for it, as he had often done in the past. He could trust his legs even if he didn’t yet know where they were taking him. He left the village and the road behind, dodged under some trees, ran through wild grass, plunged in among the mustard-yellow gorse bushes, let the silvery foliage of the olive trees hide him … he had to get away from the houses, away from the paved roads. Wild country had always protected him. Only when every breath he drew hurt him did he throw himself down into the long grass behind an abandoned cistern where frogs croaked and the rainwater that had collected among the grey stones steamed in the sun. He lay there gasping, listening to his own heartbeat and staring at the sky.
He jumped. ‘Who’s that?’
The boy stood there. Farid had followed him.
‘Go away!’ shouted Dustfinger.
The boy crouched down among the wild flowers that grew everywhere – blue and yellow and red splashes of bright colour in the grass.
‘I don’t want you!’ snapped Dustfinger.
The boy said nothing, but picked a wild orchid and examined the bloom. It looked like a bumble-bee on the tip of a flower stem. ‘What a strange flower!’ he murmured. ‘I’ve never seen one like that before.’
Dustfinger sat up and leaned against the side of the cistern. ‘You’ll be sorry if you keep running after me,’ he said. ‘I’m going back. You know where to.’
Only when he said it did he realise that he had made up his mind – long ago. Yes, he was going back. Dustfinger the coward was going back into the lion’s den. Never mind what Silvertongue said, or what his daughter thought – there was only one thing he wanted. He had never wanted anything else. And if he couldn’t have it now, then at least he could hope that one day his wish would come true.
The boy stayed sitting there.
‘Go away, will you? Go back to Silvertongue! He’ll look after you.’
Farid sat there unmoved, his arms round his knees. ‘You’re going back to that village?’
‘Yes, the village where the devils and demons live. Believe me, they’ll kill a boy like you and eat you for breakfast. They’ll enjoy their coffee all the more afterwards.’
Farid stroked his cheeks with the orchid. He made a face as the petals tickled his skin. ‘Gwin wants to get out,’ he said.
He was right. The marten was biting the fabric of the rucksack and sticking his muzzle out of it. Dustfinger undid the straps and freed him. Gwin blinked up at the sun, chattered crossly, presumably complaining that it was the wrong time of day, and scurried over to the boy. Farid picked him up, put him on his shoulder, and looked earnestly at Dustfinger. ‘I’ve never seen flowers like this,’ he repeated. ‘Or such green hills or such a clever marten. But I know a lot about the kind of men you mean. They’re the same everywhere.’
Dustfinger shook his head. ‘These are particularly bad.’
‘No, not particularly.’
The defiance in Farid’s voice made Dustfinger laugh; he himself didn’t know why.
‘We could go somewhere else,’ said the boy.
‘No, we couldn’t.’
‘Why not? What are you planning to do in that village?’
‘Steal something,’ said Dustfinger.
The boy nodded, as if stealing were the most natural plan in the world, and carefully put the orchid in his trouser pocket. ‘Will you teach me a little more about fire first? Before we go there.’
‘Before?’ Dustfinger couldn’t help smiling. The boy was a clever lad, and no doubt he knew there wouldn’t be any after.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you everything I know. Before we go there.’
27
A Good Place To Stay
I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
and How and Where and Who.
Rudyard Kipling,
The Elephant’s Child
They did not set off to join Elinor after Dustfinger had left them. ‘Meggie, I know I promised we would,’ said Mo, as they stood in the square in front of the war memorial, feeling rather at a loss. ‘But I’d like to leave the journey until tomorrow. As I told you before, there’s something else I have to discuss with Fenoglio.’
The old man was still standing where he had been when he spoke to Dustfinger, staring down the road. His grandchildren were pulling at him and talking to him, but he didn’t seem to notice them.
‘What exactly do you want to discuss with him?’
Mo sat on the steps in front of the memorial and made Meggie sit down beside him. ‘Do you see those names?’ he asked, pointing up at the chiselled letters listing people no longer alive. ‘There’s a family behind every name – a mother or father, brothers and sisters, perhaps a wife. If one of them were to find out that letters can be brought to life, that someone who’s only a name now could become flesh and blood again, don’t you think he or she would do anything, anything at all, to make it happen?’
Meggie looked at the long list. Someone had painted a heart next to the name at the top, and there was a bunch of dried flowers on the stone steps in front of the memorial.
