Inkheart

31. IN THE HILLS

Dustfinger looked across to Capricorn's village. It seemed close enough to touch. Some of the windows reflected the sky, and one of the Black Jackets was repairing a couple of broken tiles on a roof. Dustfinger saw him wipe the sweat from his brow. The fools never took off their jackets even in this heat – as if they were afraid of falling apart without that black uniform. Not that crows take off their feathers in the sun either, and these men were just a flock of crows: robbers, carrion-eaters who liked to plunge their sharp beaks into dead flesh.

The boy had been uneasy when he saw how close Dustfinger's chosen hiding place was to the village, but Dustfinger had explained why there couldn't be anywhere safer to lie low among the surrounding hills. The charred walls were hardly visible, camouflaged as they were by the spurge, brambles, and wild thyme that had taken root among the soot-blackened stones. Capricorn's men had set fire to the house soon after taking over the deserted village. The old woman who had lived there had refused to leave, but Capricorn wouldn't tolerate prying eyes so close to his new hideout and gave his followers free rein. His crows, his black vultures, had set fire to the homemade chicken run and the one-room cottage. They had trampled over the carefully tended beds in the garden and shot the donkey that was almost as old as its mistress. They came under cover of darkness as usual, and the moon, so one of Capricorn's maidservants had told Dustfinger, shone particularly brightly that night. The old woman had tottered out of the house, weeping and screaming. Then she'd cursed them. She cursed them all, but her eyes were turned on only one of them: Basta, who was standing a little way from the others because he feared the fire, his shirt very white in the moon light. Perhaps she had thought that shirt might conceal something like innocence or a kind heart. At Basta's orders, Flatnose had put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. The others had laughed until, unexpectedly, she fell down dead and lay there lifeless among her trampled garden beds. Ever since that day, Basta had feared this place more than anywhere else in the hills. No, there could be nowhere better to keep watch on Capricorn's village.

Dustfinger spent most of the time perched in one of the oaks that had once given the old woman a shady place to sit outside her cottage. Its branches hid him from the curious eyes of anyone who might stray up the hillside. He perched there motionless for hour upon hour, watching the parking lot and the houses through his binoculars. He had told Farid to stay farther away, in the hollow behind the house. The boy had reluctantly obeyed. He was sticking close to Dustfinger, close as a burr, and he didn't like the gutted cottage. "Her ghost is still here, for sure, " he kept saying. "That old woman's ghost. Suppose she was a witch?" But Dustfinger just laughed at him. There were no ghosts in this world, or if there were they never showed themselves. The hollow was so well sheltered that he had even risked lighting a fire the previous night. The boy had snared a rabbit; he was good at setting traps and more ruthless than Dustfinger. When Dustfinger caught a rabbit he didn't take it out of the trap until he was quite sure the poor thing had stopped wriggling. Farid had no such scruples. Perhaps he had gone hungry too often.

Above all he loved to watch with wonder and admiration whenever Dustfinger took a few little sticks and lit a fire. The boy had already burnt his fingers playing games with matches. The flames had bitten his nose and his lips, yet Dustfinger kept finding him making torches of cotton wool and thin twigs. Once he set light to the dry grass, and Dustfinger grabbed him and shook him like a disobedient dog until tears came into his eyes. "Listen hard, because I'm not telling you again! Fire is a dangerous creature!" he had shouted at Farid. "Fire is not your friend. It will kill you if you don't respect it. And its smoke will give you away to your enemies!"

"But it's your friend!" the boy had stammered defiantly.

"Nonsense! I'm not careless, that's all. I take note of the wind! You let it play with the fire. I've told you a hundred times: Never light a fire when it's windy. Now go and look for Gwin. "

"It is your friend, though!" the boy had muttered before running off. "Or anyway, it obeys you better than the marten does. "

He was right there, though that didn't mean much, for a marten obeys only itself, and even fire didn't obey Dustfinger in this world as well as in his own, where the flames turned to flower shapes whenever he told them to. They had forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They had roared and whispered with their crack ling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts that sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn't understand.

However, the boy was probably right. Yes, fire was his friend, but it was also the reason why Capricorn had summoned him back in that other life. "Show me how to play with fire!" he had said when his men dragged Dustfinger before him, and Dustfinger had obeyed. He still regretted teaching him so much, for Capricorn loved to give fire free rein, catching it again only when it had eaten its fill of crops and stables, houses and anything that couldn't run fast enough.

"Is he still away?" Farid was leaning against the rough bark of the tree. The boy was as quiet as a snake. Dustfinger always jumped when he appeared so suddenly.

"Yes, " he said. "Luck's on our side. " On the day they came to this hideout Capricorn's car had been standing in the parking area, but that afternoon two of the boys had begun polishing its silver paintwork until they could see their reflections in it, and shortly before it was dark he had driven off. Capricorn often had himself driven around the countryside, to the villages farther down the coast or to one of his other bases, as he liked to call them, although these so-called bases were often little more than a hut in the woods with a couple of bored men guarding it. Like Dustfinger, he couldn't drive a car, but some of his men had mastered the art of it. Hardly any of them held a driver's license, though, because to pass the test they would have to be able to read.

"Yes, I'll go over there again tonight, " murmured Dustfinger. "He won't be away much longer, and Basta is sure to be back soon, too. " Basta's car had not been in the lot at all since they'd come here. It was unusual for it to be gone so long because Basta didn't like to be away from the village for any length of time. Were he and Flatnose still lying in the ruined cottage, bound and gagged?

"Good! When do we start?" Farid sounded as if he wanted to get moving at once. "After sunset? They'll all be in the church eating then."

