Inkheart (17 page)

"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
Ink-heart.
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
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exploits that had kept her mother away, tales of the adventures she was having in distant lands, of fearsome 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 m the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on — develop-mg 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 to speak again, although it sounded almost as if she were talking to herself. "Heavens above," she murmured, taking off her shoes. "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 I 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
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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."

"But you'll freeze."

"Nonsense."

"And where will you and Elinor sleep?" Meggie yawned again. She hadn't realized how tired she was.

Elinor was still pacing from wall to wall. "What's all this about sleeping?" she said. "We're going to keep watch, of course."

"All right," murmured Meggie, burying her nose in Mo's sweater. He's back with me, she thought, as drowsiness weighed down her eyelids. Nothing else matters. And then she thought: Oh, if only I could read some more of that book. But
Inkheart
was in Capricorn's hands — and she didn't want to think of him now, or she would never get to sleep. Never . . .

Later, she didn't know how long she had slept. Perhaps her cold feet woke her, or the itchy straw under her head. Her watch said four o'clock. There was nothing in the windowless room to tell her whether it was night or day, but Meggie couldn't imagine that the night was over yet. Mo was sitting near the door with Elinor. They both looked tired and anxious, and they were talking in low voices.

"Yes, they still think I'm a magician," Mo was saying. "They gave me that ridiculous name —

Silvertongue. And Capricorn is firmly convinced I can repeat the trick anytime, with any book at all."

"And . . . and can you?" asked Elinor. "You weren't telling us the whole story earlier, were you?"

Mo didn't answer for a long time. "No," he said at last. Because I don't want Meggie thinking I'm some kind of a magician, too."

So you've — well, read things out of a book quite often?"

Mo nodded. "I always liked reading aloud, even as a boy, and one day, when I was reading
Tom
Sawyer
to a friend, a dead cat suddenly appeared on the carpet, lying there stiff as a board. I only noticed later that one of my soft toys had vanished. I think both our hearts missed a beat, and my friend and I swore to each other, sealing the oath with blood like Tom and Huck, that we'd never tell anyone about the cat. After that, of course, I kept trying again in secret, without any witnesses, but it never seemed to happen when I wanted. In fact, there didn't seem to be any rules at all, except that it happened only with stories I liked. Of course I kept everything that came out of the books, except for the snozzcumber I got out of the book about the friendly giant.

It stank too much. When Meggie was still very small, things sometimes came out of her picture
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books: a feather, a tiny shoe. We put them in her book box, without telling her where they came from, otherwise she'd never have picked up a book again for fear the giant serpent with a toothache or some other alarming creature might appear! But I'd never, never managed to bring anything living out of a book, Elinor. Until that night." Mo looked at the palms of his hands, as if seeing there all the things his voice had lured out of books. "Why couldn't it have been some nice creature, if it had to happen? Something like — oh, Babar the elephant. Meggie would have been enchanted."

Yes, I certainly would have been, thought Meggie. She remembered the little shoe, and the feather as well. It had been emerald green, like the plumage of Dr. Dolittle's parrot Polynesia.

"Well, it could have been worse." Typical Elinor! As if it wasn't bad enough to be locked up in a tumbledown house far away from ordinary life, surrounded by black-clad men with faces like birds of prey and knives in their belts. But obviously Elinor really could imagine something worse. "Suppose Long John Silver had suddenly appeared in your living room, striking out with his wooden crutch?" she whispered. "I think I prefer this Capricorn after all. You know what?

When we're home again — in my house, I mean — I'll give you a really nice book.
Winnie the
Pooh,
for instance, or maybe
Where the Wild Things Are.
I wouldn't really mind one of those monsters. I'll sit you down in my most comfortable armchair, make you a cup of coffee, and then you can read aloud. How about it?"

Mo laughed quietly, and for a moment his face didn't look quite so careworn. "No, Elinor, I will do no such thing. Although it sounds very tempting. But I swore never to read aloud again. Who knows who might disappear next time? And perhaps there's some unpleasant character we never noticed even in the Pooh books. Or suppose I read Pooh himself out of his book? What would he do here without his friends and the Hundred Acre Wood? His poor little heart would break, like Dustfinger's."

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Elinor impatiently dismissed this idea. "How often do I have to tell you that fool
has
no heart? Very well, then. Let me ask you another question, because I'd very much like to know the answer." Elinor lowered her voice, and Meggie had to strain her ears to make out what she was saying. "Who was this Capricorn in his own story? The villain of the piece, I suppose, but can you tell me more about him?"

Meggie would have liked to know more about Capricorn, too, but Mo was suddenly not very forthcoming. All he would say was, "The less you know about him the better." Then he tell silent.

Elinor kept at him for a while, but Mo evaded all her questions. He simply did not seem to want to talk about Capricorn. Meggie could see from his face that his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. At some point Elinor nodded off, curled up on the cold floor as if trying to keep herself warm with her own body. But Mo went on sitting there with his back against the wall.

As Meggie felt herself drift off to sleep again, Mo's face stayed with her in her slumber. It emerged in her dreams like a dark moon with figures leaping from its mouth, living creatures —

fat, thin, large, small, they hopped out and ran away in a long line. A woman, scarcely more than a shadow, was dancing on the moon's nose — and suddenly the moon smiled.

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Chapter 17 – The Betrayer Betrayed

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.... He
wanted .. to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in
sparkling whirls, and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

–
Ray Bradbury,
Fahrenheit 451

Sometime near daybreak the feeble light from the electric bulb that had helped them through the night flickered out. Mo and Elinor were asleep near the locked door, but Meggie lay in the dark with her eyes open, feeling fear ooze out of the cold walls. She listened to Elinor's breathing, and her father's, and more than anything wished for a candle — and a book to keep the fear away. It seemed to be everywhere, a malicious, disembodied creature that had just been waiting for the light to go out so it could steal close to her in the darkness and take her m its cold arms. Meggie sat up, fought for breath, and crawled over to Mo on all fours. She curled up in a ball beside him the way she used to when she was little, and waited for the light of dawn to come in under the door.

With the light came two of Capricorn's men. Mo had only just sat up, wearily, and Elinor was rubbing her aching back and muttering crossly when they heard the footsteps.

They weren't Basta's footsteps. One of the two men, a great tall beanpole, looked as if a giant had pressed his face flat with his thumb. The other was small and thin, with a goatee beard on his receding chin. He kept fiddling with his shotgun and glowered unpleasantly at the three of them as if he felt like shooting them on the spot.

"Come on, then. Get a move on!" he snapped as they stumbled out into the bright light of day, blinking. Meggie tried to remember whether his voice was one of those she had heard in Elinor's library, but she wasn't sure. Capricorn had many men.

It was a fine, warm morning. The sky arched blue and cloudless above Capricorn's village, and a couple of finches were twittering in a rosebush growing wild among the old houses, as if there were no danger in the world but a hungry cat or two. Mo took Meggie's arm as they stepped outside. Elinor had to get her shoes on first, and when the man with the goatee tried hauling her roughly out because she didn't move fast enough for him, she pushed his hands away and fired a volley of bad language at him. That simply made the two men laugh, whereupon Elinor tightened her lips and confined herself to hostile glances.