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about the ill-made knight and people with hairy feet going on a long journey to dark places. Have

you read them both?"

Meggie had nodded. "Lots of times." She smiled at Elinor's descriptions, stroking the bindings

before she put the books in the bag. She could remember every detail of the day when Mo had

rebound them.

"Oh dear, don't look so dismal!" Elinor had said, looking at her with concern. "You just wait —

our journey isn't going to be half as bad as those hairy-footed people's quest. It will be much

shorter, too."

Meggie would have been glad to feel as sure of that herself. The book that was the reason for

their own journey was in the trunk, under the spare tire. Elinor had put it in a plastic bag. "Don't

let Dustfinger see where it is!" she urged Meggie, before putting it into her hands. "I still don't

trust him."

But Meggie had decided to trust Dustfinger. She wanted to trust him. She needed to trust him.

Who else could lead her to Mo?

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Chapter 13 – Capricorn’s Village

"But to the last question," Zelig replied, "he probably flew to beyond the Dark Regions,

where people don't go and cattle don't stray, where the sky is copper, the earth iron, and

where the evil forces live under roofs of petrified toadstools and in tunnels abandoned by

moles."

– Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus

The sun was already high in the cloudless sky when they set off. Soon the air was so hot and

muggy in Elinor's car that Meggie's T-shirt was sticking to her skin with sweat. Elinor opened

her window and passed a bottle of water around. She herself was wearing a knitted jacket

buttoned up to her chin, and when Meggie wasn't thinking of Mo or Capricorn she wondered

whether Elinor might melt away inside it.

Dustfinger sat in the backseat, so silent you could almost have forgotten he was there. He had

put Gwin on his lap. The marten slept while Dustfinger's hands restlessly stroked his fur, passing

over it again and again. Now and then Meggie turned to look at him. He was usually gazing out of

the window indifferently, as if he were looking straight through the mountains and trees, houses

and rocky slopes passing by outside. His expression seemed perfectly empty, as if he were

thinking of something far away, and once, when Meggie glanced around, there was such sadness

on his scarred face that she quickly turned to look out of the windshield ahead of her.

She would have liked to have an animal on her own lap during this long, long journey. Perhaps it

would have driven away the dark thoughts that insisted on coming into her mind. Outside, the

world was a place of gently unfolding mountains rising higher and higher. Sometimes it seemed

as if they would crush the road between their gray and rocky sides. But worse than the

mountains were the tunnels. Pictures seemed to lurk in them that not even Gwin's warm body

could have kept at bay. They seemed to be hiding there in the darkness, waiting for Meggie:

pictures of Mo in some grim, cold place, and of Capricorn. . . . Meggie knew it must be Capricorn,

although his face was different every time.

She tried reading for a while, but soon noticed that she wasn't taking in a word of what she read,

so she gave it up and stared out of the window like Dustfinger. Elinor chose minor roads without

much traffic on them. "Otherwise the driving gets so boring," she said. It made no difference to

Meggie. She just wanted to arrive. She looked impatiently at the mountains and the houses

where other people lived. Sometimes, through the window of a car coming the other way, she

caught a glimpse of a stranger's face, then it was gone, like a book you open then close at once.

When they were driving through one village she saw a man by the roadside sticking a Band-Aid

on the grazed knee of a tearful little girl. He was stroking her hair

comfortingly, and Meggie couldn't help remembering often Mo had done that for her, how he

sometimes chased all around the house, cursing when he couldn't find a Band-Aid in time. The

memory brought tears to her eyes.

"Heavens above, it's quieter in here than a pharaoh's burial chamber!" said Elinor at some point.

(Meggie thought she said "Heavens above" quite a lot.) "Couldn't one of you at least say

something now and then? 'Oh, what a lovely landscape!' for instance, or, 'That's a very fine

castle!' If you keep as deathly quiet as this I'll be falling asleep at the wheel any minute now."

She still hadn't undone a single button of her knitted jacket.

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"I don't see any castle," muttered Meggie, but it wasn't long before Elinor spotted one. "Sixteenth

century," she announced as the ruined walls appeared on a mountainside. "Tragic story.

Forbidden love, pursuit, death, grief, and pain." And as they passed between the strong and

silent rock walls Elinor told the tale of a battle that had raged in this very place over six hundred

years ago. "To this day, if you dig among the stones you'll still find bones and dented helmets."

She seemed to know a story about every church tower. Some were so unlikely that Meggie

wrinkled her brow in disbelief, and Elinor, without taking her eyes off the road, always

responded, "No, really, that's just what happened!" She seemed to be particularly fond of

bloodthirsty stories: tales of the beheading of unhappy lovers, or princes walled up alive. "Yes,

everything looks very peaceful now," she remarked when Meggie turned a little pale at one of

these stories. "But I can tell you there s always a sad story somewhere. Ah, well, times were

more exciting a few hundred years ago."

Meggie didn't know what was so exciting about time if Elinor was to be believed, your only

choice was dying of the plague or getting slaughtered by invaders but Elinor's cheeks glowed

pink with excitement at the sight of some burnt -out old castle, and whenever she told stories of

the warrior princes and greedy bishops who had spread terror and death abroad in the very

mountains in which they were now driving on modern paved roads, a romantic gleam lit her

usually chilly pebble eyes.

"My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story" said Dustfinger at last. These

were the first words he had spoken since they set out.

"The wrong story? The wrong period, you mean. Yes, I've often thought so myself."

