Inkdeath

He looked up at the trees, away from all the whiteness below. The sun was breaking through the morning mist, and the last few leaves shone pale gold on branches that were now almost bare. "What about Farid? Isn’t he a reason to stay?"



Meggie lowered her head again. She was taking great care to sound casual. "Farid doesn’t mind whether I’m here or not. He thinks only of Dustfinger. It’s been even worse since he died."



Poor Meggie. She’d fallen in love with the wrong boy. But when did love ever bother about that?



She tried very hard to hide her sadness when she looked at him again. "What do you think, Mo? Is Elinor missing us?"



"You and your mother certainly. I’m not so sure about me." He ilvlitated Elinor’s voice. "Mortimer! You’ve put that Dickens back in the wrong place. And why do I have to tell a bookbinder not to eat jam sandwiches in a library?"



Meggie laughed. Well, that was something. It was getting harder every day to make her laugh. But next moment her face was grave again. "I do miss Elinor very much. I miss her house, and the library, and the café by the lake where she always took me for an ice cream. I miss your workshop, and you driving me to school in the morning and imitating Elinor and Darius quarreling, and my friends always wanting to come and visit us because you make them laugh. I’d love to tell them everything that’s happened to us, not that they’d believe a word of it. Although—perhaps I could take a glass man back with me as proof."



For a moment she seemed to be far, far away, taken back to her old world, not by the words of Fenoglio or Orpheus, but by her own. But they were still sitting beside a pond in the hills around Ombra, and a fairy fluttered into Meggie’s hair and pulled so hard that she shrieked, and Mo was quick to shoo the little creature away. It was one of the rainbow-colored fairies, Orpheus’s creations, and Mo thought he detected something of her maker’s malice in the tiny face. Giggling happily, she carried her pale blond plunder up to her nest, which shimmered in as many colors as the fairy herself Unlike the blue fairies, those made by Orpheus didn’t seem to grow drowsy as winter came on. The Strong Man even claimed that they stole from the blue fairies, too, as they slept in their nests. A tear hung on Meggie’s lashes. Perhaps the fairy had caused it, or perhaps not. Mo gently wiped it away.



"I see. So you do want to go back."



"No! I tell you, I don’t know!" She was looking at him so unhappily. "What will become of Fenoglio if we simply disappear? And what would the Black Prince think, and the Strong Man, and Battista? What will become of them? And Minerva and her children, and Roxane. . . and Farid?"



"Yes, what?" said Mo. "How would the story go on without the Bluejay? The Piper will take the children, because even the desperate mothers won’t be able to find the Bluejay for him. Of course the Black Prince will try to save them, he’ll be the true hero of this story, and he’ll play the part well. But he’s already played the hero too long, he’s tired — and he doesn’t have enough men. So the men-at-arms will kill him and all his followers one by one: the Prince, Battista, the Strong Man and Doria, Gecko and Snapper—well, perhaps those two will be no great loss. Then the Piper will probably chase the Milksop out and rule Ombra himself for a while. Orpheus will read unicorns here for him, or a few war machines . . . yes, I’m sure the Piper would rather like those. Fenoglio will drown his sorrows in wine and drink himself to death. And the Adderhead will be immortal. Someday he’ll reign over a nation of the dead. I think the end of the story would go something like that, don’t you?"



Meggie looked at him. In the light of the new morning her hair looked like spun gold.



Resa’s hair had been just the same color when he had first seen her, in Elinor’s house.



"Yes. Perhaps," said Meggie quietly. "But would the story really end so very differently if the Bluejay stayed? How could he give it a happy ending all by himself?"



"Bluejay?" A couple of toads jumped into the water in alarm as the Strong Man plowed his way through the undergrowth.



Mo straightened up. "Maybe you’d better not call that name quite so loud in the forest," he said, lowering his own voice.



The Strong Man looked as horrified as if men-at-arms were already standing among the trees. "Sorry," he muttered. "My head doesn’t work well so early in the morning, and all that wine last night. . . It’s the boy. You know, the one who works for Orpheus, the one that Meggie —" He stopped short at the sight of Meggie’s expression. "Oh, whatever I say sounds stupid!" he groaned, pressing his hand to his round face. "Plain stupid! But that’s how the words come out of my mouth. I can’t help it!"



"Farid. His name is Farid. Where is he?" Meggie’s face lit up, although she was making a great effort to look indifferent.



"Farid, of course. Funny sort of name. Like something out of a song, eh? He’s in the camp. But he wants to speak to your father."



Meggie’s smile was extinguished as quickly as it had come to her lips. Mo put his arm around her shoulders, but a father’s hug was no use to a lovesick girl. Damn the boy.



"He’s all worked up. He must have ridden here so fast his donkey can hardly stand.



He woke the whole camp, asking: ‘Where’s the Bluejay? I have to speak to him!’ No one could get anything else out of him!"



"The Bluejay!" Mo had never heard Meggie sound so bitter before. "I’ve told him a thousand times already not to call you that. How can he be so stupid?"



The wrong boy. But what did the heart care about that?



CHAPTER 21



SHARP WORDS



"Darius!" Elinor couldn’t bear the sound of her own voice LI anymore. It was horrible — grouchy, irritable, impatient. She hadn’t sounded like that in the old days, had she?



Darius almost dropped the books he was bringing in, and the dog raised his head from the rug she had bought to keep him from ruining her wonderful wooden floor with his slimy slobber. Quite apart from the fact that you were always slipping on it.



‘‘Where’s the Dickens we bought last week? For goodness sake, how long does it take you to put a book back in its proper place? Am I paying you to sit in my armchair reading? That’s what you do when I’m not here, admit it!"



Oh, Elinor. How she hated the words coming out of her mouth, and yet there was no keeping them back: bitter and venomous, Spat out by her unhappy heart.



Darius bowed his head, as he always did when he was trying not to show her how hurt he was. "It’s where it belongs, Elinor," he said in his gentle voice, which only infuriated her more than ever. She’d been able to have magnificent quarrels with Mortimer, and Meggie had been a real little fighter. But Darius! Even Resa, mute as she was, used to stand up to Elinor better.



Owl-faced coward. Why didn’t he call her names? Why didn’t he throw the books at her feet instead of clutching them so lovingly to his scrawny chest, as if he had to protect them from her?



"Where it belongs?" she repeated. "Do you think I can’t even read these days?"



How anxiously the stupid dog was looking at her. Then he let his massive head sink to the rug again with a grunt.