Inkspell

10. THE INKWORLD

It was bright. Sunlight filtered through countless leaves. Shadows danced on a nearby pool, and a swarm of tiny red elves was whirring above the dark water.

I can do it! That was Meggie’s first thought when she sensed that the letters on the page really had let her through and she wasn't in Elinor's house anymore, but somewhere very, very different. I can do it. I can read myself into a story. She really had slipped through the words, as she'd so often done in her mind. But this time she wouldn't have to slip into the skin of a character in the story – no, this time she would be in the story herself, part of it. Her very own self. Meggie. Not even that man Orpheus had done it. He had read Dustfinger home, but he couldn't read himself into the book, right into it. No one but Meggie had ever done it before, not Orpheus, not Darius, not Mo.

Mo.

Meggie looked around almost as if she hoped he might be standing behind her, as usual when they were in a strange place. But only Farid was there, looking around as incredulously as she was. Elinor's house was far, far away. Her parents were gone. And there was no way back.

Quite suddenly, Meggie felt fear rise in her like black, brackish water. She felt lost, terribly lost, felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done?

She stared at the paper in her hand, so useless now, the bait she had swallowed. Fenoglio's story had caught her. The sense of triumph that had carried her away just now was gone as if it had never been. Fear had extinguished it, fear that she had made a terrible mistake and it could never be put right. Meggie tried desperately to find some other feeling in her heart, but there was nothing, not even curiosity about the world now surrounding her. I want to go back! That was all she could think.

But Farid turned to her and smiled.

"Look at those trees, Meggie!" he said. "They really do grow right up to the sky. Look at them!"

He ran his fingers over his face, felt his nose and mouth, looked down at himself, and on realizing that he was obviously entirely unharmed began leaping around like a grasshopper. He made his way over the tree roots that wound through the moss that grew thick and soft between them, jumped from root to root – and then turned around and around, laughing, arms outstretched, until he was dizzy and staggered back against the nearest tree. Still laughing, he leaned against its trunk, which was so vast that five grown men with their arms stretched out could hardly have encompassed it, and looked up into the tangle of twigs and branches.

"You did it, Meggie!" he cried. "You did it! Hear that, Cheeseface?" he shouted at the trees. "She can do it, using your words. She can do what you've tried thousands of times! She can do it, and you can't!" He laughed again, as gleefully as a small child. Until he noticed that Meggie was perfectly silent.

"What's the matter?" he asked, indicating her mouth in alarm. "You haven't…?"

Lost her voice, like her mother? Had she? Her tongue felt heavy, but the words came out. "No. No, I'm all right."

Farid smiled with relief. His carefree mood soothed Meggie’s fears, and for the first time she really looked around her. They were in a valley, a broad, densely wooded valley among hills with trees standing so close together on their slopes that the crowns grew into one another. Chestnut and oak on the hillsides, ash and poplar farther down, mingling their leaves with the silvery foliage of willows. The Wayless Wood deserved its name. It seemed to have no end and no beginning, like a green sea where you could drown as easily as in the wet and salty waves of its sister the ocean.

"Isn't this incredible? Isn't it amazingly wonderful?" Farid laughed so exuberantly that an animal of some kind, invisible among the leaves, snarled angrily down at them. "Dustfinger told me about it, but it's even better than he said. How can there be so many different kinds of leaves? And just look at all the flowers and berries! We won't starve here!" Farid picked a berry, round and blue-black, sniffed it, and put it in his mouth. "I once knew an old man," he said, wiping the juice from his lips, "who used to tell stories at night by the fire. Stories about paradise. This is just how he described it: carpets of moss, pools of cool water, flowers and sweet berries everywhere, trees growing up to the sky, and the voices of their leaves speaking to the wind above you. Can you hear them?"

Yes, Meggie could. And she could see elves, swarms of them, tiny creatures with red skins. Resa had told her about them. They were swirling like midges above a pool of water, only a few steps away, which reflected the leaves of the trees. It was surrounded by bushes that bore red flowers, and the water was covered with their faded petals.

