thin layer of ice on the surface?
‘You really don’t understand the first thing about writing, Loredan!’ he growled. That was it, Loredan! That’s what he’d call her in future. It suited her much better than the flowery ‘Elinor’. ‘For one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. The brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.’
‘Well, you certainly are very good at staring into space!’ Oh, what a sharp tongue she had. ‘Next you’ll be telling me that tipping brandy and mead down your throat encourages the flow of ideas too.’
Had Rosenquartz just nodded in agreement? He’d chase him out into the forest, where his wild cousins would teach him to eat snails and beetles.
‘Well then, Loredan, I’m sure you’ve known all along how this story ought to turn out! Let me guess: I suppose a frozen sparrow told you the ending yesterday when you were sitting outside the cave, gazing at my forest and my fairies, totally beguiled by them!’ Damn it, another tear in his trousers. And Battista had hardly any thread left for mending clothes.
‘Inkweaver?’ Despina came round the wall that allowed him, for a few precious moments, to forget where he was. ‘Do you want any breakfast?’
Dear, kind Minerva. She still looked after him as if they were back in her house in Ombra. Fenoglio sighed. The good old days …
‘No thank you, Despina,’ he replied, looking sideways at his other visitor. ‘Tell your mother that unfortunately someone ruined my appetite first thing today.’
Despina and Elinor exchanged a glance that could only be called conspiratorial. Good heavens, were even Minerva’s children on Loredan’s side now?
‘Resa has been gone for two days, not to mention Snapper, but what was the good of leaving you the book if you’re just going to sleep the day away or drink bad wine with Battista?’
Dear God, how delightful this world had been when he hadn’t had that voice ringing in his ears the whole time!
‘You owe it to Mortimer to give him a few words to help him. Who else is going to do it? The Black Prince is too weak, and Mortimer’s poor daughter is just waiting for you to give her something to read aloud at long last. But oh, no, no. It’s too cold, the wine is bad, the children make too much noise, how’s anyone supposed to write? You don’t run out of words when it comes to complaining!’
There! Rosenquartz was nodding again! I’ll mix soup in his sand, thought Fenoglio, so much soup that he writhes with stomach cramps like the Black Prince – and I won’t write a single word to cure him!
‘Fenoglio, are you listening to me?’ She was looking at him as reproachfully as a teacher asking where his homework was!
The book, yes. Resa had left it here for him. So what use was that supposed to be? It just reminded him how easy he had once found storytelling, before he put every word down on paper knowing that it could become reality.
‘It can’t be all that difficult! Mortimer has done almost all the work for you in advance! He’s going to pretend to the Adderhead that he can heal the Book, then Violante will distract her father’s attention, and Mortimer will write the three words in it. Maybe afterwards there’ll be a duel with the Piper – that kind of thing always reads well – I suppose the Fire-Dancer will put on a show too, although personally I still don’t like him – and yes, you could have Resa playing a part as well. She could keep that horrible Snapper occupied, I don’t know just how, but I’m sure you’ll think of something …’
‘Be quiet!’ thundered Fenoglio in such a loud voice that Rosenquartz, terrified, took refuge behind the inkwell. ‘What outrageous nonsense! That’s just typical. Readers and their ideas! Yes, Mortimer’s plan sounds really good. Plain and simple, but good. He overcomes the Adderhead with Violante’s help, writes the three words, Adderhead dead, Bluejay saved, Violante ruler of Ombra – oh yes, it sounds wonderful. I tried writing it like that last night. It doesn’t work! Dead words! This story doesn’t like taking an easy path. It has other ideas, I can smell that in the air. But what are they? I brought the Piper into it, I gave Dustfinger his fair share of the action, but then – something or other was missing. Someone or other was missing! Someone who’s going to thwart Mortimer’s fine plan with a vengeance. Snapper? No, he’s too stupid. But who? Sootbird?’
She was looking at him so anxiously. Well, well. At last she understood. But the next moment she was as defiant as ever. It was a wonder she didn’t stamp her foot like a child. She was a child, disguised as a rather stout middle-aged woman.
‘But that’s all nonsense! You’re the author. You, and no one else.’
