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came out of it, and the story's still about them: Dustfinger, Basta, and Capricorn. Doesn't that

mean everything is still the way it was? Capricorn is still there, and we're only up against a

shadow of him in this world?"

"He's pretty frightening for a shadow," said Elinor.

"Yes, you're right," agreed Mo. "Perhaps things have changed there after all. Perhaps there's

another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world

does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole.

Perhaps the story m the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath

there's a whole world that goes on — develop-mg and changing like our own world."

Elinor groaned. "For heaven's sake, Mortimer!" she said. Stop it, please. You're giving me a

headache."

"It made my own head ache when I tried to make sense of it all," replied Mo gloomily.

After that they said nothing for quite a long time, all three of them absorbed in their own

thoughts. Elinor was the first to speak again, although it sounded almost as if she were talking to

herself. "Heavens above," she murmured, taking off her shoes. "To think of all the times I've

wished I could slip right into one of my favorite books. But that's the advantage of reading —

you can shut the book whenever you want."

Groaning, she wriggled her toes and began walking up and down. Meggie had to suppress a

giggle. Elinor looked so funny hobbling from the wall to the door and back again with her aching

feet, back and forth like a clockwork toy.

"Elinor, you're driving me bonkers! Please sit down again," said Mo, "No, I won't!" she snapped

back. "I'll go mad myself if I stay sitting down."

Mo made a face and put his arm around Meggie's shoulders. "All right, let's leave her to it!" he

whispered. "By the time she's covered ten kilometers she'll fall down exhausted. But you ought

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to get some sleep now. You can have my bed. It's not as bad as it looks. If you close your eyes

very tight you can imagine you're Wilbur the pig sleeping comfortably in his sty. ..."

"Or Wart sleeping in the grass with the wild geese." Meggie couldn't help yawning. How often

she and Mo had played this game! "Which book can you think of? Which part have we forgotten?

Oh yes, that one! It's ages since I thought about that story. . . . !" Wearily, she lay down on the

prickly straw.

Mo pulled off his sweater over his head and covered her up with it. "You need a blanket all the

same," he said. "Even if you're a pig or a goose."

"But you'll freeze."

"Nonsense."

"And where will you and Elinor sleep?" Meggie yawned again. She hadn't realized how tired she

was.

Elinor was still pacing from wall to wall. "What's all this about sleeping?" she said. "We're going

to keep watch, of course."

"All right," murmured Meggie, burying her nose in Mo's sweater. He's back with me, she thought,

as drowsiness weighed down her eyelids. Nothing else matters. And then she thought: Oh, if only

I could read some more of that book. But Inkheart was in Capricorn's hands — and she didn't

want to think of him now, or she would never get to sleep. Never . . .

Later, she didn't know how long she had slept. Perhaps her cold feet woke her, or the itchy straw

under her head. Her watch said four o'clock. There was nothing in the windowless room to tell

her whether it was night or day, but Meggie couldn't imagine that the night was over yet. Mo

was sitting near the door with Elinor. They both looked tired and anxious, and they were talking

in low voices.

"Yes, they still think I'm a magician," Mo was saying. "They gave me that ridiculous name —

Silvertongue. And Capricorn is firmly convinced I can repeat the trick anytime, with any book at

all."

"And . . . and can you?" asked Elinor. "You weren't telling us the whole story earlier, were you?"

Mo didn't answer for a long time. "No," he said at last. Because I don't want Meggie thinking I'm

some kind of a magician, too."

So you've — well, read things out of a book quite often?"

Mo nodded. "I always liked reading aloud, even as a boy, and one day, when I was reading Tom

Sawyer to a friend, a dead cat suddenly appeared on the carpet, lying there stiff as a board. I only

noticed later that one of my soft toys had vanished. I think both our hearts missed a beat, and my

friend and I swore to each other, sealing the oath with blood like Tom and Huck, that we'd never

tell anyone about the cat. After that, of course, I kept trying again in secret, without any

witnesses, but it never seemed to happen when I wanted. In fact, there didn't seem to be any

rules at all, except that it happened only with stories I liked. Of course I kept everything that

came out of the books, except for the snozzcumber I got out of the book about the friendly giant.

It stank too much. When Meggie was still very small, things sometimes came out of her picture

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books: a feather, a tiny shoe. We put them in her book box, without telling her where they came

from, otherwise she'd never have picked up a book again for fear the giant serpent with a

toothache or some other alarming creature might appear! But I'd never, never managed to bring

anything living out of a book, Elinor. Until that night." Mo looked at the palms of his hands, as if

seeing there all the things his voice had lured out of books. "Why couldn't it have been some nice

creature, if it had to happen? Something like — oh, Babar the elephant. Meggie would have been

enchanted."

Yes, I certainly would have been, thought Meggie. She remembered the little shoe, and the

feather as well. It had been emerald green, like the plumage of Dr. Dolittle's parrot Polynesia.

"Well, it could have been worse." Typical Elinor! As if it wasn't bad enough to be locked up in a

tumbledown house far away from ordinary life, surrounded by black-clad men with faces like

birds of prey and knives in their belts. But obviously Elinor really could imagine something

worse. "Suppose Long John Silver had suddenly appeared in your living room, striking out with

his wooden crutch?" she whispered. "I think I prefer this Capricorn after all. You know what?

