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Mo was standing in the road with Dustfinger. Meggie got out and went over to them. On the right

of the road a densely wooded slope fell steeply to the bank of a wide lake. The hills on the other

side rose from the lake like giants emerging from the depths. The water was almost black, and

pale twilight, darkly reflected in the waves, was already spreading across the sky. The first lights

were coming on in the houses on the bank, looking like glowworms or fallen stars.

"A lovely place, isn't it?" Mo put his arm around Meggie's shoulders. "I know you like stories

about robbers. See that ruined castle? A notorious robber band once lived there. I must ask

Elinor about them. She knows everything about this lake."

Meggie just nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. She was so tired she felt quite

dizzy, but for the first time since they had set off Mo's face wasn't looking grim with anxiety.

"Where does she live, then?" asked Meggie, stifling a yawn. "Not behind that spiky gate?"

"Actually, yes. This is the entrance to her property. Not very inviting, is it?" Mo laughed and led

Meggie across the road. "Elinor is very proud of this gate. She had it specially made. It's copied

from a picture in a book."

"A picture of the Selfish Giant's garden?" murmured Meggie, peering through the intricately

twining iron bars.

"The Selfish Giant?" Mo laughed. "No, I think it was another story. Although that one would suit

Elinor pretty well."

Tall hedges grew on both sides of the gate, their thorny branches hiding any view of what lay

beyond. But even through the iron bars Meggie could see nothing promising except for tall

rhododendron bushes and a broad gravel drive that soon disappeared between them.

"Looks like you have rich relations," Dustfinger whispered in her ear.

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"Yes, Elinor is quite rich," said Mo, drawing Meggie away from the gate. "But she'll probably end

up poor as a church mouse because she spends so much money on books. I think she'd sell her

soul to the devil without thinking twice if he offered her the right book for it." He pushed the

heavy gate open with a single movement.

"What are you doing?" asked Meggie in alarm. "We can't just drive in." For there was a sign

beside the door, still clearly legible even if some of the letters were partly hidden by the leaves

of the hedge:

PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.

Meggie didn't think it sounded very inviting.

Mo, however, only laughed. "Don't worry," he said, opening the gate wider. "The only thing

Elinor guards with a burglar alarm is her library. She couldn't care less who walks through this

gate. She's not what you'd call a nervous woman, and she doesn't have many visitors anyway."

"What about dogs?" Dustfinger peered anxiously into the strange garden. "That gate suggests at

least three ferocious dogs to me. Big ones, the size of calves."

But Mo just shook his head. "Elinor hates dogs," he said, going back to the van. "OK, get in."

Elinor's grounds were more like a wood than a garden. Once they were through the gateway the

drive curved, as if taking a deep breath before going on up the slope, then lost itself among dark

firs and chestnut trees, which grew so close together their branches made a tunnel. Meggie was

just thinking it would never end when the trees suddenly receded, and the drive brought them

to an open space covered with gravel and surrounded by carefully tended rose beds.

A gray station wagon stood on the gravel in front of a house that was bigger than the school

Meggie had been attending for the last year. She tried to count the windows, but soon gave up. It

was a very beautiful house but looked just as uninviting as the iron gate. Perhaps it was only the

evening twilight that made the ochre yellow of the plaster look so dirty. And perhaps the green

shutters were closed only because night was already falling over the surrounding mountains.

Perhaps. But Meggie would have bet her last book they were seldom open even in the daytime.

The dark wooden front door looked as forbidding as a tightly closed mouth, and Meggie

involuntarily reached for Mo's hand as they approached it.

Dustfinger followed warily, with his battered backpack over his shoulder. Gwin was probably

still asleep inside it. When Mo and Meggie went up to the door he kept a couple of steps behind

them, looking uneasily at the closed shutters as if he suspected that the mistress of the house

was watching them from one of the windows.

There was a small barred window beside the front door, the only one not hidden behind green

shutters. Below it was another notice:

IF YOU INTEND TO WASTE MY TIME

ON TRIVIA, YOU'D BETTER GO AWAY NOW.

Meggie cast Mo an anxious glance, but he only made an encouraging face at her and pressed the

bell.

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Meggie heard it ringing inside the big house, but nothing happened for quite a while. A magpie

fluttered out of one of the rhododendron bushes growing near the house, and a couple of fat

sparrows pecked busily at invisible insects in the gravel, but that was all. Meggie was just

throwing them the breadcrumbs she had found in her jacket pocket — left over from a picnic on

some long-forgotten day — when the door suddenly opened.

The woman who came out was older than Mo, quite a lot older — although Meggie could never

be quite sure how old grown-ups were. Her face reminded Meggie of a bulldog, but perhaps that

was more her ferocious expression than its features. She wore a mouse-gray sweater and an

ash-gray skirt, with a pearl necklace around her short neck and felt slippers on her feet, the kind

of slippers Meggie had once had to wear when she and Mo had visited a historic castle. Elinor's

hair was gray, too. She had pinned it up, but strands were hanging down everywhere as if she

had done it impatiently and in a hurry. She didn't look as if she spent much time in front of a

mirror.

"Good heavens, Mortimer! What a surprise!" she said, without wasting time on further greetings.

"Where did you spring from?" Her voice sounded brusque, but her face couldn't entirely hide the

fact that she was pleased to see Mo.

