As usual, the donkey tried to bite Farid when he swung himself up onto its bony back. Cheeseface was riding one of the finest horses in Ombra. Despite his pudgy figure, he was a good horseman – but, of course, miserly as he was, he'd bought only a donkey for Farid, a vicious animal so old that its head was bald. Even two donkeys couldn't have carried the Chunk, so Oss trotted along beside Orpheus like an overgrown dog, his face sweating with the effort of running up and down the narrow paths through the hills around Ombra.
"Good. So Fenoglio isn't writing anymore." Orpheus liked to think out loud. It sometimes seemed as if he couldn't put his ideas in order unless he heard his own voice at the same time. "But where do all the stories about the Bluejay come from, then? The widows he protects, silver left on poor folk's doorsteps, poached meat on the plates of fatherless children… Is all that really Mo's own doing, or did Fenoglio write a few words by way of giving him a helping hand?"
A cart came toward them. Cursing, Orpheus turned his horse toward the thorny bushes, and the Chunk stared up with a silly grin at the two boys kneeling in the cart, hands tied behind their backs, faces pinched with fear. One of them had eyes even brighter than Meggie's, and neither was older than Farid. Of course not. If they'd been older they would have gone with Cosimo on the disastrous expedition against the Adderhead that got all the men killed, and they'd be dead by now, too. But presumably that was no comfort to them this morning. Their bodies would be visible from Ombra, a dreadful example to all who were tempted by hunger to go poaching.
Did people die on the gallows too quickly for the White Women to come? Farid instinctively put his hand to his back, where Basta's knife had gone in. They hadn't come to him, had they? He didn't remember. He didn't even remember the pain, only Meggie's face when he regained consciousness, and how he had turned to see Dustfinger lying there… "Why don't you just write that they come and take me away instead of him?" he had asked Orpheus, who merely laughed out loud. "You? Do you seriously think the White Women would exchange the Fire-Dancer for a rascally thief like you? No, we'll have to offer them tastier bait than that."
The bags of silver jogged up and down beside Orpheus's saddle as he spurred his horse on, and Oss's face was so red with effort that it looked as if it would explode on his fleshy neck any moment now.
Curses on Cheeseface! Yes, Meggie had better send him back to his own world, thought Farid as he dug his heels into the donkey's sides. And the sooner the better! But who was going to write the words for her? And who but Orpheus could bring Dustfinger back from the dead?
He'll never come back, a voice whispered inside him. Dustfinger is dead, Farid. Dead.
So? he snapped back at the quiet voice. What does that mean in this world? I came back, didn't I?
If only he could remember the way.
4. INK-CLOTHES
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
There was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins, "On Turning Ten"
A new morning woke Meggie, with pale light that fell on her l face and air as fresh as if no one had ever breathed it before. The fairies were twittering outside her window like birds that had learned to talk, and a blue jay screeched somewhere – if it really was a blue jay. The Strong Man could imitate any bird's call so well that it sounded as if the real thing were nesting in his broad chest. And they all answered him: larks, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, nightingales, and Gecko's tame crows.
Mo was awake, too. She heard his voice outside – and her mother's. Could Farid have come at last? She quickly rose from the straw mattress she slept on (what had sleeping in a bed felt like? She could hardly remember) and went to the window. She'd been waiting for Farid for days. He had promised to come. However, she saw no one out in the yard but her parents and the Strong Man, who smiled at her when he saw her standing at the window.
Mo was helping Resa to saddle one of the horses that had been waiting in the stables when they first came here. The horses were so beautiful that they must once have belonged to one of the Milksop's highborn friends, but as with many of the things the Black Prince brought, Meggie tried not to think too much about how they fell into the robbers' hands. She loved the Black Prince, Battista, and the Strong Man, but some of the others sent a shudder down her spine. Men like Snapper and Gecko, for instance, although the same men had rescued her and her parents on Mount Adder. "Robbers are robbers, Meggie," Farid often said. "The Prince does what he does for other people, but several of his men just want to fill their pockets without having to toil in the fields or in a workshop." Farid… She missed him so much that she felt ashamed of it.
Her mother was looking pale. Resa had often been sick over the last few days. That must be why she wanted to ride over and see Roxane. No one knew what to do in such cases better than Dustfinger's widow, except perhaps for the Barn Owl, but he himself hadn't been particularly well since the death of Dustfinger, and especially since the Adderhead had burned down the infirmary he'd run for so many years on the other side of the forest. No one knew what had become of Bella and all the other healers there.
A mouse, horned like Dustfinger's marten, scurried past as Meggie went outside, and a fairy whirred toward her and snatched at her hair, but by now Meggie knew just how to shoo them away. The colder the weather, the fewer fairies ventured out of their nests, but they were still on the hunt for human hair.
"Nothing keeps them warmer," Battista always said. "Except for bears' hair, and it's dangerous to pull that out."
The morning was so cool that Meggie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. The clothes the robbers had found for them weren't as warm as the sweaters she'd have worn on a day like this in the other world, and she thought almost wistfully of the warm socks waiting for her in Elinor's cupboards.
Mo turned and smiled as she came toward him. He looked tired but happy to see her. He wasn't sleeping much. Often he would work late into the night in his makeshift workshop, using the few tools that Fenoglio had found him. And he was always going out into the forest, either alone or with the Prince. He thought Meggie didn't know, but several times when she had been standing by the window unable to sleep, waiting for Farid, she had seen the robbers come for him. They called to Mo with the blue jay's cry. Meggie heard it almost every night.
"Are you feeling any better?" She looked at her mother anxiously. "Perhaps it was those mushrooms we found the other day."
"No, it definitely wasn't the mushrooms." Resa looked at Mo and smiled. "Roxane is sure to know a herb that will help. Would you like to come with me? Brianna might be there; she doesn't work for Orpheus every day."
Brianna. Why would Meggie want to see her? Because they were almost the same age? After Cosimo's death and the massacre of Ombra's menfolk, Her Ugliness had thrown Brianna out as a belated punishment for having favored Cosimo's company over hers. So Brianna had come home to help Roxane in the fields at first, but now she was working for Orpheus. Just like Farid. By this time Orpheus had half a dozen maids. Farid said sarcastically that Cheeseface didn't even have to comb his own thin hair anymore. Orpheus hired only beautiful girls, and Brianna was very beautiful, so beautiful that beside her Meggie felt like a duck next to a swan. To make it even worse, Brianna was Dustfinger's daughter. "So? I don't even speak to her," Farid had said when Meggie asked about her. "She hates me, just like her mother." Still, he saw Brianna almost every day… and all the others. And it was almost two weeks since he had been to see Meggie.