Inkheart (8 page)

Meggie gulped. She felt caught in the act, for of course she had brought candles with her. They were on her bedside table upstairs, where Elinor must have seen them. However, Elinor was looking not at Meggie but at Dustfinger, who was playing with a box of matches.

"I hope you'll take that rule to heart," she said to him. "Since we're obviously going to have the pleasure of your company for another night."

"Yes, if I may impose on your hospitality a little longer. I'll be off first thing in the morning, I promise." Dustfinger was still holding the matches. He didn't seem bothered by Elinor's distrustful gaze. "I'd say someone here has the wrong idea about fire," he added. "It bites like a fierce little animal, admittedly, but you can tame it." And with these words he took a match out of the box, struck it, and popped the flame into his open mouth.

Meggie held her breath as his lips closed around the burning matchstick. Dustfinger opened his mouth again, took out the spent match, smiled, and left it on his empty plate.

"You see, Elinor?" he said. "It didn't bite me. It's easier to tame than a kitten and almost as easy as a dog."

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Elinor just wrinkled her nose, but Meggie was so amazed that she could hardly take her eyes off Dustfinger's scarred face. She looked at Mo. The little trick with the burning match didn't seem to have surprised him. He shot a warning glance at Dustfinger, who meekly put away the box of matches in his pants pocket.

"But of course I'll keep the no candles rule," he was quick to say. "That's no problem. Really."

Elinor nodded. "Good," she said. "And one more thing: If you go out again as soon as it's dark this evening, the way you did last night, you'd better not be back too late, because I switch on the burglar alarm at nine-thirty on the dot."

"Ah, then I was in luck yesterday evening." Dustfinger slipped some spaghetti into his bag. Elinor didn't notice, but Meggie did. "Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world's more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious. But I wasn't planning to walk this evening. I have other plans for tonight, and I'll have to ask you to switch this wonderful system of yours on a little later than usual."

"Oh, indeed. And why, may I ask?"

Dustfinger winked at Meggie. "Well, I've promised to put on a little show for this young lady," he said. "It begins about an hour before midnight."

"Oh yes?" Elinor dabbed some sauce off her lips with her napkin. "A little show. Why not in daylight? After all, the young lady's only twelve years old. She should be in bed at eight o'clock."

Meggie tightened her lips. She hadn't been to bed as early as eight since her fifth birthday, but she wasn't going to the trouble of explaining that to Elinor. Instead, she admired the casual way Dustfinger reacted to Elinor's hostile gaze.

"Ah, but you see the tricks I want to show Meggie wouldn't look so good by day," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I'm afraid I need the black cloak of night. Why don't you come and watch, too?

Then you'll understand why it all has to be done in the dark."

"Go on, accept his offer, Elinor!" said Mo. "You'll enjoy the show. And then perhaps you won't think fire's so sinister."

"It's not that I think it's sinister. I don't like it, that's all," remarked Elinor, unmoved.

"He can juggle!" Meggie burst out. "With eight balls."

"Eleven," Dustfinger corrected her. "But juggling is more of a daylight skill."

Elinor retrieved a string of spaghetti from the tablecloth and glanced first at Meggie and then at Mo. She looked cross. "Oh, very well. I don't want to be a spoilsport," she said. "I will go to bed with a book at nine-thirty as usual and put the alarm on first, but when Meggie tells me she's going out for this private performance I'll switch it off again for an hour. Will that be time enough?"

"Ample time," said Dustfinger, bowing so low to her that the tip of his nose collided with the rim of his plate.

Meggie bit back her laughter.

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It was five to eleven when she knocked at Elinor's bedroom door.

"Come in!" she heard Elinor call, and when she put her head around the door she saw her aunt sitting up in bed, poring over a catalog as thick as a telephone directory. "Oh, too expensive, too expensive!" she murmured. "Take my advice, Meggie Never develop a passion you can't afford.

It'll eat your heart away like a bookworm. Take this book here, for instance." Elinor tapped her finger on the left-hand page of her catalog so hard that it wouldn't have surprised Meggie if she had bored a hole in it. "What a fine edition — and in such good condition, too! I've been wanting it for fifteen years, but it just costs too much money. Far too much."

