“He’ll have to stay here,” said Meggie. “Orpheus didn’t write anything about him, and Resa will look after him. She likes him.” Farid nodded and glanced unhappily at the window, but he didn’t contradict her.
The Wayless Wood – that was where Orpheus’s words would take them. Farid knew where Dustfinger had meant to go after arriving in the forest: to Ombra, where the Laughing Prince’s castle stood. And that was where Meggie hoped to find Fenoglio, too. He had often told her about Ombra when they were both Capricorn’s prisoners. One night, when neither of them could sleep because Capricorn’s men were shooting at stray cats outside again, Fenoglio had whispered to Meggie, “If I could choose to see one place in the Inkworld, then it would be Ombra. After all, the Laughing Prince is a great lover of books, which can hardly be said of his adversary the Adder head. Yes, life must surely be good for a writer in Ombra. A room in an attic somewhere, perhaps in the alley where the cobblers and saddlers work – their trades don’t smell too bad – and a glass man to sharpen my quills, a few fairies over my bed, and I could look down into the alley through my window and see all life pass by. . ”
“What are you taking with you?” Farid’s voice startled Meggie out of her thoughts. “You know we’re not supposed to bring too much.”
“Of course I know.” Did he think that just because she was a girl she needed a dozen dresses? All she was going to carry was the old leather bag that had always gone with her and Mo on their travels when she was little. It would remind her of Mo, and she hoped that in the Inkworld it would be as inconspicuous as her dress. But the things she’d stuffed into it would certainly attract attention if anyone saw them: a hairbrush made of plastic, modern like the buttons on the cardigan she had packed; also a couple of pencils, a penknife, a photograph of her parents, and one of Elinor. She had thought hard about what book to take. Going without one would have seemed to her like setting off naked, but it mustn’t be a heavy book, so it had to be a paperback.
“Books in beach clothes,” Mo called them, “badly dressed for most occasions but useful when you’re on vacation.” Elinor didn’t have a single paperback on her shelves, but Meggie herself owned a few. In the end she had decided on one that Resa had given her, a collection of stories set near the lake that lay close to Elinor’s house. That way she would be taking a little bit of home with her – for Elinor’s house was her home now, more than anywhere else had ever been.
And who knew, maybe Fenoglio would be able to use the words in it to write her back again, back into her own story. .
Farid had gone to the window. It was open, and a cool wind was blowing into the room, moving the curtains that Resa had made. Meggie shivered in her new dress. The nights were still very mild, but what would the season be in the Inkworld?
Perhaps it was winter there. .
“I ought to say good-bye to him, at least,” murmured Farid. “Gwin!” he called softly into the night air, clicking his tongue. Meggie quickly pulled him away from the window. “Don’t do that!” she snapped. “Do you want to wake up everyone? I’ve already told you, Gwin will be fine here. He’s probably found a female marten by now. There are a few around the place. Elinor’s always afraid they’ll eat the nightingale that sings outside her window in the evening.”
Farid looked very unhappy, but he stepped back from the window. “Why are you leaving it open?” he asked. “Suppose Basta .. ” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“Elinor’s alarm system works even if there’s an open window,” was all Meggie said, while she put the notebook Mo had given her in her bag. There was a reason why she didn’t want to close the window. One night in a hotel by the sea, not far from Capricorn’s village, she had persuaded Mo to read her a poem. A poem about a moon-bird asleep in a peppermint wind. Next morning the bird was fluttering against the window of their hotel bedroom, and Meggie couldn’t forget how its little head kept colliding with the glass again and again. Her window must stay open.
“We’d better sit close to each other on the sofa,” she said. “And sling your backpack over your back.”
Farid obeyed. He sat down on the sofa as hesitantly as he had on her chair. It was an old, velvet, button-backed sofa with tassels, its pale green upholstery very worn. “You need somewhere comfortable to sit and read,” Elinor had said when she asked Darius to put it in Meggie’s room.
What would Elinor say when she found that Meggie had gone? Would she understand?
She’ll probably swear a lot, thought Meggie, kneeling beside her schoolbag. And then she’ll say,
“Damn it, why didn’t the silly girl take me, too?” That would be Elinor all over. Meggie suddenly wanted to see her again, but she tried not to think of any of them anymore – not Elinor or Resa or Mo. Particularly not Mo, for she might have only too clear an idea of what he’d look like when he found her letter . . No, stop it, she told herself.
She quickly reached into her schoolbag and took out her geography book. The sheet of paper that Farid had brought with him was in there, beside her own copy of it, but Meggie took out only the copy in her own handwriting. Farid moved aside as she sat down next to him, and for a moment Meggie thought she saw something like fear in his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Have you changed your mind?”
But he shook his head. “No. It’s just . . it hasn’t ever happened to you, has it?”
“What?” For the first time Meggie noticed that he had a beard coming. It looked odd on his young face.
“Well, what – what happened to Darius.”
Ah, that was it. He was afraid of arriving in Dustfinger’s world with a twisted face, or a stiff leg, or mute like Resa.
“No, of course not!” Meggie couldn’t help the note of injury that crept into her voice. Although –
could she really be sure that Fenoglio had arrived unharmed on the other side? Fenoglio, the Steadfast Tin Soldier . . she had never seen people again after sending them away into the letters on the page. She’d seen only those who came out of the pages. Never mind. Don’t think so much, Meggie. Read, or you may lose courage before you even feel the first word on your tongue…
Farid cleared his throat, as if he, and not Meggie, must start reading.
So what was she waiting for? Did she expect Mo to knock on her door and wonder why she had locked it? All had been quiet next door for some time. Her parents were asleep. Don’t think of them, Meggie! Don’t think of Mo or Resa or Elinor, just think of the words – and the place where you want them to take you. A place of marvels and adventures.
Meggie looked at the letters on the page, black and carefully shaped. She tried the taste of the first few syllables on her tongue, tried to picture the world of which the words whispered, the trees, the birds, the strange sky. . Then she began to read. Her heart was thudding almost as violently as it had on the night she had been meant to use her voice to kill. Yet this time she had to do so much less. She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words, just large enough for her and Farid to pass through. .
A fresh fragrance rose to her nostrils, the scent of thousands and thousands of leaves. Then everything disappeared: her desk, the lamp beside her, the open window. The last thing that Meggie saw was Gwin, sitting on the windowsill, snuffling and looking at them.