Inkspell

52. ANGRY ORPHEUS

Elinor lay on her air mattress staring at the ceiling. She had quarreled with Orpheus again, even though she knew she'd be punished with the cellar. Sent to bed early, Elinor! she thought bitterly. That was how her father used to punish her as a child when he caught her yet again with a book that he didn't think she should be reading at her age. Sent to bed early, sometimes at five in the afternoon. It had been particularly bad in summer, when the birds were singing and her sister was playing outside under the window – her sister who didn't care for books at all, but liked nothing so much as telling tales on Elinor when, instead of playing with her, she buried her head in a book that her father had said she mustn't read.

"Elinor, please don't quarrel with Orpheus!" Darius had

tried drumming that into her so often, but no, she just couldn't control her temper! How could she be expected to, when his wretched dog slobbered all over some of her most valuable books because his master never thought of putting them back on their shelves when he'd had his fun with them?

Recently, however, he hadn't been taking any more books off the shelves, not one. That at least was a small comfort. "He just reads Inkheart," Darius had whispered to her as they were washing the dishes together in the kitchen. Her dishwasher had broken down. As if it wasn't bad enough to be working as a kitchen maid in her own house, now her hands were all swollen with washing-up water! "He seems to be looking for words," Darius whispered. "Then he puts them together differently, writes them down, writes and writes; the wastepaper basket is brimming over. He keeps on trying, and then he reads what he's written out loud, and when nothing happens…"

"Yes? Then what?"

"Oh, nothing," Darius had said evasively, scrubbing away industriously at a pan encrusted with fat, but Elinor knew that if it was "nothing" he wouldn't have turned so embarrassed and silent.

"Then what?" she repeated – and Darius, blushing to his ears, had finally told her. Then Orpheus threw her books, her wonderful books, at the walls. He flung them on the floor in his rage – now and then one even sailed out of the window – and all because he couldn't do what Meggie had done. Inkheart was closed to him, however lovingly he cooed and implored in his velvety voice, reading and rereading the sentences he so longed to slip between.

Of course, she had run straight off when she next heard him shouting. She'd gone to save her printed children. "No!" Orpheus had yelled, so loudly that you could hear him in the kitchen. "No, no, no! Let me in, you thrice-accursed thing! I sent Dustfinger back into you! Can't you understand that? What would you be without him? I gave you back Mortola and Basta! I've earned my reward, haven't I?"

The man built like a wardrobe wasn't standing outside the library door to stop Elinor. He was probably roaming the house yet again, to see if he could find something worth stealing after all. Not in a hundred years would it have occurred to him that the books were by far the most valuable things in the place. Later, Elinor couldn't remember the names she had called Orpheus. She remembered only the book he was holding in his raised hand, a beautiful edition of the poems of William Blake. And for all her furious insults, he threw it out of the window, while the wardrobe-man grabbed her from behind and dragged her to the cellar stairs.

Oh, Meggie! thought Elinor as she lay on the air mattress, staring up at the crumbling plaster on her cellar ceiling. Why didn't you take me with you? Why didn't you at least ask if I'd like to come, too?