‘Oh yes? So why is Cosimo dead, then? Did I write about Mortimer binding the book in a way that would leave the Adderhead rotting alive? No. Was it my idea to make Snapper jealous of him, and Her Ugliness suddenly want to kill her father? Definitely not. I just planted this story, but it’s growing the way it wants to, and everyone expects me to know in advance what kind of flowers it will have!’
Good God, that incredulous look. As if he’d been talking about Santa Claus. But finally she thrust her chin out (it was quite an imposing chin), and that never boded well.
‘Excuses! Nothing but excuses! You can’t think of anything, and Resa’s on the way to that castle. Suppose the Adderhead gets there long before she does? Suppose he doesn’t trust his daughter, and Mortimer is dead before—’
‘And suppose Mortola is back, as Resa says?’ Fenoglio brusquely interrupted her. ‘Suppose Snapper kills Mortimer because he’s jealous of the Bluejay? Suppose Violante hands Mortimer over to her father after all, because she can’t bear to be rejected by yet another man? What about the Piper, what about Violante’s spoilt son, what about all that?’ His voice grew so loud that Rosenquartz hid under his blanket.
‘Stop shouting!’ Suddenly Signora Loredan sounded unusually subdued. ‘Poor Rosenquartz’s head will be splitting.’
‘No, it won’t, because his head is as empty as a sucked-out snail’s shell. Mine, on the other hand, has to think about difficult problems, matters of life and death – but it’s my glass man that gets your sympathy, and you drag me out of bed after I’ve been lying awake half the night straining my ears trying to get this story to tell me where it wants to go!’
She fell silent. She actually fell silent. She bit her surprisingly feminine lower lip and plucked a few burrs off the dress that Minerva had given her, lost in thought. That dress was always picking up dead leaves, burrs and rabbit droppings – and no wonder, the way she kept wandering around the forest. Elinor Loredan certainly loved his world, though of course she would never admit it – and she understood it almost as well as he did.
‘How … how would it be if you could at least gain us a little time?’ She still sounded far less sure of herself than usual. ‘Time to think, time to write! Time that might really give Resa a chance to warn Mortimer of Snapper and that magpie. Perhaps a wheel could come off the Adderhead’s coach. He travels by coach, doesn’t he?’
Well, yes. Not such a stupid idea. Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?
‘I can try,’ he growled.
‘Oh, wonderful.’ She smiled with relief – and was immediately more self-confident again. ‘I’ll ask Minerva to make you some nicer tea,’ she added, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Tea is better for thinking than wine, I’m sure. And don’t be cross with Rosenquartz.’
The glass man smiled at her in a nauseating way, and Fenoglio gave him a slight nudge with his foot that sent him over on his back.
‘Stir the ink, you slimy-tongued traitor!’ he said, as Rosenquartz scrambled to his feet, looking offended.
Minerva really did bring him some tea. It even had a little lemon in it, and outside the cave the children were laughing as if everything in the world was all right. Well, make it all right, Fenoglio, he told himself. Loredan has a point. You’re still the author of this story. The Adderhead is on his way to the Castle in the
Lake, where Mortimer is waiting. The Bluejay is preparing for his finest song. Write it for him! Write Mortimer’s part to its end. He’s playing it with as much conviction as if he’d been born with the name you gave him. The words are obeying you again. You have the book. Orpheus is forgotten. This is still your story, so give it a good ending!
Yes. He’d do it. And Signora Loredan would finally be left speechless and show him the respect she owed him. But first he had to delay the Adderhead (and forget that had been Elinor’s idea in the first place).
Outside the children were shouting noisily. Rosenquartz was whispering to Jasper, who was sitting among the freshly-sharpened pens and watching him, wide-eyed. Minerva brought some soup, and Elinor peeped over the wall as if he couldn’t see her there. But soon Fenoglio was beyond noticing any of that. The words were carrying him away as they had in the past, letting him ride on their inky backs, leaving him blind and deaf to his surroundings, until he heard only the crunch of coach wheels on frozen ground and the sound of black-painted wood splitting. Soon both glass men were dipping pens in the ink for him, the words came so fast. Splendid words. Words worthy of Fenoglio. He’d quite forgotten how the letters on the page could intoxicate you. No wine could compete with them …
‘Inkweaver!’
Fenoglio raised his head, irritated. He was already deep in the mountains, on his way to the Castle in the Lake, aware of the Adderhead’s bloated flesh as if it were his own.
