Inkheart (46 page)

226

Chapter 46 – Woken in the Dead of Night

"Let us use our magic and enchantments to conjure up a woman out of flowers." ... Math
and Gwydyon took the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet and from these
conjured up the loveliest and most beautiful girl anyone had seen; they baptized her with
the form of baptism that was used then, and named her Blodeuedd.

–
"Math Son of Mathonwy," from
The Mabinogion,
translated by Jeffrey Gantz
Night had fallen long ago, but Fenoglio was still writing. Under the table lay the sheets of paper he had crumpled up or torn. He had discarded many more pages than he had laid aside, collecting those few pages very carefully, as if the words themselves might slip off the paper.

When one of the maids, a skinny little thing, brought their supper Fenoglio hid the written sheets he had kept beneath the covers of his bed. Basta did not return that evening. Perhaps he was too busy hiding Fenoglio's magic charms.

Meggie did not go to bed until everything outside was so dark she couldn't distinguish the hills from the sky. She left the window open. "Good night," she whispered into the dark as if Mo could hear her. Then she took the tin soldier and clambered up to her bed. She put the little soldier by her pillow. "You're better off than Tinker Bell, honestly!" she whispered to him. "Basta has her in his room because he thinks fairies bring good luck, and if we ever get out of here I promise I'll make you a ballerina just like the one in your story."

The tin soldier said nothing in reply to that either. He just looked at her with his sad eyes, then, barely perceptibly, he nodded. Has he lost his voice, too, wondered Meggie, or could he never speak? His mouth did look as if he had never once opened it. If I had the book here, she thought, I could read the story and find out, or I could try to bring the ballerina out of it for him. But the Magpie had the book. She had taken all the books away.

The tin soldier leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. No, the ballerina would only break his heart, thought Meggie before she fell asleep. The last sound she heard was Fenoglio's pen scribbling over the paper, writing word after word as fast as a weaver's shuttle turning black threads into colorfully patterned cloth. . . .

Meggie did not dream of monsters that night — not even a spider scurried through her dream.

Even though she dreamed of a room that appeared to be the bedroom in Elinor's house, she knew that she was at home. Mo was there, too, and so was her mother. She looked like Elinor, but Meggie knew she was the woman who had been in the net hanging beside Dustfinger in Capricorn's church. You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your eyes. You just
know
them. She was about to sit down next to her mother on the old sofa surrounded by Mo's bookshelves when someone suddenly whispered her name, "Meggie!" Again and again: "Meggie!" She didn't want to hear it, she wanted the dream to go on and on, but the voice kept calling to her. Meggie recognized it. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Fenoglio was standing by her bed, his ink-stained fingers as black as the night beyond the open window.

"What's the matter? Let me sleep." Meggie turned her back to him. She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind? The tin soldier was still asleep, with his head sunk on his chest.

227

"I've finished!" Fenoglio whispered. Even with the guard's snores reverberating through the door, she couldn't ignore it.

Meggie yawned and sat up.

A thin pile of handwritten sheets of paper lay on the table in the light of the flickering candle.

"We're going to try an experiment!" whispered Fenoglio. "Let's see whether your voice and my words can change what happens in a story. We're going to try to send the little soldier back." He quickly picked up the handwritten sheets and put them on her lap. "It's not the best of ideas to try the experiment with a story I didn't write myself, but that can't be helped. What do we have to lose?"

"Send him back? But I don't want to send him back!" said Meggie, horrified. "He'll die if he goes back. The little boy throws him into the stove and he melts. And the ballerina burns up." Among
the ashes lay the metal spangle from the ballerina's dress; it had been burned as black as coal.

"No, no!" Fenoglio impatiently tapped the sheets of paper on her lap. "I've written him a new story with a happy ending.
That
was your father's idea: changing what happens in stories! He just wanted to get your mother back, he wanted
Inkheart
rewritten to give her up again. But if the idea really works, Meggie — if you can change the fate of a character you read out of a book by adding new words to his story, then maybe you can change everything about it: who comes out, who goes in, how it ends, who's happy, and who's unhappy afterward. Do you understand?

