Inkspell

19. BIRTHDAY MORNING

Meggie woke with a start. She had been dreaming, and her dreams had been bad, but she didn't remember what they were about, only the fear they left behind like a knife wound in the heart. Noise came to her ears, shouting and loud laughter, children's voices, the barking of dogs, the grunting of pigs, hammering, sawing. She felt sunlight on her face, and the air she was breathing smelled of dung and freshly baked bread. Where was she? Only when she saw Fenoglio sitting at his writing desk did she remember. Ombra – she was in Ombra.

"Good morning!" Fenoglio had obviously slept extremely well. He looked very pleased with himself and the world in general. Well, who should be pleased with it if not the man who made it up? The glass man Meggie had seen last night, asleep beside the jug of quill pens, was standing beside him.

"Say hello to our guest, Rosenquartz!" Fenoglio told him.

The glass man bowed stiffly in Meggie's direction, took Fenoglio's dripping pen, wiped it on a rag, and put it back in the jug with the others. Then he bent to look at what Fenoglio had written. "Ah. Not a song about this Bluejay for a change!" he snapped. "Are you taking this one up to the castle today?"

"I am indeed," said Fenoglio loftily. "Now, do please make sure the ink doesn't run."

The glass man wrinkled his nose, as if he had never allowed such a thing to happen, put both hands into the bowl of sand standing next to the pens, and scattered the fine grains over the freshly written parchment with practiced energy.

"Rosenquartz, how often do I have to tell you?" snapped Fenoglio. "Too much sand, too much energy. That way you'll smudge everything."

The glass man brushed a couple of grains of sand off his hands and folded his arms, looking injured. "Then you do better!" His voice reminded Meggie of the noise you make tapping a glass with your fingernails. "I'd certainly like to see that!" he added sharply, examining Fenoglio's clumsy fingers with such scorn that Meggie had to laugh.

"Me, too!" she said, pulling her dress on over her head. A few withered flowers from the Wayless Wood still clung to it, and Meggie couldn't help thinking of Farid. Had he found Dustfinger?

"Hear that?" Rosenquartz cast her a friendly glance. "She sounds like a clever girl."

"Oh yes, Meggie's very clever," replied Fenoglio. "The two of us have been through a lot together. It's thanks to her that I'm sitting here now, trying to tell a glass man the right way to scatter sand over ink."

Rosenquartz looked curiously at Meggie, but he didn't ask what Fenoglio's mysterious comment meant. Meggie went up to the desk and looked over the old man's shoulder. "Your handwriting's easier to read these days," she said.

"Thank you very much," murmured Fenoglio. "You should know. But look – do you see that smudged P?"

"If you are seriously suggesting that I'm to blame for it," said Rosenquartz in his ringing little voice, "then this is the last time I hold your pens for you, and I'm going straight off to look for a scribe who won't expect me to work before breakfast."

"All right, all right, I'm not blaming you. I smudged the P myself!" Fenoglio winked at Meggie. "He's easily offended," he whispered confidentially to her. "His pride is as fragile as his limbs."

The glass man turned his back on Fenoglio without a word, picked up the rag he had used to clean the pen, and tried to wipe a still-damp inkspot off his arm. His limbs were not entirely colorless, like those of the glass people who had lived in Elinor's garden. Everything about him was pale pink, like the flowers of a wild rose. Only his hair was slightly darker.

"You didn't say anything about my new song," Fenoglio pointed out. "Wonderful, don't you agree?"

"Not bad," replied Rosenquartz without turning around, and he began polishing up his feet.

"Not bad? It's a masterpiece, you maggot-colored, ink-smudging pen-holder!" Fenoglio struck the desk so hard that the glass man fell over on his back like a beetle. "I'm going to market today to get a new glass man, one who knows about these things and will appreciate my robber songs, too!" He opened a longish box and took out a stick of sealing wax. "At least you haven't forgotten to get a flame for the wax this time!" he growled.

Rosenquartz snatched the sealing wax from his hand and held it in the flame of the candle that stood beside the jug. His face expressionless, he placed the melting end of the wax on the parchment roll, waved his glass hand over the red seal a couple of times, and then cast Fenoglio an imperious glance, whereupon Fenoglio solemnly pressed the ring he wore on his middle finger down onto the soft wax.

