Cornelia Funke - Inkspell

"Oh, he's doing fine!" Cloud-Dancer raised his voice as two peddlers at the next table began to quarrel. "Still the same – black as pitch, quick with his tongue and even quicker with his knife, never seen without his bear."

Dustfinger smiled. Yes, this was good news indeed. The Black Prince: bear-tamer, knife-thrower, probably still fretting angrily at the way of the world. Dustfinger had known him since they were both homeless, orphaned children. At the age of eleven they'd stood side by side in the pillory over on the far side of the forest, where they were born, and they'd still smelled of rotten vegetables two days later. They had both been born in Argenta, the Silver Land, the realm of the Adderhead.

Cloud-Dancer looked at his face. "Well?" he asked. "When are you finally going to ask the question you've been wanting to ask since I clapped you on the shoulder? Go on! Before I'm too drunk to answer you."

Dustfinger had to smile; he couldn't help it. Cloud-Dancer had always known how to see into other people's hearts, though you might not have thought so from his face. "Very well. What shall I… how is she?"

"At last!" Cloud-Dancer smiled with such self-satisfaction that two gaps in his teeth showed. "Well, first, she's still very beautiful. Lives in a house now, doesn't sing and dance anymore, doesn't wear brightly colored skirts, pins up her hair like a farmer's wife. She tends a plot of land up on the hill behind the castle, growing herbs for the physicians. Even Nettle buys from her. She lives on that, sometimes well, sometimes not so well, bringing up her children."

Dustfinger tried to look indifferent, but Cloud-Dancer's smile told him that he wasn't succeeding. "What about that spice merchant who was always after her?"

"What about him? He left years ago; he's probably living in some big house by the sea, growing richer with every sack of pepper his ships bring in."

"Then she didn't marry him?"

"No. She chose another man."

"Another man?" Once again Dustfinger tried to sound indifferent, and once again he failed.

Cloud-Dancer enjoyed keeping him in suspense for a while, and then went on. "Yes, another man. He soon died, poor fellow, but she has a child by him, a boy."

Dustfinger said nothing, listening to his own thudding heart. His stupid heart. "What about the girls?"

"Oh, the girls. Yes, them – I wonder who their father can have been?" Cloud-Dancer was smiling again, like a little boy who has pulled off a mischievous trick. "Brianna's as lovely as her mother already. Although she's inherited your red hair."

"And Rosanna, the younger?" Her hair was dark, like her mother's.

The smile on Cloud-Dancer's face disappeared as if Dustfinger had wiped it away. "The child has been dead a long time," he said softly. "There was a fever, two winters after you went away. Many died of it. Even Nettle couldn't help them."

Dustfinger drew bright, damp lines on the table with his forefinger, which was sticky from the wine. Dead. Much might be lost in the space of ten years. For a moment he tried desperately to remember her face, such a little face, but it blurred, as if he had spent too long over the attempt to forget it.

Amid all the noise, Cloud-Dancer sat with him in silence for a long time. Then at last he rose, ponderously; it wasn't easy to get up from the low bench with his stiff leg. "I must be off, my friend," he said. "I still have three letters to deliver, two of them up there in Ombra. I want to be at the city gate before dark, or the guards will have their little joke again and refuse to let me in."

Dustfinger was still drawing lines on the dark wood of the table. Two winters after you went away – the words stung like nettles in his head. "Where are the others camping at the moment?"

"Just outside the city wall of Ombra. Our prince's beloved grandson celebrates his birthday soon. Every entertainer and minstrel is welcome at the castle on that day."

Dustfinger nodded without raising his head. "I'll see. Maybe I'll go along, too." He abruptly rose from the hard bench. The girl by the hearth looked at them. His younger daughter would have been about her age now if the fever hadn't carried her off.

Together with Cloud-Dancer, he made his way past the crowded benches and chairs to the door. It was still fine outside, a sunny autumn day, clad in bright foliage like a strolling player.

"Come to Ombra with me!" Cloud-Dancer laid a hand on his shoulder. "My horse will carry two, and we can always find a place to sleep there."

But Dustfinger shook his head.

"Later," he said, looking down the muddy road. "It's time I paid a visit."

Mo came home just as they were all sitting down to breakfast, and Resa kissed him as if he'd been away for weeks. Meggie hugged him harder than usual, too, relieved that he had come back safe and sound, but she avoided looking him straight in the eye. Mo knew her too well. He would have spotted her guilty conscience at once. And Meggie's conscience was very guilty.

The reason was the sheet of paper hidden among her school-books up in her room, closely written in her own hand, although the words were by someone else. Meggie had spent hours copying out what Orpheus had written. Every time she got something wrong she had begun again from the beginning, for fear that a single mistake could spoil everything. She had added just three words – where the passage mentioned a boy, in the sentences left unread by Orpheus, Meggie had added "and the girl." Three nondescript, perfectly ordinary words, so ordinary that it was overwhelmingly likely that they occurred somewhere in the pages of Inkheart . She couldn't check, however, because the only copy of the book she would have needed to do that was now in Basta's hands. Basta… the mere sound of his name reminded Meggie of black days and black nights. Black with fear.

Mo had brought her a present to make peace between them, as he always did when they had quarreled: a small notebook bound by himself, just the right size for her jacket pocket, with a marbled paper cover. Mo knew how much Meggie liked marbled patterns; she had been only nine when he had taught her how to color them for herself. Guilt went to her heart when he put the notebook down by her plate, and for a moment she wanted to tell him everything, just as she had always done. But a glance from Farid prevented her. That glance said, "No, Meggie, he won't let you go there – ever." So she kept quiet, kissed Mo, whispered, "Thank you," and said no more, quickly bending her head, her tongue heavy with the words she hadn't spoken.

Luckily, no one noticed her sad expression. The others were still anxious about Farid's news of Basta. Elinor had gone to the police, on Mo's advice, but her visit to them had done nothing to improve her mood.

"Just as I told you," she said crossly, working away at the cheese with her knife as if it were the cause of all this trouble. "Those fools didn't believe a word I said. A couple of sheep in uniform would have listened better. You know I don't like dogs, but maybe I ought to get some after all… a couple of huge black brutes to tear Basta apart the moment he comes through my garden gate. A Dobsterman dog, yes. A Dobsterman or two. Isn't a Dobsterman the dog that eats people?"

"You mean a Doberman." Mo winked across the table at Meggie.

It broke her heart. There he was winking at her, his deceitful daughter who was planning to go right away, to a place where he probably couldn't follow her. Perhaps her mother would understand, but Mo? No, not Mo. Never.