It's just a trial run, Meggie! If the tin soldier disappears, then, believe me, we can change
Inkheart,
too! I still have to work out just how, but for now, will you read this aloud? Please!"

Fenoglio took the flashlight out from under the pillow and put it in Meggie's hand.

Hesitantly, she turned the beam on the first densely written page. Suddenly, her mouth went dry. "Does it really end well?" She ran her tongue over her lips and looked at the sleeping tin soldier. She thought she heard a tiny snore.

"Yes, yes, I've written a truly sentimental happy ending." Fenoglio nodded impatiently. "He moves into the toy castle with the ballerina and they live happily ever after — no melted heart, no burnt paper, nothing but their blissful love."

"Your writing is difficult to read."

"What? I went to endless trouble!"

"It's difficult all the same."

The old man sighed.

"Oh, all right," said Meggie. "I'll try."

Every letter, she thought, every single letter matters! Let the words echo, ring out, whisper and rustle and roll like thunder. Then she began to read.

At the third sentence the tin soldier sat bolt upright. Meggie saw him out of the corner of her eye. For a moment she almost lost the thread of the story, stumbled over a word, and re-read it.

After that she dared not look at the little soldier again — until Fenoglio put his hand on her arm.

228

"He's gone!" he breathed. "Meggie, he's gone!"

He was right. The bed was empty.

Fenoglio squeezed her arm so hard it hurt. "You truly are a little enchantress!" he whispered.

"And I didn't do so badly myself, did I? No, definitely not." He looked with some awe at his ink-stained fingers. Then he clapped his hands and danced around the cramped room like an old bear. When he finally stopped beside Meggie's bed again he was rather breathless. "You and I are about to prepare a most unpleasant surprise for Capricorn!" he whispered, a smile lurking in every one of his wrinkles. "I'll set to work at once! Oh yes, he'll get what he wants: You'll read the Shadow out of the book for him. But his old friend will be slightly changed! I guarantee that!

I, Fenoglio, master of words, enchanter in ink, sorcerer on paper. I made Capricorn and I shall destroy him as if he'd never existed — which I have to admit would have been better! Poor Capricorn! He'll be no better off than the magician who conjured up a flower maiden for his nephew. Do you know that story?"

Meggie was staring at the place where the tin soldier had been. She missed him. "No," she muttered. "What flower maiden?"

"It's a very old story. I'll tell you the short version. The long one is better, but it will soon be light.

Well — there was once a magician called Gwydyon who had a nephew. He loved his nephew better than anything in the world, but his mother had put a curse on the young man."

"Why?"

"It would take too long to tell that part now. Anyway, she cursed him. If he ever touched a woman he would die. This broke the magician's heart — must his favorite nephew be condemned to being sad and lonely forever? No. Was he not a magician? So he shut himself up in the chamber where he worked magic for three days and three nights and made a woman out of flowers — the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet, to be precise. There was never a more beautiful woman in the world, and Gwydyon's nephew fell in love with her at first sight.

But Blodeuedd, for that was her name, was his undoing. She fell in love with another man, and the two of them killed the magician's nephew."

"Blodeuedd!" Meggie savored the name like an exotic fruit. "How sad. What happened to her?

Did the magician kill her, too, as her punishment?"

"No. Gwydyon turned her into an owl, and to this day all owls sound like a weeping woman."

"That's beautiful! Sad and beautiful," murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so beautiful? It was different in real life. "OK, so now I know the story of the flower maiden," she said. "But what does it have to do with Capricorn?"

"The point is that Blodeuedd didn't do what was expected of her. And that's our own plan: Your voice and my words, beautiful, brand-new words, will see to it that Capricorn's Shadow does
not
do what's expected of him!" Fenoglio looked as pleased as a tortoise who has found a fresh lettuce leaf somewhere entirely unexpected.

"Then what exactly
is
he to do?"

Fenoglio wrinkled his brow. His satisfaction was all gone. "I'm still working on that," he said crossly, tapping his forehead. "In here. It takes time."

