Cornelia Funke - Inkdeath

The eyes transfixed him, red eyes in all that blackness, eyes both fierce and dull, lost in themselves, with no yesterday and no tomorrow, without light and warmth, caught in their own cold, the freezing entity of evil.

Dustfinger felt the fire around him like a warm fur. It almost burned his skin, but it was his only protection against those dull eyes and the hungry mouth that opened, screaming so horribly that Brianna sank to her knees and put her hands over her ears.

The Night-Mare reached a black hand out to the fire. It hissed when he dipped it into the flames – and Dustfinger thought he recognized a face in all the blackness. A face he had never forgotten.

Was it possible? Had Orpheus seen it, too, and so tamed his black dog by calling it by its forgotten name? Or had he given it that name himself and brought back the man whom Silvertongue had sent to his death?

Brianna was crying behind him. Dustfinger sensed her trembling through the bars, but he felt no fear now. He was just grateful. Grateful for this moment. Glad of this new encounter – which he hoped would be their last.

"Well, look! Who have we here?" he said softly, as Brianna's weeping died down on the other side of the bars. "Do you remember yourself in all your darkness? Do you remember the knife, and the boy's thin, unprotected back? Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?"

The Night-Mare stared at him, and Dustfinger stepped toward it, still surrounded by flames – flames burning hotter and hotter, nourished by all the pain and despair he was bringing back to mind.

"Away with you, Basta!" he said, speaking the name loud enough to pierce the heart of all the darkness. "Be gone for all eternity."

The face showed more clearly – the narrow, foxy face that he had once feared so much – and Dustfinger made the flames bite into the cold, made them penetrate the blackness like swords, all of them writing Basta's name, and the Night-Mare screamed again, its eyes suddenly full of memories. It screamed and screamed, while its shape ran like ink, melting into the shadows, dispersing like smoke. Only the cold was left, but the fire ate that, too, and Dustfinger fell on his knees and felt the pain leaving him – pain that had outlasted death itself. He wished Farid were here with him. He wished it so much that, for a few moments, he forgot where he was.

"Father?" Brianna's whisper reached him through the smoke.

Had she ever called him that before? Yes, long ago. But had he been the same man then?

The bars of the cage bent under the heat of his hands. He dared not touch Brianna because he felt the fire so strongly in them. Footsteps approached – heavy, rapid footsteps. The Night-Mare's screams had brought them. But the darkness swallowed up Dustfinger and Brianna before the soldiers reached the cages, and they looked in vain for their black watchman.

The Black Prince was still with Roxane. She was going to splint his injured leg so that he could walk on it. Walk to the Castle in the Lake. "We have time," Meggie had told him, although her heart was in a hurry. Mo would certainly need as long to bind this White Book as he had needed in the Castle of Night.

The Black Prince intended to set out with almost all his men to stand by the Bluejay. But without Elinor and without Meggie. "Your father made me promise that you and your mother would stay in a safe place," he had told her. "With your mother I wasn't able to keep my promise, but at least I'll keep it where you're concerned. Didn't you promise him the same thing?"

No, she had not. So she would go, even if it almost broke her heart to leave Doria behind. He still hadn't woken up, but Darius would talk to him. And Elinor. And she would come back – wouldn't she?

Farid was going with her. He would be able to call fire if the weather grew cold on their way, and she had stolen some dried meat and filled one of Battista's leather bottles with water. How could the Black Prince think she would stay after she had seen those fiery words? How could he think she'd leave her father to die as if this were some other, quite different story?

"Meggie, the Black Prince doesn't know about the words," Fenoglio had pointed out. "And he has no idea what Orpheus is up to, either!" But Fenoglio did know, and all the same – just like the Prince – he didn't want her to go. "Do you want what happened to your mother to happen to you, too? No one knows where she is. No, you must stay. We'll help your father in our own way. I'll write day and night, I promise you. But what use is that if you don't stay here to read what I've written?"

Stay here. Wait. No, she was sorry, but she was going to steal away in secret like Resa, and she wouldn't get lost… she'd waited far too long already. If Fenoglio did indeed think of something – and he had certainly been able to write the giant here – then Darius could read it, and the children had Battista and Elinor, Roxane and Fenoglio to look after them. But Mo was alone, all alone. He needed her. He'd always needed her.

Elinor was snoring gently. Darius slept next to her, in between Minerva's children. Meggie moved as quietly as the woven structure of the nest allowed, picking up her jacket, her boots, and the backpack that still reminded her of the other world.

"Ready?" Farid was standing in the round doorway of the nest. "It will soon be light."

Meggie nodded – and turned as Farid stared past her, his eyes as wide as a child's.

A White Woman was standing beside the sleepers. She looked at Meggie.

She had a pencil in her hand, a short, worn-out chalk pencil, and with a look of invitation she was offering Farid one of the candles that Elinor had brought from Ombra. Farid went toward her like a sleepwalker, and with a whisper lit the wick. The White Woman dipped her pencil into the flame and began to write on a sheet of paper. Meggie had been trying to write a good end to her father's story on it after the giant took Fenoglio away. The White Woman wrote and wrote, while Minerva whispered her husband's name in her sleep, while Elinor turned over onto her other side, while Despina put her arm around her brother, and the wind blew through the wickerwork of the nest, almost putting out the candle. Then the White Woman straightened up, looked at Meggie once more, and disappeared as if the wind had blown her away.

Farid breathed a sigh of relief when she had gone, and pressed his face into Meggie's hair. But Meggie gently moved him aside and bent over the paper on which the White Woman had written.

"Can you read it?" Farid whispered.

Meggie nodded.

"Go to the Black Prince and tell him he can spare his leg," she said softly. "We'll all stay here. The song of the Bluejay has been written."

It wasn't easy to make your hands work slowly when they loved what they were doing so much. Mo's eyes stung in the bad light, his ankles were sore from the heavy chains, and yet in the strangest way he felt happy. It was as if he were binding not the Adderhead's death, but time itself into a book – and with it all fears for the future, all the pain of the past… until there was nothing left but now, this moment when his hands caressed paper and leather.