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sorrow lived longer than a day in their little heads — and, who knows, perhaps the mild night

air had already made them forget that this was not their own story.

Faint light was coming into the sky by the time they were all asleep down there. Only the boy

kept watch. He was a suspicious boy, always on his guard, always careful except when he played

with fire. Dustfinger couldn't help smiling when he thought of Farid's eager face and the way he

had burned his lips when he secretly took the torches from his backpack. The boy would be no

problem, no, none at all.

Silvertongue and Resa were asleep under a tree with Meggie between them, sheltered like a

young bird in a warm nest. Elinor was sleeping not far away and smiling in her sleep. Dustfinger

had never seen her look so happy. One of the fairies was lying curled up like a caterpillar on her

breast, with Elinor's hand around it. The fairy's face was not much bigger than the ball of her

thumb, and her fairy light shone between Elinor's strong fingers like the light of a captive star.

Farid stood up as soon as he saw Dustfinger coming. He had a shotgun in his hand. It must have

belonged to one of Capricorn's men.

"You — You're not dead?" Farid breathed incredulously. He still wore no shoes, which was

hardly surprising, for he had always been falling over the shoelaces and tying a bow had

presented him with problems.

"No, I'm not." Dustfinger stopped beside Silvertongue and looked down on him and Resa.

"Where's Gwin?" he asked the boy. "I hope you've been looking after him!"

"He ran away after they shot at us, but he came back." There was pride in the boy's voice.

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"Ah." Dustfinger crouched down beside Silvertongue. "Well, he always knew when it was time to

run, just like his master."

"We left him at our camp up by the burnt-out cottage last night, because we knew it was going to

be dangerous," the boy went on. "But I was going to fetch him as soon as I come off watch."

"Well, I can do that now. Don't worry, he's sure to be all right. A marten like Gwin will always

survive." Dustfinger reached out his hand and put it under Silvertongue's jacket.

"What are you doing?" The boy's voice sounded uneasy.

"Just taking what's mine," replied Dustfinger.

Silvertongue did not stir as Dustfinger slipped the book out. He was sleeping well and soundly,

and what was there now to disturb his sleep? He had everything his heart desired.

"It's not yours!"

"Yes, it is." Dustfinger stood up. He looked up at the branches. There were three fairies asleep up

there. He'd always wondered how they could sleep perched in the trees without falling to the

ground. Carefully, he took two of them off the spindly branch where they were lying, blew gently

into their faces as they opened their eyes and yawned, and put them in his pocket.

"Blowing at them makes them sleepy," he explained to the boy. "Just a little tip in case you ever

have anything to do with fairies. But I think it works only on the blue kind."

He didn't bother to wake a troll. They were an obstinate lot, it would take a long time to

persuade one of them to go with him, and very likely it would disturb Silvertongue.

"Let me come, too!" The boy barred his way. "Here, I've got your backpack." He held it up as if to

buy Dustfinger's company with it.

"No." Dustfinger took the pack from him, slung it over his shoulders, and turned his back on the

boy.

"Yes!" Farid ran after him. "You must let me come, too! Or what am I going to tell Silvertongue

when he realizes the book is gone?"

"Tell him you fell asleep. It happens to a lot of sentries keeping watch."

"Please!"

Dustfinger stopped. "What about her?" He pointed to Meggie. "You like the girl, don't you? Why

not stay with her?"

The boy blushed and stared at the girl for a long time, as if to commit the sight of her to memory.

Then he turned back to Dustfinger. "I don't belong with them."

"You don't belong with me either." Dustfinger walked away again, but when he was a good way

from the parking lot the boy was still behind him. He was trying to walk so quietly that

Dustfinger wouldn't hear him, and when Dustfinger turned he stopped like a thief caught in the

act.

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"What's the idea? I'm not going to be here much longer anyway!" snapped Dustfinger. "Now that

I have the book I will look for someone who can read me into it again, even if it's a stammerer

like Darius who sends me home with a lame leg or a squashed face. What will you do then? You'll

be left alone."

The boy shrugged his shoulders and looked at him with his black eyes. "I can breathe fire well

now," he said. "I practiced and practiced while you were gone. But I'm not so good at swallowing

it yet."

"That's more difficult. You go at it too fast. I've told you so a thousand times."

They found Gwin in the ruins of the burnt-out house, sleepy and with feathers around his

muzzle. He seemed pleased to see Dustfinger and even licked his hand, but then he ran after the

boy. They walked until it was light, always reaching south toward the sea. At last, they stopped

for a rest and ate the food Dustfinger had brought from Basta's larder: some red spicy sausage, a

piece of cheese, bread, olive oil. The bread was rather hard so they dipped it in the oil, ate in

silence sitting side by side on the grass, and then went on. Blue and dusty pink wild sage

flowered among the trees. The fairies moved in Dustfinger's pocket — and the boy walked

behind him like a second shadow.

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Chapter 59 – Going Home

And [he] sailed back over a year

and in and out of weeks

and through a day

and into the night of his very own room

where he found his supper waiting for him

and it was still hot.

– Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

In the morning, when Mo found the book was gone, Meggie's first thought was that Basta had

taken it, and she felt sick with fear at the thought of him prowling around them while they slept.

But Mo had a different explanation.

