"All right, all right, you don't have to read aloud," Elinor assured him impatiently. Good God, that owlish gaze of horror! She could have shaken him. "Mortimer can do it! But what should he read? Think, Darius! If we want to fetch her back, should it be something about the Inkworld or about our own world? Oh, I'm all confused. Perhaps we can write something like: Once upon a time there was a grumpy middle-aged woman called Elinor who loved nothing but her books, until one day her niece moved in with her, along with the niece's husband, and daughter. Elinor liked that, but one day the daughter set off on a very, very stupid journey, and Elinor swore that she would give all her books away if only the child would come home. She packed them up in big crates, and as she was putting the last book in, Meggie walked through the doorway.… Heavens above, don't stare at me in that sympathetic way!" she snapped at Darius. "I'm trying to do something, at least! And you yourself keep saying: 'Mortimer is a master, it takes him only a couple of sentences!'"
Darius adjusted his glasses. "Yes, only a couple of sentences," he said in his gentle, uncertain voice. "But they must be sentences describing a whole world, Elinor. The words must make music. They must be so closely interwoven that the voice doesn't fall through."
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Elinor said brusquely – although she knew he was right. Mortimer had once tried to explain it to her in almost the same way: the mystery of why not every story would come to life. But she didn't want to hear about that, not now. Damn you, Elinor, she thought bitterly, damn you three times over for all those evenings you spent with the silly child imagining what it would be like to live in that other world, among fairies, brownies, and glass men. There had been many such evenings, very many, and Mortimer had often put his head around the door and asked, sarcastically, if they couldn't discuss something other than Wayless Woods and blue-skinned fairies just for once.
Well, at least Meggie knows all she needs to know about that world, thought Elinor, wiping the tears from her eyes. She realizes she must be careful of the Adderhead and his men-at-arms, and she mustn't go too far into the forest or she'll probably be eaten, torn to pieces, or trodden underfoot. And she'd be well advised not to look up when she passes a gallows. She knows she must bow when a prince rides by, and that she can still wear her hair loose because she's only a girl… Damn it, here came the tears again! Elinor was mopping the corners of her eyes with the hem of her blouse when someone rang the front doorbell.
Many years later, she was still angry with herself for the stupidity that didn't warn her to look through the spy hole in the door before opening it. Of course she had thought it was Resa or Mortimer outside. Of course. Stupid Elinor. Stupid, stupid Elinor. She had realized her mistake only when she opened the door, and there stood the stranger in front of her.
He was not very tall and rather too well fed, with pale skin and equally pale fair hair. The eyes behind his rimless glasses looked slightly surprised, almost innocent like a child's. He opened his mouth to speak as Elinor put her head around the door, but she cut him short.
"What are you doing here?" she barked. "This is private property. Didn't you see the sign down by the road?"
He had come in a car; the impudent fool had simply brought it up her drive! Elinor saw it, a dusty, dark blue vehicle, standing beside her own station wagon. She thought she saw a huge dog on the passenger seat. That was the last straw!
"Yes, of course I did!" The stranger's smile was so innocent that it suited his childish face. "Why, no one could miss seeing the sign, and I really do apologize, Signora Loredan, for my sudden and unannounced arrival."
Heavens above – it took Elinor's breath away. The moonfaced man's voice was almost as beautiful as Mortimer's, deep and velvety like a cushion. Coming from that round face with its childlike eyes, it was so incongruous that you felt almost as if the stranger had swallowed its real owner and taken over his voice.
"Never mind the apologies!" said Elinor abruptly, once she had gotten over her surprise. "Just get out." And so saying, she was about to close the door again, but the stranger only smiled (a smile that no longer looked quite so innocent) and jammed his shoe between the door and the frame. A dusty brown shoe.
"Do forgive me, Signora Loredan," he said softly, "but I've come about a book. A truly unique book. I have heard, of course, that you have a remarkable library, but I can assure you that you don't yet have this book in your collection."
With an almost reverent expression on his face, he put a hand under his pale, creased linen jacket. Elinor recognized the book at once. Of course. It was the only book that made her heart beat faster not because it was a particularly fine edition or because she longed to read it. No. At the sight of that book Elinor's heart beat faster for only one reason: because she feared it like a ferocious animal.
"Where did you get that from?" She answered her question herself, but unfortunately a little too late. Suddenly, very suddenly, the memory of the boy's story came back to her. "Orpheus!" she whispered – and she wanted to shout, loud enough for Mortimer to hear her in his workshop, but before a sound could come out of her mouth someone slipped out of the cover of the rhododendron bushes by the front door, quick as a lizard, and put his hand over her mouth.
"Well, my lady bookworm," a man's voice purred in her ear. Elinor had so often heard that voice in her dreams, and every time she found herself fighting for breath at the sound of it! Even in broad daylight the effect was just as bad. Basta pushed her roughly back into the house. Of course, he had a knife in his hand; Elinor could as easily imagine Basta without a nose as without a knife. Orpheus turned and waved to the strange car. A man built like a wardrobe got out, strolled around the car at a leisurely pace, and opened the back door. An old woman stuck out her legs and reached for his arm.
Mortola. The Magpie.
Another regular visitor to Elinor's nightmares.
The old woman's legs were thickly bandaged under her dark stockings, and she leaned on a stick as she walked toward Elinor's house on the wardrobe-man's arm. She hobbled into the hall with a grimly determined expression, as if she were taking possession of the whole house, and the look she gave Elinor was so openly hostile that its recipient felt weak at the knees, hard as she tried to hide her fear. A thousand dreadful memories came back to her – memories of a cage stinking of raw meat, a square lit by the beams of glaring car headlights, and fear, dreadful fear…
Basta closed the door of the house behind Mortola. He hadn't changed: the same thin face, the same way of narrowing his eyes, and there was an amulet dangling around his neck to ward off the bad luck that Basta thought lurked under every ladder, behind every bush.
"Where are the others?" Mortola demanded while the wardrobe-man looked around him with a foolish expression. The sight of all those books seemed to fill him with boundless astonishment. He was probably wondering what on earth anyone would do with so many.
"The others? I don't know who you're talking about." Elinor thought her voice sounded remarkably steady for a woman half dead with terror.
Mortola's small, round chin jutted aggressively. "You know perfectly well. I'm talking about Silvertongue and his witch of a daughter, and that maidservant, the one he calls his wife. Shall I get Basta to set fire to a few of your books, or will you call the three of them for us of your own accord?"
Basta? Basta's afraid of fire, Elinor wanted to reply, but she refrained. It wasn't difficult to hold a lighted match to a book. Even Basta, who feared fire so much, would probably be capable of that small action, and the wardrobe-man didn't look bright enough to be afraid of anything. I just have to keep stalling, thought Elinor. After all, they don't know about the workshop in the garden, or about Darius, either.