‘I burned those clever fingers today!’ muttered Dustfinger angrily. ‘Still, just as you please. Your soft heart will be the ruin of us yet.’
When Dustfinger knocked on the door bearing the number 5 a faint rustling could be heard on the other side of it. ‘Seems like they were going to let him live,’ he whispered as he got to work on the lock. ‘They put people condemned to death in the crypt under the church. Ever since I told Basta for a joke that a White Lady haunts the stone coffins down there, he turns white as a sheet whenever Capricorn sends him into the crypt.’ He chuckled quietly at the memory, like a schoolboy who’s just played a particularly good practical joke.
Meggie looked across at the church. ‘Do they often condemn people to death?’ she asked quietly.
Dustfinger shrugged. ‘Not as often as they used to. But it does happen.’
‘Stop telling her such stories!’ whispered Mo. He and Elinor never took their eyes off the church tower. The sentry was posted high up on the wall beside the belfry. It made Meggie dizzy just to look up there.
‘Those are no stories, Silvertongue, it’s the truth! Don’t you recognise the truth when you meet it any more? The truth’s not pretty, of course. No one likes to look it in the face.’ Dustfinger stepped back from the door and bowed. ‘After you. I’ve picked the lock, you can fetch him out.’ Even with his burnt fingers it hadn’t taken him long.
‘You go in,’ Mo whispered to Meggie. ‘He’ll be less afraid of you.’
It was pitch dark on the other side of the door, but Meggie heard a rustle as she stepped into the room, as if an animal were moving somewhere in the straw. Dustfinger put his arm through the doorway and handed her a torch. When Meggie switched it on, the beam of light fell on the boy’s dark face. The straw they had given him seemed even mouldier than the pile on which Meggie had slept, but the boy looked as if he hadn’t closed his eyes since Flatnose had locked him in anyway. His arms were tightly clasped round his legs, as if they were all he could rely on. Perhaps he was still waiting for his nightmare to end.
‘Come with us!’ whispered Meggie, reaching out a hand to him. ‘We want to help you! We’ll take you away from here!’
He didn’t move, just stared at her, his eyes narrow with distrust.
‘Hurry up, Meggie!’ breathed Mo through the door.
The boy glanced at him and retreated until his back was right up against the wall.
‘Please!’ whispered Meggie. ‘You must come! The people here will do bad things to you.’
He was still looking at her. Then he stood up, cautiously, never taking his eyes off her. He was taller than she was by almost a hand’s breadth. Suddenly, he leaped forward, making for the open door. He pushed Meggie aside so roughly that she fell over, but he couldn’t get past Mo.
‘Here, take it easy!’ Mo said under his breath. ‘We really do want to help you, but you must do as we say, understand?’
The boy glared at him with dislike. ‘You’re all devils!’ he whispered. ‘Devils or demons!’ So he did understand their language, and why not? His own story was told in every language in the world.
Meggie got up and rubbed her knee. She must have grazed it on the stone floor. ‘If you want to see some real devils then all you have to do is stay here!’ she hissed at the boy as she pushed her way past him. He flinched as if she were a witch.
Mo drew the boy to his side. ‘See that man on watch up there?’ he whispered, pointing to the church tower. ‘If he sees us they’ll kill us.’
The boy looked up at the man on guard.
Dustfinger went over to him. ‘Hurry up, will you?’ he said quietly. ‘If the lad doesn’t want to go with us then he can just stay here. And the rest of you take your shoes off,’ he added, glancing at the boy’s bare feet, ‘or you’ll make more noise than a flock of goats.’
Elinor grumbled something in a cross voice, but she obeyed, and the boy did follow them, if hesitantly. Dustfinger hurried on ahead as if trying to outstrip his own shadow. The alley down which he led them sloped so steeply that Meggie kept stumbling, and every time Elinor stubbed her toes on the bumpy cobblestones she uttered a quiet curse. It was dark between the close-set houses. Masonry arches stretched from one side of the street to the other, as if to prevent the walls from collapsing. The rusty street lights cast ghostly shadows. Every noise sounded threatening, every cat scurrying out of a doorway made Meggie jump. But Capricorn’s village was asleep. They passed only one guard, leaning on the wall in a side street and smoking. Two tom cats were fighting somewhere on the rooftops, and the guard bent to pick up a stone to throw at them. Dustfinger took advantage of the moment. Meggie was very glad he had made them take off their shoes. They slipped soundlessly past the guard whose back was still turned, but Meggie dared not breathe again until they were round the next corner. Once again, she noticed the many empty houses, the blank windows, the dilapidated doors. What had wrecked these homes? Just the course of time? Had the people who once lived here run away from Capricorn, or was the village already abandoned before he and his men took up residence? Hadn’t Dustfinger said something like that?