Sighing, she closed her catalog, dropped it on the rug, and swung her legs out of bed. To Meggie's surprise, she was wearing a long floral nightdress. She looked younger in it, almost like a girl who has woken up one morning to find her face wrinkled. "Ah, well, you'll probably never be as crazy as I am!" she muttered, putting a thick pair of socks on her bare feet. "Your father's not inclined to be crazy, and your mother never was either. Quite the opposite — I never knew anyone with a cooler head. My father, on the other hand, was at least as mad as me. I inherited over half my books from him, and what good did they do him? Did they keep him alive? Far from it. He died of a stroke at a book auction. Isn't that ridiculous?"

With the best will in the world, Meggie didn't know what to say to that. "My mother?" she asked, instead. "Did you know her well?"

Elinor snorted as if she had asked a silly question. "Of course I did. It was here that your father met her. Didn't he ever tell you?"

Meggie shook her head. "He doesn't talk about her much."

"Well, probably better not. Why probe old wounds? And you re not particularly like her. She painted that sign on the library door. Come on, then, or you'll miss this show of yours."

Meggie followed Elinor down the unlit corridor. For a moment she had the odd feeling that her mother might step out of one of the many doors, smiling at her. There was hardly a light on in the whole vast house, and once or twice Meggie bumped her knee on a chair or a little table that she hadn't seen in the gloom. "Why is it so dark everywhere here?" she asked as Elinor felt around for the light switch in the entrance hall.

"Because I'd rather spend my money on books than unnecessary electricity," replied Elinor, looking at the light she had turned on as if she thought the stupid thing should go easy on the power. Then she made her way over to a metal box fixed to the wall near the front door and hidden behind a thick, dusty curtain. "I hope you switched your light off before you knocked on my door?" she asked as she opened the box.

"Of course," said Meggie, although it wasn't true.

"Turn around!" Elinor told her before setting to work on the alarm system. She frowned.

"Heavens, all these knobs! I hope I haven't done something wrong again. Tell me as soon as the show's over — and don't even think of seizing your chance to slink into the library and take a book off the shelves. Remember that I sleep right next door, and my hearing is keener than a bat's."

Meggie bit back the answer on the tip of her tongue. Elinor opened the front door. Without a word, Meggie pushed past her and went outside. It was a mild night, full of strange scents and
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the chirping of crickets. "Were you always as nice as this to my mother?" she asked as Elinor was about to close the door behind her.

Elinor looked at her for a moment as if turned to stone. "Oh yes, I think so," she said. "Yes, I'm sure I was. And she was always as cheeky as you, too! Have fun with your fire-eater!" Then she shut the door.

As Meggie was going through the dark garden behind the house she suddenly heard unexpected music. It filled the night air as if it had been only waiting for Meggie's footsteps: strange music, a carnival mixture of bells, pipes, and drums, both boisterous and sad. Meggie wouldn't have been surprised to find a whole troupe of fairground entertainers waiting for her on the lawn behind Elinor's house, but only Dustfinger stood there.

He was waiting where Meggie had found him that afternoon. The music came from a cassette recorder on the grass beside the wooden deck chair. Dustfinger had placed a garden bench on the edge of the lawn for his audience. Lighted torches were stuck into the ground to the right and left of it, and two more were burning on the lawn, casting quivering shadows in the night.

The shadows danced across the grass like servants conjured up by Dustfinger from some dark world for this occasion. He himself stood there bare-chested, his skin as pale as the moon, which was hanging in the sky right above Elinor's house as if it, too, had turned up especially for Dustfinger's show.

When Meggie emerged from the darkness Dustfinger bowed to her. "Sit down, pretty lady!" he called over the music. "We were all just waiting for you."

Shyly, Meggie sat down on the bench and looked around her. The two dark glass bottles she had seen in Dustfinger's bag were standing on the deck chair. Something whitish shimmered in the bottle on the left, as if Dustfinger had filled it with moonlight. A dozen torches with white wadding heads were wedged between the wooden rungs of the chair, and beside the cassette recorder stood a bucket and a large, big-bellied vase, which if Meggie remembered correctly came from Elinor's entrance hall.

