"Meggie," he whispered, taking her hand between his and pressing it so hard that it hurt. "I know how we can make everything right again. You go to Fenoglio! Tell him to write something that will bring Dustfinger back to life! He'll listen to you!"
Of course. She might have known he would think up this idea. He was looking at her so pleadingly that it hurt, but she shook her head.
"No, Farid. Dustfinger is dead. Fenoglio can't do anything for him. And even if he could – haven't you heard what he keeps muttering to himself? He says he'll never write another word, not after what happened to Cosimo."
Fenoglio had indeed changed. Meggie had hardly recognized him when she saw him again. Once, his eyes had always reminded her of a little boy's. Now they were an old man's eyes. His gaze was suspicious, uncertain, as if he didn't trust the ground under his feet anymore, and since Cosimo's death he cared nothing for shaving himself, combing his hair, or washing. He had asked only about the book that Mo had bound. But not even Meggie's assurance that its blank pages did indeed ward off death had wiped the bitterness from his face. "Oh, wonderful!" he had muttered. "The Adderhead's immortal and Cosimo's dead as a doornail. Nothing goes right with this story anymore." And he had gone off again, far from all the others. No, Fenoglio wouldn't help anyone anymore, not even himself. All the same, when Farid set off in search of him, Meggie went, too.
Fenoglio was spending most of his time these days in one of the deepest galleries of the mine, a place almost entirely filled with rubble, to which no one else climbed down. He was asleep when they clambered down the steep ladder, the fur that the robbers had given him drawn up to his chin, his old forehead wrinkled as if he were thinking hard even in his dreams.
"Fenoglio!" Farid roughly shook him awake.
The old man turned over on his back with a grunt that would have done the Prince's bear credit. Then he opened his eyes and stared at Farid as if seeing his dark face for the very first time. "Oh, it's you!" he growled, dazed with sleep, and propped himself on his elbows. "The boy who came back from the dead.
Something else that I never wrote! What do you want? Do you know I was just having my first good dream for days?"
"You must write us something!"
"Write something? I'm never going to write again. Haven't we seen what comes of it? I have this fabulous idea about the book of immortality that will set the good characters free and bring the Adderhead to his death in the most subtle way. And what happens? The Adder is immortal now, and the forest is full of corpses again! Robbers, strolling players, the two-fingered man – dead! Why do I keep making them up if this story is only going to kill them? Oh, this thrice-accursed story! It's in love with Death!"
"But you must bring him back!" Farid's lips were trembling. "You made the Adderhead immortal, so why not him?"
"You're talking about Dustfinger, aren't you?" Fenoglio sat up and rubbed his face, sighing heavily. "Yes, he's dead now, too, dead as a doornail, but I'd planned that a long way back, as you perhaps remember. Be that as it may, Dustfinger is dead, you were dead… Minerva's husband, Cosimo, the boys who rode with him, they're all dead! Can't this story think of anything else? I'll tell you something, my boy. I'm not its author anymore. No, the author is Death, the Grim Reaper, the Cold Man, call him what you like. It's his dance, and never mind what I write he'll take my words and make them serve him!"
"Nonsense!" Farid was no longer even wiping away the tears that streamed down his face. "You must fetch him back. It wasn't his death at all, it was mine! Make him breathe again! It will only take a few words. After all, you did it for Cosimo and for Silvertongue."
"Just a moment – Meggie's father wasn't dead yet," Fenoglio soberly pointed out. "And as for Cosimo, he only looked like
Cosimo – how many more times do I have to explain that? Meggie and I made a brand-new Cosimo, and unfortunately it went terribly wrong. No!" He reached into his belt, produced something resembling a handkerchief, and blew his nose noisily. "This is not a story in which the dead come to life! All right, I admit I brought immortality into it, yes. But that's different from bringing back the dead. No, when someone is dead here, he stays dead! It's the same in this world as in the one I come from. Dustfinger got around that rule very cleverly on your behalf. Perhaps I wrote the sentimental story that gave him the idea myself… I really don't remember, but never mind, there are always gaps. And he paid for your life with his own. That's always been the only trade-off that Death will accept. Who'd have thought it? Dustfinger, of all people, gets so fond of a good-for-nothing boy that he ends up dying for him. I admit it's a much better idea than the one about the marten, but it isn't mine. Oh no! So if you're looking for someone to blame, then blame yourself. Because one thing is certain, my boy" – and so saying he jabbed his finger roughly into Farid's thin chest – "and it's that you don't belong in this story! And if you hadn't taken it into your head to wangle your way into it, Dustfinger would still be alive -"
Farid punched Fenoglio in the face before Meggie could pull him back.
"How can you say a thing like that?" she shouted at Fenoglio as Farid, sobbing, put his arms around her. "Farid saved Dustfinger at the mill. He's protected him ever since he arrived here -"
"Yes, yes, all right!" growled Fenoglio, feeling his nose. It hurt. "I'm a heartless old man, I know. But although you may not believe it, I felt dreadful when I saw Dustfinger lying there. And then Roxane's tears, appalling, really appalling. All the wounded men, Meggie, all the dead, so many dead… No, Meggie, the words don't obey me anymore. Except when it suits them. They've turned against me like snakes."
"Exactly. You're a failure, a miserable failure!" Farid shook Meggie off. "You don't know your own trade. But someone else does. The man who brought Dustfinger here. Orpheus. He'll get him back, you wait and see. Write him here! You can at least do that! Yes, write Orpheus here at once or… or… I'll tell the Adderhead you were going to kill him, I'll tell all the women in Ombra it's your fault their menfolk are dead… I'll… I'll…"
He stood there with his fists clenched, quivering with rage and despair. But the old man just looked at him. Then, with difficulty, he rose to his feet. "Do you know something, my boy?" he said, putting his face very close to Farid's. "If you'd asked me nicely I might have tried, but not this way. No, no! Fenoglio must be asked, not threatened. I still have that much pride left."
At this Farid looked like going for him again, but Meggie held him back. "Fenoglio, stop it!" she shouted at the old man. "He's desperate, can't you see that?"
"Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said, holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words, Meggie! Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm its creator!"
"Fetch Orpheus!" said Farid hoarsely. Meggie could hear how much trouble he was taking to control his voice, to banish the rage from it. "Bring him here, and let him write it for you! Teach him what you know, the way Dustfinger taught me everything! Let him find the right words for you. He loves your story, he told Dustfinger so himself! He even wrote you a letter when he was a boy."
"Did he?" For a moment Fenoglio sounded almost like his old inquisitive self.
"Yes, he admires you! He thinks this is the best of all stories, he said so!"
"Really?" Fenoglio sounded flattered. "Well, it isn't bad. That is to say, it wasn't bad." He looked thoughtfully at Farid. "A pupil. A pupil for Fenoglio," he murmured. "A writer's apprentice. Hmm. Orpheus…" He spoke the name as if he had to taste it. "The only poet who ever challenged Death… appropriate."