unwelcome guests were behind the church, in a paved area where rubbish containers stood next to mountains of building rubble. There was a slight smell of petrol in the air, and even the glow-worms whirling aimlessly through the night didn’t seem to know what had brought them to this place. A row of tumbledown houses stood behind the bins and the rubble. The windows were just holes in the grey walls, and a couple of rotten shutters hung from their hinges at such an angle they looked as if a sudden gust of wind would blow them right off. Only the doors on the ground floor had obviously been given a fresh coat of paint fairly recently, in a dull brown shade with numbers painted on them clumsily, as if by a child, one for each door. As far as Meggie could see in the dark the last door had a number 7 on it. Basta propelled her and Elinor towards number 4. For a moment Meggie was relieved that he hadn’t really meant a cage, although the door in the blank wall looked anything but inviting.
‘This is ridiculous!’ said Elinor furiously, as Basta unlocked and unbolted the door. He had brought reinforcements with him from the house in the form of a skinny lad who wore the same black uniform as the grown men in Capricorn’s village, and who obviously liked to menace Elinor by pointing his gun at her whenever she opened her mouth. But that didn’t keep her quiet for long.
‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ she said angrily, without taking her eyes off the muzzle of the gun. ‘I’ve heard that these mountains were always a paradise for robbers, but for heaven’s sake, we’re living in the twenty-first century! These days people don’t go pushing visitors around at gunpoint – certainly not a youngster like him.’
‘As far as I’m aware people in this fine century of yours still do exactly as they always did,’ replied Basta. ‘And that youngster is just the right age to be apprenticed to us. I was even younger when I joined.’ He pushed the door open. The darkness inside was blacker than night itself. Basta shoved first Meggie, then Elinor in, and slammed the door behind them.
Meggie heard the key turn in the lock, then Basta saying something which made the boy laugh, and the sound of their footsteps retreating. She reached her hands out until her fingertips touched a wall. Her eyes were useless; she might as well have been blind, she couldn’t even see where Elinor was. But she heard her muttering, letting off steam somewhere over to her left.
‘Isn’t there at least a bloody light switch somewhere in this hole? Oh, to hell with it, I feel as if I’ve fallen into some farfetched adventure story where the villains wear black eye-patches and throw knives. Damn, damn, damn!’ Meggie had already noticed that Elinor swore a lot, and the more upset she was the worse her language became.
‘Elinor?’ The voice came from somewhere in the darkness, and that one word expressed delight, horror and surprise.
Meggie spun round so suddenly she almost fell over her own feet. ‘Mo?’
‘Oh no! Meggie, not you too! How did you get here?’
‘Mo!’ Meggie stumbled through the darkness towards Mo’s voice. A hand took her arm and fingers felt her face.
‘Ah, at last!’ A naked electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling came on, and Elinor, looking pleased with herself, took her finger off a dusty switch. ‘Electric light is a wonderful invention!’ she said. ‘That at least is an improvement on past centuries, don’t you agree?’
‘What are you two doing here, Elinor?’ demanded Mo, holding Meggie very close. ‘I trusted you to look after her at least as well as your books! How could you let them bring her here?’
‘How could I let them?’ Elinor’s indignant voice almost cracked. ‘I never asked to baby-sit your daughter! I know how to look after books, but children are something else, dammit! And she was worried about you – wanted to go looking for you. So what does stupid Elinor do instead of staying comfortably at home? I mean, I couldn’t let the child go off on her own, I told myself. And what do I get for my noble conduct? Insults, a gun held to my chest, and now I’m here in this hole with you carrying on at me too!’
‘All right, all right!’ Mo held Meggie at arm’s length and looked her up and down.
‘I’m fine, Mo!’ said Meggie, although her voice shook just a little. ‘Honestly.’
Mo nodded and glanced at Elinor. ‘You brought Capricorn the book?’
‘Of course! You’d have given it to him yourself if I hadn’t …’ said Elinor, going red and looking down at her dusty shoes.
‘If you hadn’t swapped them round,’ Meggie ended her sentence for her. She reached for Mo’s hand and held it very tightly. She couldn’t believe he was back with her, apparently perfectly all right except for the scratch on his forehead, almost hidden by his dark hair. ‘Did they hit you?’ She felt the dried blood anxiously with her forefinger.
Mo had to smile, although he couldn’t have been feeling much like it. ‘That’s nothing. I’m fine too. Don’t worry.’
Meggie didn’t think that was really much of an answer, but she asked no more questions.
‘So how did you come here?’ asked Mo. ‘Did Capricorn send his men back again?’