Battista stood there, concern in his face, and the mountains vanished. Fenoglio was back in the cave, surrounded by robbers and hungry children. What was the matter? The Black Prince hadn’t taken a turn for the worse again, had he?
‘Doria is back from one of his scouting expeditions. The boy’s dead on his feet; he must have been running half the night. He says the Milksop is on his way here, and he knows about the cave. No one has any idea who told him.’ Battista rubbed his pockmarked cheeks. ‘They have hounds with them. Doria says they’ll be here this evening. That means we must leave.’
‘Leave? And go where?’
Where could they take all the children, many of them half crazed with homesickness by now? Fenoglio saw from Battista’s face that the robber had no answer to that question either.
Well, so now what would clever Signora Loredan say? How was anyone supposed to write in these circumstances? ‘Tell the Prince I’ll be with him right away.’
Battista nodded. As he turned, Despina pushed past him. Her little face was anxious. Children know at once when something’s wrong. They are used to having to guess what grown-ups don’t tell them.
‘Come here!’ Fenoglio beckoned her over, while Rosenquartz fanned the words he had just written with a maple leaf. Fenoglio sat Despina on his lap and stroked her fair hair. Children … he forgave his villains so much, but since the Piper had started hunting children down, there was only one ending he wanted to write to the man’s story, and it was a bloody one. If only he’d already written it! But it would have to wait now, like the song of the Bluejay. Where could they take the children? Think, Fenoglio, think!
He desperately rubbed his lined brow. Heavens, no wonder thinking dug such deep furrows in your face.
‘Rosenquartz!’ he told the glass man sharply. ‘Find Meggie. Tell her she must read what I’ve written, even though it isn’t quite finished. It’ll have to do.’
The glass man scurried off so fast that he knocked over the wine Battista had brought, and the covers of Fenoglio’s bed were stained as if soaked in blood. The book! He snatched it out from under the damp fabric in concern. Inkheart. He still liked that title. What would happen if these pages were moistened? Would his whole world begin to rot? But the paper was dry, only one corner of the binding was slightly damp. Fenoglio rubbed it with his sleeve.
‘What’s that?’ Despina took the book from him. Of course – where would she ever have seen a book before? She hadn’t grown up in a castle or a rich merchant’s house.
‘This is a thing that has stories in it,’ said Fenoglio.
He heard Elfbane calling the children together, the alarmed voices of the women, the first sounds of weeping. Despina listened anxiously too, but then she stared at the book again.
‘Stories?’ She leafed through the pages as if expecting the words to fall out. ‘What stories? Have you told them to us already?’
‘Not this one.’ Fenoglio gently took the book from her hand and stared at the page where she had opened it. His own words looked back at him, written so long ago that they sounded like someone else’s work …
‘What kind of a story is it? Will you tell it to me?’
He stared at his old words, written by a different Fenoglio, a Fenoglio whose heart had been so much younger, so much lighter – and not so vain, no doubt Signora Loredan would add.
Great marvels lay north of Ombra. Hardly any of its inhabitants had ever set eyes on those wonders, but the songs of the strolling players told tales about them and when the peasants wanted to escape their toil in the fields for a few precious moments they would imagine themselves standing on the banks of the lake which, so it was said, the giants used as their mirror. They would picture the nymphs thought to live in it rising from the water and taking them away to castles made of pearls and mother-of-pearl. As the sweat ran down their faces they would sing softly, songs that told of snow-white mountains and of the nests human beings had built in a mighty tree when the giants had begun stealing their children.
Nests … a mighty tree … stealing their children. Good heavens, that was it!
Fenoglio picked Jasper up and put him on Despina’s shoulder. ‘Jasper will take you back to your mother,’ he said, and strode away past her. ‘I must go to the Prince.’
Signora Loredan is right, he thought as he made his way swiftly through the crowd of excited children, weeping mothers and robbers standing around helplessly. You’re a foolish old man. Your befuddled brain doesn’t even remember your own stories any more! Orpheus may well know more about your own world than you do by now.
But his vain self, lurking somewhere between his forehead and his breastbone, answered back at once. How are you supposed to remember them all, Fenoglio? There are just too many of them. Your imagination is inexhaustible.
Yes. Yes, he was indeed a vain old man. He admitted it. But he had very good reasons for his vanity.
51
The Wrong Helpers
We never know we go – when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us blots it,
And we accost no more.
