"… oaths are made to be broken!" Meggie finished his sentence for him.
"You said it." Dustfinger looked at the city gate. "Go now. It won't be easy to get through that crowd, but hurry all the same. Tell the old man there's a minstrel woman who lives on that hill, he -"
"He knows who Roxane is," Meggie interrupted.
"Of course!" This time Dustfinger's smile was bitter. "I keep forgetting he knows all about me. Right, tell him to let Roxane know I must be away for a few days. And ask him to keep an eye on my daughter. I suppose he knows who she is, too?"
Meggie just nodded.
"Good," Dustfinger went on. "Then tell the old man something else: If a single one of his accursed words harms Brianna, he'll rue the day he ever thought up a man who can summon fire."
"I'll tell him!" Meggie whispered. Then she ran off, pushing and shoving her way through the crowds of people trying to get into the city. Mo, she thought. Mortola shot Mo. And her dream came back to her, her red, red dream.
Fenoglio was standing at the window when Meggie stumbled into his room.
"Good heavens, what do you think you look like?" lie exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you not to go out while all these people are thronging the streets? But that boy only has to whistle and you go running to him like a well-trained puppy!"
"Stop that!" snapped Meggie, so abruptly that Fenoglio actually did fall silent. "You have to write something for me. And fast!"
She hauled him over to his desk, where Rosenquartz was quietly snoring away.
"Write what?" Confused, Fenoglio dropped into his chair.
"It's my father," faltered Meggie, taking one of the freshly sharpened quill pens out of the jug with shaking fingers. "He's here, but Mortola's shot him. He's very sick! Dustfinger didn't want to say so, but I could tell from the way he looked, so please write something, anything that will make him well again. He's in the forest in the strolling players' Secret Camp. Please, hurry!"
Fenoglio looked at her in bewilderment. "Shot your father? And he's here? But why? I don't understand!"
"You don't have to understand!" cried Meggie desperately. "You just have to help him. Dustfinger's going to take me to him. And I'll read him better, understand? I mean, he's in your story now, you can even bring back the dead, so why can't you heal a wound, too? Please!" She dipped the pen in the inkwell and put it into his hand.
"Heavens, Meggie!" murmured Fenoglio. "This is bad, but… but with the best will in the world I don't know what to write. I don't even know where he is. If at least I knew what the place looks like…"
Meggie stared at him. Suddenly, the tears she had been holding back all this time were flowing. "Please!" she whispered. "Just try! Dustfinger's waiting. Outside by the gate."
Fenoglio looked at her and gently took the pen from her hand.
"I'll try, then," he said hoarsely. "You're right, this is my story. I couldn't have helped him in the other world, but perhaps I can here. Go to the window," he told her, when she had brought him two sheets of parchment. "And look out of it, look at the people in the streets or the birds in the sky, occupy your mind somehow. Just don't look at me or I won't be able to write."
Meggie obeyed. She saw Minerva and her children down in the crowd, and the woman who lived opposite; she watched pigs grunting as they pushed past the people, soldiers with the Laughing Prince's emblem on their chests – yet she wasn't really seeing any of it. She just heard Fenoglio dip his pen in the inkwell, heard it scratching over the parchment, pausing, and writing on again. Please, she thought, please let him find, the right words. Please. The pen fell silent for a painfully long time, while down in the street a beggar pushed a child aside with his crutch. Time passed slowly, like a shadow spreading. People thronged the streets, one dog barked at another, trumpets sounded from the castle, ringing out above the rooftops.
Meggie couldn't have said how much time had passed when, with a sigh, Fenoglio put down his pen. Rosenquartz was still snoring, stretched out straight as a ruler behind the sandbox. Fenoglio reached into the box and sprinkled sand over the wet ink.
"Did you – did you think of something?" Meggie hesitantly asked.
"Yes, yes, but don't ask me if I got it right."
He handed her the parchment, and her eyes skimmed the words. There weren't many of them, but if they were indeed the right words, they would be enough.
"I didn't make him up, Meggie!" said Fenoglio in a soft voice. "Your father isn't one of my characters, like Cosimo and Dustfinger and Capricorn. He doesn't belong here. So don't hope for too much, will you?"
Meggie nodded as she rolled up the parchment. "Dustfinger wants you to keep an eye on his daughter while he's gone."
"His daughter? Dustfinger has a daughter? Did I write that? Oh yes – indeed, weren't there two of them?"
"You know one of them, anyway. She's Brianna, Her Ugliness's maid."
"Brianna?" Fenoglio looked at her in astonishment.
"Yes." Meggie picked up the leather bag that she had brought with her from the other world and went to the door. "Look after her. I'm to say that if you don't, you'll rue the day you ever thought up someone who can call on fire."
"He said that?" Fenoglio pushed back his chair and laughed. "You know something? I like him better and better. I believe I'll write another story about him, a story where he's the hero, and he doesn't -"
"Die?" Meggie opened the door. "I'll tell him, but I think he's had more than enough of being in one of your stories."
"But he is in one. He came back into my story of his own free will!" Fenoglio called after her as she hurried down the steps. "We're all in it, Meggie, up to our necks in it! When are you coming back? I want you to meet Cosimo!"
Meggie did not reply. How was she to know when she'd be coming back?
"You call that hurrying?" asked Dustfinger, when she was standing before him again, out of breath and putting Fenoglio's parchment in her bag. "What's that parchment for? Did the old man give you one of his songs for nourishment along the way?"
"Something like that," replied Meggie.
"Just so long as my name's not in it," said Dustfinger, turning toward the road.
"Is it far?" called Meggie, as she hurried after him and Farid.
"We'll be there by evening," said Dustfinger, over his shoulder.
36. SCREAMS
I want to see thirst
In the syllables,
Touch fire
In the sound;
Feel through the dark
For the scream.
Pablo Neruda, "Word," Five Decades
The White Women were still there. Resa didn't seem to see them anymore, but Mo felt their presence like shadows in sunlight. He didn't tell her about them. She looked so tired. The one thing that still kept her going was her hope that Dustfinger would soon arrive – with Meggie.
"You wait and see, he'll find her," Resa kept whispering to him when he shook with fever. How could she be so sure? As if Dustfinger had never let them down, never stolen the book, never betrayed them… Meggie. The need to see her once again was even stronger than the enticing whispers of the White Women, stronger than the pain in his breast… and who could say, perhaps this accursed story might yet take a turn for the better? Although Mo remembered Fenoglio's preference for unhappy endings only too well.
"Tell me what it looks like outside," he sometimes whispered to Resa. "It's ridiculous to be in a whole different world and see nothing of it but a cave." And Resa described what he couldn't see – the trees, so much taller and older than any trees he had ever set eyes on, the fairies like swarms of gnats among the branches, the glass men in the tall bracken, and the nameless terrors of the night. Once she caught a fairy – Dustfinger had told her how to do it – and took it to him. She held the little creature in the hollow of her hands and put it close to his ear, so that he could hear the fairy's chirping, indignant voice.