"So, what?" Meggie pushed the chair from her desk over to him and sat down on the windowsill herself. Farid sat down as hesitantly as he had entered her room.
"You must get me there, too. Please!" He held the dirty piece of paper out to her again, with such a pleading expression in his black eyes that Meggie didn't know where to look. How long and thick his eyelashes were! Hers were nowhere near as beautiful.
"Please! I know you can do it!" he stammered. "I remember that night in Capricorn's village… I remember all about it, and you had only a single sheet of paper then!"
That night in Capricorn's village. Meggie’s heart always began to thud when she thought of it: the night when she had read the Shadow into appearing, and then hadn't been able to make him kill Capricorn until Mo did it for her.
"Orpheus wrote the words, he said so himself! He just didn't read them aloud – but they're here on this paper! Of course my actual name isn't there or it wouldn't work." Farid was speaking faster and faster. "Orpheus says that's the secret of it: If you want to change the story you must only use words that are already in the book, if possible."
"He said that?" Meggie's heart missed a beat, as if it had stumbled over Farid's information. You must only use words that are already in the book, if possible… Was that why she'd never been able to read anything out of Resa's stories – because she'd used words that weren't in Inkheart? Or was it just because she didn't know enough about writing?
"Yes. Orpheus thinks he's so clever because of the way he can read aloud." Farid spat out the man's name like a plum pit. "But if you ask me, he's not half as good at it as you or your father."
Maybe not, thought Meggie, but he read Dustfinger back. And he wrote the words for it himself. Neither Mo nor I could have done that. She took from Farid the piece of paper with the passage that Orpheus had written. The handwriting was difficult to decipher, but it was beautiful – very individual and curiously ornate.
"When exactly did Dustfinger disappear?"
Farid shrugged. "I don't know," he muttered, abashed. Of course – she had forgotten that he couldn't read.
Meggie traced the first sentence with her finger. Dustfinger returned on a day fragrant with the scent of berries and mushrooms.
Thoughtfully, she lowered the piece of paper. "It's no good," she said. "We don't even have the book. How can it work without the book?"
"But Orpheus didn't use the book, either! Dustfinger took it away from him before he read the words on that paper!" Farid pushed his chair back and came to stand beside her. Feeling him so close made Meggie uneasy; she didn't try to figure out why.
"But that can't be so!" she murmured.
Dustfinger had gone, though.
A few handwritten sentences had opened the door between the words on the page for him – the door that Mo had tried to batter down so unsuccessfully. And it was not Fenoglio, the author of the book, who had written those sentences, but a stranger – a stranger with a curious name. Orpheus.
Meggie knew more than most people about what waited beyond the words. She herself had already opened doors, had lured living, breathing creatures out of faded, yellowing pages – and she had been there when her father read this boy out of an Arabian fairy tale, the boy of flesh and blood now standing beside her. However, this Orpheus seemed to know far, far more than she did, even more than Mo – Farid still called him Silvertongue – and suddenly Meggie was afraid of the words on that grubby piece of paper. She put it down on her desk as if it had burned her fingers.
"Please! Do please at least try!" Farid's voice sounded almost pleading. "Suppose Orpheus has already read Basta back after all? Dustfinger has to learn that they're in league with each other. He thinks he's safe from Basta in his own world!"
Meggie was still staring at the words written by Orpheus. They sounded beautiful, enchantingly beautiful. Meggie felt her tongue longing to taste them. She very nearly began reading them aloud. Horrified, she clapped her hand to her mouth. Orpheus.
Of course she knew the name, and the story that surrounded it like a tangle of flowers and thorns. Elinor had given her a book with a beautiful poem about him in it.
Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountaintops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing die.
She looked at Farid with a question in her eyes. "How old is he?"
"Orpheus?" Farid shrugged. "Twenty, twenty-five, how should I know? Difficult to say. His face is like a child's."
So young. But the words on the paper didn't sound like a young man's words. They sounded as if they knew a great many things.
"Please!" Farid was still looking at her. "You will try, won't you?"
Meggie looked out of the window. She couldn't help thinking of the empty fairies' nests, the glass men who had vanished, and something Dustfinger had said to her long ago: Sometimes, when you went to the well to wash early in the morning, those tiny fairies would be whirring above the water, hardly bigger than the dragonflies you have here, and blue as violets… they weren't very friendly, but by night they shone like glowworms.
"All right," she said, and it was almost as if someone else were answering Farid. "All right, I'll try. But your feet must get better first. The world my mother talks about isn't a place where you'd want to be lame."
"Nonsense, my feet are fine!" Farid walked up and down on the soft carpet as if to prove it. "You can try right away as far as I'm concerned!"
But Meggie shook her head. "No," she said firmly. "I must learn to read it fluently first. That's not going to be easy, given his handwriting – and it's smeared in several places, so I'll probably copy it out. This man Orpheus wasn't lying. He did write something about you, but I'm not quite sure that it will do. And if I try it," she went on, trying to sound very casual, "if I try it, then I want to come with you." "What?"
"Yes, why not?" Meggie couldn't keep her voice from showing how hurt she felt by his horrified look.
Farid did not reply.
Didn't he understand that she wanted to see it for herself? She wanted to see everything that Dustfinger and her mother had told her about, Dustfinger in a voice soft with longing: the fairies swarming above the grass, trees so high that you thought they would catch the clouds in their branches, the Wayless Wood, the strolling players, the Laughing Prince's castle, the silver towers of the Castle of Night, the Ombra market, the fire that danced for him, the whispering pool where the water-nymphs' faces looked up at you…
No, Farid didn't understand. He had probably never felt that yearning for a completely different world, any more than he felt the homesickness that had broken Dustfinger's heart. Farid wanted just one thing: He wanted to find Dustfinger, warn him of Basta's knife, and be back with him again. He was Dustfinger's shadow. That was the part he wanted to play, never mind what story they were in.
"Forget it! You can't come, too." Without looking at Meggie he limped back to the chair she had given him, sat down, and pulled off the bandages that Resa had so carefully put on his toes. "People can't read themselves into a book. Even Orpheus can't! He told Dustfinger so himself: He's tried it several times, he said, and it just won't work."