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Capricorn said finally as I became more and more entangled in my own words. 'Never mind how

we arrived in this miserable place. Just send us back at once, you accursed magician, or Basta

here will cut the talkative tongue out of your mouth.' Which didn't sound exactly reassuring, and

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I'd read enough about those two in the first chapters of the book to know that Capricorn meant

what he said. I was so desperately wondering how to end the nightmare that I felt quite dizzy. I

picked up the book. Perhaps if I read the same passage again, I thought... I tried. I stumbled over

the words while Capricorn glared at me and Basta drew the knife from his belt. Nothing

happened. The two of them just stood there in my house, showing no sign of going back into

their story. And suddenly I knew for certain that they meant to kill us. I put down the fatal book

and picked up the sword I'd dropped on the rug. Basta tried to get to it before me, but I moved

faster. I had to hold the wretched thing with both hands; I still remember how cold the hilt felt.

Don't ask me how I did it, but I managed to drive Basta and Capricorn out into the hallway.

There were several breakages because I was brandishing the sword so clumsily. You began to

cry, and I wanted to turn around and tell you it all just a bad dream, but I was fully occupied with

keeping Basta's knife away from me with Capricorn's sword. So it's happened, I kept thinking,

you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes

quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as

much fun as I'd expected. The two of them would certainly have killed me if they hadn't still

been rather weak at the knees. Capricorn cursed me, his eyes almost bursting out of his head in

fury. Basta swore and threatened, giving me a nasty cut on my upper arm, but then, suddenly,

the front door was thrown open and they both disappeared into the night, still reeling like

drunks. My hands were trembling so much I could hardly manage to bolt the door. I leaned

against it and listened for sounds outside, but all I heard was my own racing heart. Then I heard

you crying in the living room, and remembered that there had been a third man. I staggered

back, still holding the sword, and there stood Dustfinger in the middle of the room. He had no

weapon, just the marten sitting on his shoulders. He flinched, face white as a sheet, when I came

toward him. I must have been a terrible sight with the blood running down my arm, and I was

shaking all over, whether from fear or anger I couldn't have said. 'Please,' he kept whispering,

'don't kill me! I have nothing to do with those two. I'm only a juggler, just a harmless fire-eater. I

can show you.' And I said, 'Yes, yes, all right, I know who you are, you're Dustfinger — I even

know your name, you see.' At which he cowered in awe before me — a magician, he thought,

who seemed to know all about him and who had plucked him out of his world as easily as

picking an apple °if a tree. The marten scampered along his arm, jumped down on the carpet,

and ran toward you. You stopped crying and put out your hand. 'Careful, he bites,' said

Dustfinger, shooing him away from you. I took no notice. I suddenly realized how quiet the room

was, that was all. How quiet and how empty. I saw the book lying open on the carpet where I had

dropped it, and I saw the cushion where your mother had been sitting. And she wasn't there.

Where was she? I called her name again and again; I ran from room to room. But she had gone."

Elinor was sitting bolt upright, staring at him in horror. "For heaven's sake, Mortimer, what are

you saying?" she cried. "You told me she went away on some stupid adventure holiday and

never came back!"

Mo leaned his head against the wall. "I had to think up something, Elinor," he said. "I mean, I

could hardly tell the truth, could I?"

Meggie stroked his arm where his shirt hid the long, pale scar. "You always told me you'd cut

your arm climbing through a broken window."

"Yes, I know. The truth would have sounded too crazy, don't you think?"

Meggie nodded. He was right; she would just have thought it was another of his stories. "So she

never came back?" she whispered, although she knew the answer already.

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"No," replied Mo softly. "Basta, Capricorn, and Dustfinger came out of the book and she went

into it, along with our two cats who were curled up on her lap as usual while I read aloud. I

expect some creature from here changed places with Gwin, too, maybe a spider or a fly or a bird

that happened to be flying around the house. Oh, I don't know. ..." Mo fell silent.

Sometimes, when he had made up such a good story that Meggie thought it was true, he would

suddenly smile and say, "You fell for that one, Meggie!" Like the time on her seventh birthday

when he'd told her he'd seen fairies among the crocuses in the garden. But the smile didn't come

this time.

"I searched the whole house for your mother. No sign of her," he went on. "And when I came

back to the living room, Dustfinger had vanished and so had his friend with the horns. But the

sword was still there, and it felt so real that I decided not to doubt my sanity. I put you to bed —

I think I told you your mother had already gone to sleep — then I began reading Inkheart out

loud again. I read the whole damn book until I was hoarse and the sun was rising, but nothing

came out of it except a bat and a silken cloak, which I used later to line your book box. I tried

again and again during the days and nights that followed, until my eyes were burning and the

letters danced drunkenly on the page. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I kept making up different

stories for you to explain where your mother was, and I took good care you were never in the

room with me when I was reading aloud, in case you disappeared, too. I wasn't worried about

myself. Oddly enough, I had a feeling that the person reading the book ran no risk of slipping

into its pages. I still don't know whether I was right." Mo flicked a midge off his hand. "I read

until I couldn't hear my own voice anymore," he went on, "but your mother didn't come back,

Meggie. Instead, a strange little man as transparent as if he were made of glass appeared in my

living room on the fifth day, and the mailman disappeared just as he was putting the mail into

our mailbox. I found his bike out in the yard. After that I knew that neither walls nor locked

doors would keep you safe — you or anybody else. So I decided never to read aloud from a book

again. Not from Inkheart nor from any other book."