Dustfinger shooed a fly away from his binoculars. "I'm going alone. You're to stay here and keep an eye on our things. "

"No!"

"Yes. This will be dangerous. There's someone I want to visit, and to do that I have to get into the yard behind Capricorn's house. "

The boy gazed at him with eyes full of astonishment-eyes that sometimes looked as if they had seen too much already.

"Surprised, are you?" Dustfinger suppressed a smile. "You wouldn't have thought I had any friends in Capricorn's house!"

The boy shrugged his shoulders and looked over to the village. A vehicle was driving into the parking lot, a dusty truck with two goats tethered on the open loading platform.

"Look at that – another farmer's lost his goats!" muttered Dustfinger. "Wise of him to give them up freely, or there'd have been a note pinned to his stable door this evening."

Farid looked at him, an unspoken question in his eyes.

"The red rooster crows tomorrow, that's what the note would say. It's the only thing Capricorn's men know how to write. But sometimes they just hang a dead rooster above the door. Anyone can understand that."

"Red rooster?" The boy shook his head. "Is it a curse or something?"

"No! Good heavens, you sound like Basta. " Dustfinger laughed quietly. Capricorn's men were getting out of the truck. The smaller of them was carrying two plastic bags filled to bursting; the other was hauling the goats off the loading platform. "The red rooster means fire, the fire they'll light in the farmer's outhouses or olive groves. And sometimes the rooster crows in the attic of the house or, if a farmer has been particularly stubborn, in his children's bedroom. We almost all have something we love dearly."

The men were leading the goats into the village, Dustfinger knew by his limp that one of them was Cockerell. He had often wondered whether Capricorn knew about all the little deals his men did, or whether they were working for themselves on the side now and then.

Farid caught a grasshopper in the hollow of his hand and watched it through his fingers. "I'm going with you all the same, " he said.

"No. "

"I'm not afraid!"

"That makes it worse. "

Capricorn had had floodlights installed after the escape of his captives – outside the church, on the roof of his house, and in the parking area. They didn't exactly make it easier to walk the streets unobserved. The first night after their arrival here Dustfinger had stolen into the village, his scarred face blackened with soot because it was too easily recognizable. Capricorn had also reinforced the guards on sentry duty, probably because of all the treasure Silvertongue had brought him. By now, of course, that treasure had disappeared into the cellar of his house and was carefully locked in the heavy safes that Capricorn had fitted there. He didn't care to spend money; like the dragons of legend, he hoarded it. Sometimes he placed a ring on his finger or put a necklace around the neck of a maid who happened to take his fancy.

"Who are you going to meet?"

"None of your business. "

The boy let the grasshopper go again. It hopped rapidly away on its spindly olive-green legs.

"A woman, " said Dustfinger. "One of Capricorn's maids. She's helped me a couple of times before. "

"The one in the photo in your backpack?"

Dustfinger lowered his binoculars. "How do you know what's in my backpack?"

The boy hunched his head down between his shoulders, like someone used to being beaten for every thoughtless remark. "I was looking for matches. "

"If I catch you with your fingers in my pack again I'll tell Gwin to bite them off."

The boy grinned. "Gwin never bites me. "

He was right. The marten was crazy about Farid.

"Where is that faithless animal anyway?" Dustfinger peered through the branches. "I haven't seen him since yesterday. "

"I think he's found a female. " Farid picked up a stick and Poked at the dead leaves that lay everywhere under the trees. By night the rustling leaves would give away anyone trying to steal up to their camp in silence. "If you don't take me with you tonight, " said the boy, without looking at Dustfinger, "I'll just follow you anyway."

"If you follow me I will beat you black and blue. "

Farid lowered his head and gazed inscrutably at his bare toes. Then he glanced at the ruined walls where they had made their camp.

"And don't start on about the old woman's ghost again!" said Dustfinger crossly. "How often do I have to tell you? All the danger is over in those houses. Light a fire in the hollow if you're afraid of the dark."

"Ghosts don't fear fire. " The boy's voice was hardly more than a whisper.

Sighing, Dustfinger clambered down from his lookout post. The boy was almost as bad as Basta. He wasn't afraid of curses, ladders, or black cats, but he saw ghosts everywhere, and not just the ghost of the old woman now sleeping buried somewhere in the hard ground. Farid saw other ghosts and spirits, too, whole armies of them: malignant, all-powerful beings who tore the hearts out of poor mortal boys and ate them. He refused to believe it when Dustfinger told him they hadn't come with him, he had left them behind in a book along with the thieves who used to beat and kick him. He might well die of fear if he stayed here alone all night. "Oh, very well then, you'd better come, " said Dustfinger. "But not a squeak out of you, understand? The men down there aren't ghosts. They're real people, and they have knives and guns."

Gratefully, Farid flung his thin arms around him.

"Yes, all right, that'll do!" said Dustfinger, pushing him away. "Come on, let's see if you can stand on one hand yet."

The boy immediately obeyed. Bright red in the face, he balanced first on his right hand and then on his left, bare legs up in the air. After three wobbly seconds he landed in the prickly leaves of a rockrose, but he promptly got up, pulled a few thorns out of his foot, and tried again.

Dustfinger sat down under a tree.

It was high time to get rid of the boy, but how? You could throw stones at a dog, but a boy… Why hadn't he stayed with Silvertongue, who knew more about looking after young people? And it was Silvertongue, after all, who had brought him here. But no, the boy had to run after him, Dustfinger.

"I'm going to look for Gwin, " said Dustfinger, getting to his feet.

Without a word Farid trotted after him.