He had stopped. He raised his hand in a warning gesture, and put a finger to his lips. They had reached the outskirts of the village. Only the car park still lay ahead. Two street lights illuminated the surface of the cracked asphalt, and a tall wire-netting fence rose to their left. ‘The arena for Capricorn’s ceremonies and festivities is on the other side of that fence,’ whispered Dustfinger. ‘I suppose the village children once played football there, but these days it’s the scene of Capricorn’s diabolical celebrations: bonfires, brandy, a few shots fired into the air, fireworks, blackened faces – that’s their idea of fun.’
They put their shoes on before following Dustfinger into the car park. Meggie kept looking at the wire fence. Diabolical celebrations. She could almost see the bonfires, the blackened faces … ‘Come on, Meggie!’ urged Mo, leading her on. The sound of rushing water could be heard somewhere in the darkness, and Meggie remembered the bridge they had crossed on the way here. Suppose a guard was stationed there this time?
There were several cars in the car park, including Elinor’s, which was parked a little way from the others. They all kept looking around anxiously as they ran towards it. Behind them the church tower rose high above the rooftops, and there was nothing now to shield them from the sentry’s eyes. Meggie couldn’t see him at this distance, but she was sure he was still there. From such a height they must look like black beetles crawling over a table. Did he have a pair of binoculars?
‘Come on, Elinor!’ whispered Mo. It seemed to be taking her forever to unlock the car door.
‘All right, all right!’ she growled back. ‘I just don’t have such nimble hands as our light-fingered friend.’
Mo put his arm round Meggie’s shoulders as he looked around, but apart from a few stray cats he could see nothing moving in the car park or among the houses. Reassured, he made Meggie get into the back seat. The boy hesitated for a moment, examining the car as if it were some strange animal and he couldn’t be sure whether it was kindly disposed or would swallow him alive, but finally he got in too. Meggie scowled at him and moved as far away from him as possible. Her knee still hurt.
‘Where’s the matchstick-eater?’ whispered Elinor. ‘Dammit, don’t tell me the man’s disappeared again.’
Meggie was the first to spot him. He was stealing over to the other cars. Elinor clutched the steering-wheel as if resisting only with difficulty the temptation to drive off without him. ‘What’s he up to this time?’ she hissed.
None of them knew the answer. Dustfinger was gone for an excruciatingly long time, and when he came back he was closing a flick-knife.
‘What was the idea of that?’ Elinor snapped, when he squeezed into the back seat next to the boy. ‘Didn’t you say we must hurry? And what were you doing with that knife? Not cutting someone open, I hope!’
‘Is my name Basta?’ enquired Dustfinger, annoyed, as he forced his legs in behind the driver’s seat. ‘I was slitting their tyres, that’s all. Just to be on the safe side.’ He was still holding the knife.
Meggie looked at it uneasily. ‘That’s Basta’s knife,’ she said.
Dustfinger smiled as he put it in his trouser pocket. ‘Not any more. I’d like to have stolen his silly amulet too, but he wears it round his neck even at night, and that would have been too dangerous.’
Somewhere a dog began to bark. Mo wound down his window and put his head out, looking concerned.
‘Believe it or not, it’s only toads making all that racket,’ said Elinor. But what Meggie suddenly heard echoing through the night was nothing like the croaking of toads, and when she looked in alarm through the back window a man was climbing out of one of the parked vehicles, a dusty, dirty white delivery van. It was one of Capricorn’s men. Meggie had seen him in the church. He looked around him with a face still dazed by sleep.
Before Meggie could stop her, Elinor started the engine, and the man snatched a shotgun from his back and stumbled towards the car. For a moment Meggie almost felt sorry for him – he looked so sleepy and baffled. What would Capricorn do to a guard who fell asleep on duty? But then he aimed the gun and fired it. Meggie ducked her head well below the back of the seat, and Elinor pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator.
