"Oh, did she?" Mo opened the book. "Suppose it does, though?" He leafed through the smooth white pages.
Meggie put her pillow close to his.
"Do you really have any idea how you might be able to read Dustfinger back into his story? Or were you making it up?"
"Nonsense. I'm useless at telling lies, as you know."
"Yes, I do. " Meggie couldn't help smiling. "Well, what's your idea?"
"I'll tell you when I know if it works. "
Mo was still leafing through Elinor's book. Frowning, he read a page, turned it over, and read another.
"Please, Mo!" Meggie moved closer to him. "Just one poem. A tiny little poem. Please. For me. "
He sighed. "Just one?"
Meggie nodded.
Outside the noise of the cars had died down. The world was as quiet as if it had spun itself into a cocoon like a moth preparing itself to slip out in the morning, young again and good as new.
"Please, Mo, read to me!" said Meggie. So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained-glass pictures, tickling the skin. Even when Meggie nodded off she could still hear them, although Mo had closed the book long ago. Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams. And not a single bad dream came over the wall for the rest of that night.
The next morning, a bird flew down and perched on Meggie's bed, a bird as orange as the light of last night's moon. She tried to catch it, but it flew away to the window where the blue sky was waiting for it. It collided with the invisible glass again and again, bumping its tiny head, until Mo opened the window and let it out,
"Well, do you still wish you could do it?" asked Mo when Meggie had watched the bird fly away until it merged with the blue of the sky,
"It was beautiful!" she said,
"Yes, but will it like this world?" asked Mo, "And what's gone to replace it in the world it came from?"
Meggie stayed by the window as Mo went downstairs to pay their bill. She remembered the last poem that Mo had read before she fell asleep. She picked up the book from her bedside table, hesitated for a moment – and opened it.
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind.
Meggie whispered the words aloud as she read them, but no moon-bird flew down from the lamp. And she must have been just imagining the smell of peppermint.
24. FENOGLIO
You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Dustfinger and Farid were waiting for them in the parking lot when they left the hotel. Over the nearby hills, a warm wind was slowly driving rain clouds toward the sea. Everything seemed gray today, even the houses with their bright color-washed walls and the flowering shrubs in the streets. Mo took the coastal road, which Elinor had said was built by the Romans, and followed it farther west.
All through the drive the sea lay to their left, its water stretching to the horizon, sometimes hidden by houses, sometimes by trees, but this morning it didn't look half as inviting as it had on the day Meggie had come down from the mountains with Elinor and Dustfinger. The gray of the sky cast a dull reflection on the blue waves, and the sea spray foamed like dirty dishwater. Several times, Meggie found her gaze wandering to the hills on her right. Capricorn's village was hidden somewhere among them. Once, she even thought she saw its pale church tower in a dark fold of the hills, and her heart beat faster though she knew that it couldn't possibly be Capricorn's church. Her feet remembered all too well how long that endless journey down the mountainside had been.
Mo was driving faster than usual, much faster. Obviously he could hardly wait to reach their destination. After a good hour they turned off the coast road and followed a narrow, winding lane through a valley gray with buildings. Green houses covered the hills here, their panes painted white for protection against the sun that was now hidden behind clouds. Only when the road went uphill did the country on both sides turn green again. The buildings gave way to natural meadow-land, and stunted olive trees lined the road, which forked unexpectedly a couple of times. Mo had to keep consulting the map he had bought, but finally the right name appeared on a sign.
They drove into a small village, little more than a square, a few dozen houses, and a church that looked very much like Capricorn's. When Meggie got out of the car she saw the sea far below. The waves were so rough on this overcast day that, even from this distance, she could see the breakers. Mo had parked in the village square beside the memorial for the dead of two world wars. The list of names was long for such a small place, Meggie thought there were almost as many names as the village had houses,
"You can leave the car unlocked. I'll keep an eye on it, " said Dustfinger as Mo was about to lock up. He threw his pack over his shoulder, put the sleepy Gwin on his chain, and sat on the steps in front of the war memorial. Farid sat down beside him without a word. Meggie looked uneasily at them both as she followed Mo.
"Remember, you promised not to mention me!" Dustfinger called after them.
"Yes, all right!" replied Mo.
Farid was playing with matches again. Meggie caught him at it when she looked around once more. By now he could extinguish the burning matches with his mouth quite well, but all the same Dustfinger took the box of matches away from him, and Farid looked sadly at his empty hands.
Meggie had met many people who loved books, sold them, collected them, printed them or, like her father, prevented them from falling apart, but she had never before met anyone who wrote the words that filled a book's pages. She didn't even know the names of the authors of some of her favorite stories, let alone what they looked like. She had seen only the characters who emerged from the words to meet her, never the writer who had made them up. It was just as Mo had said: In general one thought of writers as dead or very, very old. But the man who opened the door to them, after Mo had rung the bell twice, was neither. That is, he was certainly quite old, at least in Meggie's eyes: in his mid-sixties or even older. His face was wrinkled like a turtle's, but his hair was black, without a trace of gray (she was to find out later that he dyed it), and he didn't look at all fragile. On the contrary: He planted himself so impressively in the doorway that Meggie was instantly tongue-tied. Luckily Mo was not.
"Signor Fenoglio?" he asked.
"Yes?" The face looked less forthcoming than ever. There was disapproval in every line of it. But Mo seemed undaunted.
"I'm Mortimer Folchart," he introduced himself, "and this is my daughter, Meggie. I'm here about one of your books."
A boy appeared at the door beside Fenoglio, a little boy of about five, and a small girl joined them on the other side of the doorway. She stared curiously, first at Mo, then at Meggie. "Pippo's picked the chocolate chips out of the cake, " Meggie heard her whisper as she looked anxiously up at Mo. When his eyes twinkled at her she disappeared behind Fenoglio's back, giggling. But Fenoglio himself still looked anything but friendly.
"All the chocolate chips?" he growled. "Very well, I'm coming. You go and tell Pippo he's in serious trouble. " The little girl nodded and ran away, obviously happy to be the bearer of bad news. The small boy clung to Fenoglio's leg.