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Elinor by pointing his gun at her whenever she opened her mouth. But that didn't keep her quiet

for long.

"What do you think you're playing at?" she said angrily, without taking her eyes off the muzzle of

the gun. "I've heard that these mountains were always a paradise for robbers, but for heaven's

sake, we're living in the twenty-first century! These days people don't go pushing visitors

around at gunpoint — certainly not a youngster like him."

"As far as I'm aware people in this fine century of yours still do exactly as they always did,"

replied Basta. "And that youngster is just the right age to be apprenticed to us. I was even

younger when I joined." He pushed the door open. The darkness inside was blacker than night

itself. Basta shoved first Meggie, then Elinor in, and slammed the door behind them.

Meggie heard the key turn in the lock, then Basta saying something that made the boy laugh, and

the sound of their footsteps retreating. She reached her hands out until her fingertips touched a

wall. Her eyes were useless; she might as well have been blind, she couldn't even see where

Elinor was. But she heard her muttering, letting off steam somewhere over to her left.

"Isn't there at least a bloody light switch somewhere in this hole? Oh, to hell with it, I feel as if

I've fallen into some farfetched adventure story where the villains wear black eye patches and

throw knives. Damn, damn, damn!" Meggie had already noticed that Elinor swore a lot, and the

more upset she was the worse her language became.

"Elinor?" The voice came from somewhere in the darkness, and that one word expressed delight,

horror, and surprise.

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Meggie spun around so suddenly she almost fell over her own feet. "Mo?"

"Oh no! Meggie, not you, too! How did you get here?"

"Mo!" Meggie stumbled through the darkness toward Mo's voice. A hand took her arm and

fingers felt her face.

"Ah, at last!" A naked electric lightbulb hanging from the ceiling came on, and Elinor, looking

pleased with herself, took her finger off a dusty switch. "Electric light is a wonderful invention!"

she said. "That at least is an improvement on past centuries, don't you agree?"

"What are you two doing here, Elinor?" demanded Mo, holding Meggie very close. "I trusted you

to look after her at least as well as your books! How could you let them bring her here?"

"How could I let them?" Elinor's indignant voice almost cracked. "I never asked to baby-sit your

daughter! I know how to look after books, but children are something else, damn it! And she was

worried about you — wanted to go looking for YOU. So what does stupid Elinor do instead of

staying comfortably at home? I mean, I couldn't let the child go off on her own, I told myself. And

what do I get for my noble conduct? Insults, a gun held to my chest, and now I'm here in this hole

with you carrying on at me, too!"

"All right, all right!" Mo held Meggie at arm's length and looked her up and down.

"I'm fine, Mo!" said Meggie, although her voice shook just a little. "Honestly."

Mo nodded and glanced at Elinor. "You brought Capricorn the book?"

"Of course! You'd have given it to him yourself if I hadn't. . . ," said Elinor, turning red and

looking down at her dusty shoes.

"If you hadn't swapped them." Meggie ended her sentence for her. She reached for Mo's hand

and held it very tightly. She couldn't believe he was back with her, apparently perfectly all right

except for the scratch on his forehead, almost hidden by his dark hair. "Did they hit you?" She

felt the dried blood anxiously with her forefinger.

Mo had to smile, although he couldn't have been feeling much like it. "That's nothing. I'm fine,

too. Don't worry."

Meggie didn't think that was really much of an answer, but she asked no more questions.

"So how did you come here?" asked Mo. "Did Capricorn send his men back again?"

Elinor shook her head. "No need for that," she said bitterly. "Your slimy-tongued friend fixed it. A

nice kind of snake you brought to my house, I must say. First, he gives you away, then he serves

up the book and your daughter to this man Capricorn. 'Bring the girl and the book.' We heard

Capricorn say so himself. That was our little matchstick-eater's mission, and he carried it out to

his master's complete satisfaction."

Meggie put Mo's arm around her shoulders and buried her face against him.

"The girl and the book?" Mo held Meggie close again. "Of course. Now Capricorn can be sure I'll

do what he wants." He turned around and went over to the pile of straw lying on the floor in a

corner of the room. Sighing, he sat down on it, leaned his back against the wall, and closed his

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eyes for a moment. "Well, now we're quits, Dustfinger and I," he said. "Although I wonder how

Capricorn is going to pay him for his treachery. Because what Dustfinger wants is something

Capricorn can't give him."

"Quits? What do you mean?" Meggie sat down beside him. "And what areyou supposed to do for

Capricorn? What does he want you for, Mo?" The straw was damp, not a good place to sleep, but

still better than the bare stone floor.

Mo said nothing for what seemed an eternity. He stared at the bare walls, the locked door, the

dirty floor.

"I think it's time I told you the whole story," he said at last. "Although I would rather not have

had to tell you in a grim place like this, and not until you're a little older."

"Mo, I'm twelve!" Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth?

Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets? "Sit down, Elinor,"

said Mo, making room. "It's quite a long story."

Elinor sighed and sat down unceremoniously on the damp straw. "This can't be happening!" she

murmured. "This really can't be happening!"

"That's what I thought for nine years, Elinor," said Mo. And then he began his story.

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Chapter 16 – Once Upon A Time

He held up the book then. "I'm reading it to you for relax."

"Has it got any sports in it?"

"Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men.

Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders ... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men.

Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."

"Sounds okay," I said, and I kind of closed my eyes.

