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But Basta only wrinkled his nose in scorn. "I've already tried with spiders. And parsley and salt.

The old woman's proof against them all."

"Parsley and spiders!" Fenoglio laughed quietly. "What a fool you are, Basta! I'm not talking

about children's magic. I mean the magic of the written word. Nothing is more powerful for good

or evil, I do assure you." Fenoglio lowered his voice to a whisper. "I made you yourself out of

words and letters, Basta! You and Capricorn."

Basta flinched. Fear and hatred are closely linked, and Meggie saw both on his face. He believed

the old man. He believed every word of it. "You're a sorcerer!" he muttered. "You and the girl

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alike — you both ought to be burned like those accursed books, and her father, too." He quickly

spat three times at the old man's feet.

"Ah, spitting! What's that supposed to prevent? The evil eye?" Fenoglio mocked him. "That

notion of burning us isn't a very new idea, Basta, but then you never were fond of new ideas.

Well, are we in business or aren't we?"

Basta stared at the tin soldier until Meggie hid him behind her back. "Very well!" he growled.

"But I will check what you've been scribbling every day, understand?"

How are you going to do that, thought Meggie, when you can't read? Basta looked at her as if he

had heard her thoughts. "I know one of the maids," he said. "She'll read it to me, so don't try any

tricks, right?"

"Of course not!" Fenoglio nodded energetically. "Oh yes, and a pen would be a good idea, too. A

black one if possible."

Basta brought the pen and a whole stack of white typing paper. Fenoglio sat down at the table

with a purposeful look, put the first sheet of paper in front of him, folded it, and then tore it

neatly into nine parts. He wrote five letters on each piece. They were ornate, barely legible, and

always the same. Then he carefully folded these notes, spat once on each, handed them to Basta,

and told him to hide them as he told him. "Three where she sleeps, three where she eats, and

three where she works. Then, after three days and three nights, the desired effect will set in. But

should the accursed woman find even one of the notes, the magic will instantly turn against

you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Basta stared at Fenoglio's notes as if they would strike him

with plague on the spot.

"Best to hide them where she won't find them!" was all Fenoglio replied as he propelled Basta

toward the door.

"If it doesn't work, old man," growled Basta before he closed the door behind him, "I will

decorate your face to match Dustfinger's." Then he was gone, and Fenoglio leaned against the

closed door with a satisfied smile.

"But it won't work!" whispered Meggie.

"So? Three days are a long time," replied Fenoglio, sitting down at the table again. "And I hope

we won't need that long. After all, we want to prevent an execution tomorrow evening, don't

we?"

He spent the rest of the day alternately staring into space and writing like a man possessed.

More and more of the white sheets were covered with his large handwriting, scrawled

impatiently over the paper. Meggie didn't disturb him. She sat by the window with the tin

soldier, looking at the hills and wondering exactly where Mo was hiding among all the branches

and leaves there. The tin soldier sat beside her, his legs stretched straight out in front of him,

looking with fear in his eyes at the world that was so entirely new to him. Perhaps he was

thinking of the paper ballerina he loved so much, or perhaps he wasn't thinking at all. He said

not a single word.

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Chapter 46 – Woken in the Dead of Night

"Let us use our magic and enchantments to conjure up a woman out of flowers." ... Math

and Gwydyon took the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet and from these

conjured up the loveliest and most beautiful girl anyone had seen; they baptized her with

the form of baptism that was used then, and named her Blodeuedd.

– "Math Son of Mathonwy," from The Mabinogion, translated by Jeffrey Gantz

Night had fallen long ago, but Fenoglio was still writing. Under the table lay the sheets of paper

he had crumpled up or torn. He had discarded many more pages than he had laid aside,

collecting those few pages very carefully, as if the words themselves might slip off the paper.

When one of the maids, a skinny little thing, brought their supper Fenoglio hid the written

sheets he had kept beneath the covers of his bed. Basta did not return that evening. Perhaps he

was too busy hiding Fenoglio's magic charms.

Meggie did not go to bed until everything outside was so dark she couldn't distinguish the hills

from the sky. She left the window open. "Good night," she whispered into the dark as if Mo could

hear her. Then she took the tin soldier and clambered up to her bed. She put the little soldier by

her pillow. "You're better off than Tinker Bell, honestly!" she whispered to him. "Basta has her in

his room because he thinks fairies bring good luck, and if we ever get out of here I promise I'll

make you a ballerina just like the one in your story."

The tin soldier said nothing in reply to that either. He just looked at her with his sad eyes, then,

barely perceptibly, he nodded. Has he lost his voice, too, wondered Meggie, or could he never

speak? His mouth did look as if he had never once opened it. If I had the book here, she thought, I

could read the story and find out, or I could try to bring the ballerina out of it for him. But the

Magpie had the book. She had taken all the books away.

The tin soldier leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. No, the ballerina would only

break his heart, thought Meggie before she fell asleep. The last sound she heard was Fenoglio's

pen scribbling over the paper, writing word after word as fast as a weaver's shuttle turning

black threads into colorfully patterned cloth. . . .

Meggie did not dream of monsters that night — not even a spider scurried through her dream.