Emily Dickinson,
Collected Poems
Mortola was perching in a poison yew, surrounded by needles nearly as black as her plumage. Her left wing hurt. Orpheus’s servant had almost broken it with his meaty fingers, and only her beak had saved her. She’d pecked his ugly nose until it bled, but she hardly knew how she had managed to flutter out of the tent. She had been able to fly only short distances since then, but even worse, she couldn’t change back from her bird shape, although it was a long time since she had swallowed any of the seeds. How long since she had taken human form? Two days, three days? The magpie didn’t count days, the magpie thought of nothing but beetles and worms (ah, plump, pale worms!), winter and wind and the fleas in her feathers.
The last person she had seen when she was in human shape was Snapper. And yes, he would follow the good advice she had given him in a whisper, and attack the Adderhead in the forest, but all the thanks he’d given her was to call her a damn witch, and try to seize her so that his men could kill her. She had bitten his hand, hissed at the others until they retreated, and there in the bushes she had swallowed the seeds again so that she could fly to Orpheus – only to have his servant almost break her wings! Peck his eyes out! Peck all their eyes out! Dig your claws into their stupid faces!
Mortola uttered a pitiful cry, and the robbers looked up at her as if she were announcing their death. They didn’t realize that the
magpie was the old woman they’d wanted to kill. They didn’t realize anything. What were they going to do with the Book without her help, if they ever really did get their grubby hands on it? They were as stupid as the pale worms she pecked out of the earth. Did they think they just had to shake the Book, or tap its rotting pages, for the gold she’d promised them to come raining down? No, most likely they thought nothing at all as they sat down there among the trees, waiting for darkness to fall. Only a few hours before they planned to ambush the Adderhead’s black coach, what were they doing? Drinking home-distilled spirits stolen from some charcoal-burner, dreaming of the wealth to come, bragging that they’d kill first the Adder and then the Bluejay. What about the three words? That’s what the magpie wanted to call down to them. Which of you fools can write them in the White Book? However, Snapper at least had obviously thought of that point.
‘And once we have the Book,’ he was babbling, ‘we’ll catch the Bluejay and force him to write the three words in it, and then as soon as the Adder is dead and we’re wallowing in gold we’ll kill him too, because I’m sick and tired of hearing all those stupid songs about him.’
‘Yes, let folk sing about us in future!’ mumbled Gecko, putting a piece of bread soaked in brandy into the beak of the crow on his shoulder. The crow, alone among them, kept staring up at Mortola. ‘We’ll be more famous than anyone! More famous than the Bluejay, more famous than the Black Prince, more famous than Firefox and his fire-raisers. More famous than … what was his old master’s name?’
‘Capricorn.’
The name pierced Mortola’s heart like a red-hot needle, and she cowered on the branch where she was perching, shaken by yearning for her son. Ah, to see his face once more, bring him food once more, cut his pale hair …
She uttered another shrill cry, and her pain and hatred echoed through the dark valley where the robbers were planning to attack the lord of the Castle of Night.
Her son. Her son. Her wonderful, cruel son. Mortola plucked feathers from her own breast as if that could drive the pain out of her heart.
Dead. Lost. And his murderer was playing the noble robber, his praises sung by the stupid rabble who used to tremble before her son! The murderer’s shirt had been dyed red, the life had almost flowed out of him, but that little witch of a daughter had saved him. Was she whispering somewhere even now? I’ll peck both their faces to pieces, I’ll do such a good job of it that the treacherous maid won’t recognize them … Resa … she saw you back at the cave, Mortola, she saw you, but what’s she going to do about it? The bookbinder went alone, and she’s playing the game that all women play in this world, the waiting game … ah, caterpillar!
She pecked furiously at the hairy body. Caterpillar, caterpillar, cried the voice inside her. Damn this bird-brain. What had she been thinking of just now? Killing. Yes. Revenge. The bird knew that feeling too. She felt her feathers ruffling up, her beak striking at the wood of the branch where she sat, as if it were the Bluejay’s body.
A cold wind blew through the tree, shaking its evergreen branches. Rain fell on Mortola’s plumage. Time to fly down under the dark yews that would hide her from the robbers, and try, yet again, to shake off the bird-shape, be human flesh once more.
But the bird thought: no! Time to tuck her beak into her feathers,