Elinor shook her head. ‘No need for that,’ she said bitterly. ‘Your slimy-tongued friend fixed it. A nice kind of snake you brought to my house, I must say. First he gives you away, then he serves up the book and your daughter to this man Capricorn. “Bring the girl and the book.” We heard Capricorn say so himself. That was our little matchstick-eater’s mission, and he carried it out to his master’s complete satisfaction.’
Meggie put Mo’s arm round her shoulders and buried her face against him.
‘The girl and the book?’ Mo held Meggie close again. ‘Of course. Now Capricorn can be sure I’ll do what he wants.’ He turned round and went over to the pile of straw lying on the floor in a corner of the room. Sighing, he sat down on it, leaned his back against the wall, and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Well, now we’re quits, Dustfinger and I,’ he said. ‘Although I wonder how Capricorn is going to pay him for his treachery. Because what Dustfinger wants is something Capricorn can’t give him.’
‘Quits? What do you mean?’ Meggie sat down beside him. ‘And what are you supposed to do for Capricorn? What does he want you for, Mo?’ The straw was damp, not a good place to sleep, but still better than the bare stone floor.
Mo said nothing for what seemed an eternity. He stared at the bare walls, the locked door, the dirty floor.
‘I think it’s time I told you the whole story,’ he said at last. ‘Although I would rather not have had to tell you in a grim place like this, and not until you’re a little older.’
‘Mo, I’m twelve!’ Why do grown-ups think it’s easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don’t they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?
‘Sit down, Elinor,’ said Mo, making space. ‘It’s quite a long story.’
Elinor sighed, and sat down unceremoniously on the damp straw. ‘This can’t be happening!’ she murmured. ‘This really can’t be happening!’
‘That’s what I thought for nine years, Elinor,’ said Mo. And then he began his story.
16
Once Upon a Time
He held up the book then. ‘I’m reading it to you for relax.’
‘Has it got any sports in it?’
‘Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders … Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.’
‘Sounds okay,’ I said, and I kind of closed my eyes.
William Goldman,
The Princess Bride
You were just three years old, Meggie,’ Mo began. ‘I remember how we celebrated your birthday. We gave you a picture book – you know, the one about the sea-serpent with toothache winding itself round the lighthouse …’
Meggie nodded. It was still in her book-box – Mo had twice given it a new dress. ‘We?’ she asked.
‘Your mother and I …’ Mo picked some s
traw off his trousers. ‘I could never pass by a bookshop. The house where we lived was very small – we called it our shoebox, our mouse-hole, we had all sorts of names for it – and that very day I’d bought yet another crate full of books from a second-hand bookseller. Elinor would have liked some of them,’ he added, glancing at her and smiling. ‘Capricorn’s book was there too.’
‘You mean it belonged to him?’ Meggie looked at Mo in surprise, but he shook his head.
‘No, but … well, let’s take it all in order. Your mother sighed when she saw all those new books and asked where we were going to put them, but then of course she helped me to unpack the crate. I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings—’
‘You? You read aloud?’
‘Yes, every evening. Your mother enjoyed it. That evening she chose Inkheart. She always did like tales of adventure – stories full of brightness and darkness. She could tell you the names of all King Arthur’s knights, and she knew everything about Beowulf and Grendel, the ancient gods and the not-quite-so ancient heroes. She liked pirate stories too, but most of all she loved books which had at least a knight or a dragon or a fairy in them. She was always on the dragon’s side, by the way. There didn’t seem to be any of them in Inkheart, but there was any amount of brightness and darkness, fairies and brownies. Your mother liked brownies as well: hobgoblins, bugaboos, the Fenoderee, the folletti with their butterfly wings, she knew them all. So we gave you a pile of picture books, sat down on the rug beside you, and I began to read.’
Meggie leaned her head against Mo’s shoulder and stared at the blank wall. She saw herself against its dirty white background as she had looked in old photos: small, with plump legs, very fair hair (it had darkened a little since then), her little fingers turning the pages of big picture books.
‘We enjoyed the story,’ her father went on. ‘It was exciting, well written, and full of all sorts of amazing creatures. Your mother loved a book to lead her into an unknown land, and the world into which Inkheart led her was exactly what she liked. Sometimes the story took a very dark turn, and whenever the suspense got too much, your mother put a finger to her lips, and I read more quietly, although we were sure you were too busy with your own books to listen to a sinister story which you wouldn’t have understood anyway. I remember it as if it were yesterday; night had fallen long ago. It was autumn, with draughts coming in through the windows. We had lit a fire – there was no central heating in our shoebox of a house, but it had a stove in every room – and I began reading the seventh chapter. That’s when it happened—’
Mo stopped. He stared ahead of him as if lost in his own thoughts.