‘Damn it all!’ she shouted at Dustfinger. ‘Didn’t you see that man when you were slinking about among the cars?’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Dustfinger shouted back. ‘Now, drive! Not that way! It’s over there. We must get to the road!’
Elinor wrenched the steering-wheel around. The boy was huddled down beside Meggie. At every shot he had closed his eyes tight and put his hands over his ears. Were there any guns in his story? Probably not, any more than there were cars. His and Meggie’s heads knocked together as Elinor’s car bumped over the stony track. When it finally reached the road things weren’t much better.
‘This isn’t the road we came along!’ cried Elinor. Capricorn’s village loomed over them like a fortress. The houses simply refused to get any smaller.
‘Oh yes, it is! But Basta met us further down when we arrived.’ Dustfinger was clinging to the seat with one hand and to his rucksack with the other. A furious chattering came from the bag, and the boy cast it a terrified glance.
Meggie thought she recognised the place where Basta had met them when they drove past it – it was the hill from which she had seen the village for the first time. Then the houses suddenly disappeared, engulfed by the night, as if Capricorn’s village had never existed.
There was no guard posted on the bridge, nor at the rusty barrier across the road cutting off the way to the village. Meggie looked back at it until the darkness had swallowed it up. It’s over, she thought. It really is all over.
The night was clear. Meggie had never seen so many stars. The sky stretched above the black hills like a cloth embroidered with tiny beads. The whole world seemed to consist of hills, like a cat arching its back at the face of the night – no human beings, no houses. No fear.
Mo turned round and stroked the hair back from Meggie’s forehead. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
She nodded and closed her eyes. Suddenly, all Meggie wanted to do was sleep – if only the pounding of her heart would let her.
‘It’s a dream,’ murmured a toneless voice beside her. ‘Only a dream. It’s just a dream. What else can it be?’
Meggie turned to the boy, who wasn’t looking at her. ‘It has to be a dream!’ he repeated, nodding vigorously as if to encourage himself. ‘Everything looks wrong, false, weird, like in dreams, and now,’ he murmured, turning his head to indicate the surroundings outside, ‘now we’re flying. Or the night is flying past us. Or something.’
Meggie could almost have smiled. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t a dream, but she was just too tired to explain the whole complicated story. She looked at Dustfinger. He was patting the fabric of his rucksack, probably trying to soothe his angry marten.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ he said when he saw Meggie watching him. ‘You can’t expect me to explain. Your father will have to do that. After all, the poor lad’s nightmare is his fault.’
Mo’s guilty conscience showed clearly on his face when he turned to the boy. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t in the—’ But there he broke off.
The boy looked at him suspiciously, then bowed his head. ‘Farid,’ he said dully. ‘My name is Farid, but I believe it’s unlucky to speak in a dream. You never find your way back if you do.’ He shut his mouth tightly and stared straight ahead, as if to avoid looking at anyone, and said no more. Did he have a mother and father in his story? Meggie couldn’t remember. It had just mentioned a boy, a boy without a name who served a band of thieves.
‘It’s a dream,’ he whispered again. ‘Only a dream. The sun will rise and it will all disappear. That’s what it’ll do.’
Mo looked at him, unhappy and at a loss, like someone who has handled a young bird, knowing it can never return to the nest. Poor Mo, thought Meggie. Poor Farid. But she was thinking of something else too, and she was ashamed of herself for it. Ever since she had seen the lizard crawl out of the golden coins in Capricorn’s church she couldn’t help thinking about it. I wish I could do that, her thoughts had kept saying to her, very quietly. The wish had settled like a cuckoo in the nest of her heart, where it kept fluffing up its plumage and making itself at home, no matter how hard she tried to throw it out. I wish I could do that, it whispered. I’d like to bring them out of books, touch them, all those characters, all those wonderful characters. I want them to come out of the pages and sit beside me, I want them to smile at me, I want, I want, I want …
Outside, it was still as dark as if morning would never come.
‘I’m going to drive straight on,’ said Elinor, ‘until we reach my house.’
Far behind them, headlights showed, like fingers probing the night.
20
Snakes and Thorns
‘None of that matters now,’ said Twilight. ‘Look behind you.’
The Borribles did and there, just a little beyond the rim of the bridge, they saw a halo of harsh whiteness reflected on the underneath of the dark sky. It was the beam of a car’s headlights as it got into position on the north side of the bridge, the side the runaways had left only moments before.
