Inkdeath (54 page)

— the children hadn’t had enough to eat for days — but after all the hours that Meggie had spent trudging through the mud with the little boy in her arms he seemed as heavy as an adult. "Meggie, sing me one of those songs!" he kept saying, and she sang in a soft voice that was reedy with weariness. Songs about the Bluejay, of course. By now she sometimes forgot that she was also singing about her father.

When she closed her eyes now and then in sheer exhaustion she saw the castle Farid had shown her in the fire, a growth of dark stone reflected on a misty lake. She’d tried desperately to catch a sight of Mo somewhere among the walls, but she couldn’t see him.

She was alone. She was even more alone now that Resa had gone. In spite of Elinor, in spite of Fenoglio, in spite of all the children, and definitely in spite of Farid. But out of this feeling of being abandoned, which only Doria could sometimes dispel, something else had grown: a sense that she must protect those who, like herself, were on their own, without father or mother, seeking shelter in a world that was as strange to them as to Meggie, although these children had never known any other.

Fenoglio himself, who was leading them, had only written about this world without knowing it, yet now they had nothing but his words to guide them.

He was walking at the front with the Black Prince. Despina clung to his back, though she was older than some of the children who had to walk. Her brother was up ahead with the older boys.

They were running about among the trees as though they didn’t feel tired at all. The Black Prince kept calling them back, telling them to do as the older girls did and carry the little ones. Farid and Doria were so far in advance of the rest of the party that Meggie hadn’t seen them for nearly an hour. They were looking for the tree that Fenoglio had described to the Black Prince so persuasively that the Prince had decided they should set off at once. And indeed, what other hope did they have?

"How much farther?" Meggie heard Despina ask, not for the first time.

"Not very far now, not very far," replied Fenoglio, but did he really know?

Meggie had heard him telling the Black Prince about the human nests. "They look like huge fairies’ nests, but people lived in them, Prince! Many people. They built the nests when giants started coming for their children, and they chose such a tall tree that even the largest giants couldn’t reach up to it."

"Which goes to show," he had whispered to Meggie, "that it’s sensible not to make your giants too big when you’re writing a story about them!"

"Human nests?" she had whispered back. "Have you only just thought that up?"

"Don’t be ridiculous! What makes you think that?" Fenoglio sounded offended.

"Have I asked you to read them into existence? No. This world is so well equipped that you can manage very well without stopping to make up something new every five minutes — although that fool Orpheus thinks otherwise. I hope by now he’s begging in the streets of Ombra — that’d serve him right for making my fairies rainbow-colored!"

"Beppe, walk for a little, will you?" Meggie put the boy down, although he resisted, and instead picked up a little girl who was so tired that she could hardly keep on her feet.

"How much farther?" A question that she had asked Mo so often herself, on those endless drives when they were going to cure another few sick books. Not far now, Meggie! She could almost hear her father’s voice, and for a moment her weariness made her imagine he was putting his jacket around her cold shoulders, but it was only a branch brushing against her back, and when she slipped on the wet leaves that covered the ground like a carpet, only Roxane’s hand kept her from falling.

"Careful, Meggie," she said, and for a moment her face seemed as familiar as Resa’s.

"We’ve found the tree!" Doria appeared in front of them so suddenly that some of the smaller children hid, alarmed, behind the grown-ups. He was drenched with rain and trembling with cold, but he looked happy — happier than he had been for many days.

"Farid stayed there. He’s going to climb the tree and see if the nests are still fit to live in!" Doria spread his arms wide. "They’re huge! We’ll have to construct something to help us haul the little ones up, but I have an idea."

Meggie had never heard him talk so fast or so much before. One of the little girls ran toward him, and Doria picked her up and whirled her around in a circle with him, laughing. "The Milksop will never find us up there!" he cried. "Now we only have to learn to fly and we can live as free as the birds!"

The children all began talking excitedly, until the Black Prince raised his hand.

"Where is the tree?" he asked Doria. His voice was heavy with fatigue. Sometimes Meggie feared that the poison had broken something in him, casting a shadow over the light that had always been a part of him before.