229

Voices were raised outside — men's voices. They came from the other side of the wall. Meggie slipped quickly off her bed and ran to the open window. She heard footsteps, rapid, stumbling, fleeing footsteps — then shots. She leaned out of the window so far she almost fell out, but she could see nothing. The noise seemed to come from the square outside the church.

"Careful!" whispered Fenoglio, grasping her shoulders. More shots were heard. Capricorn's men were calling to one another. Their voices sounded angry and excited — oh, why couldn't she make out what they were saying? She looked at Fenoglio, her eyes full of fear. Perhaps he had been able to understand some of the shouting — words, names?

"I know what you're thinking, but it certainly wasn't your father," he soothed her. "He wouldn't be crazy enough to creep into Capricorn's house at night!" Gently, he drew her back from the window. The voices died away. The night became still again as if nothing had happened.

Her heart beating fast, Meggie went back to bed. Fenoglio helped her up.

"Make him kill Capricorn!" she whispered. "Make the Shadow kill him." Her own words frightened her, but she did not take them back.

Fenoglio rubbed his forehead. "Yes, I suppose I must, mustn't I?" he murmured.

Meggie took Mo's sweater and held it close. Doors slammed somewhere in the house; the sound of footsteps echoed up to them. Then all was silent again. It was a menacing silence. A deathly silence, thought Meggie. The word kept going through her mind.

"Suppose the Shadow doesn't obey you?" she asked. "Like the flower maiden. Then what?"

"We had better not even think of that," replied Fenoglio slowly.

230

Chapter 47 – Alone

"Why, O why did I ever leave my hobbit-hole!" said poor Mr. Baggins bumping up and
down on Bombur's back.

–
J. R. R. Tolkien,
The Hobbit

When Elinor heard the shots she jumped up so fast that she stumbled over her blanket in the dark and fell full length in the coarse grass. It pricked her hands as she got up. "Oh God, oh God, they've caught them!" she stammered, groping around in the night looking for the stupid dress the boy had stolen for her. It was so dark she could scarcely see her own feet. "Oh, it serves them right," she kept repeating to herself. "Why didn't they take me with them, the stupid idiots? I could have kept watch, I'd have been on the alert." But when she finally found the dress and pulled it over her head with trembling fingers she suddenly stood still.

How quiet it was. Deathly quiet.

They've shot them, something whispered inside her. That's why it's so quiet. They're dead. Dead as mutton. They're lying bleeding on that square outside the house, both of them, oh, my God!

Now what? She sobbed. No, Elinor, no tears now. What use are tears? You must look for them, come on. She stumbled off. Was she going the right way?

"No, you can't come, too, Elinor," Mortimer had said. He had looked so different in the black suit Farid had stolen for him — like one of Capricorn's men, which of course was the point of the masquerade. The boy had even found him a shotgun.

"Why not?" she had replied. "I'll even put that silly dress on!"

"A woman would be conspicuous, Elinor! You've seen for yourself — there are never any women in the streets at night. Only the guards. Ask the boy."

"I don't want to ask him! Why didn't he steal a suit for me, too? Then I could have disguised myself as a man."

They had no answer to that.

"Elinor, please, we need someone to stay with our things!"

"Our things? You mean Dustfinger's dirty backpack?" She was so angry she had kicked it. How clever they'd thought themselves, but their disguise had done them no good! Who had recognized them? Basta, Flatnose, the man with the limp? "We'll be back by dawn, Elinor, with Meggie," Mo had said. Liar! She could tell from his voice he didn't believe it himself. Elinor stumbled over a tree root, grabbed at something prickly, and fell to her knees sobbing.

Murderers! Murderers and fire-raisers. What had she to do with people like that? She should have known better when Mortimer suddenly turned up at her door, asking her to hide the book.

Why hadn't she just said no? Hadn't she thought instantly that the matchstick-eater looked like someone with the word
trouble
written all over him in red? But the book — ah, the book. Of course she hadn't been able to resist the book.