Mortola tried to hit her in the face, as she had so often done before, as she had done to all her maids – right in the middle of the face – but Resa caught her hand before it landed.

“He’s alive, Mortola!” she whispered to the Magpie. “This story isn’t over yet, and his death isn’t written anywhere in it but my daughter will whisper yours in your ear when she hears what you did to her father. You’ll see one day. And then I shall watch you die.”

This time she didn’t manage to catch Mortola’s hand, and her cheek was still burning long after the Magpie had gone away. She felt the eyes of the other prisoners like fingers feeling her face when she was sitting on the cold ground again. Mina was the first to say something. “Where did you meet the old woman? She mixed poisons for Capricorn.”

“I know,” said Resa tonelessly. “I belonged to her. For many long years.”

Chapter 55 – A Letter from Fenoglio

Is there then a world

Where I rule absolutely on fate?

A time I bind with chains of signs?

An existence become endless at my bidding?

– Wislawa Szymborska, “The Joy of Writing”, View with a Grain of Sand

Dustfinger was asleep when Roxane arrived. It was already growing dark outside. Farid and Meggie had gone out to the beach, but he was lying down because his leg was hurting. When he saw Roxane standing in the doorway he thought at first his imagination was playing tricks on him, as it so often did by night. After all, he had once been here with her, very long ago. The room they had then had looked almost the same, and he had been lying on a straw mattress just like this, his face slashed and sticky with his own blood.

Roxane was wearing her hair loose. Perhaps that was why she woke the memory of that other night. His heart always seemed to miss a beat at the mere thought of it. He had been mad with pain and fear, had crawled away like a wounded animal, until Roxane found him and brought him here. At first the Barn Owl had hardly recognized him. He had given him something to drink that made him sleep, and when he woke again Roxane had been standing in the doorway, just as she was standing now. When the cuts would not heal, for all the physician’s skill, she had gone into the forest with him, deeper and deeper into the forest to find the fairies – and she had stayed with him until his face was healed well enough for him to venture among other people again. There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

But what was his greeting when she suddenly appeared? “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Then he could have bitten off his tongue. Why didn’t he say how much he had missed her, so much that he had almost turned back a dozen times?

“Yes, indeed, what am I doing here?” Roxane asked back. Once she would have turned her back on him for such a question, but now she just smiled, so mockingly that he felt as awkward as a boy.

“Where have you left Jehan?”

“With a friend.” She kissed him. “What’s the matter with your leg? Fenoglio told me you were wounded.”

“It’s getting better. What do you have to do with Fenoglio?”

“You don’t like him. Why not?” Roxane stroked his face. How beautiful she looked. So very beautiful.

“Let’s just say he had plans for me that I didn’t care for in the least. Has the old man by any chance given you something for Meggie? A letter, for instance?”

Without a word, she brought it out from under her cloak. There the words were – words that wanted to come true. Roxane offered him the sealed parchment, but Dustfinger shook his head.

“You’d better give that to Meggie,” he said. “She’s down on the beach.”

Roxane glanced at him in surprise. “You look almost as if you were afraid of a piece of parchment.”

“Yes,” said Dustfinger, reaching for her hand. “Yes, I am. Particularly when Fenoglio’s been writing on it. Come on, let’s go and look for Meggie.”

Meggie smiled awkwardly at Roxane when she gave her the parchment and for a moment looked curiously from her to Dustfinger, but then she had eyes only for Fenoglio’s letter. She broke the seal so hastily that she almost tore the parchment. There were three closely written sheets. The first was a letter to her. When she had read it Meggie put it away under her belt, paying it no further attention. The words she had been so eagerly waiting for filled the other two sheets.

Meggie’s eyes traveled over the lines so fast that Dustfinger could hardly believe she was really reading them. Finally, she raised her head, looked up at the Castle of Night – and smiled.

“Well, what does the old devil say?” asked Dustfinger.

Meggie offered him the two sheets. “It’s different from what I expected. Quite different, but it’s good. Here, read it for yourself.”

Gingerly, he took the parchment in his fingertips, as if he might burn himself on it more easily than on a flame. “When did you learn to read?” Roxane’s voice sounded so surprised that he had to smile.

“Meggie’s mother taught me.” Fool; why was he telling her that? Roxane gave Meggie a long look as he labored to decipher Fenoglio’s handwriting. Resa had usually written in capital letters, to make it easier for him.

“It could work, couldn’t it?” Meggie was looking over his shoulder.

The sea roared as if to agree with her. Yes, perhaps it really would work. . Dustfinger followed the written words like a dangerous path. But it was a path, and it led right into the middle of the Adderhead’s heart. However, Dustfinger didn’t like the part the old man intended Meggie to play. After all, her mother had asked him to take care of her.

Farid looked unhappily at the letters. He still couldn’t read. Sometimes Dustfinger felt that he suspected those tiny black signs of witchcraft. What else would he think of them, indeed, after all his experiences? “Come on!” Farid shifted impatiently from foot to foot. “What’s he written?”

“Meggie will have to go to the castle. Straight into the Adder’s nest.”

“What?” Horrified, the boy looked first at him and then at the girl. “But that’s impossible!” He took Meggie by the shoulders and turned her roughly around to face him. “You can’t go there. It’s much too dangerous!”

Poor boy. Of course she would go. “That’s the way Fenoglio has written it,” she said, removing Farid’s hands from her shoulders.

“Leave her alone,” said Dustfinger, giving Meggie the sheets of parchment back. “When are you going to read it aloud?”

“Now.”

Of course. She didn’t want to lose any time, and why should she? The sooner the story took a new turn, the better. It could hardly get worse. Or could it?

“What’s all this about?” Roxane looked from one to another of them, baffled. She scrutinized Farid without much friendliness; she still didn’t like him. Dustfinger thought that wouldn’t change until something convinced her that Farid was not his son. “Explain!” she said. “Fenoglio said this letter could save her parents. But what can a letter do for someone in a dungeon in the Castle of Night?”

Dustfinger stroked her hair back. He liked to see her wearing it loose again. “Listen,” he said. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but if anything can open the dungeon doors in the Castle of Night, it’s this letter – and Meggie’s voice. She can make ink live and breathe, Roxane, just as you can bring a song to life. Her father has the same gift. If the Adder head knew that, then I imagine he’d have hanged him long ago. The words that Meggie’s father used to kill Capricorn looked just as harmless as these.”