ten men back with you.’ Flatnose obeyed and marched off with his reinforcements. The benches now looked a good deal emptier. ‘And don’t any of you show your faces back here before you’ve found the fire-raiser!’ Capricorn called after them. ‘Whoever it is, we’ll teach him not to start fires in the Devil’s own domain – we’ll teach him a lesson, right here and now!’
Someone laughed, but most of those who had stayed behind were looking uneasily in the direction of the village. Some of the maids had actually risen to their feet, but the Magpie called their names in a sharp voice, and they were quick to sit back down with the others, like schoolchildren unfairly slapped on the hand. Nonetheless, the restlessness persisted. Scarcely anyone was looking at Meggie, almost all the members of her audience had turned their backs to her, and were pointing at the smoke and whispering to one another. A red glow was creeping up the church tower, and grey smoke formed a dense cloud above the rooftops.
‘What is all this? Why are you staring at that little wisp of smoke?’ There was no missing the anger in Capricorn’s voice now. ‘A bit of smoke, a few flames – so what? Are you going to let that spoil our festivities? Fire is our best friend, have you forgotten?’
Meggie saw the doubting faces turn back towards him. Then she heard a name. Dustfinger. A woman’s voice had called it out.
‘What does that mean?’ Capricorn’s voice was so sharp that Darius almost dropped the casket of snakes. ‘There is no Dustfinger any more. He’s lying up there in the hills with his mouth full of earth and that marten of his on his breast. I never want to hear his name again. He is forgotten as if he had never been—’
‘That’s not true.’
Meggie’s voice rang out over the arena so loud and clear that she herself was alarmed. ‘He’s here!’ She held up the book.’ Never mind what you do to him. Everyone who reads this story will see him – you can even hear his voice, and see the way he laughs and breathes fire.’
All went perfectly quiet. A few feet scraped uneasily on the red clinkers of the old football field – then, suddenly, Meggie heard something behind her. It was a ticking like the sound of a clock, yet not quite the same; it sounded like a human tongue imitating a clock: tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.
The sound was coming from among the cars parked behind the wire fence with their dazzling headlights on. Meggie couldn’t help it – she looked round, in spite of the Magpie and all the suspicious eyes turned on her. She could have kicked herself for being so stupid. Suppose they had seen it too – the thin figure rising among the cars and quickly ducking down again. But no one seemed to have noticed her glance any more than the ticking.
‘A very fine speech!’ said Capricorn slowly. ‘But you’re not here to make funeral orations for dead traitors. You’re here to read aloud, and I am not going to tell you so again.’
Meggie forced herself to look at Capricorn. She mustn’t look at the cars again. Suppose that really had been Farid? Suppose she hadn’t imagined the ticking?
The Magpie was watching her suspiciously. Perhaps she had heard it too, that soft, harmless ticking, nothing but a tongue clicking against someone’s teeth. What did it mean, unless you knew the story of Captain Hook and his fear of the crocodile with the ticking clock inside it? The Magpie wouldn’t have read it, but Mo knew that Meggie would understand his signal. He had woken her up often enough with that ticking sound, right beside her ear, so close that it tickled. ‘Breakfast time, Meggie!’ he used to whisper. ‘The crocodile’s here!’
That was it. Mo knew she would recognise the ticking that helped Peter Pan to go aboard Captain Hook’s ship and rescue Wendy. He couldn’t have given her a better signal.
Wendy, thought Meggie. What had happened next? For a moment she almost forgot where she was, but the Magpie reminded her. She slapped Meggie’s face with the flat of her hand.
‘Start reading, will you, little witch!’ she hissed. And so Meggie obeyed.
Hastily, she removed the black bookmark from the pages where it lay. She must hurry, she must read before Mo did anything silly. He didn’t know what she and Fenoglio were planning.
‘I’m going to start now, and I don’t want anyone disturbing me!’ she cried. ‘Anyone! Is that understood?’ Oh please, let Mo understand, she thought, please!
A few of Capricorn’s remaining men laughed, but Capricorn himself leaned back and folded his arms in anticipation. ‘Yes, just you take heed of what the girl said!’ he called. ‘Anyone who disturbs her will be given to the Shadow to welcome him here.’
