Cornelia Funke - Inkheart

Farid was still trying to get the lock open when they reached the cage. He was picking at it, looking angry, and muttering something to the effect that Dustfinger had shown him just how to do it and this must be a very special sort of lock.

"Oh, wonderful!" said Elinor sarcastically, pressing her face to the bars from inside. "So that Shadow didn't eat us after all, but we'll be left to starve in a cage. Well, well! What do you think of your daughter, Mo? Isn't she a brave little thing? I couldn't have uttered a word myself, not a single word. My God, my heart almost stopped when that old woman tried to get the book away from her. "

Mo put his hand on Meggie's shoulder and smiled, but he was looking at someone else. Nine years is a long, long time.

"I've done it! I've done it!" cried Farid, pulling the door of the cage open. But before the two women could take a step, a figure rose in the darkest corner of their prison, leaped toward them, and seized the first person he could lay his hands on – Meggie's mother.

"Wait!" spat Basta. "Stop, stop, not so fast. Where are you off to, then, Resa? To join your beloved family? You think I didn't understand all that whispering down in the crypt? Well, I did. "

"Let go of her!" cried Meggie. "Let go of her!" Why hadn't she noticed the dark heap lying so still in the corner? She just assumed Basta was as dead as Capricorn. And indeed, why wasn't he? Why hadn't he disappeared like Flatnose and Cockerell and all the others?

"Let her go, Basta!" Mo spoke very quietly as if he had no strength for anything else, "You won't get out of here, even by using her as a shield. No one will help you. They're all gone. "

"Oh, I'll get out!" replied Basta unpleasantly. "I will choke her if you don't let me pass. I'll break her scrawny neck. Did you know she can't talk? She can't make a sound because that useless Darius read her out of the book. She's as silent as a fish, a pretty, mute fish. But if I know you, you'll want her back all the same, am I right?"

Mo made no reply, and Basta laughed.

"Why aren't you dead?" Elinor shouted at him. "Why didn't you fall down dead like your master, or vanish? Why not?"

Basta merely shrugged. "How should I know?" he growled, keeping his hand around Resa's neck. She tried to kick him, but he only tightened his grip. "After all, the Magpie's still here, too, but she always made other people do her dirty work for her, and as for me – perhaps I'm one of the good characters in the story now because they put me in the cage? Perhaps I'm still here because it's been a long time since I set fire to anything, and Flatnose got much more fun out of killing people? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… but anyway here I am, so let me pass, you old bookbag!"

But Elinor did not budge.

"No, " she said. "You don't get out of here until you let her go! I'd never have expected this story to have a happy ending, but it has – and a creature like you isn't going to spoil that at the last moment, as sure as my name's Elinor Loredan!" Looking very determined, she placed herself in front of the cage door. "You don't have your knife with you this time, " she went on in a dangerously soft voice. "You have nothing but your filthy tongue, and believe you me, that'll be no use to you now. Poke your fingers into his eyes, Teresa! Kick him, bite him, the beast!"

But before Teresa could do as she said Basta thrust her away from him so violently that she fell against Elinor and brought her down – her and Mo, for both of them had been coming to her aid. As for Basta, he raced for the open door of the cage, pushed the startled Farid and Meggie aside – and ran away past all the people and creatures still wandering like sleepwalkers around the scene of Capricorn's festivities. Before Farid or Mo could give chase he had disappeared.

"Oh, great!" muttered Elinor, stumbling out of the cage with Teresa. "Now that wretched fellow will haunt me in my dreams, and every time I hear something rustling out in my garden at night I will feel his knife at my throat. "

Not only had Basta gone, but the Magpie also disappeared without a trace that night. And when, wearily, they set off to find a vehicle of some kind to get them away from Capricorn's village, they found all the cars had gone, too. Not a single one was left in the parking lot, which was dark now.

"Oh no, tell me it isn't true!" groaned Elinor. "Does this mean we have to go the whole wretched way on foot again?"

"Unless you happen to have a cell phone with you, " said Mo. He had not moved from Teresa's side since Basta had made his escape. He had looked with concern at her neck, where the red marks left by Basta's fingers were still visible, and he had run a strand of her hair through his fingers and said he almost liked it better now that it was darker. But nine years is a long time, and Meggie saw how careful they were with each other, like people on a narrow bridge crossing a wide, wide void.

Of course Elinor did not have her cell phone. Capricorn had had it taken away from her, and although Farid immediately offered to go and search Capricorn's fire-blackened house for it, it did not turn up. So they finally decided to spend one last night in the village, along with all the creatures that Fenoglio had brought back to life. It was still a beautiful, mild night, and sleeping under the trees would be quite comfort able. Meggie and Mo found plenty of blankets in the now-deserted houses. But they did not go back into Capricorn's house. Meggie never wanted to set foot inside it again, not because of the acrid smell of burning seeping out of its windows, or the charred doors, but because of the memories that leaped out at her like fierce animals at the mere sight of the place.

Sitting between Mo and her mother under one of the old oaks surrounding the parking lot, Meggie thought for a moment of Dustfinger, and wondered whether perhaps Capricorn had been telling the truth after all, maybe he really was dead and buried somewhere in the hills. I may never find out what's happened to him, she thought, as one of the blue fairies rocked back and forth on a twig above her, its face bland and happy.

The whole village seemed to be enchanted that night. The air was full of buzzing and murmuring, and the figures wandering around the parking lot looked as if they had escaped from the dreams of children and not the words of an old man. That was something else Meggie kept asking herself during the night: Where was Fenoglio now, and did he like it in his own story? She so much hoped so. But she knew he would miss his grandchildren and their games of hide-and-seek in his kitchen cupboard.

Before Meggie's eyes closed, she saw Elinor walking around among the trolls and fairies, looking happier than she had ever seen her. And her own parents were sitting to the left and right of Meggie, and her mother was writing and writing, on leaves from the trees, on the fabric of her dress, in the sand. There were so many words, so many tales to tell.

Dustfinger watched it all from a rooftop far enough from the scene of Capricorn's festivities for him to feel safe from the Shadow, but close enough for him to see everything through the binoculars he had found in Basta's house. At first, he had meant to stay in hiding. He had seen the Shadow kill too often already. Yet, a strange feeling, as irrational as Basta's good-luck charms, had driven him out: a feeling that he could protect the book just by his presence. When he slipped into the alley he felt something else, too. He didn't like to admit it to himself, but he wanted to see Basta die through the same binoculars Basta himself had so often turned on his future victims.