Piper with all their men…

  "Please, Battista," Mo had said, "why don't you, at least, write a song telling the true story? About the people who helped the Jay and the Fire-Dancer. About the swift – and the boy!"

  Battista had promised Mo to write a song like that, but Fenoglio only shook his head. "No one will sing it, Meggie. People don't like their heroes to need help, particularly not from women and children."

  No doubt he was right. Perhaps that meant Violante would have a hard time on the throne of Ombra, although all its people were cheering her today. Jacopo stood beside his mother. He looked more like a small copy of his father every day, but all the same he still reminded Meggie even more of his sinister grandfather. She shuddered to think how ready Jacopo had been to deliver the Adderhead up to Death – even though that had been the saving of Mo.

  Another widow now ruled the country on the far side of the forest, and she, too, had a son and was taking care of the throne for him. Meggie knew that Violante expected war, but no one wanted to think of that today. This day belonged to the children who had come home. Not one of them was missing, and the strolling players sang about Farid's fire, the tree full of nests, and the giant who had so mysteriously come out of the mountains at just the right moment.

  "I'll miss him," Elinor had whispered as he disappeared among the trees, and Meggie felt the same. She would never forget how the Inkworld was reflected on his skin, or how light-footed he was when he strode away, so gentle in such a big body.

  "Meggie!" Farid made his way through the women and children. "Where's Silvertongue?"

  "With my mother," she replied – and was surprised to find that her heart beat no faster than usual at the sight of him. When had that changed?

  Farid frowned. "Yes, yes," he said, "and Dustfinger's with his minstrel woman again. He kisses her so often you might think her lips tasted of honey."

  Oh dear. Farid was still jealous of Roxane.

  "I think I'll go away for a while," he said.

  "Go away? Where to?"

  Behind Meggie, Elinor and Fenoglio began arguing over something Elinor didn't like about the look of the castle. Those two loved arguing with each other, and they had plenty of opportunity for arguments because they were neighbors now. The bag in which Elinor had
packed all kinds of things that might come in useful in the Inkworld, including her silver cutlery, was still standing in her house in the other world ("Well, I was very excited, it's easy to forget such things then!"), but fortunately she had been wearing the Loredan family jewels when Darius read them both over, and Rosenquartz had sold them for her so cleverly ("Meggie, you've no idea what a shrewd businessman that glass man is!") that now she was the proud possessor of a house in the street where Minerva lived.

  "Where to?" Farid made a fiery flower grow between his fingers and placed it on Meggie's dress. "Oh, I think I'll just stroll from village to village the way Dustfinger used to."

  Meggie looked at the burning flower. The flames faded like real petals, and only a tiny spot of ash was left on her dress. Farid. His mere name used to quicken her pulse, but now she hardly listened as he told her about his plans, all the marketplaces where he would put on a show, the mountain villages, the far side of the Wayless Wood. Her heart leaped only when she suddenly saw the Strong Man standing there with the women. A few of the children had climbed onto his shoulders, just as they often used to in the cave, but she couldn't see the face she was looking for beside him. Disappointed, she let her eyes wander on, and blushed when Doria was suddenly standing there in front of her Farid abruptly fell silent, and looked at the other boy in the same way as he so often looked at Roxane.

  The scar on Doria's forehead was as long as Meggie's middle finger. "A blow with a spiked mace, not particularly well aimed," Roxane had said. "Head wounds bleed a lot, so they probably thought he was dead." Roxane had nursed him for many nights on end, but Fenoglio's opinion was still that Doria was alive thanks only to the story he had written long ago about the boy's future. "And anyway, even if you want to believe it was Roxane who made him better, then who made up Roxane, may I ask?" He was certainly his old self again.

  "Doria! How are you?" Meggie involuntarily put out her hand and caressed the scar on his forehead. Farid gave her a strange look.

  "Fine. My head's as good as new." Doria brought something out from behind his back. "Is this what they're like?"

  Meggie stared at the tiny wooden airplane he had made.

  "That's how you described them, isn't it? The flying machines."

  "But you were unconscious!"

  He smiled and put his hand to his head. "The words are in here, all the same. But I don't know how the music thing is supposed to work. You know, the little box that plays music."

  Meggie had to smile. "Oh yes, a radio. That wouldn't be any good here. I don't know just how to explain it to you…"

  Farid was still looking at her. Then he abruptly took her hand. "Excuse us," he told Doria, and led Meggie into the nearest doorway. "Does Silvertongue know how you look at him?"