'What happened to the little glass man?" asked Meggie.

Mo sighed. "He broke into pieces only a few days later when a heavy truck drove past the house.

Obviously, very few creatures move easily from one world to another. We both know what fun it

can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly

finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all. It broke Dustfinger's heart."

"Oh, he has a heart, does he?" inquired Elinor bitterly.

"It would be better for him if he didn't," replied Mo. "More than a week passed before he was

back at my door again. It was night, of course. He prefers night to day. I was just packing. I'd

decided it was safer to leave, since I didn't want to be driving Basta and Capricorn out of my

house at sword point again. Dustfinger's reappearance showed that I was right to feel anxious. It

was well after midnight when he turned up, but I couldn't sleep anyway." Mo stroked Meggie's

hair. "You weren't sleeping well then either. You had bad dreams, however much I tried to keep

them away with my stories. I was just packing the tools in my workshop when there was a knock

on the front door, a very soft, almost furtive knock. Dustfinger emerged from the dark as

suddenly as he did when he came to our house four days ago — heavens, was it really only four

days? Well, when he came back that first time he looked as if it had been too long since he'd

eaten. He was thin as a stray cat and his eyes were dull. 'Send me back,' he begged, 'send me

back! This world will be the death of me. It's too fast, too crowded, too noisy. If I don't die of

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homesickness I shall starve to death. I don't know how to make a living. I don't know anything.

I'm like a fish out of water,' he said. And he refused to believe that I couldn't do it. He wanted to

see the book and try for himself, even though he could scarcely read, but there was no way I

could let him have 't It would have been like giving away the very last part I still had of your

mother. Luckily, I'd hidden it well. I let Dustfinger sleep on the sofa, and came down the next

morning to find him still searching the bookshelves. Over the next few years he kept on turning

up, following us wherever we went, until I got sick and tired of it and made off with you in secret

like a thief in the night. After that I saw no more of him for five years. Until four days ago."

Meggie looked at him. "You still feel sorry for him," she said.

Mo was silent. At last, he said, "Sometimes."

Elinor's comment on that was a snort of contempt. "You're even crazier than I thought," she said.

"It's that idiot's fault we're in this hole, it's his fault if they cut our throats, and you still feel sorry

for him?"

Mo shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling, where a few moths were fluttering

around the naked lightbulb. "No doubt Capricorn has promised to take him back," he said.

"Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he

wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy

ending!"

"Well, that's no different from real life," remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things

will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end."

Meggie sat with her arms clasped around her legs, her chin on her knees, staring at the dirty

white walls. In her mind's eye she saw the N in front of her, the N with the horned marten sitting

on it, and she felt as if her mother were looking out from beyond the big capital letter, her

mother as she was in the faded photograph under Mo's pillow. So she hadn't run away after all.

Did she like it in that other world? Did she still remember her daughter? Or were Meggie and Mo

just a fading picture for her, too? Did she long to be back in her own world, just as Dustfinger

did?

And did Capricorn long to be back in his own world, as well? Was that what he wanted — for Mo

to read him back again? What would happen when Capricorn realized that Mo simply couldn't

do it? Meggie shuddered.

"It seems Capricorn has someone else to read aloud to him now," Mo went on, as if he had

guessed her thoughts. "Basta told me about the man, probably to show me I'm not by any means

indispensable. Apparently, he's read several useful assistants for Capricorn out of a book

already."

"Oh yes? Then why does he want you?" Elinor sat up, rubbing her behind and groaning. "I don't

understand any of this. I just hope it's all a bad dream, the kind you wake up from with a stiff

neck and a bad taste in your mouth."

Meggie doubted whether Elinor really had any such hope. The damp straw felt too real, and so

did the cold wall behind them. She leaned against Mo's shoulder again and closed her eyes. She

was very sorry she had scarcely read a line of Ink-heart. She knew nothing at all about the story

into which her mother had disappeared. All she knew was Mo's other stories, about the fabulous

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exploits that had kept her mother away, tales of the adventures she was having in distant lands,

of fearsome enemies who kept preventing her from coming home, and of a box she was filling

for Meggie, putting something new and wonderful in it at every enchanted place she visited.

"Mo," she asked, "do you think she likes being in that story?"

It took Mo quite a long time to answer. "She'd certainly like the fairies," he said at last, "although

they're deceitful little things. And if I know her she'll be putting out bowls of milk for the goblins.

Yes, I think she'd like that part of it. ..."

"So ... so, what wouldn't she like?" Meggie looked at him anxiously.

Mo hesitated. "The evil in it," he finally said. "So many bad things happen in that book, and she

never found out that it all ends reasonably well — after all, I never finished reading her the

whole story. That's what she wouldn't like."

"No, of course not," said Elinor. "But how do you know the story hasn't changed anyway? After

you read Capricorn and his friend out of it. And now we're stuck with them here."

"Yes," said Mo, "but they're still in the book, too. Believe me, I've read it often enough since they