Cornelia Funke - Inkheart

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.

She tried reading for a while, but soon noticed that she wasn't taking in a word of what she read, so she gave it up and stared out of the window like Dustfinger. Elinor chose minor roads without much traffic on them. "Otherwise the driving gets so boring, " she said. It made no difference to Meggie. She just wanted to arrive. She looked impatiently at the mountains and the houses where other people lived. Sometimes, through the window of a car coming the other way, she caught a glimpse of a stranger's face, then it was gone, like a book you open then close at once. When they were driving through one village she saw a man by the roadside sticking a Band-Aid on the grazed knee of a tearful little girl. He was stroking her hair comfortingly, and Meggie couldn't help remembering how often Mo had done that for her, how he sometimes chased all around the house, cursing when he couldn't find a Band-Aid in time. The memory brought tears to her eyes.

"Heavens above, it's quieter in here than a pharaoh's burial chamber!" said Elinor at some point. (Meggie thought she said "Heavens above" quite a lot.) "Couldn't one of you at least say something now and then? 'Oh, what a lovely landscape!' for instance, or, 'That's a very fine castle!' If you keep as deathly quiet as this I'll be falling asleep at the wheel any minute now. " She still hadn't undone a single button of her knitted jacket.

"I don't see any castle," muttered Meggie, but it wasn't long before Elinor spotted one. "Sixteenth century," she announced as the ruined walls appeared on a mountainside. "Tragic story. Forbidden love, pursuit, death, grief, and pain." And as they passed between the strong and silent rock walls Elinor told the tale of a battle that had raged in this very place over six hundred years ago. "To this day, if you dig among the stones you'll still find bones and dented helmets. " She seemed to know a story about every church tower. Some were so unlikely that Meggie wrinkled her brow in disbelief, and Elinor, without taking her eyes off the road, always responded, "No, really, that's just what happened!" She seemed to be particularly fond of bloodthirsty stories: tales of the beheading of unhappy lovers, or princes walled up alive. "Yes, everything looks very peaceful now, " she remarked when Meggie turned a little pale at one of these stories. "But I can tell you there's always a sad story somewhere. Ah, well, times were more exciting a few hundred years ago. "

Meggie didn't know what was so exciting about times when, if Elinor was to be believed, your only choice was between dying of the plague or getting slaughtered by invading soldiers. But Elinor's cheeks glowed pink with excitement at the sight of some burnt-out old castle, and whenever she told tales of the warrior princes and greedy bishops who had once spread terror and death abroad in the very mountains through which they were now driving on modern paved roads, a romantic gleam lit her usually chilly pebble eyes.

"My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story, " said Dustfinger at last. These were the first words he had spoken since they set out.

"The wrong story? The wrong period, you mean. Yes, I've often thought so myself. "

"Call it what you like, " said Dustfinger. "Anyway, you should get along well with Capricorn. He likes the same kinds of stories as you. "

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" asked Elinor, offended. The comparison seemed to trouble her, for after that she kept quiet for almost an hour, which left Meggie with nothing to distract her from her miserable thoughts and the frightening pictures they conjured up for her in every tunnel.

Twilight was beginning to fall when the mountains drew back from the road and the sea suddenly appeared beyond green hills, a sea as wide as another sky. The sinking sun made it glisten like the skin of a beautiful snake. It was a long time since Meggie had seen the sea, and then it had been a cold sea, slate gray and pale from the wind. This sea looked different, very different.

It warmed Meggie's heart just to see it, but all too often it disappeared behind the tall, ugly buildings covering the narrow strip of land that lay between the water and the encroaching

hills. Sometimes, the hills reached all the way down to the sea, and in the light of the setting sun they looked like giant waves that had rolled up onto the land.

As they followed the winding coastal road Elinor began telling stories again: tales of the Romans who, she said, had built the road they were on, and how they feared the savage inhabitants of this narrow strip of land. Meggie was only half listening. Palm trees grew beside the road, their fronds dusty and sharp-edged. Giant agaves flowered among the palms, looking like spiders squatting there with their long spiny leaves. The light behind them turned pink and lemon yellow as the sun sank farther down toward the sea, and dark blue trickled down from the sky like ink flowing into water. It was so beautiful a sight that it almost hurt to look at it. Meggie had thought the place where Capricorn lived would be quite different. Beauty and fear make uneasy companions.

They drove through a small town, past houses as bright as if a child had painted them. They were color-washed orange and pink, red and yellow. A great many were yellow: pale yellow, brownish yellow, sandy yellow, dirty yellow, and they had green shutters and red-brown roofs. Even the gathering twilight couldn't drain them of their brightness.

"It doesn't seem so very dangerous here, " remarked Meggie as they drove past another pink house.

"That's because you keeping looking to your left, " said Dustfinger behind her. "But there's always a light side and a dark side. Look to your right for a change. "

Meggie did as he said. At first she saw nothing but the brightly colored houses there, too. They crowded close to the roadside, leaning against each other as if they were arm in arm. But then the houses were suddenly left behind, and steep hills with the night already settling among their folds lined the road instead. Yes, Dustfinger was right. It looked sinister over there, and the few houses left seemed to be drowning in the gathering dusk.

It quickly grew darker, for night falls fast in the south, and Meggie was glad that Elinor was driving along the well-lit coastal road. But all too soon Dustfinger told her to turn off along a minor road leading away from the coast, away from the sea and the brightly colored houses, and into the dark.

The road wound farther and farther into the hills, going up and down as the slopes by the roadside grew steeper and steeper. The light of the headlights fell on brambles, on vines run wild, and on olive trees crouching like bent old men beside the road.