"Farid is gone, too, Meggie," he said. "Do you think he'd have gone with Basta?"

No, she didn't. There was only one person Farid would have gone with. Meggie could well

imagine Dustfinger emerging from the darkness, just as he had on the night when it all began.

"But what about Fenoglio?" she said.

Mo only sighed. "I don't know whether I'd have tried to read him back, anyway, Meggie," he said.

"So much misfortune has come from that book already, and I'm not a writer who can make up

for himself the words he wants to read aloud. I'm only a kind of book doctor. I can give books

new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms from eating them, and prevent them

from losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them,

filling new, empty pages with the right words — I can't do that. That's a very different trade. A

famous writer once wrote, 'An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or a

magician — but the magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.' I always thought he was right

about that."

Meggie didn't know what to say. She only knew she missed Fenoglio's face. "And Tinker Bell,"

she said. "What about her? Will she have to stay here, too, now?" When she'd woken up the fairy

had been lying in the grass beside her. Now she was flying around with the other fairies. If you

didn't look too closely they might have been a flock of moths. Meggie couldn't imagine how she

had escaped from Basta's house. Hadn't he been planning to keep her in a jug?

"As far as I remember, Peter Pan himself once forgot she'd ever existed," said Mo. "Am I right?"

Yes, Meggie remembered it, too. "All the same!" she murmured. "Poor Fenoglio!"

But as she said that her mother shook her head vigorously. Mo searched his pockets for paper,

though all he could find was a shopping receipt and a felt-tip pen. Teresa took both from him,

smiling. Then, while Meggie crouched in the grass beside her, she wrote: Don't be sorry for

Fenoglio. It's not a bad story he's landed in.

"Is Capricorn still in it? Did you ever meet him there?" asked Meggie. How often she and Mo had

wondered that. After all, he was one of the main characters in Inkheart. But perhaps there really

was something behind the printed story, a world that changed every day just like this one.

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I only heard of him there, her mother wrote. They spoke of him as if he had gone away for a while.

But there were others just as bad. It's a world full of terror and beauty (here her writing became

so small Meggie could hardly make it out) and I could always understand why Dustfinger felt

homesick for it.

The last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled

and reached for her hand. I was far, far more homesick for you two, she wrote on the palm of it,

and Meggie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold them fast. She read them again and

again on the long drive back to Elinor's house, and it was many days before they faded.

Elinor hadn't been able to reconcile herself to the idea of another walk all the way down through

the thorny hills where the snakes lived. "Do you think I'm crazy?" she said crossly. "My feet hurt

at the mere thought of it." So she and Meggie had set off again in search of a telephone. It was a

strange feeling to walk through the village — a truly deserted village now — past Capricorn's

smoke-blackened house and the half-charred church porch. Water lay in the square outside. The

blue sky was reflected in it and made it look almost as if the square had turned into a lake

overnight. The hoses Capricorn's men had used to save their master's house lay like huge snakes

in the pools of water. In fact, the fire had ravaged only the ground floor, but all the same Meggie

would not go in, and when they had searched over a dozen other houses in vain Elinor bravely

went through the charred door on her own. Meggie told her where to find the Magpie's room,

and Elinor took a gun just in case the old woman had come back to save what she could of her

own and her robber son's treasures. But the Magpie had long gone, just like Basta, and Elinor

came back with a triumphant smile on her lips, carrying a cordless phone.

They called a taxi. It was somewhat difficult to persuade the driver he must ignore the road

barrier when he came to it, but luckily he had never believed any of the sinister stories that were

told of the village. They arranged to wait for him by the roadside so he wouldn't see any of the

fairies and trolls. Meggie and her mother stayed in the village while Mo and Elinor went in the

taxi to the nearest town, and came back a few hours later driving the two small buses they had

rented. For Elinor had decided to offer a home, or "asylum," as she put it, to all the strange

creatures who had landed in her world. "After all," she said, "many people here have little

enough patience or understanding for their fellow human beings who are only superficially

different than them — so how would it be for little people with blue skins who can fly?"

It took some time for them all to understand Elinor's offer — which was, of course, also made to

the men, women, and children out of the book — but most of them decided to stay in Capricorn's

village. It obviously reminded them of a home that their earlier death had almost made them

forget, and, of course, they could use the treasure that Meggie told the children must still be

lying in the cellars of Capricorn's house. It would probably be enough to keep them all for the

rest of their lives. The birds, dogs, and cats who had emerged from the Shadow had not hung

around, but had long ago disappeared into the surrounding hills, while a few fairies and two of

the little glass men, enchanted by the broom blossoms, the scent of rosemary, and the narrow

alleys where the ancient stones whispered their stories to them, decided to make the once

sinister village their home.

In the end, however, forty-three blue-skinned fairies with dragonfly wings fluttered into the

buses and settled on the backs of the gray-patterned seats. Capricorn had obviously swatted

fairies as carelessly as other people swat flies. Tinker Bell was among those who didn't come,

which did not particularly trouble Meggie, for she had realized that Peter Pan's fairy was very

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self-centered. Her tinkling really got on your nerves, too, and she tinkled almost all the time if

she didn't get what she wanted.

In addition to four trolls who looked like very small and hairy human beings, thirteen little glass

men and women climbed into Elinor's buses — and so did Darius, the unhappy stammering