Inkheart (12 page)

He turned his back to the bed. Out of sight, out of mind. Then he opened the book hastily before he could think better of it. His breathing was heavy — as if he had filled his mouth with liquid in preparation for breathing fire. He leafed through the first few pages and began to read, slowly turning page after page after page. But with every page his fingers hesitated a little longer, until suddenly he closed the book. Moonlight was seeping through the cracks in the shutters. He had no idea how long he had been standing there, his eyes lost in the labyrinth of letters. He had always been a very slow reader. . . .

"Coward!" he whispered. "Oh, what a coward you are, Dustfinger!" He bit his lips until they hurt.

"Come on!" he told himself. "This may be your last chance, you fool! Once Capricorn has the book he'll never let you look at it again." Once more, he opened the book, leafed rapidly through to about the middle — and closed it again, with a sound loud enough to make Meggie give a little start in her sleep and bury her head under the covers. Dustfinger waited motionless beside the bed until she was breathing regularly again, then leaned over her treasure chest with a deep sigh and put the book back under the others.

Soundlessly, he closed the lid.

'Did you see that, Gwin?" he whispered to the marten. "I just dare not look. Wouldn't you rather find a braver master? Think it over." Gwin chattered softly in his ear, but if that an answer Dustfinger didn't understand it.

For a moment he went on listening to Meggie's quiet breathing, then stole back to the door.

"Well, what does it matter?" he muttered when he was out in the corridor. "Who wants to know the end of a story in advance?"

He climbed up to the attic bedroom Elinor had given him and lay down on the narrow bed with the crates of books towering around it. But he could not sleep until morning came.

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Chapter 12 – Going Farther South

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

–
J. R. R. Tolkien,
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

After breakfast the next morning Elinor spread a crumpled road map out on the kitchen table.

"Right, three hundred kilometers south of here," she said with a wary glance at Dustfinger. "So show us exactly where we have to look for Meggie's father."

Meggie looked at Dustfinger, her heart thudding. There were dark shadows around his eyes, as if he had slept very badly. Hesitantly, he came over to the table, rubbing his stubbly chin. He bent over the map, scrutinized it for what seemed an eternity, and finally pointed with his finger.

"There," he said. "Capricorn's village is right there."

Elinor looked over his shoulder. "Liguria," she said. "Aha. And what is the name of this village, if I may ask? Capricornia?" She was examining Dustfinger's face as if tracing his scars with her eyes.

"It doesn't have a name." Dustfinger responded to her gaze with unconcealed dislike. "I expect it had one once, but the name was already forgotten before Capricorn settled there. You won't find it on this map, or any other either. To the rest of the world the village is just a collection of tumbledown houses along what can hardly be called a road."

"Hmm." Elinor bent closer to the map. "I've never been in that region. I was in Genoa once. I bought a very fine edition of
Alice in Wonderland
there, in good condition and for half what it was worth." She looked inquiringly at Meggie. "Do you like
Alice in Wonderland!"

"Not particularly," said Meggie, staring at the map. Elinor shook her head at such childish folly and turned back to Dustfinger.

"What does this Capricorn do when he's not stealing books and abducting people's fathers?" she asked. "If I understand Meggie correctly, you know him pretty well."

Dustfinger avoided her eyes and ran his finger along a blue river winding its way through the green and pale brown of the map. "We come from the same place," he said. "But apart from that we don't have much in common."

Elinor looked at him so penetratingly that Meggie wouldn't have been surprised to see a hole suddenly appear in his forehead. "There's one thing that strikes me as strange," Elinor said

"Meggie's father wanted to keep
Inkheart
safe from this Capricorn. So why bring the book here to me? He was practically running into Capricorn's arms!"

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Dustfinger shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps he just thought your library would be the safest hiding place."

A memory stirred in Meggie's mind. At first, she couldn't identify it, but then it all came flooding back to her, perfectly clearly, as vivid as a picture in a book. She saw Dustfinger standing beside their camper van at the gate of the farmhouse, and it was almost as if she heard his voice again. .