‘What?’ whispered Meggie. ‘What happened, Mo?’
Her father looked at her. ‘They came out,’ he said. ‘There they were, all of a sudden, standing in the doorway to the corridor outside the room, as if they’d just come in from out of doors. There was a crackling noise when they turned to us – like someone slowly unfolding a piece of paper. I still had their names on my lips: Basta, Dustfinger, Capricorn. Basta was holding Dustfinger by the collar, as if he were shaking a puppy for doing something forbidden. Capricorn liked to wear red even then, but he was nine years younger and not quite as gaunt as he is today. He wore a sword, something I’d never seen at close quarters before. Basta had one hanging from his belt too, while Dustfinger …’ Here Mo shook his head. ‘Well, of course the poor fellow had nothing but the horned marten whose tricks earned him a living. I don’t think any of the three of them realised what had happened. Indeed, I didn’t understand it myself until much later. My voice had brought them slipping out of their story like a bookmark forgotten by some reader between the pages. How could they understand what had happened? Basta pushed Dustfinger away so roughly that he fell down, then he tried to draw his sword, but his hands were white as paper and they obviously didn’t yet have the strength for it. The sword slipped from his fingers and fell on the rug. Its blade looked as if there were dried blood on it, but perhaps it was only the reflection of the fire. Capricorn stood there, looking round. He seemed dizzy; he was staggering on the spot like a dancing bear that has been made to turn round too often. And that may well have saved us, or so Dustfinger has always claimed. If Basta and his master had been in full command of their powers, they’d probably have killed us outright, but they hadn’t fully arrived in this world yet, and I picked up the terrible sword lying on the rug among my books. It was heavy, much heavier than I’d expected. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous holding the thing. I probably clutched it like a vacuum cleaner or a walking stick, but when Capricorn staggered towards me and I held the blade between us he stopped. I stammered something, tried to explain what had happened, not that I understood it myself, but Capricorn just stared at me with those pale eyes, the colour of water; while Basta stood beside him with a hand on the hilt of his dagger. He seemed to be waiting for his master to tell him to cut all our throats.’
‘And what about Dustfinger?’ Elinor’s voice sounded hoarse too.
‘He was still where he’d fallen on the rug, sitting there as if paralysed, not making a sound. I didn’t stop to think about Dustfinger. If you open a basket and see two snakes and a lizard crawl out, you’re going to deal with the snakes first, right?’
‘What about my mother?’ Meggie could only whisper. She wasn’t used to saying that word.
Mo looked at her. ‘I couldn’t see her anywhere. You were still kneeling among your books, staring wide-eyed at the strange men standing there with their heavy boots and their weapons. I was terrified for you, but to my relief both Basta and Capricorn ignored you. “That’s enough talk,” Capricorn said finally, as I became more and more entangled in my own words. “Never mind how we arrived in this miserable place, just send us back at once, you accursed magician, or Basta here will cut the talkative tongue out of your mouth.” Which didn’t sound exactly reassuring, and I’d read enough about those two in the first chapters of the book to know that Capricorn meant what he said. I was wondering so desperately how to end the nightmare that I felt quite dizzy. I picked up the book. Perhaps if I read the same passage again, I thought … I tried. I stumbled over the words while Capricorn glared at me and Basta drew the knife from his belt. Nothing happened. The two of them just stood there in my house, showing no sign of going back into their story. And suddenly I knew for certain that they meant to kill us. I put down the fatal book and picked up the sword I’d dropped on the rug. Basta tried to get to it before me, but I moved faster. I had to hold the wretched thing with both hands; I still remember how cold the hilt felt. Don’t ask me how I did it, but I managed to drive Basta and Capricorn out into the passage. There were several breakages because I was brandishing the sword so clumsily. You began to cry, and I wanted to turn round and tell you it was all just a bad dream, but I was fully occupied keeping Basta’s knife away from me with Capricorn’s sword. So it’s happened, I kept thinking, you’re in the middle of a story exactly as you’ve always wanted, and it’s horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you’re not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn’t half as much fun as I’d expected. The two of them would certainly have killed me if they hadn’t still been rather weak at the knees. Capricorn cursed me, his eyes almost bursting out of his head with fury. Basta swore and threatened, giving me a nasty cut on my upper arm, but then, suddenly, the front door was thrown open and they both disappeared into the night, still reeling like drunks. My hands were trembling so much I could scarcely manage to bolt the door. I leaned against it and listened for sounds outside, but all I heard was my own racing heart. Then I heard you crying in the living room, and remembered that there had been a third man. I staggered back, still holding the sword, and there stood Dustfinger in the middle of the room. He had no weapon, just the marten sitting on his shoulders. He flinched, face white as a sheet, when I came towards him. I must have been a terrible sight with the blood running down my arm, and I was shaking all over, whether from fear or anger I c
ouldn’t have said. “Please,” he kept whispering, “don’t kill me! I’m nothing to do with those two. I’m only a juggler, just a harmless fire-eater. I can show you.” And I said, “Yes, yes, all right, I know who you are, you’re Dustfinger – I even know your name, you see.” At which he cowered in awe before me – a magician, he thought, who seemed to know all about him and who had plucked him out of his world as easily as picking an apple off a tree. The marten scampered along his arm, jumped down on the carpet and ran towards you. You stopped crying and put out your hand. “Careful, he bites,” said Dustfinger, shooing him away from you. I took no notice. I suddenly realised how quiet the room was, that was all. How quiet and how empty. I saw the book lying open on the carpet where I had dropped it, and I saw the cushion where your mother had been sitting. And she wasn’t there. Where was she? I called her name again and again, I ran from room to room. But she had gone.’
