Resa took his hand and rose to her feet with difficulty. Co? Go where? she felt like asking. Back to the camp, where an empty tent is waiting and your men will look at me with more hostility than ever?
Doria brought her horse. The Strong Man was still standing with Meggie, his big face as tearstained as her daughter's. He avoided her eyes. So he, too, blamed her for what had happened.
Go where? Back?
Resa was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it. Elinor's house. How would it feel to go back there without Mo? If Meggie would agree to read the words at all. Elinor, I've lost Mo. I wanted to protect him, but… No, she didn't want to have to tell that story. There was no going back. There was nothing anymore.
"Come along, Meggie." The Black Prince beckoned Meggie over. He was about to put her up with Resa on her horse, but Meggie recoiled.
"No. I'll ride with Doria," she said.
Doria brought his horse to her side. Farid gave the other boy a scowl when he lifted up Meggie behind him.
"And why are you still here?" Meggie snapped at him. "Still hoping to see Dustfinger suddenly materialize in front of you? He won't come back, any more than my father will – but I'm sure Orpheus will take you in again, after all you've done for him!"
Farid flinched like a beaten dog at every word. Then he turned in silence and went to his donkey. He called for the marten, but Jink didn't come, and Farid rode away without him.
Meggie didn't watch him go.
She turned to Resa. "You needn't think I'm going back with you!" she said sharply. "If you need a reader for your precious words, go to Orpheus, like you did before!"
Again, the Black Prince didn't ask what Meggie was talking about, although Resa saw the question on his weary face. He stayed at Resa's side as they rode the long way back. The sun claimed hill after hill for its own, but Resa knew that night would not end for her. It would live in her heart from now on. The same night, forever and ever. Black and white at the same time, like the women who had taken Mo away with them.
25. THE END AND THE BEGINNING
Here is a small fact. You are going to die.
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
They brought it all back: the memory of pain and fear, of the burning fever and their cold hands on his heart. But this time everything was different. The White Women touched Mo and he did not fear them. They whispered the name that they thought was his, and it sounded like a welcome. Yes, they were welcoming him in their soft voices, heavy with longing, the voices he heard so often in his dreams – as if he were a friend who had been away for a long time but had come back to them at last.
There were many of them, so many. Their pale faces surrounded him like mist, and everything else disappeared beyond it: Orpheus, Resa, Meggie, the Black Prince, who had been standing beside him only a moment ago. Even the stars vanished, and so did the ground beneath his feet. Suddenly, he was standing on rotting leaves. Their fragrance hung sweet and heavy in the cold air. Bones lay among the leaves, pale and polished. Skulls. Arm bones and leg bones. Where was he?
They've taken you away with them, Mortimer, he thought. Just as they took Dustfinger.
Why didn't the idea make him afraid?
He heard birds above him, many birds, and when the White Women withdrew he saw air-roots overhead, hanging from a dark height like cobwebs. He was inside a tree as hollow as an organ pipe and as tall as the castle towers of Ombra. Fungi grew from its wooden sides, casting a pale green light on the nests of birds and fairies. Mo put out his hand to the roots to see if his fingers still had any feeling in them. Yes, they did. He ran them over his face, felt his own skin, the same as ever, warm. What did that mean? Wasn't this death, after all?
If not, what was it? A dream?
He turned, still as if he were asleep, and saw beds of moss. Moss-women slept on them, their wrinkled faces as ageless in death as in life. But on the last mossy bed lay a familiar figure, his face as still as when Mo had last seen it. Dustfinger.
Roxane had kept the promise she made in the old mine. And he will look as if he were only sleeping long after my hair is white, for I know from Nettle how you go about preserving the body even when the soul is long gone.
Hesitantly, Mo approached the motionless figure. Without a word, the White Women made way for him.
Where are you, Mortimer? he wondered. Is this still the world of the living, even though the dead sleep here?
Dustfinger did indeed look as if he were sleeping. A peaceful, dreamless sleep. Was this where Roxane visited him? Presumably it was. But how did he himself come to be here?
"Because this is the friend you wanted to ask about, isn't he?" The voice came from above, and when Mo looked up into the darkness he saw a bird sitting among the web of roots, a bird with gold plumage and a red mark on its breast. It was staring down at him from a bird's round eyes, but the voice that came from its beak was the voice of a woman.
"Your friend is a welcome guest here. He has brought us fire, the only element that does not obey me. And my daughters would gladly bring you here, too, because they love your voice, but they know that voice needs the breath of living flesh. And when I ordered them to bring you here all the same, as your penalty for binding the White Book, they persuaded me to spare you, telling me you have a plan that will appease me."
"And what might that be?" It was strange to hear his own voice in this place.
"Don't you know? Even though you're ready to part with everything you love for it? You are going to bring me the man you took from me. Bring me the Adderhead, Bluejay."
"Who are you?" Mo looked at the White Women. Then he looked at Dustfinger's still face.
"Guess." The bird ruffled up its golden feathers, and Mo saw that the mark on its breast was blood.
"You are Death." Mo felt the word heavy on his tongue. Could any word be heavier?
"Yes, so they call me, although I might be called by so many other names!" The bird shook itself, and golden feathers covered the leaves at Mo's feet. They fell on his hair and shoulders, and when he looked up again there was only the skeleton of a bird sitting among the roots. "I am the end and the beginning." Fur sprouted from the bones. Pointed ears grew on the bare skull.
A squirrel was looking down at Mo, clutching the roots with tiny paws, and the voice with which the bird had spoken now came from its little mouth.
"The Great Shape-Changer, that's the name I like!" The squirrel shook itself in its own turn, lost its fur, tail, and ears, and became a butterfly, a caterpillar at his feet, a big cat with a coat as dappled as the light in the Wayless Wood – and finally a marten that jumped onto the bed of moss where Dustfinger lay and curled up at the dead man's feet.
"I am the beginning of all stories, and their end," it said in the voice of the bird, in the voice of the squirrel. "I am transience and renewal. Without me nothing is born, because without me nothing dies. But you have interfered with my work, Bluejay, by binding the Book that ties my hands. I was very angry with you for that, terribly angry."
The marten bared its teeth, and Mo felt the White Women coming close to him again. Was he about to die now? His chest felt tight, he was breathing with difficulty, as he had when he felt them near him before.
"Yes, I was angry," whispered the marten, and its voice was the voice of a woman, but it suddenly sounded old. "However, my daughters calmed my rage. They love your heart as much as your voice. They say it is a great heart, very great, and it would be a pity to break it now."
The marten fell silent, and suddenly the whispering that Mo had never forgotten came again. It surrounded him, it was everywhere. "Be on your guard! Be on your guard, Bluejay!"