"Right ahead, there!" Doria pointed through the trees that dripped with rain.

Suddenly, even the weariest feet could walk again. "Quiet!" the Prince warned the children as they shouted louder and louder, but they were too excited to obey, and the forest echoed to the sound of their clear voices.

"There, told you so, didn’t I?" Suddenly, Fenoglio was walking beside Meggie, his eyes full of his old pride in the world he had written. It was easily aroused.

"Yes, you did." Elinor got in before Meggie with the answer. She was obviously feeling cross in her damp clothes. "But I haven’t seen these fabulous nests of yours yet, and I must say the prospect of perching up at the top of a tree in this weather doesn’t exactly sound enticing."

Fenoglio glared at Elinor with contempt. "Meggie," he asked in a low voice, "what’s that lad there called? You know, the Strong Man’s brother."

"You mean Doria?"

Doria glanced around as she spoke his name, and Meggie smiled at him. She liked the way he looked at her. His glance warmed her heart in a way quite unlike Farid’s.

In a very different way.

"Doria," murmured Fenoglio. "Doria. Sounds somehow familiar to me.

"Hardly surprising," said Elinor sarcastically. "The Dorias were a very famous aristocratic Italian family."

Fenoglio gave her a look that was far from friendly, but he never got a chance to reply.

"There they are!"

Ivo’s voice was so loud in the gathering dusk that Minerva instinctively put her hand over his mouth.

And there they really were.

Human nests.

They looked just as Fenoglio had described them in his book. He had read the passage aloud to Meggie. Gigantic nests in the crown of a mighty tree, with evergreen branches reaching so high into the shy that its top seemed lost in the clouds. The nests were round like fairies’ nests, but Meggie thought she saw bridges between them, ladders and nets made of twining tendrils. The children gathered around the Black Prince and stared up, enchanted, as if he had led them to a castle in the clouds. But Fenoglio looked happiest of all.

"Aren’t they fabulous?" he cried.

"They’re a very long way up, that’s for sure!" Elinor sounded far from enthusiastic.

"Well, that’s the whole point!" replied Fenoglio brusquely, but Minerva and the other women were also looking at the nests in dismay.

"What happened to the people who used to live up there?" asked Despina. "Did they fall out of the nests?"

"Of course not!" said Fenoglio impatiently, but Meggie could see he hadn’t the faintest idea what had happened to the original nest-dwellers.

"Oh no, I suppose they just wanted to get back to the ground!" said Jasper in his clear little voice.

The two glass men were sitting in the deep pockets of Darius’s coat. He was the only one who had anything like proper winter clothing, but he was always ready to share his coat generously with a few of the children. He let them slip in under the warm fabric like chicks under a mother hen’s wings.

The Black Prince looked up at the strange dwellings, scrutinized the tree that they would have to climb — and said nothing.

"We can pull the children up in nets," said Doria. "The creepers will make ropes.

Farid and I have tried them. They’ll hold."

"This is the best possible hiding place!"

It was Farid’s voice calling to them. Nimble as a squirrel, he came climbing down the trunk as if he had lived in trees in his old life, not in the desert. "Even if the Milksop’s hounds find us we can defend ourselves from up here!"

"With luck they won’t find us at all," said the Black Prince. "I hope we’ll be able to hold out up there until..

They all looked at him expectantly. Until — yes, until when?

"Until the Bluejay’s killed the Adderhead!" said one of the children so confidently that the Prince had to smile.

"Yes, exactly. Until the Bluejay’s killed the Adderhead."

"And the Piper!" added one of the boys.

"Of course, the Piper, too." Hope and anxiety were equally balanced in the glance that Battista exchanged with the Black Prince.

"That’s right, he’ll kill them both, and then he’ll marry Her Ugliness, and they’ll reign over Ombra and live happily ever after!" Despina’s smile was as delighted as if she could already see the wedding before her eyes.

"No, no!" Fenoglio looked at her, as horrified as if her words might come true the next moment. "The Bluejay already has a wife, Despina, doesn’t he? Have you forgotten Meggie’s mother?"

Despina glanced at Meggie in alarm and put her hand over her mouth, but Meggie just stroked her smooth hair. "Sounds like a good story all the same," she whispered to the child.

