“He’ll have to stay here,” said Meggie. “Orpheus didn’t write anything about him, and Resa will look after him. She likes him.” Farid nodded and glanced unhappily at the window, but he didn’t contradict her.
The Wayless Wood – that was where Orpheus’s words would take them. Farid knew where Dustfinger had meant to go after arriving in the forest: to Ombra, where the Laughing Prince’s castle stood. And that was where Meggie hoped to find Fenoglio, too. He had often told her about Ombra when they were both Capricorn’s prisoners. One night, when neither of them could sleep because Capricorn’s men were shooting at stray cats outside again, Fenoglio had whispered to Meggie, “If I could choose to see one place in the Inkworld, then it would be Ombra. After all, the Laughing Prince is a great lover of books, which can hardly be said of his adversary the Adder head. Yes, life must surely be good for a writer in Ombra. A room in an attic somewhere, perhaps in the alley where the cobblers and saddlers work – their trades don’t smell too bad – and a glass man to sharpen my quills, a few fairies over my bed, and I could look down into the alley through my window and see all life pass by. . ”
“What are you taking with you?” Farid’s voice startled Meggie out of her thoughts. “You know we’re not supposed to bring too much.”
“Of course I know.” Did he think that just because she was a girl she needed a dozen dresses? All she was going to carry was the old leather bag that had always gone with her and Mo on their travels when she was little. It would remind her of Mo, and she hoped that in the Inkworld it would be as inconspicuous as her dress. But the things she’d stuffed into it would certainly attract attention if anyone saw them: a hairbrush made of plastic, modern like the buttons on the cardigan she had packed; also a couple of pencils, a penknife, a photograph of her parents, and one of Elinor. She had thought hard about what book to take. Going without one would have seemed to her like setting off naked, but it mustn’t be a heavy book, so it had to be a paperback.
“Books in beach clothes,” Mo called them, “badly dressed for most occasions but useful when you’re on vacation.” Elinor didn’t have a single paperback on her shelves, but Meggie herself owned a few. In the end she had decided on one that Resa had given her, a collection of stories set near the lake that lay close to Elinor’s house. That way she would be taking a little bit of home with her – for Elinor’s house was her home now, more than anywhere else had ever been.
And who knew, maybe Fenoglio would be able to use the words in it to write her back again, back into her own story. .
Farid had gone to the window. It was open, and a cool wind was blowing into the room, moving the curtains that Resa had made. Meggie shivered in her new dress. The nights were still very mild, but what would the season be in the Inkworld?
Perhaps it was winter there. .
“I ought to say good-bye to him, at least,” murmured Farid. “Gwin!” he called softly into the night air, clicking his tongue. Meggie quickly pulled him away from the window. “Don’t do that!” she snapped. “Do you want to wake up everyone? I’ve already told you, Gwin will be fine here. He’s probably found a female marten by now. There are a few around the place. Elinor’s always afraid they’ll eat the nightingale that sings outside her window in the evening.”
Farid looked very unhappy, but he stepped back from the window. “Why are you leaving it open?” he asked. “Suppose Basta .. ” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“Elinor’s alarm system works even if there’s an open window,” was all Meggie said, while she put the notebook Mo had given her in her bag. There was a reason why she didn’t want to close the window. One night in a hotel by the sea, not far from Capricorn’s village, she had persuaded Mo to read her a poem. A poem about a moon-bird asleep in a peppermint wind. Next morning the bird was fluttering against the window of their hotel bedroom, and Meggie couldn’t forget how its little head kept colliding with the glass again and again. Her window must stay open.
“We’d better sit close to each other on the sofa,” she said. “And sling your backpack over your back.”
Farid obeyed. He sat down on the sofa as hesitantly as he had on her chair. It was an old, velvet, button-backed sofa with tassels, its pale green upholstery very worn. “You need somewhere comfortable to sit and read,” Elinor had said when she asked Darius to put it in Meggie’s room.