"F for Fenoglio, F for fantasy, F for fabulous," he announced. "There we are."

"B for breakfast would sound better just now," said Rosenquartz, but Fenoglio ignored this remark.

"What did you think of the song for the prince?" he asked Meggie.

"I… er… I couldn't read it all because you two were quarreling," she said evasively. She didn't want to make Fenoglio even gloomier by saying that the lines struck her as familiar. "Why does the Laughing Prince want such a sad poem?" she asked instead.

"Because his son is dead," replied Fenoglio. "One sad song after another, that's all he wants to hear since Cosimo's death. I'm tired of it!" Sighing, he put the parchment back on his desk and went over to the chest standing under the window.

"Cosimo? Cosimo the Fair is dead?" Meggie couldn't conceal her disappointment. Resa had told her so much about the Laughing Prince's son: Everyone who saw him loved him, even the Adderhead feared him, his peasants brought their sick children to him because they believed anyone as beautiful as an angel could cure all sicknesses, too…

Fenoglio sighed. "Yes, it's terrible. And a bitter lesson. This story isn't my story anymore! It's developed a will of its own."

"Oh no, here we go again!" Rosenquartz groaned. "His story! I'll never understand all this talk. Maybe you really ought to go and see one of those physicians who cure sick minds."

"My dear Rosenquartz," Fenoglio replied, "all this talk, as you call it, is above your transparent little head. But believe me, Meggie knows just what I'm talking about!" He opened the chest, looking cross, and took out a long, dark blue robe. "I ought to get a new one made," he muttered. "Yes, I definitely ought to. This is no robe for a man whose words are sung up and down the land, a man commissioned by a prince to put his grief for his son into words! Just look at the sleeves! Holes everywhere. In spite of Minerva's sprigs of lavender, the moths have been at it."

"It's good enough for a poor poet," remarked the glass man in matter-of-fact tones.

Fenoglio put the robe back in the chest and let the lid fall into place with a dull thud. "One of these days," he said, "I am going to throw something really hard at you!"

This threat did not seem to bother Rosenquartz unduly. The two went on wrangling about this and that; it seemed to be a kind of game they played, and they had obviously forgotten Meggie’s presence entirely. She went to the window, pushed aside the fabric over it, and looked out. It was going to be a sunny day, although mist still lingered above the hills surrounding the city. Which was the hill where the house of the minstrel woman stood, the place where Farid hoped to find Dustfinger? She had forgotten. Would he come back if he actually found the fire-eater, or would he just go off with him, like last time, forgetting that she was here, too? Meggie didn't even try to work out just how that idea made her feel. There was enough turmoil in her heart already, so much turmoil that she'd have liked to ask Fenoglio for a mirror, just to see herself for a moment – her own familiar face amid all the strangeness surrounding her, all the strange feelings in her heart. But instead she let her gaze wander over the misty hills.

How far did Fenoglio's world go? Just as far as he had described it? "Interesting!" he had whispered, back when Basta had dragged the two of them off to Capricorn's village. "Do you know, this place is very like one of the settings I thought up for Inkheart?" It must have been Ombra he meant. The hills around Ombra really did look like those over which Meggie had escaped with Mo and Elinor when Dustfinger set them free from Capricorn's dungeons, except that these seemed even greener, if that was possible, and more enchanted. As if every leaf suggested that fairies and fire-elves lived under the trees. And the houses and streets you could see from Fenoglio's room might have been in Capricorn's village, if they hadn't been so much noisier and more colorful.

"Just look at the crowds – they all want to go up to the castle today," said Fenoglio behind her. "Traveling peddlers, peasants, craftsmen, rich merchants, beggars, they'll all be going there to celebrate the birthday, to earn or spend a few coins, to enjoy themselves, and most of all to stare at the grand folk."

Meggie looked at the castle walls. They rose above the russet rooftops almost menacingly. Black banners on the towers flapped in the wind.

"How long has Cosimo been dead?"