When we're home again — in my house, I mean — I'll give you a really nice book. Winnie the

Pooh, for instance, or maybe Where the Wild Things Are. I wouldn't really mind one of those

monsters. I'll sit you down in my most comfortable armchair, make you a cup of coffee, and then

you can read aloud. How about it?"

Mo laughed quietly, and for a moment his face didn't look quite so careworn. "No, Elinor, I will

do no such thing. Although it sounds very tempting. But I swore never to read aloud again. Who

knows who might disappear next time? And perhaps there's some unpleasant character we

never noticed even in the Pooh books. Or suppose I read Pooh himself out of his book? What

would he do here without his friends and the Hundred Acre Wood? His poor little heart would

break, like Dustfinger's."

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Elinor impatiently dismissed this idea. "How often do I have to tell you

that fool has no heart? Very well, then. Let me ask you another question, because I'd very much

like to know the answer." Elinor lowered her voice, and Meggie had to strain her ears to make

out what she was saying. "Who was this Capricorn in his own story? The villain of the piece, I

suppose, but can you tell me more about him?"

Meggie would have liked to know more about Capricorn, too, but Mo was suddenly not very

forthcoming. All he would say was, "The less you know about him the better." Then he tell silent.

Elinor kept at him for a while, but Mo evaded all her questions. He simply did not seem to want

to talk about Capricorn. Meggie could see from his face that his thoughts were somewhere else

entirely. At some point Elinor nodded off, curled up on the cold floor as if trying to keep herself

warm with her own body. But Mo went on sitting there with his back against the wall.

As Meggie felt herself drift off to sleep again, Mo's face stayed with her in her slumber. It

emerged in her dreams like a dark moon with figures leaping from its mouth, living creatures —

fat, thin, large, small, they hopped out and ran away in a long line. A woman, scarcely more than

a shadow, was dancing on the moon's nose — and suddenly the moon smiled.

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Chapter 17 – The Betrayer Betrayed

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.... He

wanted ... to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-

winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in

sparkling whirls, and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Sometime near daybreak the feeble light from the electric bulb that had helped them through

the night flickered out. Mo and Elinor were asleep near the locked door, but Meggie lay in the

dark with her eyes open, feeling fear ooze out of the cold walls. She listened to Elinor's

breathing, and her father's, and more than anything wished for a candle — and a book to keep

the fear away. It seemed to be everywhere, a malicious, disembodied creature that had just been

waiting for the light to go out so it could steal close to her in the darkness and take her m its cold

arms. Meggie sat up, fought for breath, and crawled over to Mo on all fours. She curled up in a

ball beside him the way she used to when she was little, and waited for the light of dawn to come

in under the door.

With the light came two of Capricorn's men. Mo had only just sat up, wearily, and Elinor was

rubbing her aching back and muttering crossly when they heard the footsteps.

They weren't Basta's footsteps. One of the two men, a great tall beanpole, looked as if a giant had

pressed his face flat with his thumb. The other was small and thin, with a goatee beard on his

receding chin. He kept fiddling with his shotgun and glowered unpleasantly at the three of them

as if he felt like shooting them on the spot.

"Come on, then. Get a move on!" he snapped as they stumbled out into the bright light of day,

blinking. Meggie tried to remember whether his voice was one of those she had heard in Elinor's

library, but she wasn't sure. Capricorn had many men.

It was a fine, warm morning. The sky arched blue and cloudless above Capricorn's village, and a

couple of finches were twittering in a rosebush growing wild among the old houses, as if there

were no danger in the world but a hungry cat or two. Mo took Meggie's arm as they stepped

outside. Elinor had to get her shoes on first, and when the man with the goatee tried hauling her

roughly out because she didn't move fast enough for him, she pushed his hands away and fired a

volley of bad language at him. That simply made the two men laugh, whereupon Elinor tightened

her lips and confined herself to hostile glances.

Capricorn's men were in a hurry. They led Mo, Meggie, and Elinor back the way Basta had

brought them the night before. The flat-faced man went ahead of them and the man with the

goatee brought up the rear, shotgun at the ready. He dragged one leg as he walked, but

nonetheless he kept urging them on, as if to prove he could move faster than they could even

though he limped.

Even by day Capricorn's village appeared curiously deserted, and not just because of the many

empty houses, which looked even more dismal in the sunlight. There was hardly anyone to be

seen in the narrow alleys, only a few of the Black Jackets, as Meggie had secretly dubbed them,

with skinny boys following them like puppies. Meggie only twice saw a woman passing in a

hurry. She could see no children playing or running after their mothers, only cats: black, white,

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ginger, tortoiseshell, tabby cats, lying in the warm sun on top of walls, in doorways, on lintels. It

was deathly quiet among the houses of Capricorn's village, and everything that went on seemed

to be done in secret. Only the men with the guns didn't hide. They hung around together in

gateways and at the corners of buildings, leaning lovingly on their weapons as they talked. There

were no flowers outside the houses like the flowers Meggie had seen in the towns and villages

all along the coast; instead roofs had fallen in and wild bushes were in bloom, growing out

through glassless windows. Some shrubs were so heavy with scent that they made Meggie feel

dizzy.

When they reached the square outside the church, Meggie thought the two men were taking

them to Capricorn's house again, but they passed it on their left and went straight to the big

church door. The tower of the church looked as if wind and weather had been wearing the

masonry down for a dangerously long time. A rusty bell hung under the pointed roof, and barely

a meter lower down a seed carried by the wind had grown into a stunted tree that now clung to