For a moment, she let her eyes wander to the windows of the house. There was no light in Mo's bedroom — he was probably still working — but one floor below Meggie saw Elinor standing at her lighted window. The moment Meggie looked her way she drew the curtain, as if she had felt Meggie watching her, but she still stayed at the window. Her shadow was a dark outline against the pale yellow curtain.

"Do you hear how quiet it is?" Dustfinger switched off the recorder. The silence of the night fell on Meggie's ears, muffled as if by cotton wool. Not a leaf moved; there was nothing to be heard but the torches crackling and the chirping of the crickets.

Dustfinger switched the music back on. "I had a private word with the wind," he said. "There's one thing you should know: If the wind takes it into its head to play with fire then even I can't tame the blaze. But it gave me its word of honor to keep still tonight and not spoil our fun."

So saying, he picked up one of the torches from Elinor's deck chair. He sipped from the bottle with the moonlight in it and spat something whitish out into the big vase. Then he dipped the torch he was holding into the bucket, took it out again, and held its dripping head of wadding to one of its burning sisters. The fire flared up so suddenly it made Meggie jump. However, Dustfinger put the second bottle to his lips, filling his mouth until his scarred cheeks were
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bulging. Then he took a deep, deep breath, arched his body like a bow, and spat whatever was in his mouth out into the air above the burning torch.

A fireball hung over Elinor's lawn, a bright, blazing globe of fire. It ate away at the darkness like a living thing. And it was so big, Meggie felt sure everything around it would go up in flames: the grass, the deck chair, and Dustfinger himself. But he just spun around and around on the spot, exuberant as a dancing child, breathing out more fire. He made the fire climb high in the air, as if to set the stars alight. Then he lit a second torch and ran its flame over his bare arms. He looked as happy as a child playing with a pet animal. The fire licked his skin like something living, a darting, burning creature that he had befriended, a creature that caressed him and danced for him and drove the night away. He threw the torch high in the air where the fireball had just been blazing, caught it as it came down, lit more, juggled with three, four, five torches. Their fire whirled around him, danced with him but never hurt him: Dustfinger the tamer of flames, the man who breathed sparks, the friend of fire. He made the torches disappear as if the darkness had devoured them, bowed to the speechless Meggie with a smile, before once more spitting fire out into the night's black face.

Afterward, she could never say what had distracted her attention from the whirling torches and the showers of sparks, making her look up once more at the house and its windows. Perhaps you feel the presence of evil on your skin like sudden heat or cold .. or perhaps it was just that the light now seeping through the library shutters caught her eye, the light falling on the rhododendron bushes where their leaves pressed close to the wood. Perhaps.

She thought she heard voices rising above Dustfinger's music, men's voices, and a terrible fear rose inside her, as dark strange as the terror she had felt on the night when she first saw Dustfinger standing out in the yard. As she jumped up, a burning torch slipped from his hands and fell on the grass. He quickly trod out the fire before it could spread any further, then followed the direction of Meggie's eyes, and he, too, looked at the house without a word.

Meggie began to run. Gravel crunched under her feet as she raced toward the house. The front door stood ajar, there was no light in the entrance hall, but Meggie heard loud voices echoing down the corridor that led to the library. "Mo?" she called, and there was the fear back again, digging its curved beak into her heart, taking her breath away.

The library door was open, too, Meggie was about to rush in when two strong hands grasped her by the shoulders.

"Quiet!" breathed Elinor, pulling her into her bedroom. Meggie saw that her fingers were shaking as she locked the door.

"Don't!" Meggie dragged Elinor's hand away and tried to turn the key. She wanted to shout that she must help her father, but Elinor put a hand over her mouth and pulled her away from the door, hard as Meggie struggled, hitting and kicking. Elinor was strong, much stronger than Meggie.

"There are too many of them!" Elinor whispered as Meggie tried to bite her fingers. "About four or five, big strong men, and they're armed." She hauled the struggling Meggie over to the wall by the bed. "I've told myself a hundred times — oh, a thousand times! — I ought to buy a revolver!"