"Someday we'll go and visit them together," Elinor often says, and Darius nods. Darius can tell wonderful stories, too, about flying carpets and genies in bottles. "Someday the three of us will go back, and then I'll show you all these things."
And the boy runs to the workshop where his father is making leather clothes for books that are often illustrated with pictures painted by the famous Balbulus himself, and says, "Mo!" He always calls his father Mo, he doesn't know why, perhaps because that's what his sister calls him. "When are we going to the other world, the one you came from?"
And his father puts him on his lap and runs his fingers through his dark hair, and says, like Elinor, "I'm sure we will someday. But we'd need words for that, exactly the right words, because only the right words unlock the doors between worlds, and the only person who could write them for us is a lazy old man. What's more, I'm afraid he's getting more forgetful every day."
Then he tells him about the Black Prince and his bear, the giants that they'll go to see someday, and the new tricks the Fire-Dancer has taught the flames. And the boy will see, in his father's eyes, that he is very happy and not at all homesick for the other world. Any more than his sister is. Or his mother.
So the boy will think that perhaps he'll have to go alone one day, if he wants to see that world. And he'll have to find out which old man his father means, because there are several in Ombra. Maybe he means the one who has two glass men and writes songs for the strolling players and for Violante, whom everyone calls Her Kindliness, and who is much better liked than her son. Battista calls this old man Inkweaver, and Meggie sometimes goes to see him. Maybe he'll go with her next time, so that he can ask him for the words that open doors. Because it must be exciting in that other world, much more exciting than in his own…