. .

She looked at him in horror. "You told Mo that Capricorn was in the north!" she said. "He specially asked, and you said you were sure of it."

Dustfinger examined his fingernails.

"Well, yes . . . yes, that's right," he admitted without looking at Meggie or Elinor. He just went on staring at his nails. Finally, he rubbed them on his sweater as if to remove an ugly mark. "You don't trust me," he said hoarsely, still without looking at them. "Neither of you trust me. I — I can understand that, but I wasn't lying. Capricorn has two main headquarters and several smaller hideouts in case things get too hot for him, or one of his men needs to disappear for a while. He usually spends the summer months in the north and doesn't come south until October, but this year he's obviously spending the summer down in the south. How would I know why?

Perhaps he had trouble with the police in the north. Perhaps he has business of some kind in the south and wants to see to it personally." His voice sounded injured, like the voice of a child unjustly accused. "In any case, his men drove south with Meggie's father, I saw them go myself, and when Capricorn is m the south he always does anything of importance in that village. He feels safe in it, safer than anywhere else. He's never had any trouble with the police there, he can act like a king, as if the whole world belonged to him. He makes the laws, he decides what happens, he can do or not do anything he likes. His men take care of that. Believe you me, I understand these things." Dustfinger smiled. It was a bitter smile. It seemed to be saying: If you only knew! But you don't know anything. You don't understand anything.

Meggie felt unease spread through her again. It was not caused by what Dustfinger said, but by what he wasn't saying. Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.

Elinor seemed to be feeling the same. "For heaven's sake, don't make such a mystery of it!" She snapped, "I'm asking you again, what does this Capricorn do? How does he earn his money?"

Dustfinger crossed his arms. "You won't get any more information out of me. Ask him yourself.

Even taking you to his village could cost me dearly, so am I going to tell you about Capricorn's business? Not likely!" He shook his head. "I warned Meggie's father. I advised him to bring Capricorn the book of his own free will, but he wouldn't listen. If I hadn't warned him, Capricorn's men would have found him much sooner. Ask Meggie! She was there when I warned him. OK, I didn't tell him everything I knew. So what? I talk about Capricorn as little as possible, I try not even to think of him, and you take my word for it, once you know him you'll feel the same."

Elinor wrinkled her nose as if such an idea were too ridiculous for her to waste a single word on it. "So I assume you can't tell me why he's so keen to get hold of this book?" she asked, folding up the road map. "Is he some kind of collector?"

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Dustfinger ran his finger along the edge of the table. "All I'm going to tell you is that he wants this book. And that's why you'd better give it to him. I once knew his men to stand outside a man's house for four nights running just because Capricorn took a fancy to the man's dog."

"Did he get the dog?" asked Meggie quietly.

"Of course," replied Dustfinger, looking at her thoughtfully- "Believe me, no one sleeps soundly with Capricorn's men standing outside the door looking up at their window — or their children's window. Capricorn usually gets what he wants within a couple of days, maximum."

"Disgusting!" said Elinor. "He wouldn't have got
my
dog."

Dustfinger examined his fingernails again, smiling.

"Stop grinning like that!" snapped Elinor. And, turning to Meggie, she added, "You'd better pack a few things! We set off within the hour. It's about time you got your father back. Even if I don't like having to leave the book with this Capri-what's-his-name. I hate to see books fall into the wrong hands."

They were going in Elinor's car, although Dustfinger would have preferred to travel in Mo's camper van.

"Nonsense, I've never driven anything like that," said Elinor, dumping in Dustfinger's arms a cardboard box full of provisions for the journey. "Anyway, Mortimer's locked the van."

Meggie saw that Dustfinger had an answer on the tip of his tongue, but chose to keep it to himself. "Suppose we have to spend the night somewhere?" he asked, carrying the box over to Elinor's car.