Meggie put two fingers up her sleeve. There they were, Fenoglio’s words. She looked at the Magpie. ‘Well, she’s disturbing me!’ she said out loud. ‘I can’t read with her standing so close behind me.’
Capricorn gestured impatiently to the Magpie. Mortola’s face looked sour, as if he had told her to eat a bar of soap, but she took two or three reluctant steps back. That would have to do.
Meggie raised her hand and pushed the hair back from her forehead.
The signal for Fenoglio.
He instantly launched into his performance. ‘No, no, no! She’s not to read!’ he cried, moving towards Capricorn before Cockerell could stop him. ‘I can’t allow it! I am the author of this story, and I didn’t write it to be misused for purposes of violence and murder!’
Cockerell tried to put his hand over Fenoglio’s mouth, but Fenoglio bit his fingers and side-stepped him with more agility than Meggie would ever have expected of the old man.
‘I invented you!’ he bellowed as Cockerell chased him round Capricorn’s chair. ‘And I’m sorry I did, you stinking devil of a villain.’ Then he ran off. Cockerell didn’t catch up with Fenoglio until he reached the cage containing the prisoners, and in revenge for the mockery and laughter coming from the benches he twisted the old man’s arm behind his back so viciously that Fenoglio let out a cry of pain. Yet when Cockerell dragged him back to Capricorn’s side Fenoglio was looking quite pleased, because he knew he had given Meggie plenty of time. They had rehearsed it often enough. Her fingers had been shaking as she took the sheet of paper out of her sleeve, but no one noticed anything when she slipped it into the pages of the book. Not even the Magpie.
‘How the old man boasts!’ cried Capricorn. ‘Do I look as if an old fellow like that invented me?’
There was more laughter. The smoke above the rooftops seemed to have been forgotten. Cockerell put his hand over Fenoglio’s mouth.
‘Once again, and I hope this will be the last time,’ said Capricorn to Meggie, ‘start reading! The prisoners have waited long enough for their executioner.’
Silence fell again, and once more it smelled of fear.
Meggie bent over the book on her lap. The letters seemed to dance on the pages.
Come out, thought Meggie, come out and save us! Save us all: Elinor and my mother, Mo and Farid. Save Dustfinger if he’s still alive, and save Basta too for all I care.
Her tongue felt like a little animal that had found refuge in her mouth, and was now butting its head against her teeth.
‘Capricorn had many men,’ she began. ‘And every one of them was feared in the surrounding towns and villages. They stank of cold smoke, they stank of sulphur and everything that reminds you of fire. Whenever one of them passed by people closed their doors and hid under the stairs with their children. They called them Firefingers and Bloodhounds; Capricorn’s men had many names. They were feared by day, and by night they made their way into dreams and poisoned them. But there was one who was feared even more than Capricorn’s villains.’ Meggie felt as if her voice was growing stronger with every word she read. It seemed to grow until it filled the arena. ‘Folk called him the Shadow.’
Two more lines at the bottom of the page, then turn it over. Fenoglio’s words were waiting. ‘Look at this, Meggie!’ he had whispered when he showed her the sheet of paper. ‘What an artist I am, eh? Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth . . all those glorious words.’
Taste every word, Meggie, whispered Mo’s voice inside her, savour it on your tongue. Do you taste the colours? Do you taste the wind and the night? The fear and the joy? And the love. Taste them, Meggie, and everything will come to life. ‘Folk called him Capricorn’s Shadow.’ How the sh hissed as it passed her lips, how darkly the sound of the ‘o’ formed in her mouth.
‘He came only when Capricorn called him,’ she read. ‘Sometimes he was red as fire, sometimes grey as the ash to which fire turns all that it devours. He darted out of the earth as fast as flames lick their way up wood. His fingers and even his breath brought death. He rose before his master’s feet, soundless, faceless, scenting his way like a hound on the trail and waiting for his master to point to the victim. It was said that Capricorn had commanded one of the trolls who understand the whole art of fire and smoke to create the Shadow from the ashes of his victims. No one was sure, for it was also said that Capricorn had ordered those who called the Shadow to life to be killed. All that everyone knew was that he was immortal, invulnerable and pitiless, like his master.’
Meggie’s voice died away as if the wind had blown it from her lips.
Something was rising from the gravel that covered the football pitch. It grew taller, it stretched its ashen limbs. The night air suddenly stank of sulphur. That stench burned Meggie’s eyes so that the letters blurred, but she must go on reading while the eerie creature grew taller and taller.