Meggie couldn't see any blue fairies, but she did see butterflies, bees, birds, spiders' webs still silvery with dew although the sun was high in the sky, lizards, rabbits… There was a rustling and a rushing all around them, a crackling and a scratching and a pulsing; there was a hissing and a cooing and a chirping. This world seemed to be bursting with life, and yet it seemed quiet as well, wonderfully quiet, as if time didn't exist, as if there were no beginning or end to the present moment.

"Do you think he came here, too?" Farid looked around wistfully, as if hoping that Dustfinger would appear among the trees at any moment. "Yes, of course. Orpheus must have read him to this very place, don't you think? He told me about that pool, and the red elves, and the tree over there with the pale bark where you can find their nests. 'And then you must follow a stream,' he said, 'a stream going north. For in the south lies Argenta where the Adderhead rules, and you'll be hanged from a gallows there quicker than you can say your name.' But I'd better take a look from up there!" Quick as a squirrel, he climbed a sapling, and before Meggie knew it he had caught hold of a woody vine and was hauling himself up to the top of a gigantic tree.

"What are you doing?" she called after him.

"You can always see more from farther up!"

Farid was hardly visible among the branches now. Meggie folded up the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it and put it in her bag. She didn't want to see the letters anymore; they seemed to her like poisonous beetles, like Alice in Wonderland's bottle saying, "Drink me!" Her fingers touched the notebook with its marbled paper cover, and suddenly she had tears in her eyes.

"When you come to a charcoal-burner's hut, Dustfinger said, then you know you're out of the Wayless Wood." Farid's voice came down to her like the sound of a strange bird. "I remember every word he said. If I want them to, words stick in my memory like flies sticking to resin. I don't need paper to put them on, not me! You just have to find the charcoal-burners and the black patches they leave on the forest floor, he said, and then you know the world of humans isn't far off. Follow the stream that springs from the water-nymphs' pool. It will lead you straight to Lombrica and the Laughing Prince's realm. Soon you'll see his castle on the eastern slope of a hill, high above a river. It's gray as a wasp's nest, and the city is all around it, with a marketplace where you can breathe fire right up to the sky…"

Meggie was kneeling among the flowers – violets and purple bellflowers – most of them fading now, but they were still fragrant and smelled so sweet that she felt dizzy. A wasp was zooming around among them – or did it just look like a wasp? How much had Fenoglio copied from his own world and how much had he made up? It all seemed so familiar and yet so strange.

"Isn't it lucky he told me about everything in such detail?" Meggie saw Farid's bare feet. He was swinging through the leaves at a dizzy height. "Dustfinger often couldn't sleep at night. He was afraid of his dreams. I used to wake him up when they were bad, and then we sat by the fire and I asked him questions. I do that very well. I'm brilliant at asking questions. You bet I am!"

Meggie couldn't help smiling at the pride in his voice. She looked up at the canopy of foliage and saw that the leaves were turning color, as they had been in Elinor's garden, too. Did the two worlds keep time with each other? And had they always kept time, or did their stories become inextricably linked only on the day when Mo brought Capricorn, Basta, and Dustfinger from one into the other? She would never find out the answer, for who could know?

There was a rustling under one of the bushes, a thorny shrub, heavy with dark berries. Wolves and bears, cats with dappled fur – Resa had told her about them, too. Involuntarily, Meggie stepped back, but her dress caught on some tall thistles white with their own downy seed heads.

"Farid?" she called, angry with herself when she heard the fear in her voice. "Farid!"

But he didn't seem to hear her. He was still chattering away to himself high among the branches, carefree as a bird in the sunshine, while she, Meggie, was down here among the shadows. Shadows that moved, had eyes, growled… Was that a snake? She freed her dress with such a violent tug that it tore, and stumbled farther back until she came up against the rough trunk of an oak tree. The snake slid past quickly, as if the sight of Meggie had made it mortally afraid, too, but there was still something moving under the bush, and finally a head pushed out from the prickly twigs. It was furry and round-nosed, and it had tiny horns between its ears.

"No!" whispered Meggie. "Oh no!"

Gwin stared at her almost reproachfully, as if he thought it was her fault that his fur was full of fine prickles.

Farid's voice above her was more distinct now. Obviously, he was finally coming down from his lookout post. "No hut, no castle, nothing in sight!" he called. "It'll be a few days before we get out of this forest, but that's how Dustfinger wanted it. He wanted to take his time coming back to the world of humans. I think he was almost more homesick for the trees and fairies than for other people. Well, I don't know about you – and the trees are beautiful, very beautiful – but personally I'd like to see the castle, too, and the other strolling players, and the men-at-arms."

