"Meggie, for heaven's sake, how many more times do I have to call you?" Elinor was wheezing from climbing all the stairs. "What are you doing, standing there rooted to the spot? Didn't you say – good heavens, who's that?"
"You can see him, too?" Meggie was so relieved she could have hugged Elinor.
"Of course I can."
The figure moved. Barefoot, it ran over the pale gravel.
"It's that boy!" Elinor sounded incredulous. "The one who helped the matchstick-eater steal the book from your father. Well, he's got nerve, turning up here. He looks somewhat worse for wear. Does he think I'm going to let him in? I daresay the matchstick-eater's out there, too."
Elinor came closer to the window, looking anxious, but Meggie was already out the door. She ran downstairs and raced through the entrance hall. Her mother came along the corridor leading to the kitchen.
"Resa!" Meggie called. "Farid's here. It's Farid!"
5. FARID
He was stubborn as a mule, clever as a monkey, and nimble as a hare.
Louis Pergaud, The War of the Buttons
Resa took Farid into the kitchen and tended his feet first. They looked terrible, cut and bleeding. While Resa cleaned them and put bandages over the cuts, Farid began telling his story, his tongue heavy with weariness. Meggie did her best not to stare at him too often. He was still rather taller than she was, even though she'd grown a great deal since they last met… on the night when he had gone off with Dustfinger. Dustfinger and the book. She hadn't forgotten his face, any more than she could forget the day when Mo first read him out of his own story in Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. She'd never met another boy with such beautiful eyes, almost like a girl's. They were as black as his hair, which was cut a little shorter than it had been in the old days and made him look more grown-up. Farid. Meggie felt her tongue relishing his name – and quickly turned her eyes away when he raised his head and looked at her.
Elinor stared at him all the time without any embarrassment and with as much hostility as she had shown in scrutinizing Dustfinger when he had sat at her kitchen table, feeding his marten bread and ham. She hadn't let Farid bring the marten into the house with him. "And if he eats a single songbird in my garden he'd better watch out!" she said as the marten scurried away over the pale gravel. She had bolted the door after him, as if Gwin could open locked doors as easily as his master.
Farid played with a book of matches as he told his tale.
"Look at that!" Elinor whispered to Meggie. "Just like the matchstick-eater. Don't you think he looks a lot like him?"
But Meggie did not reply. She didn't want to miss a word of the story Farid had to tell. She wanted to hear everything about Dustfinger's return, about the man with the hellhound who read aloud so well, about the snarling creature that could have been one of the big cats from the Wayless Wood – and about the words that Basta had shouted after Farid: "You can run, but I'll get you yet, do you hear? You, the fire-eater, Silvertongue and his hoity-toity daughter – and the old man who wrote those accursed words! I'll kill you all! One by one!"
While Farid told his story, Resa's eyes kept straying to the grubby piece of paper he had put down on the kitchen table. She looked at it as if she were afraid of it, as if the words on that paper could draw her back again. Back to the Inkworld. When Farid repeated the threat Basta had shouted, she put her arms around Meggie and held her close. But Darius, who had been sitting next to Elinor in silence all this time, buried his face in his hands.
Farid didn't waste much time describing how he had gotten to Elinor's house on his bare, bloody feet. In answer to Meggie’s questions, he just muttered something about getting a lift from a truck driver. He ended his account abruptly, as if he had suddenly run out of words, and when he fell silent it was very quiet in the big kitchen.
Farid had brought an invisible guest with him. Fear.
"Put more coffee on, Darius!" said Elinor as she looked gloomily at the table laid for supper. No one was taking any notice of it. "This could be iced tea, it's so cold."
Darius set to work at once, busy and eager, like a bespectacled squirrel, while Elinor gave Farid a glance as cold as if he were personally responsible for the bad news he had brought. Meggie still remembered just how alarming she had once found that look. "The woman with pebble eyes," she had secretly called Elinor. Sometimes the name still fitted.
"What a terrific story!" exclaimed Elinor as Resa went to give Darius a hand; Farid's news had obviously made him so nervous that he couldn't measure out the right amount of ground coffee. He had just begun counting the spoonfuls he was tipping into the filter for the third time when Resa gently took the measuring spoon from his hand.
"So Basta's back with a brand-new knife and a mouth full of peppermint leaves, I suspect. Bloody hell!" Elinor was apt to swear when she was anxious or annoyed. "As if it wasn't bad enough waking up every third night drenched in sweat because I've seen his foxy face in my dreams… not to mention his knife. But let's try to keep calm! Look at it like this: Basta knows where I live, but obviously it's Mo and Meggie he's after, not me, so this house ought really to be safe as – well, safe as houses, for you. After all, he's not likely to know you've moved in here, is he?" She looked at Resa and Meggie triumphantly, as if this were a conclusive argument.
But Meggie's response made Elinor's face darken again at once. "Farid knew," she pointed out.
"So he did," growled Elinor, her glance turning to Farid again. "You knew, too. How?"
Her voice was so sharp that Farid instinctively flinched. "An old woman told us," he said in a wavering voice. "We went back to Capricorn's village after the fairies Dustfinger took with him turned to ashes. He wanted to see if the same thing had happened to the others. The whole village was deserted, not a soul in sight, not even a stray dog. Only ashes, ashes everywhere. So we went to the next village and tried to find out just what had happened, and… well, that was when we heard how a fat woman had been there, saying something about dead fairies, but at least, she said, luckily the human beings hadn't died on her, too, and they were living with her now…"
Elinor lowered her gaze guiltily and collected a few crumbs from her plate with one finger. "Damn it," she muttered. "Yes. Perhaps I did say rather too much in that shop when I phoned you from there. I was in such a state after seeing the empty village! How could I guess those gossips would tell Dustfinger about me? Dustfinger, of all people! Since when do old women talk to someone like him?"
Or to someone like Basta, thought Meggie.
But Farid just shrugged his shoulders, rose to his feet, which were now covered with bandages, and began limping up and down Elinor's kitchen. "Dustfinger thought you'd all be here in any case," he said. "We even passed this way once because he wanted to see if she was all right."
He jerked his head Resa's way. Elinor snorted scornfully. "Oh, did he, indeed? How good of him." She had never liked Dustfinger, and the fact that he had stolen the book from Mo before disappearing had done little to lessen her dislike. Resa, however, smiled at Farid's words, though she tried to hide her smile from Elinor. Meggie still clearly remembered the morning when Darius had brought her mother the strange little bundle he'd found outside the front door – a candle, a few pencils, and a box of matches, all tied up with stems of blue speedwell. Meggie had known at once who the bundle came from. And so did Resa.
"Well," said Elinor, drumming on her plate with the handle of her knife, "I'm delighted to hear that the matchstick-eater's back where he belongs. The very idea of him slinking around my house by night! It's just a pity he didn't take Basta, too."