‘Yet one night, a mild and starlit night, the Shadow heard not Capricorn’s voice when it was called forth, but the voice of a girl, and when she called his name he remembered; he remembered all those from whose ashes he was made, all the pain and all the grief—’
The Magpie reached over Meggie’s shoulder. ‘What’s this? What are you reading?’ But Meggie jumped up and backed away before the old woman could snatch the sheet of paper from her. ‘He remembered,’ she read on in a loud, clear voice, ‘and he determined to be avenged – avenged upon those who were the cause of all this misfortune, whose cruelty poisoned the whole world.’
‘Make her stop!’
Was that Capricorn’s voice? Meggie almost fell off the rostrum as she tried to keep away from the Magpie. Darius stood there, staring at her in astonishment, the casket in his hands. Then suddenly but deliberately, as if he had all the time in the world, he put down the casket and wrapped his thin arms firmly around the Magpie from behind. Nor did he let go, no matter how hard she struggled and cursed. And Meggie read on as the Shadow stood, watching her. The figure had no face, that was true, but it had eyes, terrible eyes, red as the embers of a hidden fire.
‘Get the book away from her!’ shouted Capricorn. He was standing in front of his chair, bent double as if he feared his legs would refuse to obey him if he took so much as a step towards the Shadow. ‘Get it away from her!’
But none of his remaining men moved, none of the boys and none of the women came to his aid. They had eyes for nothing but the Shadow as he stood there listening to Meggie’s voice, as if she were telling him a long-forgotten tale.
‘Indeed, he wanted revenge,’ Meggie read on. If only her voice weren’t shaking so much, but it wasn’t easy to kill, even if someone else was going to do it for her. ‘So the Shadow went to his master, and reached out to him with ashen hands …’
How soundlessly it moved, that terrible, gigantic figure!
Meggie stared at Fenoglio’s next sentence. And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating—She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t. It had all been in vain.
Then, suddenly, someone else was standing behind her. She hadn’t even noticed him climbing up on to the rostrum. The boy was there too, holding a shotgun aimed at the benches – but no one sitting there stirred. No one so much as lifted a finger to save Capricorn. And Mo took the book from Meggie’s hands, ran his eyes over the lines Fenoglio had added, and in a firm voice read to the end of what the old man had written.
‘And Capricorn fell down on his face, and his black heart stopped beating, and all those who had gone burning and murdering with him disappeared – blown away like ashes in the wind.’
57
A Deserted Village
In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,
in books I see what is yet to come …
All things decay and pass with time …
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.
Richard de Bury,
The Philobiblon
So Capricorn died, just as Fenoglio had written, and Cockerell disappeared at the same moment as his master fell to the ground, and with him more than half the men left on the benches. The rest ran away, all of them, the boys and women too. Those heading towards the village met some of Capricorn’s men running back from extinguishing the fire. Their faces were smeared with soot and full of horror, and not because of the flames that had been licking around Capricorn’s house, for they had put these out. No. They had seen Flatnose and several other men vanish into thin air before their very eyes. They were gone, as if the darkness had swallowed them up, as if they had never existed. And perhaps that was the truth of it. The man who had made them had now destroyed them, erased them like mistakes in a drawing, like marks on white paper. They were gone, and the others, the men who had not been born of Fenoglio’s words, were hurrying back to tell Capricorn what had happened. But Capricorn lay on his face with gravel clinging to his red suit, and never again would anyone tell him anything – about fire and smoke, about fear and death. Never again.
Only the Shadow still stood there, a figure so tall that the men running across the car park saw him from afar, grey before the black night sky, his eyes two blazing red stars, and they forgot the master they had been going to serve. Every one of them ran for the cars. They wanted only to get away, far away, before the being who had been summoned like a dog turned and devoured them all.
Meggie did not come to her senses properly until they had all gone. She had nestled her head under Mo’s arm, as she always did when she simply didn’t want to see the world. Mo put the book under the jacket which had almost made him look like one of Capricorn’s henchmen. And he held her tight while all about them people were running and screaming. Only the Shadow stood perfectly still, as if killing his master had sapped all his power.
‘Farid,’ Meggie heard Mo say, ‘can you get that cage open?’
