"Oh no?" Meggie tried to sound more sure of herself than she felt. "You said yourself that I read better than he does. So perhaps I can make it work!" Even if I can't write as well as he does, she added to herself.
Farid cast her an uneasy glance as he put the bandages in his trouser pocket. "But it's dangerous there," he said. "Particularly for a g -" He didn't finish the word. Instead he began inspecting his bloodstained toes intently.
Idiot. Meggie’s anger tasted bitter on her tongue. Who did he think she was? She probably knew more about the world she'd be reading him into than he did. "I know it's dangerous," she said, piqued. "Either I go with you or I don't read aloud from this sheet of paper. You must make up your mind. And now you'd better leave me alone. I have to think."
Farid cast a final glance at the piece of paper with Orpheus's words on it before he went to the door. "When will you try?" he asked before he went back out into the corridor. "Tomorrow?"
"Perhaps," was all Meggie would say.
Then she closed the door behind him and was alone with the words that Orpheus had written.
6. THE INN OF THE STROLLING PLAYERS
"Thank you," said Lucy, opening the box and taking out a match. "WATCH, EVERYONE!" she cried, her voice echoing round the White Flats. "WATCH! THIS IS GOODBYE TO BAD MEMORIES!"
Philip Ridley, Dakota of the White Flats
It took Dustfinger two whole days to get through the Wayless Wood. He met very few people on the way: a few charcoal-burners blackened with soot, a ragged poacher with two rabbits slung over his shoulder and hunger written large on his face, and a group of the prince's game wardens, armed to the teeth, probably on the trail of some poor devil who had shot a deer to feed his children. None of them saw Dustfinger. He knew how to pass unseen, and only on the second night, when he heard a pack of wolves howling in the nearby hills, did he dare to summon fire.
Fire. So different in this world and the other one. How good it would be to hear its crackling voice again at last, and to be able to answer. Dustfinger collected some of the dry wood lying around among the trees, with wax-flowers and thyme rambling over it. He carefully unwrapped the fire-elves' stolen honey from the leaves that kept it moist and supple and put a tiny morsel in his mouth. How scared he had been the first time he tasted the honey! Scared that his precious booty would burn his tongue forever and he would lose his voice. But that fear had proved groundless. The honey did burn your mouth like red-hot coals, but the pain passed away – and if you bore it long enough, then afterward you could speak to fire, even with a mere human tongue. The effect of a tiny piece lasted for five or six months, sometimes almost a year. Just a soft whisper in the language of the flames, a snap of your fingers, and sparks would leap crackling from dry wood, damp wood, even stone.
At first the fire licked up from the twigs more reluctantly than it had in the old days – as if it couldn't really believe he was back. But then it began to whisper and welcomed him more and more exuberantly, until he had to rein in those wildly leaping flames, imitating the sound of their crackling until the fire sank lower, like a wildcat that will crouch down and purr if you stroke its fur carefully enough.
While the fire devoured the wood and its light kept the wolves away, Dustfinger found himself thinking of the boy again. He couldn't count the many nights when he'd had to tell Farid how fire spoke, for the boy knew only mute and sullen flames. "Heavens above," he muttered to himself as he warmed his fingers over the glowing embers, "you're still missing him!" He was glad that the marten at least was still with the boy, to keep him company as he faced the ghosts he saw everywhere.
Yes, Dustfinger did miss Farid. But there were others whom he had been missing for ten long years, missing them so much that his heart was still sore with longing. It was with those people crowding his mind that he strode out, more impatiently with every passing hour, as he approached the outskirts of the forest and what lay beyond it – the world of humans. It was not just his longing for fairies, little glass men, and water-nymphs that had tormented him in the other world, nor his desire to be back in the silence under the trees. There weren't many human beings he had missed, but he had missed those few all the more fiercely.
He had tried so hard to forget them since the day he came, half-starved, to Silvertongue's door, and Silvertongue had explained that there could be no way back for him. It was then he had realized that he must choose. Forget them, Dustfinger – how often he had told himself that! – forget them, or the loss of them all will drive you mad. But his heart simply did not obey. Memories, so sweet and so bitter… they had both nourished and devoured him for so many years. Until a time came when they began to fade, turning faint and blurred, only an ache to be quickly pushed away because it went to your heart. For what was the use of remembering all you had lost?
Better not remember now, either, Dustfinger told himself as the trees around him became younger and the canopy of leaves above grew lighter. Ten years – it's a long time, and many may be lost and gone by now.
Charcoal-burners' huts appeared among the trees more and more often now, but Dustfinger did not let the soot-blackened men see him. Outside the forest, people spoke of them slightingly, for the charcoal-burners lived deeper in the forest than most dared to go. Craftsmen, peasants, traders, princes: They all needed charcoal, but they didn't like to see the men who burned it for them in their own towns and villages. Dustfinger liked the charcoal-burners, who knew almost as much about the forest as he did, although they made enemies of the trees daily. He had sat by their fires often enough, listening to their stories, but after all these years there were other stories he wanted to hear, tales of what had been going on outside the forest, and there was only one place to hear those: in one of the inns that stood along the road.
Dustfinger had one particular inn in mind. It lay on the northern outskirts of the forest, where the road appeared among the trees and began to wind uphill, past a few isolated farms, until it reached the city gate of Ombra, the capital city of Lombrica, the Laughing Prince's realm.
The inns on the road outside Ombra had always been places where the strolling players called the Motley Folk met. They offered their skills there to rich merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen, for weddings and funerals, for festivities to celebrate a traveler's safe return or the birth of a child. They would provide music, earthy jokes, and conjuring tricks for just a few coins, taking the audience's minds off their troubles large and small. And if Dustfinger wanted to find out what had been happening in all the years he was away, then the Motley Folk were the people to ask. The players were the newspapers of this world. No one knew what went on in it better than these travelers who were never at home anywhere.
Who knows? thought Dustfinger as he walked down the road, with the autumn sun, by now low in the sky, on his face. If I'm lucky I may even meet old acquaintances.
The road was muddy and full of puddles. Cartwheels had made deep ruts in it, and the hoofprints left by oxen and horses were full of rainwater. At this time of year it sometimes rained for days on end, as it had yesterday, when he had been glad to be under the trees where the leaves caught the rain before it drenched him to the skin. The night had been cold, all the same, and his clothes were clammy even though he had slept beside his fire. He was glad that the sky was clear today, apart from a few shreds of cloud drifting over the hills.