Paying no attention to the written pages, he put them aside. So many words. How long ago had he begun writing again? Meggie tried reading the first of the sheets. "Only a few ideas," muttered Fenoglio when their eyes met. "Trying to see how all this could yet end well. What part your father will play in the story…"
Meggie's heart turned over, but Elinor got in ahead of her.
"Aha! So it was you who wrote all that about Mortimer after alclass="underline" letting himself be taken prisoner, then riding to that castle, while my niece cries her eyes out at night!"
"No, it wasn't me!" Fenoglio snapped at her angrily as he quickly hid the written sheets under his clothes again. "I didn't have him talking to Death, either – though I must say I really like that part of the story. I tell you, these are just some ideas! Useless scribbling that leads nowhere! And it'll probably be the same with what I'm trying to do now. But I'll have a shot at it all the same. So kindly be quiet! Or do you want to talk the Black Prince into his grave?"
As Fenoglio dipped his pen in the ink, Meggie heard a slight sound behind her. With a clearly embarrassed expression, Rosenquartz emerged from behind the rock on which Fenoglio's writing things stood. The pale green face of a wild glass woman appeared behind him. Without a word, she scurried away past Fenoglio and Meggie.
"I don't believe it!" thundered the old man in such a loud voice that Rosenquartz put his hands over his ears. "The Black Prince is at death's door, and you're gadding about with a wild glass woman!"
"The Prince?" Rosenquartz looked at Fenoglio in such dismay that he calmed down at once. "But, but -"
"Stop all that gabbling and stir the ink!" Fenoglio snapped. "And if you were going to say something clever like, 'But the Prince is such a good man!' that never kept anyone alive yet in any world, did it?" He dipped his pen in the ink so vigorously that it splashed Rosenquartz's pink face, but Meggie saw that the old man's fingers were shaking. "Come on, then, Fenoglio!" he whispered to himself. "It's only a flower. You can do it!"
Rosenquartz was watching him with concern, but Fenoglio just stared at the blank sheet before him. He stared at it like a matador facing a bull.
"The entrance to the brownie burrow where the plant grows lies where Elfbane sets his snares!" he murmured. "And the flowers smell so horrible that the fairies give them a wide berth. But moths love them, gray moths with wings patterned as if a glass man had painted tiny death's-heads on them. Can you see them, Fenoglio? Yes…"
He put pen to paper, hesitated – and began to write.
New words. Fresh words. Meggie thought she could hear the story taking a deep breath. Nourishment at last, after all the time when Orpheus had merely fed it with Fenoglio's old words.
"There we are! He only has to be brought up to the mark, you see. He's a lazy old man," Elinor whispered to her. "Of course he can still do it, even if he won't believe it himself. You don't forget that kind of thing. I mean, could you forget how to read?"
I don't know, Meggie was going to reply, but she said nothing. Her tongue was waiting for Fenoglio's words. Healing words. Like the words she had once read for Mo.
"Why is the bear howling like that?" Meggie felt Farid's hands on her shoulders. She supposed he had been off in some place where the children couldn't find him, to try conjuring up fire again, but judging by his glum face the flames had refused to show anything.
"Oh no! Him, too!" cried the exasperated Fenoglio. "Why did Darius and I pile up all these rocks? So that anyone and everyone can march into my bedroom? I need peace! This is a matter of life and death!"
"Life and death?" Farid looked at Meggie in alarm.
"The Black Prince… he… he…" Elinor was trying to sound composed, but her voice was shaking.
"Not another word!" said Fenoglio, without looking up. "Rosenquartz! Sand!"
"Sand? Where am I supposed to find sand?" Rosenquartz's voice rose shrilly.
"Oh, you really are useless! Why do you think I dragged you off to this wilderness with me? For a nice holiday so that you can chase green glass women?" Fenoglio blew on the wet ink and handed Meggie the sheet he had just written. He looked unsure of himself.
"Make them grow, Meggie!" he said. "A few last healing leaves, warmed by the breath of sleeping brownies, picked before the winter freezes them."
Meggie stared at the paper. There it was again, the story she had last heard when she had brought Orpheus here.
Yes. The words obeyed Fenoglio once again. And she would teach them how to live.
45. WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN
The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Advice to Writers
Roxane found the plants exactly where Fenoglio had described: in the entrance of a brownie burrow where Elfbane set his snares. And Meggie, holding Despina's hand, watched again as the words that she had only just read became reality.
The leaves and flowers defied the cold wind, as if the fairies had planted them so that they could dream of summer when they saw them. But the smell rising from the flowers was the odor of decomposition and decay, and it had given the plant its name: deathbud. The flowers were put on graves to placate the White Women.
Roxane brushed the moths off the leaves, dug up two plants, and left two others, for fear of angering the wood-elves. Then she hurried back to the cave, where the White Women were already standing at the Black Prince's side, grated the roots, brewed them using the method Resa had described to her, and spooned the hot liquid into the Prince's mouth. He was already very weak, yet what they had hardly dared to hope for happened: The brew lessened the effect of the poison, lulled it to sleep, and brought back the strength of life.
And the White Women disappeared, as if Death had called them to another place.
Those last sentences had been easy to read, but many anxious hours passed before they, too, became reality. The poison was not giving in without a struggle, and the White Women came and went. Roxane strewed herbs to keep them away, as she had learned to do from Nettle, but the pale faces kept appearing again, barely visible against the gray walls of the cave, and a time came when Meggie felt they were looking not just at the Prince but at her, too.
Don't we know you? their eyes seemed to ask. Didn't your voice protect the man who has twice been ours? Meggie returned their glance for little longer than it takes to draw a breath, yet she immediately felt the longing that Mo had spoken of: longing for a place that lay far beyond all words. She took a step toward the White Women to feel their cool hands on her beating heart, to let them wipe away all her fear and pain, but other hands held her back, warm, firm hands.
"Meggie, for heaven's sake don't look at them!" Elinor murmured. "Come on, let's get you out into the fresh air. Why, you're as pale as those creatures themselves!"
And she wouldn't take no for an answer, but led Meggie outside to where the robbers were consulting together and the children played under the trees, as if they had forgotten what was going on in the cave. The grass was white with hoarfrost, white as the figures waiting for the Black Prince, but the spell of the White Women was broken as soon as Meggie heard the children's laughter. They were throwing fir cones for the marten and shouting as he chased them. Life seemed so much stronger than death, death so much stronger than life. Like the ebb and flow of the tide.
Resa was standing outside the cave, too, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, although the Strong Man had put a rabbit-skin cloak over her shoulders. "Have you seen Snapper?" she asked Elinor. "Or Gecko and his magpie?"
Battista joined them. He looked exhausted. This was the first time he had left the Prince's side. "They've gone," he said. "Snapper, Gecko, and ten others. They went after the Bluejay as soon as it was clear that the Prince wasn't likely to be able to follow him."