Michael de Larrabeiti,
The Borribles Go For Broke
Behind them the headlights were getting closer, no matter how fast Elinor drove.
‘It could be just any old car,’ said Meggie, but she knew that was unlikely. There was only one village on the bumpy, potholed road they had been following for almost an hour, and that was Capricorn’s. Their pursuers could only have come from there.
‘Now what?’ asked Elinor. She was in such a state the car was weaving all over the road. ‘I’m not letting them lock me up in that hole again. No. No. No.’ At each ‘No’ she struck the steering-wheel with the palm of her hand. ‘Didn’t you say you’d slit their tyres?’ she snapped at Dustfinger.
‘Yes, and so I did!’ he replied angrily. ‘Obviously they’ve thought of that kind of thing. Ever heard of spare tyres? Go on, step on it! There ought to be a village quite soon. It can’t be far away now. If we can make it that far …’
‘If, yes. If is the question,’ said Elinor, tapping the fuel gauge. ‘I’ve got enough petrol for about another ten kilometres, twenty at the most.’
But they never got that far. As they swerved round a sharp bend one of the front tyres blew out. Elinor only just managed to wrench the steering-wheel round before the car skidded off the road. Meggie screamed, burying her face in her hands. For a terrible moment she thought they were going to plunge down the steep slope to their left, the bottom of which disappeared in the darkness, but the car skidded to the right, scraped its wing against the low stone wall on the other side of the road, gave a last gasp and came to a halt under the low branches of a chestnut oak that leaned over the road.
‘Oh hell, hell, bloody hell!’ swore Elinor, undoing her seat-belt. ‘Everyone all right?’
‘Now I know why I’ve never trusted cars,’ muttered Dustfinger, opening his door.
Meggie sat there trembling all over. Mo pulled her out of the car and looked anxiously at her face. ‘Are you all right?’
Meggie nodded.
Farid climbed out on Dustfinger’s side. Did he still think he was dreaming?
Dustfinger stood in the road, rucksack over his shoulder, listening. The umistakable sound of an engine came purring through the night from far away.
‘We must get the car off the road!’ he said.
‘What?’ Elinor looked at him in horror.
‘We’ll have to push it down the slope.’
‘My car!’ Elinor was almost screaming.
‘He’s right, Elinor,’ said Mo. ‘Perhaps we can shake them off that way. We’ll push the car down the slope – they may not notice it in the dark, and even if they do, they’ll think we came off the road. Then we can climb up the hill on the other side and hide among the trees.’
Elinor cast a doubtful glance at the hill on their right. ‘But it’s much too steep! And what about the snakes?’
‘I’m sure Basta has a new knife by now,’ Dustfinger reminded her.
Elinor gave him her darkest look and, without another word, went round to the back of her car to check inside the boot. ‘Where’s our luggage?’ she asked.
Dustfinger looked at her with amusement. ‘I expect Basta’s divided it out among Capricorn’s maids. He likes to ingratiate himself with them.’
Elinor looked at him as if she didn’t believe a word of it, but then quickly closed the boot, braced her arms against the car, and began to push.
They couldn’t do it.
Hard as they pushed and shoved, Elinor’s car only rolled off the road but would not slide more than a few metres down the slope. Then it stopped with its bonnet stuck in the undergrowth and refused to go any further. Meanwhile, the sound of the engine, so curiously out of place in this desolate wilderness, was getting alarmingly loud. Dustfinger gave the obstinate car a final kick, and they all clambered back up to the road, sweating. After climbing over an ancient wall on the other side they struggled on up the slope. Anything to get away from the road itself. Mo hauled Meggie along behind him whenever she got stuck, and Dustfinger helped Farid. Elinor had her work cut out getting herself up the hillside, which was criss-crossed with low walls that had been built in a laborious attempt to wrest narrow fields and orchards from the poor soil, somewhere to grow a few olive trees and grape vines, anything that would bear fruit here. But the trees had run wild, and the ground was covered with fruit that was no longer harvested, for the people who once lived here had long since left to find an easier life elsewhere.
‘Keep your heads down!’ gasped Dustfinger, ducking behind one of the ruined walls. ‘They’re coming!’ Mo pulled Meggie down under the nearest