‘No one can bring back the dead, Meggie,’ Mo went on. ‘Perhaps it’s true that death is only the beginning of a new story, but no one has ever read the book in which it’s written, and the writer of that book certainly doesn’t live in a little village on the coast playing football with his grandchildren. Your mother’s name isn’t on a stone like this but hidden somewhere in a book, and I have an idea which just might make it possible to alter what happened nine years ago.’
‘You’re going back!’
‘No, I’m not. I gave you my word. Have I ever broken it?’
Meggie shook her head. You broke your word to Dustfinger, she thought, but she didn’t say so out loud.
‘There you are, then,’ said Mo. ‘I want to talk to Fenoglio. That’s the only reason why I want to stay.’
Meggie looked at the sea. The sun had broken through the clouds, and all of a sudden the water was glistening and shining as if someone had poured paint into it.
‘It’s not far from here,’ she murmured.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Capricorn’s village.’
Mo looked eastward. ‘Yes, it’s odd that he felt drawn here of all places, don’t you think? As if he were looking for somewhere resembling the countryside of his own story.’
‘Suppose he finds us?’
‘Nonsense. Do you know how many villages there are along this coast?’
Meggie shrugged her shoulders. ‘He found you before, even when you were far, far away.’
‘He found me with Dustfinger’s help, and you can be sure Dustfinger isn’t going to help him again.’ Mo rose and drew Meggie to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s go and ask Fenoglio where we can stay the night. He looks as if he could do with some company.’
Fenoglio did not tell them whether Dustfinger looked as he had imagined him. He said very little as they walked back to his house. But when Mo told him that he and Meggie would like to stay there another day his face brightened slightly. He even offered them a place to spend the night: an apartment he sometimes rented out to tourists. Mo gratefully accepted.
He and the old man talked far into the evening, while Fenoglio’s grandchildren chased Meggie all over the nooks and crannies of the house. The two men sat in Fenoglio’s study. It was next to the kitchen, and Meggie kept trying to listen at the closed door, but Pippo and Rico always caught her in the act and dragged her away to the next flight of stairs before she had heard more than a few words. Finally, she gave up. She let Paula show her the kittens scampering about with their mother in the tiny garden behind the house, and followed the three children to the house where they lived with their parents. They didn’t stay long, just long enough to persuade their mother to let them stay at their grandfather’s for supper.
Supper was pasta with sage. Pippo and Rico picked the bitter-tasting green bits out of their sauce with disgusted expressions on their faces, but Meggie and Paula enjoyed the flavour of the leaves. After the meal Mo and Fenoglio drank a whole bottle of red wine between them, and when the old man finally saw Mo and Meggie to the door he said goodnight and added, ‘So you’ll look at my books as we agreed, Mortimer, and I’ll get down to work first thing tomorrow.’
‘What kind of work, Mo?’ asked Meggie as they walked along the dimly lit alleys together. Night had hardly cooled the air at all; a strangely foreign wind blew through the village, hot and sandy, as if it were carrying the desert itself across the sea.
‘I’d rather you didn’t ask me that,’ said Mo. ‘Let’s just act as if we were on holiday for a few days. This looks a good place for a holiday, don’t you think?’
Meggie answered only with a nod. Mo really knew her very well – he could often tell what she was thinking before she put it into words – but he sometimes forgot she wasn’t five years old any more, and these days it took rather more than a few kind words to distract her from her worries. Very well, she thought as she silently followed Mo through the sleeping village, if he doesn’t want to tell me what Fenoglio’s supposed to do for him I’ll ask old turtle-face himself. And if he won’t say either, then one of his grandchildren can find out for me! Paula was just the right size for a spy. It didn’t seem all that long ago since Meggie herself had been able to hide unnoticed under a table.
28
Going Home
My library was dukedom large enough.
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest
It was almost midnight by the time Elinor finally saw her garden gate beside the road. The lights down by the banks of the lake stood side by side like a caravan of glow-worms, trembling as they were reflected in the black water. It was good to be home again. Even the wind that blew on Elinor’s face as she got out to open the gate felt familiar. It was all familiar, the scent of the hedges and the earth and the air, so much cooler and moister than in the south. It didn’t taste of salt any more either. I might even miss that saltiness, thought Elinor. The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.