"Hardly a year yet. I'd just moved into this room. As you can imagine, your voice took me straight to where it plucked the Shadow out of the story: the middle of Capricorn's fortress. Fortunately, all was hopeless confusion there because the monstrous Shadow had disappeared, and none of the fire-raisers noticed an old man suddenly standing among them looking foolish. I spent a couple of dreadful days in the forest, and unfortunately I didn't, like you, have a clever companion who could use a knife, catch rabbits, and kindle fire with a couple of dry twigs. But the Black Prince himself finally picked me up – imagine how I stared when he was suddenly there in front of me. I didn't think I knew any of the men who were with him, but I'll admit that I could never remember the minor characters in my stories very clearly – only vaguely, if at all.

"Well, be that as it may, one of them took me to Ombra, ragged and destitute as I was. But luckily I had a ring that I could sell. A goldsmith gave me enough for it to allow me to rent this room from Minerva, and all seemed to be going well. Very well indeed, in fact. I thought up stories, and stories about stories, better than any I'd made up for a long time. The words came pouring out of me, but when I'd only just made my name with the first songs I wrote for the Laughing Prince, when the strolling players had just begun to find that they liked my verses, Firefox goes and burns down a few farms by the river – and Cosimo the Fair sets out to put an end to Firefox and his gang once and for all. Good, I thought, why not? How was I to guess that he'd get himself killed? I had such plans for him! He was to be a truly great prince, a blessing to his subjects, and my story was going to give them a happy ending when he freed this world from the Adderhead. But instead he gets himself killed by a band of fire-raisers in the Wayless Wood!"

Fenoglio sighed.

"At first his father wouldn't believe he was dead. For Cosimo's face was badly burned, like those of all the other dead who were brought back. The fire had done its work, but when months passed, and still he didn't return…" Fenoglio sighed again, and once more looked in the chest where the moth-eaten robe lay. He handed Meggie two long, pale blue woolen stockings, a couple of leather straps, and a much-washed, dark blue dress. "I'm afraid this will be too big for you – it belongs to Minerva's second daughter, and she's the same size as her mother," he said, "but what you're wearing now urgently needs a wash. You can keep the stockings up with those garters – not very comfortable, but you'll get used to it. Good Lord, you really have grown, Meggie," he said, turning his back to her as she changed her clothes. "Rosenquartz! You turn around, too!"

It was true that the dress didn't fit particularly well, and Meggie suddenly felt almost glad that Fenoglio had no mirror. At home she had been studying her reflection quite often recently. It was odd to watch your own body changing, as if you were a butterfly coming out of its chrysalis.

"Ready?" asked Fenoglio, turning around. "Ah well, that'll do, although such a pretty girl really deserves a prettier dress." He looked down at himself and sighed. "I think I'd better stay as I am; at least this robe doesn't have any holes in it. And what does it matter? The castle will be swarming with entertainers and fine folk today, so no one will take any notice of the two of us."

"Two? What do you mean?" Rosenquartz put down the blade he had been using to sharpen a pen. "Aren't you going to take me with you?"

"Are you crazy? Just for me to carry you back in pieces? No. Anyway, you'd have to listen to that bad poem I'm taking to the prince."

Rosenquartz was still grumbling as Fenoglio closed the door behind them. The wooden staircase that Meggie had hardly been able to climb last night, exhausted as she was, led down to a yard surrounded by houses, with pigsties, woodsheds, and vegetable plots competing for what little space was left. A narrow little stream wound its way through the yard, two children were shooing a pig away from the vegetable beds, and a woman with a baby in her arms was feeding a flock of skinny hens.

"A wonderful morning, isn't it, Minerva?" Fenoglio called to her, as Meggie hesitantly followed him down the last steep steps.

Minerva came to the foot of the stairs. A girl of perhaps six was clinging to her skirt and stared suspiciously at Meggie. She stopped, feeling unsure of herself. Perhaps they can see it, she thought, perhaps they can see I don't belong here…

"Watch out!" the little girl called, but before Meggie realized what she meant, something was pulling her hair. The little girl threw a clod of earth, and a fairy fluttered away empty-handed, scolding crossly.

