On the first night, she’d gotten up from the air mattress, which made all her bones ache, and thrown cans of food against the wall. Darius just crouched there on the blanket he had spread out over the cushion for the garden bench, looking at her wide-eyed. By the afternoon of the second day – or was it the third? Elinor was breaking jars, sobbing when she cut her fingers on the glass. Darius was just sweeping up the broken pieces when the wardrobe-man came to fetch her. Darius tried to follow, but the wardrobe-man pushed his thin chest so roughly that he stumbled and fell among the olives, preserved tomatoes, and all the other things that had spilled out of the jars when Elinor smashed them.
“Bastard!” she snapped at the colossus, but he just grinned, pleased as a child who has knocked down a tower of building bricks, and hummed to himself as he led Elinor to her library. Who says bad people can’t be happy, too? she thought as he opened the door and jerked his head, indicating that she should go in.
Her library was a shocking sight. There were dirty mugs and plates strewn around everywhere –
on the windowsill, on the carpet, even on the glass cases containing her greatest treasures and that wasn’t the worst of it. Her books were the worst. Hardly any of them were still in their right places. They were stacked on the floor among the unwashed coffee mugs, they were scattered in front of the windows. Many even lay flat on the floor, open, their spines upward.
Elinor couldn’t bear to look! Didn’t the monster know that was the way to break a book’s neck?
If he did, it didn’t bother him. Orpheus was sitting in her favorite armchair, his dreadful dog beside him holding something between its paws that looked suspiciously like one of her gardening shoes. Its master had draped his plump legs over one arm of the chair and was holding a beautifully illustrated book about fairies that Elinor had bought in an auction only two months ago, paying such a high price that it had made Darius bury his head in his hands.
“That,” she said, her voice trembling slightly, “that is a very, very valuable book.”
Orpheus turned his head to her and smiled. It was the smile of a naughty boy. “I know!” he said in his velvety voice. “You have very, very many valuable books, Signora Loredan.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Elinor icily. “That’s why I don’t stack them any old way, like egg cartons or slices of cheese. Each has its own place.”
This observation only made Orpheus smile even more broadly. He closed the book, after dog-earing one of the pages. Elinor drew in her breath sharply.
“Books aren’t glass vases, dear lady,” said Orpheus as he sat up in the chair. “They’re not as fragile or as decorative. They’re just books! It’s their contents that matter, and their contents won’t fall out if you stack them in a pile.” He ran his hand over his smooth hair, as if afraid his parting might have slipped. “Sugar says you wanted to speak to me?”
Elinor cast an incredulous glance at the wardrobe-man. “Sugar?”
The giant smiled, revealing such an extraordinary collection of bad teeth that Elinor didn’t have to wonder how he got his nickname.
“I certainly do. I’ve been wanting to speak to you for days. I insist on being let out of the cellar –
and my librarian, too! I’m sick of having to pee in a bucket in my own house, and not knowing whether it’s day or night. I order you to bring my niece and her husband back. They’re in the greatest danger, and it’s all your fault, and I order you to keep your fat fingers off my books, damn it!”
Elinor shut her mouth – and cursed herself with every curse she could call to mind. Oh no! What was Darius always telling her? What had she told herself hundreds of times, lying down there on that horrible air mattress? Control yourself, Elinor, be cunning, Elinor, watch your tongue – all useless. She had burst like a balloon blown up too far.
But Orpheus still sat there, with his legs crossed and that impudent smile on his face. “I could probably bring them back. Yes, probably!” he said, patting his dog’s ugly head. “But why should I?” His fat fingers stroked the cover of the book he had just so cruelly dog-eared. “A handsome cover, isn’t it? Rather sentimental, perhaps, and I don’t think of fairies quite like that, but all the same .. ”
“Yes, yes, I know it’s handsome, but I’m not interested in the cover just now!” Elinor was trying not to raise her voice, but she simply couldn’t keep it down. “If you can really bring them back, then for heaven’s sake get a move on and do it! Before it’s too late. The old woman is going to kill him, didn’t you hear her? She’s going to kill Mortimer!”
His expression indifferent, Orpheus straightened his crumpled tie. “Well, he killed Mortola’s son, as far as I can make out. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as another – not entirely unknown
– book so forcibly puts it.”
“Her son was a murderer!” Elinor clenched her fists. She wanted to rush at the moon-face and snatch her book from his hands, hands that looked as soft and white as if they had never in their life done anything but turn the pages of a book. However, Sugar barred her way.
“Yes, yes, I know.” Orpheus heaved a heavy sigh. “I know all about Capricorn. I’ve read the book telling his story more times than I can count, and I have to say he was a very good villain, one of the best I ever met in the realm of the written word. Just killing someone like that – well, if you ask me, it’s almost a crime. Although I’m glad of it for Dustfinger.”
Oh, if only she could have hit him just once, on his broad nose, on his smiling mouth!
“Capricorn had Mortimer abducted! He captured his daughter and kept his wife a prisoner for years on end!” Tears of rage and helplessness came into Elinor’s eyes. “Please, Mr. Orpheus or whatever your real name is!” She put all her strength and self-control into sounding reasonably friendly. “Please! Bring them back, and while you’re at it please bring Meggie back, too, before she gets trodden on by a giant or impaled on a spear in that story.” Orpheus leaned back and looked at her as if she were a picture on an easel. How naturally he had taken over her armchair
– as if Elinor herself had never sat there with Meggie beside her, or with Resa on her lap when she was still tiny, so many years ago. Elinor bit back her fury. Control yourself, Elinor, she thought, as she kept her eyes fixed on Orpheus’s pale, bespectacled face. Control yourself ! For the sake of Mortimer, and Resa, and Meggie!
Orpheus cleared his throat. “I don’t know what’s bothering you,” he said, examining his fingernails, which were bitten like a schoolboy’s. “I envy all three of them!”
It was a moment before Elinor realized what he was talking about. Only when he went on did it become clear.
“What makes you think they want to come back?” he asked softly. “If I were there I never would!
There’s nowhere in this world I’ve ever wanted to be half as much as on the hill where the Laughing Prince’s castle lies. I’ve walked through Ombra market countless times, I’ve looked up at the towers and the banners with the lion emblem. I’ve imagined what it would be like to wander through the Wayless Wood and watch Dustfinger stealing honey from the fire-elves. I’ve pictured the minstrel woman he loves, Roxane. I’ve stood in Capricorn’s fortress smelling the potions that Mortola brewed from monkshood and hemlock. The Adderhead’s castle often figures in my dreams, even today. Sometimes I’m in one of its dungeons, sometimes I’m stealing in through the gate with Dustfinger and looking up at the heads of minstrels set there on pikes by the Adderhead for singing the wrong song .. By all the words and letters in the world, when Mortola told me her name I thought she was crazy! Yes, she and Basta did look like the characters they claimed to be, but could it really be true that someone had brought them here out of my favorite book? Were there other people who could read aloud the way I can? I didn’t believe it until Dustfinger came up to me in that musty, ramshackle library. Oh God, how my heart beat when I saw his face with the three pale scars left by Basta’s knife! It beat faster than on the day I first kissed a girl. It really was him, the melancholy hero of my very favorite book.