"Brother? I want a sister."
"Ah, do you?" Now he was smiling after all. "Good. I want another daughter, too. My first has grown too big to be picked up in my arms."
They looked at each other, and there were so many words that Meggie wanted to say, but not one that really expressed what she was feeling.
"Who's going to take the letter to the castle?" she asked quietly.
"We don't know yet," replied Mo. "It won't be easy to find someone who'll be allowed access to Violante."
Three days to go from the time Her Ugliness would get the letter and the Piper would accept the terms. Meggie hugged him as hard as she used to when she was a small child. "Please, Mo!" she said softly. "Don't go! Please! Let's all go back. Resa was right!"
"Go back? Meggie! Go back now, just when it's getting exciting?" he whispered to her. So he hadn't changed so very much after all. He still cracked jokes when he thought things were getting too serious. She loved him so much.
Mo took her face between his hands. He looked at her as if he were going to say something to her, and for a moment Meggie thought she read in his eyes that he was as frightened for her sake as she was for his.
"Believe me, Meggie!" he said. "I'm also riding to that castle to protect you. Someday you'll understand that. Didn't the two of us already know in the Castle of Night that I was binding the White Book for the Adderhead only to write those three words in it sometime in the future?"
Meggie shook her head so hard that Mo hugged her again.
"Yes, Meggie!" he said quietly. "Yes, we did."
32. AT LAST
There, in the night, where none can spy
all in my hunter's camp I lie,
and play at books that I have read
till it is time to go to bed.
These are the hills, these are the woods,
these are my starry solitudes,
and there the river by whose brink
the roaring lions come to drink.
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Land of Story Books"
Darius read wonderfully, although in his mouth the words sounded very different from the way Mortimer would have read them (and of course very different again from the voice of Orpheus, that defiler of books). Perhaps Darius's art was most like Meggie's. He read with the innocence of a child, and it seemed to Elinor as if, for the first time, she saw the boy he had once been – a thin, bespectacled boy who loved books as passionately as she did, but with the difference that for him the pages came to life.
Darius's voice was not as full and beautiful as Mortimer's, nor did it have the enthusiasm that lent Orpheus's voice its power. No, Darius took the words on his tongue as carefully as if they might break apart there, might lose their meaning if they were spoken in too loud and firm a tone. All the sadness of the world lay in Darius's voice: the magic of the weak, the quiet and cautious, and their knowledge of the pitiless minds of the strong…
The music of Orpheus's words amazed Elinor as much as on the day she'd first heard him read them. Those words didn't sound at all like the work of the vain fool who had thrown her books at the library walls. Well, that's because he stole them from someone else, thought Elinor, and then she thought of nothing more at all.
Darius's tongue didn't stumble once – perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read. He opened the door between the letters on the page so gently that Elinor felt as if they were stealing into Fenoglio's world like two children slipping into a forbidden room.
When she suddenly found a wall behind her she dared not believe what her fingers were feeling. At first you think it's a dream. Wasn't that how Resa had described it? Well, if this is a dream, thought Elinor, then I never intend to wake up! Her eyes greedily drank in the images suddenly flooding in on her: a square, a well, houses leaning against each other as if they were too old to stand up straight, women in long dresses (most of them very shabby), a flock of sparrows, pigeons, two thin cats, a cart and an old man shoveling garbage into it… Heavens above, the stench was almost unbearable, but all the same Elinor breathed it in deeply.
Ombra! She was in Ombra! What else could her surroundings be? A woman drawing water at the well turned and looked suspiciously at the heavy dark-red velvet dress Elinor was wearing. Oh, drat it! She had rented the dress from a theatrical costume agency, along with the tunic Darius was wearing. She'd asked for "something medieval," and now here she stood looking as conspicuous as a peacock among a flock of crows!
Never mind. You're here, Elinor! When something pulled her hair rather roughly, tears of joy came to her eyes. With a practiced move, she caught the fairy who was about to make off with a gray strand of it. How she'd missed those tiny, fluttering creatures! But hadn't they been blue? This one shimmered in all the iridescent colors of a soap bubble. Captivated, Elinor closed her hands around her catch and examined the fairy through her fingers. The little creature looked rather sleepy. This was wonderful! When the tiny teeth dug into her thumb and the fairy escaped, Elinor laughed out loud, making two women poke their heads out of the nearby windows.
Elinor!
She clapped her hand to her mouth, but she could still feel laughter like sherbet powder fizzing on her tongue. Oh, she was so happy, so idiotically happy. She hadn't felt like this since she was six years old and stole into her father's library to get at the books he wouldn't let her read. Perhaps you ought to drop dead here and now, Elinor, she told herself. At this very moment. How can things get any better?
Two men in colorful garments were crossing the square. Strolling players! They didn't look quite as romantic as Elinor had imagined the Motley Folk, but never mind… they were minstrels, and a brownie was carrying their instruments. His hairy face looked so bemused when he saw her that Elinor instinctively felt her nose. Had something happened to her face? No, surely her nose had always been that size, hadn't it?
"Elinor?"
She turned. Darius! For heaven's sake, she'd completely forgotten him. What was he doing under the rubbish cart?
Looking bewildered, he crawled out from between the wooden wheels and plucked a few not-very-clean blades of straw off his tunic. Oh, Darius! Of all the places in the Inkworld, he had to land under a load of garbage! Just like him! He was a walking disaster area. And the way he was looking around him – as if he'd fallen among thieves. Poor Darius. Wonderful Darius. He was still holding the sheet of paper with Orpheus's words on it, but where was the bag with all the things they'd meant to bring?
Just a moment, Elinor, you were going to bring it. She looked around – and instead of the bag saw Cerberus beside her, snuffling at the strange paving stones with great interest.
"H-h-he'd have starved to death if we'd left him behind," stuttered Darius, still brushing straw off his tunic. "A-a-anyway I suppose he can lead us to his master, and maybe he'll know where we can find the others."
Not a bad idea, Elinor told herself. I'd never have thought of that. But what was making him stammer again?
"Darius! You did it!" she whispered, hugging him so hard that his glasses slipped. "Thank you! Thank you so, so much!"
"Hey, you there, where'd that dog come from?"
Cerberus pressed close to Elinor's legs, growling. Two soldiers were facing them. The soldiers are worse than the highwaymen. Hadn't Resa told her that, too? Most of them will kill for fun sometime or other.