Heavens above, who said anything about that? I intend to be back here tomorrow morning at the latest. I hate leaving my books on their own for more than a day."

Dustfinger rolled his eyes up at the sky, as if more sense might be expected there than in Elinor's head, and began clambering into the backseat, but Elinor stopped him. "No, wait, you'd better drive," she said, handing him her car keys. "You're the one who knows where we're going."

But Dustfinger gave her back the keys. "I can't drive," he said. "It's bad enough sitting in a car, never mind driving it."

Elinor got behind the steering wheel, shaking her head. "Well, you're an oddity and no mistake!"

she said as Meggie climbed into the passenger seat beside her. "And I hope you really do know where Meggie's father is, or you'll find out that this Capricorn of yours isn't the only person to be frightened of around here!"

Meggie rolled down her window as Elinor started the engine. She looked back at Mo's van. It felt bad leaving it behind here, worse than leaving a house, even this one. Strange as a place might be, the camper van meant that Mo and she always had a bit of home with them. Now that was gone, too, and nothing was familiar anymore except the clothes in her traveling bag in the trunk of Elinor's car. She had also packed a few things for Mo — and two of her books.

"Interesting choice!" Elinor had commented when she lent Meggie a bag for the books, an old-fashioned one made of dark leather that you could sling over your shoulder. "These stories
60

about the ill-made knight and people with hairy feet going on a long journey to dark places. Have you read them both?"

Meggie had nodded. "Lots of times." She smiled at Elinor's descriptions, stroking the bindings before she put the books in the bag. She could remember every detail of the day when Mo had rebound them.

"Oh dear, don't look so dismal!" Elinor had said, looking at her with concern. "You just wait —

our journey isn't going to be half as bad as those hairy-footed people's quest. It will be much shorter, too."

Meggie would have been glad to feel as sure of that herself. The book that was the reason for their own journey was in the trunk, under the spare tire. Elinor had put it in a plastic bag. "Don't let Dustfinger see where it is!" she urged Meggie, before putting it into her hands. "I still don't trust him."

But Meggie had decided to trust Dustfinger. She wanted to trust him. She needed to trust him.

Who else could lead her to Mo?

61

Chapter 13 – Capricorn’s Village

"But to the last question," Zelig replied, "he probably flew to beyond the Dark Regions,
where people don't go and cattle don't stray, where the sky is copper, the earth iron, and
where the evil forces live under roofs of petrified toadstools and in tunnels abandoned by
moles."

–
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus

The sun was already high in the cloudless sky when they set off. Soon the air was so hot and muggy in Elinor's car that Meggie's T-shirt was sticking to her skin with sweat. Elinor opened her window and passed a bottle of water around. She herself was wearing a knitted jacket buttoned up to her chin, and when Meggie wasn't thinking of Mo or Capricorn she wondered whether Elinor might melt away inside it.

Dustfinger sat in the backseat, so silent you could almost have forgotten he was there. He had put Gwin on his lap. The marten slept while Dustfinger's hands restlessly stroked his fur, passing over it again and again. Now and then Meggie turned to look at him. He was usually gazing out of the window indifferently, as if he were looking straight through the mountains and trees, houses and rocky slopes passing by outside. His expression seemed perfectly empty, as if he were thinking of something far away, and once, when Meggie glanced around, there was such sadness on his scarred face that she quickly turned to look out of the windshield ahead of her.

She would have liked to have an animal on her own lap during this long, long journey. Perhaps it would have driven away the dark thoughts that insisted on coming into her mind. Outside, the world was a place of gently unfolding mountains rising higher and higher. Sometimes it seemed as if they would crush the road between their gray and rocky sides. But worse than the mountains were the tunnels. Pictures seemed to lurk in them that not even Gwin's warm body could have kept at bay. They seemed to be hiding there in the darkness, waiting for Meggie: pictures of Mo in some grim, cold place, and of Capricorn. . . . Meggie knew it must be Capricorn, although his face was different every time.