He jumped down on the grass, hopped on one leg through the carpet of blue flowers – and let out a cry of delight when he saw the marten. "Gwin! Oh, I knew you'd heard me! Come here, you son of a devil and a snake! Won't Dustfinger be surprised to see we've brought him his old friend after all!"

Oh, won't he just! thought Meggie. Fear will take his breath away – he'll go weak at the knees.

The marten jumped onto Farid's knee as the boy crouched down in the grass, and affectionately licked his chin. He would have bitten anyone else, even Dustfinger, but with Farid he acted like a young kitten.

"Shoo him away, Farid!" Meggie’s voice sounded sharper than she had intended.

"Shoo him away?" Farid laughed. "What are you talking about? Hear that, Gwin? What have you done to offend her? Left a dead mouse on one of her precious books?"

"Shoo him away, I said! He'll be all right on his own, you know he will. Please!" she added, seeing his horrified expression as he looked at her.

Farid straightened up, the marten in his arms. His face was more hostile than she had ever seen it before. Gwin jumped up on his shoulder and stared at Meggie as if he had understood every word she said. Very well, then, she'd just have to tell Farid – but how?

"Didn't Dustfinger tell you?"

"Tell me what?" He looked at her as if he'd like to hit her.

Above them, the wind blew through the leaf canopy like a menacing whisper.

"If you don't shoo Gwin away," said Meggie, although each word was difficult to utter, "then Dustfinger will. And he'll chase you away, too."

The marten was still staring at her.

"Why would he do a thing like that? You don't like him, that's what it is. You never liked Dustfinger, and you don't like Gwin, either."

"That's not true! You don't understand!" Meggie’s voice was loud and shrill. "He's going to die because of Gwin! Dustfinger dies, that's how Fenoglio wrote the story! Perhaps it's been changed, perhaps this is a new story we're in and everything in the book is just a pile of dead words, but all the same…"

Meggie hadn't the heart to go on. Farid stood there shaking his head again and again, as if her words were like needles digging into it, hurting him.

"He's going to die?" His voice was barely audible. "He dies in the book?"

How lost he looked standing there with the marten still perched on his shoulder! He looked at the trees around them with horror, as if they were all intent on killing Dustfinger. "But – but if I'd known that," he stammered, "I'd have torn up Cheeseface's wretched piece of paper! I'd never have let him read Dustfinger back!"

Meggie just looked at him. What could she say?

"Who kills him? Basta?"

Two squirrels were chasing around overhead. They had white spots as if someone had shaken a paintbrush over them. The marten wanted to go after them, but Farid seized his tail and held it tight.

"One of Capricorn's men. That's all Fenoglio wrote!"

"But they're all dead!"

"We don't know that." Meggie would have been only too glad to comfort him, but she didn't know how "Suppose they're still alive in this world? And even if they aren't – Mo and Darius didn't read all of them out. Some are still sure to be here. Dustfinger tries to save Gwin from them, and they kill him. That's what it says in the book, and Dustfinger knows it. That's why he left the marten behind."

"Yes, so he did." Farid looked around as if seeking some solution, a way he could send the marten back again. Gwin nuzzled his cheek with his nose, and Meggie saw the tears in Farid's eyes.

"Wait here!" he said, and he turned abruptly and went off with the marten. He had gone only a few paces before the forest swallowed him up like a frog swallowing a fly, and Meggie stood there on her own among the flowers. Some of them grew in Elinor's garden, too, but this wasn't Elinor's garden. This wasn't even the same world. And this time she couldn't just close the book and be back again: back in her own room, on the sofa that smelled of Elinor. The world beyond the words on the page was wide – hadn't she always known it? – wide enough for her to be lost there forever. Only one person could write her out of it again – an old man – and Meggie didn't even know where he lived in this world he had created. She didn't even know if he was still alive. Could this world live if its creator was dead? Why not? Books don't stop existing just because their authors have died, do they?

What have I done? thought Meggie as she stood there waiting for Farid to come back. Oh Mo, what have I done? Can't you fetch me back again?