"Good heavens, where are you from?" asked Minerva, helping Meggie down from the steps. "Aren't there any fairies there? They're crazy for human hair, particularly when it's as pretty as yours. If you don't pin it up you'll soon be bald. And anyway, you're too old to wear it loose, not unless you want to be taken for one of the strolling players."

Minerva was small and stocky, not much taller than Meggie. "My word, how thin you are!" she said. "That dress is almost slipping off your shoulders. I'll take it in for you this evening. Has she had any breakfast?" she asked and shook her head at the sight of Fenoglio's baffled expression. "Dear Lord, surely you didn't forget to give the girl something to eat?"

Fenoglio helplessly raised his hands. "I'm an old man, Minerva!" he cried. "I do forget things! What's the matter with everyone this morning? I was in such a good mood, but you all keep going on like this. Rosenquartz has already been infuriating me."

By way of answer Minerva dumped the baby in his arms and led Meggie off with her.

"And whose baby is this?" inquired Fenoglio, following her. "Aren't there enough children running around the place already?"

"It's my eldest daughter's," was all Minerva replied, "and you've seen it a couple of times before. Are you getting so forgetful that I'll have to introduce my own children to you?"

Minerva's younger children were called Despina and Ivo; Ivo was the boy who had been carrying Fenoglio's torch last night. He smiled at Meggie as she and his mother came into the kitchen. Minerva made Meggie eat a plate of polenta and two slices of bread spread with a paste that smelled of olives. The milk she gave her was so rich that Meggie's tongue felt coated with cream after the first sip. As she ate, Minerva pinned up her hair for her. Meggie scarcely recognized herself when Minerva pushed a bowl of water over to her so that she could see her reflection.

"Where did you get those boots?" asked Ivo. His sister was still inspecting Meggie like some strange animal that had lost its way and wandered into their kitchen. Where indeed? Meggie hastily tried to pull down the dress to hide her boots, but it was too short.

"Meggie comes from far away," explained Fenoglio, who had noticed her confusion. "Very far away. A place where there are people with three legs and others whose noses grow on their chins."

The children stared first at him and then at Meggie.

"Oh, stop it! What nonsense you do talk!" Minerva lightly cuffed the back of his head. "They believe every word you say. One of these days they'll be setting off to look for all the crazy places you tell them about, and I'll be left childless."

Meggie almost choked on the rich milk. She had quite forgotten her homesickness, but Minerva's words brought it back – and her guilty conscience, too. She had been away from home five days now, if she'd been keeping count correctly.

"You and your stories!" Minerva handed Fenoglio a mug of milk. "As if it wasn't enough for you to keep telling them those robber tales. Do you know what Ivo said to me yesterday? When I'm grown-up I'm going to join the robbers, too! He wants to be like the Bluejay! What do you think you're doing, pray? Tell them about Cosimo for all I care, tell them about the giants, or the Black Prince and his bear, but not another word about that Bluejay, understand?"

"Yes, yes, not another word," muttered Fenoglio. "But don't blame me if the boy picks up one of the songs about him from somewhere. Everyone's singing them."

Meggie had no idea what they were talking about, but in her mind she was already up at the castle, anyway. Resa had told her that the birds' nests clustered together on its walls so thickly that sometimes the twittering drowned out the minstrels' songs. And fairies nested there, too, she said, fairies who were pale gray like the stone of the castle walls because they often nibbled human food, instead of living on flowers and fruits like their sisters in the wild. And there were said to be trees in the Inner Courtyard of the castle that grew nowhere else except in the very heart of the Wayless Wood, trees with leaves that murmured in the wind like a chorus of human voices and foretold the future on moonless nights – but in a language that no one could understand.

"Would you like anything else to eat?"

Meggie started and came down to earth again.

"Inky infernos!" Fenoglio rose and handed the baby back to Minerva. "Do you want to fatten her up until she fits into that dress? We must be off, or we'll miss half of it. The prince has asked me to bring him the new song before midday, and you know he doesn't like people to be late."

"No, I don't know any such thing," replied Minerva grumpily, as Fenoglio propelled Meggie toward the door. "Because I don't go in and out of the castle the way you do. What does our fine prince want from you this time – another lament?"

"Yes, I've had enough of them, too, but he pays well. Would you rather I was penniless and you had to look for a new lodger?"