"Call it what you like," said Dustfinger. "Anyway, you should get along well with Capricorn. He

likes the same kinds of stories as you."

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" asked Elinor, offended. The comparison seemed to trouble

her, for after that she kept quiet for almost an hour, which left Meggie with nothing to distract

her from her miserable thoughts and the frightening pictures they conjured up for her in every

tunnel.

Twilight was beginning to fall when the mountains drew back from the road and the sea

suddenly appeared beyond green hills, a sea as wide as another sky. The sinking sun made it

glisten like the skin of a beautiful snake. It was a long time since Meggie had seen the sea, and

then it had been a cold sea, slate gray and pale from the wind. This sea looked different, very

different. It warmed Meggie's heart just to see it, but all too often it appeared behind the tall,

ugly buildings covering the narrow strip of land that lay between the water and the encroaching

hills. Sometimes, the hills reached all the way down to the sea, and in the light of the setting sun

they looked like giant waves that had rolled up onto the land.

As they followed the winding coastal road Elinor began telling stories again: tales of the Romans

who, she said, had built the road they were on, and how they feared the savage inhabitants of

this narrow strip of land. Meggie was only half listening. Palm trees grew beside the road, their

fronds dusty and sharp-edged. Giant agaves flowered among the palms, looking like spiders

squatting there with their long spiny leaves. The light behind them turned pink and lemon

yellow as the sun sank farther down toward the sea, and dark blue trickled down from the sky

like ink flowing into water. It was so beautiful a sight that it almost hurt to look at it. Meggie had

thought the place where Capricorn lived would be quite different. Beauty and fear make uneasy

companions.

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They drove through a small town, past houses as bright as if a child had painted them. They

were color-washed orange and pink, red and yellow. A great many were yellow: pale yellow,

brownish yellow, sandy yellow, dirty yellow, and they had green shutters and red-brown roofs.

Even the gathering twilight couldn't drain them of their brightness.

"It doesn't seem so very dangerous here," remarked Meggie as they drove past another pink

house.

"That's because you keeping looking to your left," said Dustfinger behind her. "But there's

always a light side and a dark side. Look to your right for a change."

Meggie did as he said. At first she saw nothing but the brightly colored houses there, too. They

crowded close to the roadside, leaning against each other as if they were arm in arm-But then

the houses were suddenly left behind, and steep hills of the night already settling among their

folds lined the roadstead. Yes, Dustfinger was right. It looked sinister over there, and the few

houses left seemed to be drowning in the gathering dusk.

It quickly grew darker, for night falls fast in the south, and Meggie was glad that Elinor was

driving along the well-lit coastal road. But all too soon Dustfinger told her to turn off along a

minor road leading away from the coast, away from the sea and the brightly colored houses, and

into the dark.

The road wound farther and farther into the hills, going up and down as the slopes by the

roadside grew steeper and steeper. The light of the headlights fell on brambles, on vines run

wild, and on olive trees crouching like bent old men beside the road.

Only twice did they meet another vehicle coming toward them. Now and then the lights of a

village emerged from the darkness. But the roads along which Dustfinger guided Elinor led away

from the lights and deeper and deeper into the night. Several times the beam of the headlights

fell on ruined houses, but Elinor didn't know stories about any of them. No princes had lived in

those wretched hovels, no red-robed bishops, only farmers and laborers whose stories no one

had written down, and now they were lost, buried under wild thyme and fast-growing spurge.

"Are we still going the right way?" asked Elinor in a muted voice, as if the world around her were

too quiet for anyone to speak out loud. "Where on earth do we find a village in this godforsaken

wilderness? We've probably taken at least two wrong turns already."

Dustfinger only shook his head. "We're going the right way," he replied. "Once we're over that

hill you'll be able to see the houses."

"I certainly hope so!" muttered Elinor. "I can hardly make out the road. Heavens above, I had no

idea anywhere in the world was still so dark. Couldn't you have told me what a long way it was?

Then I'd have filled up the tank again. I don't even know if we have enough gas to make it back

to the coast."

"So whose car is this?" Dustfinger snapped back. "Mine? I told you I don't know the first thing

about cars. Now, keep your eyes on the road. We'll be coming to the bridge any moment."

"Bridge?" Elinor drove around the next bend and suddenly stamped on the brake. Right across

the road, lit by two floodlights, was a metal barrier. It looked rusty, as if it had stood there for

years.

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"There!" said Elinor, clapping her hands on the steering wheel. "We have gone the wrong way. I

told you so."

"No, we haven't." Dustfinger took Gwin off his shoulder and got out of the car. He looked around,

listening intently as he approached the barrier, then dragged it over to the side of the road.

Elinor's look of disbelief almost made Meggie laugh out loud. "Has the man gone right out of his

mind?" she whispered. "He doesn't think I'm going to drive down a closed road in this darkness,

does he?"

All the same, she started the engine when Dustfinger impatiently waved her on. As soon as she

was past him he pulled the barrier back across the road.

"No need to look at me like that!" he said, climbing back into the car. "The barrier's always there.

Capricorn had it put up to keep unwanted visitors away. Not that people often venture up here.

Capricorn spreads stories around the village that keep most of them at a distance, but —"

"What sort of stories?" Meggie interrupted him, although she didn't think she really wanted to

know.

"Bloodcurdling stories," said Dustfinger. "Like most folk, the locals around here are

superstitious. The most common tale is that the devil himself lives on the far side of that hill."

Meggie was angry with herself for being scared, but now she just couldn't take her eyes off the