Even though she dreamed of a room that appeared to be the bedroom in Elinor's house, she

knew that she was at home. Mo was there, too, and so was her mother. She looked like Elinor,

but Meggie knew she was the woman who had been in the net hanging beside Dustfinger in

Capricorn's church. You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your

eyes. You just know them. She was about to sit down next to her mother on the old sofa

surrounded by Mo's bookshelves when someone suddenly whispered her name, "Meggie!" Again

and again: "Meggie!" She didn't want to hear it, she wanted the dream to go on and on, but the

voice kept calling to her. Meggie recognized it. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Fenoglio was

standing by her bed, his ink-stained fingers as black as the night beyond the open window.

"What's the matter? Let me sleep." Meggie turned her back to him. She wanted to return to her

dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its

happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a

token behind? The tin soldier was still asleep, with his head sunk on his chest.

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"I've finished!" Fenoglio whispered. Even with the guard's snores reverberating through the

door, she couldn't ignore it.

Meggie yawned and sat up.

A thin pile of handwritten sheets of paper lay on the table in the light of the flickering candle.

"We're going to try an experiment!" whispered Fenoglio. "Let's see whether your voice and my

words can change what happens in a story. We're going to try to send the little soldier back." He

quickly picked up the handwritten sheets and put them on her lap. "It's not the best of ideas to

try the experiment with a story I didn't write myself, but that can't be helped. What do we have

to lose?"

"Send him back? But I don't want to send him back!" said Meggie, horrified. "He'll die if he goes

back. The little boy throws him into the stove and he melts. And the ballerina burns up." Among

the ashes lay the metal spangle from the ballerina's dress; it had been burned as black as coal.

"No, no!" Fenoglio impatiently tapped the sheets of paper on her lap. "I've written him a new

story with a happy ending. That was your father's idea: changing what happens in stories! He

just wanted to get your mother back, he wanted Inkheart rewritten to give her up again. But if

the idea really works, Meggie — if you can change the fate of a character you read out of a book

by adding new words to his story, then maybe you can change everything about it: who comes

out, who goes in, how it ends, who's happy, and who's unhappy afterward. Do you understand?

It's just a trial run, Meggie! If the tin soldier disappears, then, believe me, we can change

Inkheart, too! I still have to work out just how, but for now, will you read this aloud? Please!"

Fenoglio took the flashlight out from under the pillow and put it in Meggie's hand.

Hesitantly, she turned the beam on the first densely written page. Suddenly, her mouth went

dry. "Does it really end well?" She ran her tongue over her lips and looked at the sleeping tin

soldier. She thought she heard a tiny snore.

"Yes, yes, I've written a truly sentimental happy ending." Fenoglio nodded impatiently. "He

moves into the toy castle with the ballerina and they live happily ever after — no melted heart,

no burnt paper, nothing but their blissful love."

"Your writing is difficult to read."

"What? I went to endless trouble!"

"It's difficult all the same."

The old man sighed.

"Oh, all right," said Meggie. "I'll try."

Every letter, she thought, every single letter matters! Let the words echo, ring out, whisper and

rustle and roll like thunder. Then she began to read.

At the third sentence the tin soldier sat bolt upright. Meggie saw him out of the corner of her

eye. For a moment she almost lost the thread of the story, stumbled over a word, and re-read it.

After that she dared not look at the little soldier again — until Fenoglio put his hand on her arm.

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"He's gone!" he breathed. "Meggie, he's gone!"

He was right. The bed was empty.

Fenoglio squeezed her arm so hard it hurt. "You truly are a little enchantress!" he whispered.

"And I didn't do so badly myself, did I? No, definitely not." He looked with some awe at his ink-

stained fingers. Then he clapped his hands and danced around the cramped room like an old

bear. When he finally stopped beside Meggie's bed again he was rather breathless. "You and I

are about to prepare a most unpleasant surprise for Capricorn!" he whispered, a smile lurking in

every one of his wrinkles. "I'll set to work at once! Oh yes, he'll get what he wants: You'll read

the Shadow out of the book for him. But his old friend will be slightly changed! I guarantee that!

I, Fenoglio, master of words, enchanter in ink, sorcerer on paper. I made Capricorn and I shall

destroy him as if he'd never existed — which I have to admit would have been better! Poor

Capricorn! He'll be no better off than the magician who conjured up a flower maiden for his

nephew. Do you know that story?"

Meggie was staring at the place where the tin soldier had been. She missed him. "No," she

muttered. "What flower maiden?"

"It's a very old story. I'll tell you the short version. The long one is better, but it will soon be light.

Well — there was once a magician called Gwydyon who had a nephew. He loved his nephew

better than anything in the world, but his mother had put a curse on the young man."

"Why?"

"It would take too long to tell that part now. Anyway, she cursed him. If he ever touched a

woman he would die. This broke the magician's heart — must his favorite nephew be

condemned to being sad and lonely forever? No. Was he not a magician? So he shut himself up in

the chamber where he worked magic for three days and three nights and made a woman out of

flowers — the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet, to be precise. There was never a

more beautiful woman in the world, and Gwydyon's nephew fell in love with her at first sight.

But Blodeuedd, for that was her name, was his undoing. She fell in love with another man, and

the two of them killed the magician's nephew."

"Blodeuedd!" Meggie savored the name like an exotic fruit. "How sad. What happened to her?

Did the magician kill her, too, as her punishment?"

"No. Gwydyon turned her into an owl, and to this day all owls sound like a weeping woman."

"That's beautiful! Sad and beautiful," murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so

beautiful? It was different in real life. "OK, so now I know the story of the flower maiden," she

said. "But what does it have to do with Capricorn?"