"Very well, very well," grumbled Minerva, clearing the children's empty bowls off the table. "I tell you what, though: This prince of ours will sigh and lament himself to death, and then the Adderhead will send his men-at-arms. They'll settle here like flies on fresh horse dung, on the excuse of just wanting to protect their master's poor fatherless grandson."

Fenoglio turned so abruptly that he almost sent Meggie flying. "No, Minerva. No!" he said firmly. "That won't happen. Not as long as I live – which I hope will be a very long time yet!"

"Oh yes?" Minerva removed her son's fingers from the tub of butter. "And how are you going to prevent it? With your robber songs? Do you think some fool with a feathered mask, playing the hero because he's listened to your songs too often, can keep the men-at-arms away from our city? Heroes end up on the gallows, Fenoglio," she continued, lowering her voice, and Meggie could hear the fear behind her mockery. "It may be different in your songs, but in real life princes hang them, and the finest of words don't change that."

The two children looked uneasily at their mother, and Minerva stroked their hair as if that would wipe away her own words. But Fenoglio merely shrugged. "Oh, come on, you see everything in such dismal hues!" he said. "You underestimate the power of words, believe me! They are strong, stronger than you think. Ask Meggie!"

But before Minerva could do just that, he was pushing Meggie out of the house. "Ivo, Despina, do you want to come?" he called to the children. "I'll bring them home safe and sound. I always do!" he added, as Minerva's anxious face appeared in the doorway. "The best entertainers far and wide will be at the castle today. They'll have come from very far away. Your two can't miss this chance!"

As soon as they stepped out of the alley, they were caught up in the crowd streaming along. People came thronging up from all sides: shabbily dressed peasants, beggars, women with children, and men whose wealth showed not only in the magnificence of their embroidered sleeves but most of all in the servants who roughly forced a path through the crowd for them. Riders drove their horses through the throng without a thought for those they pushed against the walls, litters were jammed in the crush of bodies, however angrily the litter-bearers cursed and shouted.

"Devil take it, this is worse than a market day!" Fenoglio shouted to Meggie above the heads around them. Ivo darted through the crowd, quick as a herring in the sea, but Despina looked so alarmed that Fenoglio finally put her up on his shoulders before she was squashed between baskets and people's bellies. Meggie felt her own heart beat faster, what with all the confusion, the pushing and shoving, the thousands of smells and the voices filling the air.

"Look around you, Meggie! Isn't it wonderful?" cried Fenoglio proudly.

It was indeed. It was just as Meggie had imagined it on all those evenings when Resa had told her about the Inkworld. Her senses were quite dazed. Eyes, ears… they could scarcely take in a tenth of all that was going on around her. Music came from somewhere: trumpets, jingles, drums… and then the street widened, spewing her and all the others out in front of the castle walls. They towered among the other buildings, tall and massive, as if they had been built by men larger than those now flocking to the gateway. Armed guards stood in front of the gate, with their helmets reflecting the pale morning light. Their cloaks were dark green, like the tunics they wore over their coats of mail. Both bore the emblem of the Laughing Prince. Resa had described it to Meggie: a lion on a green background, surrounded by white roses – but it had changed. The lion wept silver tears now, and the roses twined around a broken heart.

The guards let most of the crowd pass, only occasionally barring someone's way with the shaft of a spear or a mailed fist. No one seemed troubled by that, they went on pressing in, and Meggie, too, finally found herself in the shadow of those foot-wide walls. Of course she had been in castles before, with Mo, but it felt quite different to be going in past guards armed with spears instead of a kiosk selling picture postcards. The walls seemed so much more threatening and forbidding. Look, they seemed to say, see how small you all are, how powerless and fragile.

Fenoglio appeared to feel none of this; he was beaming like a child at Christmas. He ignored both the portcullis above their heads and the slits through which hot pitch could be tipped out on the heads of uninvited guests. Meggie, on the contrary, instinctively looked up as they passed and wondered why the traces of pitch on the weathered stone looked so fresh. But finally the open sky was above her again, clear and blue, as if it had been swept clean for the princely birthday – and Meggie was in the Outer Courtyard of Ombra Castle.