Cornelia Funke - Inkspell

As soon as they stepped out of the alley, they were caught up in the crowd streaming along. People came thronging up from all sides: shabbily dressed peasants, beggars, women with children, and men whose wealth showed not only in the magnificence of their embroidered sleeves but most of all in the servants who roughly forced a path through the crowd for them. Riders drove their horses through the throng without a thought for those they pushed against the walls, litters were jammed in the crush of bodies, however angrily the litter-bearers cursed and shouted.

"Devil take it, this is worse than a market day!" Fenoglio shouted to Meggie above the heads around them. Ivo darted through the crowd, quick as a herring in the sea, but Despina looked so alarmed that Fenoglio finally put her up on his shoulders before she was squashed between baskets and people's bellies. Meggie felt her own heart beat faster, what with all the confusion, the pushing and shoving, the thousands of smells and the voices filling the air.

"Look around you, Meggie! Isn't it wonderful?" cried Fenoglio proudly.

It was indeed. It was just as Meggie had imagined it on all those evenings when Resa had told her about the Inkworld. Her senses were quite dazed. Eyes, ears… they could scarcely take in a tenth of all that was going on around her. Music came from somewhere: trumpets, jingles, drums… and then the street widened, spewing her and all the others out in front of the castle walls. They towered among the other buildings, tall and massive, as if they had been built by men larger than those now flocking to the gateway. Armed guards stood in front of the gate, with their helmets reflecting the pale morning light. Their cloaks were dark green, like the tunics they wore over their coats of mail. Both bore the emblem of the Laughing Prince. Resa had described it to Meggie: a lion on a green background, surrounded by white roses – but it had changed. The lion wept silver tears now, and the roses twined around a broken heart.

The guards let most of the crowd pass, only occasionally barring someone's way with the shaft of a spear or a mailed fist. No one seemed troubled by that, they went on pressing in, and Meggie, too, finally found herself in the shadow of those foot-wide walls. Of course she had been in castles before, with Mo, but it felt quite different to be going in past guards armed with spears instead of a kiosk selling picture postcards. The walls seemed so much more threatening and forbidding. Look, they seemed to say, see how small you all are, how powerless and fragile.

Fenoglio appeared to feel none of this; he was beaming like a child at Christmas. He ignored both the portcullis above their heads and the slits through which hot pitch could be tipped out on the heads of uninvited guests. Meggie, on the contrary, instinctively looked up as they passed and wondered why the traces of pitch on the weathered stone looked so fresh. But finally the open sky was above her again, clear and blue, as if it had been swept clean for the princely birthday – and Meggie was in the Outer Courtyard of Ombra Castle.

First of all Meggie looked for the birds' nests that Resa had described, and sure enough, there they were, clinging just below the battlements like blisters on the walls. Birds with yellow breasts shot out of the entrance holes. Like flakes of gold dancing in the sun, Resa had said, and she was right. The sky above Meggie seemed to be covered with swirling gold, all in honor of the princely birthday. More and more people surged through the gateway, although there was already a milling crowd in the courtyard. Stalls had been set up within the walls, in front of the stables and the huts where the blacksmiths, grooms, and everyone else employed in the castle lived and worked. Today, as theprince was inviting his subjects to celebrate with him the birthday of his grandson and royal heir, food and drink was free. "Very generous, I'm sure," Mo would probably have whispered. "Food and drink from their own fields, won by the labor of their own hands." Mo did not particularly like castles. But that was the way of Fenoglio's world: The land on which the peasants toiled belonged to the Laughing Prince who was now the Prince of Sighs, so a large part of the harvest was his, too, and he dressed in silk and velvet, while his peasants wore much-mended smocks that scratched the skin.

Despina had wound her thin arms around Fenoglio's neck when they passed the guards at the gate, but at the sight of the first entertainers she quickly slipped off his back. One of them had stretched his rope between the battlements, and was walking high up there in the air, moving more lightly than a spider on its silver thread. His clothes were blue as the sky above him, for blue was the color of the tightrope-walkers; Meggie's mother had told her that, too. If only Resa had been here! The Motley Folk were everywhere among the stalls: pipers and jugglers, knife-throwers, strong men, animal-tamers, contortionists, actors, clowns. Right in front of the wall Meggie saw a fire-eater, yes, black and red was their costume, and for a moment she thought it was Dustfinger, but when the man turned he was a stranger with an unscarred face, and the smile with which he bowed to the people around him was not at all like Dustfinger's.

But he must be here, if he's really back, thought Meggie, as she looked around for him. Why did she feel so disappointed? As if she didn't know. It was Farid she really missed. And if

Dustfinger wasn't here, she supposed it would be no use looking for Farid, either.

"Come along, Meggie!" Despina pronounced her name as if it was going to take her tongue some time to get used to it. She pulled Meggie over to a stall selling sweet cakes dripping with honey Even today those cakes had to be paid for. The trader selling them was keeping a close eye on his wares, but luckily Fenoglio had a few coins on him. Despina's thin fingers were sticky when she put them into Meggie's hand again. She looked around, wide-eyed, and kept stopping, but Fenoglio impatiently waved them on, past a wooden platform decked with flowers and evergreen branches, rising above the stalls. The black banners flying from the castle battlements and towers overhead hung here as well, to the right and left of three thrones on the platform. The backs of the seats were embroidered with the emblem of the weeping lion.

"Why three thrones, I ask myself?" Fenoglio whispered to Meggie as he urged her and the children on. "The Prince of Sighs himself won't be showing his face, anyway. Come along, we're late already." With a firm step, he turned his back on the busy scene in the Outer Courtyard and made his way to the Inner Ring of the castle walls. The gate toward which he was moving was not quite as tall as the one in the Outer Ring, but it, too, looked forbidding, and so did the guards who crossed their spears as Fenoglio approached them. "As if they didn't know me!" he whispered crossly to Meggie. "But we have to play the same game every time. Tell the prince that Fenoglio the poet is here!" he said, raising his voice, as the two children pressed close to him and stared at the spears as if looking for dried blood on their points.

"Is the prince expecting you?" The guard who spoke seemed to still be very young, judging by what could be seen of his face under his helmet.

"Of course he is!" snapped Fenoglio. "And if he has to wait any longer I'll blame it on you, Anselmo. What's more, if you want me to write you a few fine-sounding words, as you did last month" – here the guard cast a nervous glance at his fellow sentry, but the latter pretended not to have heard and looked up at the tightrope-walker – "then," Fenoglio concluded, lowering his voice, "I shall keep you waiting in your own turn. I'm an old man, and God knows I have better things to do than cool my heels here in front of your spear."