Elinor was sitting bolt upright, staring at him in horror. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mortimer, what are you saying?’ she cried. ‘You told me she went away on some stupid adventure holiday and never came back!’
Mo leaned his head against the wall. ‘I had to think up something, Elinor,’ he said. ‘I mean, I could hardly tell the truth, could I?’
Meggie stroked his arm where his shirt hid the long, pale scar. ‘You always told me you’d cut your arm climbing through a broken window.’
‘Yes, I know. The truth would have sounded too crazy, don’t you think?’
Meggie nodded. He was right; she would just have thought it was another of his stories. ‘So she never came back?’ she whispered, although she knew the answer already.
‘No,’ replied Mo softly. ‘Basta, Capricorn and Dustfinger came out of the book and she went into it, along with our two cats who were curled up on her lap as usual while I read aloud. I expect some creature from here changed places with Gwin too, maybe a spider or a fly or a bird that happened to be flying round the house. Oh, I don’t know …’ Mo fell silent.
Sometimes, when he had made up such a good story that Meggie thought it was true, he would suddenly smile and say, ‘You fell for that one, Meggie!’ Like the time on her seventh birthday when he told her he’d seen fairies among the crocuses in the garden. But the smile didn’t come this time.
‘I searched the whole house for your mother. No sign of her,’ he went on, ‘and when I came back to the living room, Dustfinger had vanished and so had his friend with the horns. But the sword was still there, and it felt so real that I decided not to doubt my sanity. I put you to bed – I think I told you your mother had already gone to sleep – and then I began reading Inkheart out loud again. I read the whole damn book until I was hoarse and the sun was rising, but nothing came out of it except a bat and a silken cloak, which I used later to line your book-box. I tried again and again during the days and nights that followed, until my eyes were burning and the letters danced drunkenly on the page. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I kept making up different stories for you to explain where your mother was, and I took good care you were never in the room with me when I was reading aloud, in case you disappeared too. I wasn’t worried about myself. Oddly enough, I had a feeling that the person reading the book ran no risk of slipping into its pages. I still don’t know whether I was right.’ Mo flicked a midge off his hand. ‘I read until I couldn’t hear my own voice any more,’ he went on, ‘but your mother didn’t come back, Meggie. Instead, a strange little man as transparent as if he were made of glass appeared in my living room on the fifth day, and the postman disappeared just as he was putting the mail into our letterbox. I found his bike out in the yard. After that I knew that neither walls nor locked doors would keep you safe – you or anybody else. So I decided never to read aloud from a book again. Not from Inkheart or from any other book.’
‘What happened to the little glass man?’ asked Meggie.
Mo sighed. ‘He broke into pieces only a few days later when a heavy truck drove past the house. Obviously, very few creatures move easily from one world to another. We both know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn’t seem to be much fun at all. It broke Dustfinger’s heart.’
‘Oh, he has a heart, does he?’ enquired Elinor bitterly.
‘It would be better for him if he didn’t,’ replied Mo. ‘More than a week passed before he was back at my door again. It was night, of course. He prefers night to day. I was just packing. I’d decided it was safer to leave, since I didn’t want to be driving Basta and Capricorn out of my house at sword-point again. Dustfinger’s reappearance showed that I was right to feel anxious. It was well after midnight when he turned up, but I couldn’t sleep anyway.’ Mo stroked Meggie’s hair. ‘You weren’t sleeping