  "Look at who?"

  "Who!" He passed his finger over his forehead as if tracing Doria's scan "Listen," he said, stroking her hair back. "Why don't you come with me? We could go from village to village together.

  The way we did when we and Dustfinger were following your mother and father. Do you remember?"

  How could he ask that?

  Meggie looked over her shoulder. Doria was standing beside Fenoglio and Elinor. Fenoglio was looking at the airplane.

  "I'm sorry, Farid," she said, gently removing his hand from her shoulder. "But I don't want to leave."

  "Why not?" He tried to kiss her, but Meggie turned her face away. Even though she felt tears coming to her eyes. Do you remember?

  "I wish you luck," she said, kissing him on the cheek. He still had the most beautiful eyes of any boy she'd ever seen. But now her heart beat so much faster for someone else.

  81. LATER

  Almost five months later a baby will be born at the lonely farm where the Black Prince once hid the Bluejay. It will be a boy, dark-haired like his father, but with his mother and sister's eyes. He will think that every wood is full of fairies, that a glass man sleeps on every table – so long as there's some parchment on it – that books are written by hand, and that the most famous of illuminators paints with his left hand because his right hand is made of leather. He will think that strolling players breathe fire and perform comic plays in every marketplace, that women always wear long dresses, and that soldiers stand at every city gate.

  And he will have a great-aunt called Elinor who tells him there's a world that is not like this one. A world with neither fairies nor glass men, but with animals who carry their young in a pouch in front of their bellies, and birds with wings that beat so fast it sounds like the humming of a bumblebee, with carriages that drive along without any horses, and pictures that move of their own accord. Elinor will tell him how, long ago, a horrible man called Orpheus brought his parents out of that world and into this one by magic, and how this Orpheus finally had to flee from his father and the Fire-Dancer to the northern mountains, where it's to be hoped he froze to death. She will tell him that even the most powerful men don't carry swords in the other world, but there are much, much more terrible weapons there. (His father owns a very fine sword, kept wrapped in a cloth in his workshop. He hides it from the child, but sometimes the boy will secretly unwrap it and run his fingers over the shiny blade.) Elinor will tell him amazing things about that other world. She will even claim that the people there have built coaches that can fly, but he doesn't really believe that, although Doria has made wings for his sister, and Meggie really did fly from the city wall to the river wearing them. The boy laughed at her, all the same, for he knows more about flying than Meggie. That's because he sometimes grows wings at night, and he and his mother fly up into the trees. But perhaps he's just dreaming it. He dreams it almost every night, but he'd like to see the flying coaches all the same, and the animals with pouches, the moving pictures, and the house that Elinor is always talking about. A house full of books not written by any hand – books that are sad, because they're waiting for Elinor.

  "Someday we'll go and visit them together," Elinor often says, and Darius nods. Darius can tell wonderful stories, too, about flying carpets and genies in bottles. "Someday the three of us will go back, and then I'll show you all these things."

  And the boy runs to the workshop where his father is making leather clothes for books that are often illustrated with pictures painted by the famous Balbulus himself, and says, "Mo!" He always calls his father Mo, he doesn't know why, perhaps because that's what his sister calls him. "When are we going to the other world, the one you came from?"

  And his father puts him on his lap and runs his fingers through his dark hair, and says, like Elinor, "I'm sure we will someday. But we'd need words for that, exactly the right words, because only the right words unlock the doors between worlds, and the only person who could write them for us is a lazy old man. What's more, I'm afraid he's getting more forgetful every day."

  Then he tells him about the Black Prince and his bear, the giants that they'll go to see someday, and the new tricks the Fire-Dancer has taught the flames. And the boy will see, in his father's eyes, that he is very happy and not at all homesick for the other world. Any more than his sister is. Or his mother.

  So the boy will think that perhaps he'll have to go alone one day, if he wants to see that world. And he'll have to find out which old man his father means, because there are several in Ombra. Maybe he means the one who has two glass men and writes songs for the strolling players and for Violante, whom everyone calls Her Kindliness, and who is much better liked than her son. Battista calls this old man Inkweaver, and Meggie sometimes goes to see him. Maybe he'll go with her next time, so that he can ask him for the words that open doors. Because it must be exciting in that other world, much more exciting than in his own…

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