"Hello, Elinor," said Mo, putting his hand on Meggie's shoulder. "Do you remember Meggie? As

you can see, she's grown up quite a bit now,"

Elinor cast Meggie a brief, irritated glance. "Yes, so I see," she said. "It's only natural for children

to grow, wouldn't you say? As far as I remember, it's been some years since I last set eves on

either you or your daughter, so, to what do I owe the unexpected honor of your visit today? Are

you finally going to take pity on my poor books?"

"That's right." Mo nodded. "One of my library commissions has been postponed — you know

how libraries are always short of money."

Meggie looked at him uneasily. She hadn't realized he could lie quite so convincingly.

"And because it was so sudden," Mo continued, "I couldn't find anywhere for Meggie to go, so I

brought her with me. I know you don't like children, but Meggie won't leave jam on your books

or tear out pages to wrap up dead frogs."

Elinor muttered something suspicious and scrutinized Meggie as if she thought her capable of

any kind of disgraceful conduct, whatever her father might say. "When you last brought her we

could at least put her in a playpen," she remarked coldly. "I don't suppose that would do now."

Once again, she looked Meggie up and down as if she were being asked to admit a dangerous

animal to her house.

Meggie felt her anger make the blood rise to her face. She wanted to go home, or get back in the

camper van and go somewhere else, anywhere, so long as she didn't have to stay with this

horrible woman whose cold pebble eyes were boring holes in her face.

Elinor's gaze moved from Meggie to Dustfinger, who was still standing in the background

looking awkward. "And who's this?" She looked inquiringly at Mo. "Do I know him?"

"This is Dustfinger, a ... a friend of mine." Perhaps only Meggie noticed Mo's hesitation. "He

wants to go on south, but maybe you could put him up for a night in one of your many rooms?"

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Elinor folded her arms. "Only on the condition that his name has nothing to do with the way he

treats books," she said. "And he'll have to put up with rather Spartan accommodations in the

attic, because my library has grown a great deal over the last few years. Nearly all my guest

bedrooms are full of books."

"How many books do you have?" asked Meggie. She had grown up among piles of books, but

even she couldn't imagine there were books behind all the windows of this huge house.

Elinor inspected her again, this time with unconcealed contempt. "How many?" she repeated.

"Do you think I count them like buttons or peas? A very, very great many. There are probably

more books in every single room of this house than you will ever read — and some of them are

so valuable that I wouldn't hesitate to shoot you if you dared touch them. But because you're a

clever girl, or so your father assures me, you wouldn't do that anyway, would you?"

Meggie didn't reply. Instead, she imagined standing on tiptoe and spitting three times into this

old witch's face.

However, Mo just laughed. "You haven't changed, Elinor," he remarked. "A tongue as sharp as a

paper knife. But I warn you, if you harm Meggie I'll do the same to your beloved books."

Elinor's lips curled in a tiny smile. "Well said," she answered, stepping aside. "You obviously

haven't changed either. Come in. I'll show you the books that need your help, and a few others as

well."

Meggie had always thought Mo had a lot of books. She never thought so again, not after setting

foot in Elinor's house.

There were no haphazard piles lying around as they did at home. Every book obviously had its

place. But where other people have wallpaper, pictures, or just an empty wall, Elinor had

bookshelves. The shelves were white and went right up to the ceiling in the entrance hall

through which she had first led them, but in the next room and the corridor beyond it the

shelves were as black as the tiles on the floor.

"These books," announced Elinor with a dismissive gesture as they passed the closely ranked

spines, "have accumulated over the years. They're not particularly valuable, mostly of mediocre

quality, nothing out of the ordinary. Should certain fingers be unable to control themselves and

take one off the shelf now and then," she added, casting a brief glance at Meggie, "I don't suppose

the consequences would be too serious. Just so long as once those fingers have satisfied their

curiosity they put every book back in its proper place again and don't leave any unappetizing

bookmarks inside." Here Elinor turned to Mo. "Believe it or not," she said, "I actually found a

dried -up slice of salami used as a bookmark in one of the last books I bought, a wonderful

nineteenth-century first edition."

Meggie couldn't help giggling, which naturally earned her another stern look. "It's nothing to

laugh about, young lady," said Elinor. "Some of the most wonderful books ever printed were lost

because some fool of a fishmonger tore out their pages to wrap his stinking fish in. In the Middle

Ages, thousands of books were destroyed when people cut up their bindings to make soles for

shoes or to heat steam baths with their paper." The thought of such incredible abominations,

even if they had occurred centuries ago, made Elinor gasp for air. "Well, let's forget about that,"

she said, "or I shall get overexcited. My blood pressure's much too high as it is."

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She had stopped in front of a door that had an anchor with a dolphin coiled around it painted on

the white wood. "This is a famous printer's special sign," explained Elinor, stroking the dolphin's

pointed nose with one finger. "Just the thing for a library door, eh?"

"I know," said Meggie. "Aldus Manutius. He lived in Venice and printed books the right size to fit

into his customers' saddlebags."

"Really?" Elinor wrinkled her brow, intrigued. "I didn't know that. In any case, I am the fortunate

owner of a book he printed with his own hands in the year 1503."

"You mean it's from his workshop," Meggie corrected her.

"Of course that's what I mean." Elinor cleared her throat and gave Mo a reproachful glance, as if

it could only be his fault that his daughter was precocious enough to know such things. Then she

put her hand on the door handle. "No child," she said as she pressed the handle down with

almost solemn reverence, "has ever before passed through this door, but as I assume your father

has taught you a certain respect for books I'll make an exception today. However, only on the

condition that you keep at least three paces away from the shelves. Is that agreed?"

For a moment Meggie felt like saying no, it wasn't. She would have loved to surprise Elinor by