Inkheart

29. ONLY AN IDEA

The apartment that Fenoglio rented to tourists was only two streets away from his own house. It had two rooms plus a tiny bathroom and kitchen. Since it was on the ground floor it was rather dark, and the beds creaked when you lay down in them. All the same, Meggie slept well or, anyway, better than on Capricorn's damp straw or in the hovel with the ruined roof.

Mo slept only fitfully. Meggie was woken twice on that first night by tomcats fighting out in the street, and both times she saw him lying there with his eyes open, arms folded behind his head, looking at the dark window.

He got up very early in the morning and went to buy food for breakfast in the little shop at the end of the street. The rolls were fresh and warm, and Meggie really did almost feel as if they were on vacation when Mo and she drove to the nearest town of any size to buy the basic tools of his trade: brushes, knives, fabric, stout cardboard – and truly gigantic ice creams, which they ate together in a cafe by the sea. Meggie still had the taste of the ice cream in her mouth as they knocked on the door of Fenoglio's house. The old man and Mo drank another cup of coffee in his green kitchen before he took Mo and Meggie up to the attic where he kept his books.

"I don't believe it!" said Mo, outraged, standing in front of Fenoglio's dusty bookshelves. "They should all be seized on the spot! When did you last come up here? I could scrape the dust off their pages with a trowel. "

"I had to put them up here, " said Fenoglio defensively, signs of a guilty conscience lurking among his wrinkles. "I was getting so short of space downstairs with all those shelves, and anyway my grandchildren were always pulling them around."

"They could hardly have done as much damage as the damp and dirt up here," said Mo.

Fenoglio went downstairs again looking crestfallen. "You poor child. Is your father always so strict?" he asked Meggie as they climbed down the steep staircase.

"Only about books, " she said.

Fenoglio disappeared into his study before she could ask him any questions, and his grandchildren were at school or play group, so she got the books that Elinor had given her and sat down with them on the flight of steps leading into Fenoglio's tiny garden. Wild roses grew so thickly there that you could hardly take a step without feeling their shoots twine around your legs, and from the top step you could see the sea, far away yet looking very close.

Meggie opened the book of poems. She had to narrow her eyes because the sun was shining in her face so brightly, and before beginning to read she looked over her shoulder to make quite sure Mo hadn't followed her down. She didn't want him to catch her at what she was planning to do. She was ashamed of it, but the temptation was just too great.

When she was perfectly sure no one was coming she took a deep breath, cleared her throat – and began. She shaped every word with her lips the way she had seen Mo do it, almost tenderly, as if every letter were a musical note and any words spoken without love were a discord in the melody. But she soon realized that if she paid too much attention to every separate word the sentence didn't sound right anymore, and the pictures behind it were lost if she concentrated on the sound alone and not the sense. It was difficult. So difficult. And the sun was making her drowsy, until at last she closed the book and held her face up to its warm rays. It was silly of her to try anyway. Very silly…

Later that afternoon Pippo, Paula, and Rico came back, and Meggie walked around the village with them. They bought things in the shop where Mo had gone in the morning, sat on a wall on the outskirts of the village, watched ants carrying pine needles and flower seeds over the rough stones, and counted the ships sailing by on the distant sea.

A second day passed like this. Now and then Meggie wondered where Dustfinger could be and whether Farid was still with him, how Elinor was, and if she was beginning to wonder where they were.

There was no answer to any of these questions, and Meggie didn't find out what Fenoglio was doing behind his study door either. "Chewing his pencil, " Paula told her when she had managed to hide under her grandfather's desk. "Just chewing the end of his pencil and walking up and down. "

"Mo, when are we going to Elinor's house?" Meggie asked on their second night, when she sensed that, yet again, he couldn't sleep. She perched on the edge of his bed. The bed creaked just like hers.

"Soon, " he said. "Go to sleep again now, OK?"

"Do you miss her – my mother I mean?" Meggie herself didn't know why she asked that question out of the blue. All of a sudden it was there, on the tip of her tongue, and had to be spoken aloud.

It was a long time before Mo answered.

"Sometimes, " he said at last. "In the morning, at midday, in the evening, at night. Almost all the time. "

Meggie felt jealousy digging its little claws into her heart. She knew that feeling; she felt it every time Mo had a new girlfriend. But how could she be jealous of her own mother? "Tell me about her, " she said quietly. "I don't mean the made-up stories you used to tell. "

She used to search her books for a suitable mother, but there were hardly any mothers in her favorite stories. Tom Sawyer? No mother. Huck Finn? Ditto. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys? Not a mother in sight. Jim Button was motherless, too – and all you found in fairy tales were wicked stepmothers; heartless, jealous stepmothers… the list could go on forever. That had often comforted Meggie in the past. It didn't seem particularly unusual not to have a mother, or at least not in the books she liked best.

"What do you want me to tell you?" Mo looked at the window. The tomcats were fighting outside again. Their yowls sounded like babies crying. "You look more like her than me I'm glad to say. She laughs like you, and she chews a strand of hair while she's reading exactly the way you do. She's near sighted, but too vain to wear glasses -"

"I can understand that." Meggie sat down beside him. His arm hardly hurt him now. The bite from Basta's dog had almost healed, but there would always be a scar, pale as the scar Basta's knife had left nine years ago.

"What do you mean? I like glasses, " said Mo.

"I don't. Go on. "

"She loves stones-flat, smooth stones that fit comfortably into the hand. She always has one or two of them in her pocket, and she weights down books with them, especially paperbacks. She doesn't like the covers to stick up in the air, but you were always taking the stones away and rolling them over the wooden floor."

"And then she was cross. "

"Oh, I don't know. She tickled your fat little neck until you let go of the stones. " Mo turned around to look at her. "Do you really not miss her, Meggie?"

"I don't know. Well, only if I'm feeling angry with you. "

"About a dozen times a day, then?"

"Don't be so silly!" Meggie dug her elbow into his ribs. They both listened for any sounds in the night. The window was open just a crack, and it was quiet outside. The tomcats had fallen silent, probably licking their wounds. For a moment Meggie thought she could hear the sea breaking in the distance, but perhaps it was only the traffic on the nearby highway.

"Where do you think Dustfinger has gone?" The darkness enveloped them like a soft cloth. I'll miss this warmth, she thought, I really will.

"I don't know, " said Mo. His voice sounded absent. "A long way off, I hope, but I'm not sure. "

Nor was Meggie. "Do you think that boy's still with him?" Farid. She liked his name.

"I expect so. He was running after Dustfinger like a dog. "

"He likes Dustfinger. Do you think Dustfinger likes him?"

Mo shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know who or what Dustfinger likes. "

Meggie rested her head against his chest, the way she always used to at home when he was telling her a story. "He still wants the book, doesn't he?" she whispered. "Basta will make mincemeat of him if he catches him. He must have got ten a new knife by now. "

Someone was coming along the narrow alley. A door opened and was closed again; a dog barked.

"If it wasn't for you, " said Mo, "I'd go back, too. "