The iron gate creaked quietly as she pushed it open, almost as if it were welcoming her home. But no other voice would greet her. ‘What a silly notion, Elinor!’ she muttered crossly as she got back into the car. ‘Your books will welcome you home. That’s good enough, surely.’
She had been in a strange mood even during the drive. She had taken her time on the way home, avoiding major roads, and had spent the night in a tiny place in the mountains, the name of which she had already forgotten. She had enjoyed being alone again, for that, after all, was what she was used to, yet the silence in her car had suddenly begun to trouble her, and she had gone into a café in a sleepy little town which didn’t even have a bookshop, just to hear other human voices. She hadn’t spent much time there, staying only long enough to gulp down a cup of coffee, because she was annoyed with herself. ‘What’s all this in aid of, Elinor?’ she had muttered when she was back in the car. ‘Since when did you long for human company? High time you were home again, before you go right round the bend.’
Her house looked so dark and deserted as she drove up to it that it seemed curiously strange to her. Only the scents of her garden made her feel a little better as she went up the steps to the front door. The light over the door which usually came on automatically at night wasn’t working, and it took Elinor a ridiculous amount of time to get her key into the lock. As she pushed the door open and stumbled into the pitch dark hall she quietly cursed the man who usually kept an eye on the house and garden whenever she went away. She had tried phoning him three times before she set out, but she supposed he’d gone to see his daughter again. Didn’t anyone realise what treasures this house contained? Of course, if they’d been made of gold … but they consisted only of paper and printer’s ink.
It was very quiet, and for a moment Elinor thought she heard Mortimer’s voice as it brought life into the church with the red walls. She could have listened to him for a hundred years. No, two hundred. At least. ‘I must get him to read aloud to me when he arrives,’ she murmured, taking the shoes off her tired feet. ‘There must be some books he can read safely.’
Why had she never before noticed how quiet her house could be? It was silent as the grave, and the pleasure Elinor had expected to feel as soon as she was back within her own four walls was slow in coming.
‘Hello, here I am again!’ she cried into the silence, as she felt along the wall for the light switch. ‘Now you shall all be dusted and tidied again, my dears!’
The ceiling light came on, very bright, and as Elinor stumbled back in alarm she fell over her own handbag, which she had put down on the floor. ‘Oh heavens!’ she whispered, getting to her feet again. ‘Oh, dear heavens! Oh no!’
The custom-made bookshelves were empty. The books that had stood on them so safely, spine beside spine, now lay in untidy heaps on the floor, crumpled, dirty, and trampled underfoot, as if heavy boots had been performing a wild dance on them. Elinor began to tremble all over. She stumbled through her desecrated treasures as if she were wading through a muddy pond, pushed them aside, picked one up and let it drop, staggered on down the long corridor that led to her library.
The corridor was no better. Great disorderly piles of books were heaped so high that Elinor could hardly make her way through the ruins. At last she reached the library door. It had not been locked. Elinor stood there for an eternity, weak at the knees, before she finally dared to open it.
Her library was empty.
Not a book in sight, not a single book, not on the shelves or beneath the broken glass of the display cases. There wasn’t a book on the floor either. They were all gone. Instead, a red rooster dangled from the ceiling, stone dead.
Elinor’s hand flew to her mouth. The rooster’s head was hanging down, its red comb flopped over its staring eyes. Its plumage was still glossy, as if all the life in it had fled there, into the fine russet breast feathers, the darkly patterned wings and the long deep-green tail feathers that shimmered like silk.
One of the windows was open. A black arrow had been drawn in soot on the white paint of the windowsill, and pointed the way to the garden outside. Elinor staggered towards the window, numb with fear. The night was not dark enough to hide what lay on the lawn outside: a shapeless mound of ashes, pale grey in the moonlight, grey as moth wings, grey as burnt paper.
There they were. Her most valuable books. Or all that was left of them.
Elinor knelt down on the floorboards, on the wood she had so carefully chosen. The wind wafted in through the open window and over her, the familiar wind, and it smelled almost like the air in Capricorn’s church. Elinor wanted to scream, she wanted to curse, rage, cry out in fury, but not a sound came out of her mouth. All she could do was weep.
29
Only an Idea
‘Don’t have a mother,’ he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons.
J.M. Barrie,
Peter Pan
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 tom cats 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 bread rolls were fresh and warm, and Meggie really did almost feel as if they were on holiday 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 café 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 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 ought all to be removed from you 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 about.’
‘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 playgroup, so she fetched 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