Only then did she bring her head out from under Mo’s arm, and saw that the Magpie was still there. Why hadn’t she disappeared too? Darius was still holding on to her as if he were afraid of what would happen if he let go. But she was no longer kicking and struggling. She was just looking at Capricorn, with tears running down her sharp-boned face, over her small soft chin, and falling like rain on her dress.
Agile as Gwin, Farid jumped down from the rostrum and ran over to the cage, without once taking his eyes off the Shadow. However, the Shadow just stood there frozen, as if he would never move again.
‘Meggie,’ whispered Mo. ‘Let’s go over to the prisoners, shall we? Poor Elinor looks exhausted, and there’s someone else I want to introduce to you.’ Farid was already busy with the door of the cage, but the two women inside were watching them.
‘You don’t need to introduce her,’ said Meggie, squeezing his hand. ‘I know who she is. I’ve known for ages. I wanted so much to tell you, but you weren’t here, and now there’s something else we have to read first. The last few sentences.’ She took the book out from under Mo’s jacket and leafed through it until she found Fenoglio’s sheet of paper still among the pages. ‘He wrote them on the other side, there wasn’t any space left on the first page,’ she said. ‘He just can’t make his handwriting small.’
Fenoglio!
Meggie lowered the sheet of paper and looked round, searching for him, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Had Capricorn’s men taken him with them, or—?
‘Mo, he’s gone!’ she said, dismayed.
‘I’ll go and look for him in a moment,’ Mo reassured her. ‘But now read the rest, quick! Or shall I do it?’
‘No, I will.’
The Shadow was beginning to move again. He took a step towards the dead Capricorn, staggered back and turned as clumsily as a dancing bear. Meggie thought she heard a groan. Farid ducked down behind the cage when the red eyes looked his way. Her mother and Elinor flinched, too, but Meggie read in a firm voice:
‘There stood the Shadow, and his memories hurt so much that they almost tore him apart. He heard them in his head, all those screams and sighs, he thought he could feel tears on his grey skin. Their fear burned his eyes like smoke. Then, quite suddenly, he felt something different, something that made him shudder and forced him to his knees. Then his whole terrible figure disintegrated, and suddenly they were all back again, all the beings from whose ashes the Shadow had been made: men, women and children, dogs and cats, brownies, fairies, and many others as well.’
Meggie saw the arena filling up with them. More and more of them were gathering in a throng where the Shadow had collapsed, all looking around as if they’d just woken from a deep sleep. She read Fenoglio’s last sentence.
‘They woke as if from a bad dream and then, at last, everything was all right again.’
‘He isn’t here any more!’ said Meggie when Mo took Fenoglio’s sheet of paper from her and put it back in the book. ‘Fenoglio’s gone, Mo! He’s in the story now. I know he is.’
Mo looked at the book and tucked it back under his jacket. ‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘But if so, there’s nothing we can do about it for the moment. Perhaps the story now goes on beyond the book.’ He led Meggie away with him down from the rostrum, past all the people and the strange creatures crowding into the arena outside Capricorn’s village as if they had always been there. Darius followed them. He had finally let go of the Magpie, who was now standing with her bony hands gripping the back of the chair where Meggie had been sitting. She was weeping soundlessly, her face crumpled, as if her whole being were made of tears.
A tiny, blue-skinned fairy apologised profusely when it fluttered into Meggie’s hair as she and Mo went towards the cage containing her mother and Elinor. Then a shaggy creature who looked half human, half animal stumbled across her path, and finally she almost trod on a tiny little man who seemed to be made entirely of glass. Capricorn’s village had acquired some strange new inhabitants.
Farid was still trying to get the lock open when they reached the cage. He was picking at it, looking angry, and muttering something to the effect that Dustfinger had shown him just how to do it and this must be a very special sort of lock.
‘Oh, wonderful!’ said Elinor sarcastically, pressing her face to the bars from inside. ‘So the Shadow didn’t eat us after all, but we’ll be left to starve in a cage. Well, well! What do you think of your daughter, Mo? Isn’t she a brave little thing? I couldn’t have uttered a word myself, not a single word. My God, my heart almost stopped when that old woman tried to get the book away from her.’
Mo put his hand on Meggie’s shoulder and smiled, but he was looking at someone else. Nine years are a long, long time.