– William Goldman, The Princess Bride

You were just three years old, Meggie," Mo began. "I remember how we celebrated your

birthday. We gave you a picture book — you know, the one about the sea serpent with a

toothache winding itself around the lighthouse. ..."

Meggie nodded. It was still in her book box — Mo had twice given it a new dress. "We?" she

asked.

"Your mother and I. . ." Mo picked some straw off his pants. "I could never pass by a bookshop.

The house where we lived was very small — we called it our shoe box, our mouse hole we had

all sorts of names for it — and that very day I'd bought yet another crate full of books from a

secondhand bookseller. Elinor would have liked some of them," he added, glancing at her and

smiling. “Capricorn's book was there, too."

"You mean it belonged to him?" Meggie looked at Mo in surprise, but he shook his head.

"No, but. . . well, let's take it all in order. Your mother sighed when she saw all those new books

and asked where we were going to put them, but then of course she helped me to unpack the

crate. I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings —"

"You? You read aloud?"

"Yes, every evening. Your mother enjoyed it. That evening she chose Inkheart. She always did

like tales of adventure — stories full of brightness and darkness. She could tell you the names of

all King Arthur's knights, and she knew everything about Beowulf and Grendel, the ancient gods

and the not-quite-so-ancient heroes. She liked pirate stories, too, but most of all she loved books

that had at least a knight or a dragon or a fairy in them. She was always on the dragon's side, by

the way. There didn't seem to be any of them in Inkheart, but there was any amount of

brightness and darkness, fairies and goblins. Your mother liked goblins as well: hobgoblins,

bugaboos, the Fenoderee, thefolletti with their butterfly wings, she knew them all. So we gave

you a pile of picture books, sat down on the rug beside you, and I began to read."

Meggie leaned her head against Mo's shoulder and stared at the blank wall. She saw herself

against its dirty white background as she had looked in old photos: small, with plump legs, very

fair hair (it had darkened a little since then), her little lingers turning the pages of big picture

books.

"We enjoyed the story," her father went on. "It was exciting, well written, and full of all sorts of

amazing creatures. Your mother loved a book to lead her into an unknown land, and the world

into which Inkheart led her was exactly what she liked. Sometimes the story took a very dark

turn, and whenever the suspense got too much, your mother put a finger to her lips, and I read

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more quietly, although we were sure you were too busy with your own books to listen to a

sinister story that you wouldn't have understood anyway. I remember it as if it were yesterday:

Night had fallen long ago; it was autumn, with drafts coming in through the windows. We had lit

a fire — there was no central heating in our shoe box of a house, but it had a stove in every room

— and I began reading the seventh chapter. That's when it happened —"

Mo stopped. He stared ahead of him as if lost in his own thoughts.

"What?" whispered Meggie. "What happened, Mo?"

Her father looked at her. "They came out," he said. "There they were, all of a sudden, standing in

the doorway to the corridor outside the room, as if they'd just come in from outdoors. There was

a crackling noise when they turned to us — like someone slowly unfolding a piece of paper. I still

had their names on my lips: Basta, Dustfinger, Capricorn. Basta was holding Dustfinger by the

collar, as if he were shaking a puppy for doing something forbidden. Capricorn liked to wear red

even then, but he was nine years younger and not quite as gaunt as he is today. He wore a sword,

something I'd never seen at close range before. Basta had one hanging from his belt, too, while

Dustfinger ..." Here Mo shook his head. "Well, of course the poor fellow had nothing but the

horned marten whose tricks earned him a living. I don't think any of the three of them realized

what had happened. Indeed, I didn't understand it myself until much later. My voice had brought

them slipping out of their story like a bookmark forgotten by some reader between the pages.

How could they understand what had happened? Basta pushed Dustfinger away so roughly that

he fell down, then he tried to draw his sword, but his hands were white as paper and they

obviously didn't yet have the strength for it. The sword slipped from his fingers and fell on the

rug. Its blade looked as if there was dried blood on it, but perhaps it was only the reflection of

the fire. Capricorn stood there, looking around. He seemed dizzy; he was staggering on the spot

like a dancing bear that has been made to turn around too often. And that may well have saved

us, or so Dustfinger has always claimed. If Basta and his master had been in full command of

their powers, they'd probably have killed us outright, but they hadn't fully arrived in this world

yet, and I picked up the terrible sword lying on the rug among my books. It was heavy, much

heavier than I'd expected. I must have looked absolutely ridiculous holding the thing. I probably

clutched it like a vacuum cleaner or a walking stick, but when Capricorn staggered toward me

and I held the blade between us he stopped. I stammered something, tried to explain what had

happened, not that I understood it myself, but Capricorn just stared at me with those pale eyes,

the color of water, while Basta stood beside him with a hand on the hilt of his dagger. He seemed

to be waiting for his master to tell him to cut all our throats."

'And what about Dustfinger?" Elinor's voice sounded hoarse, too.

"He was still where he'd fallen on the rug, sitting there as " paralyzed, not making a sound. I

didn't stop to think about Dustfinger. If you open a basket and see two snakes and a lizard crawl

out, you're going to deal with the snakes first, right?"

"What about my mother?" Meggie could only whisper. She wasn't used to saying that word.

Mo looked at her. "I couldn't see her anywhere. You were still kneeling among your books,

staring wide-eyed at the strange men standing there with their heavy boots and their weapons. I

was terrified for you, but to my relief both Basta and Capricorn ignored you. 'That's enough talk,'