"Start getting ropes up into the tree," the Black Prince told Battista, "and ask Doria just how he plans to haul up the nets. The rest of you, climb to the top of the tree and see which nests are still sound."

Meggie looked up at the dense thicket of branches. She had never set eyes on a tree like it before. The bark was reddish brown, but as rough as the bark of an oak, and the trunk did not branch until high up in the tree, although it had so many bulges that you could find footholds and handholds everywhere. In some places huge tree fungi formed platforms. Hollows gaped in the towering trunk, and crevices full of feathers showed that human beings were not the only creatures to have nested in this tree.

Perhaps I should ash Doria if he can really build me wings, Meggie said to herself, and suddenly she thought of the magpie that had frightened her mother so much.

Why hadn’t Resa taken her along? Because she thinks I’m still a small child, she told herself.

"Meggie?" One of the children slipped her cold fingers into Meggie’s hand. Elinor had nicknamed the little girl Fire-Elf because of her hair, which was as red as if Dustfinger had sprinkled it with sparks. How old was she? Four? Five? Many of the children didn’t know their own ages.

"Beppe says there are birds that eat children up there."

"Nonsense. Anyway, how would he know? You think Beppe’s been up there already?" Fire-Elf smiled in relief and looked sternly at Beppe. But her face grew grave again as, her fingers still clutching Meggie’s hand firmly, she listened with the others to Farid reporting to the Black Prince.

"The nests are so large that I should think five or even six of us can sleep in each of them!" He sounded so excited. "Many of the bridges are crumbling, but there are enough creepers and timber up there to repair them."

"We have hardly any tools," Doria pointed out. "We must make do with our knives and swords."

The robbers looked in some alarm at their swordbelts.

"The crown of the tree is dense enough to give us good shelter from the wind, but there are gaps in it in some places," Farid went on. "I guess they were lookout points for the guards. We’ll have to pad and line the nests, as the fairies do."

"Maybe some of us had better stay down here," Elfbane put in, "We have to go hunting and—"

"Oh, you can hunt up there!" Farid interrupted. "There are flocks of birds, and I’ve seen large squirrels, and creatures like rabbits with fingers that cling to the branches.

Though there are wild cats up there as well. . ."

The women looked at one another, frightened.

" . . . and bats, and long-tailed brownies," Farid went on.

"There’s a whole world up there! It has caves in it, and a lot of the branches are so wide you can easily walk along them. Flowers and mushrooms grow there! It’s fabulous. Wonderful!"

Fenoglio was smiling all over his wrinkled face, like a king hearing praise of his domain, and even Elinor looked wistfully up the rough trunk for the first time. Some of the children wanted to climb the tree at once, but the women stopped them. "Go and collect leaves," they told them, "and moss and birds’ feathers —anything you can find to make soft linings."

The sun was already low as the robbers began stretching ropes, weaving nets, and building wooden platforms to be hauled up the tall trunk. Battista went back with some of the men to wipe out their tracks, and Meggie saw the Black Prince looking at his bear, at a loss. How was he going to get the bear up the tree? What would happen to the packhorses? So many questions, and he still wasn’t at all sure that they had outrun the Milksop.

Meggie was just helping Minerva to tie creepers together to make a net for provisions when Fenoglio drew her aside, a conspiratorial expression on his face.

"You won’t believe this!" he murmured to her when they were standing among the mighty roots of the tree. "And don’t you dare tell Loredan about it. She’d only accuse me of having delusions of grandeur again!"

"What don’t you want me to tell her?" Meggie looked at him blankly.

"Well, that boy, you know who I mean — the one who keeps looking at you and brings you flowers and turns Farid green with jealousy. Doria. . . ."

Above them the crown of the tree was bathed with red in the light of the setting sun, and the nests hung among its branches like black fruits.

Feeling embarrassed, Meggie turned her face away. "What about him?"

Fenoglio looked around as if afraid that Elinor might appear behind him the next moment. "Meggie," he said, lowering his voice,. "I think I made him up, too, just like Dustfinger and the Black Prince!"