“Darius!” whispered Elinor, putting a hand on his thin shoulder. “Won’t you just have a try? I know he always keeps the book close to him, but perhaps we can get our hands on it somehow.
You could put something in his food. . ”
“He gets Sugar to taste everything he’s going to eat.”
“Yes, I know. Right, so we must try something else, anything, and then you can read us into the book! If this repulsive creature won’t bring them out for us, then we’ll simply go after them!”
But Darius shook his head, as he had done every time Elinor had suggested the same thing, although in slightly different words. “I can’t do it, Elinor!” he whispered, and his glasses clouded over, whether with the steam of cooking or tears rising to his eyes she thought it better not to inquire. “I’ve never read anyone into a book, only out of it, and you know what happened then.”
“Oh, all right, then read someone here, someone strong and heroic who’ll chase those two out of my house! Who cares if his nose has been flattened or he’s lost his voice like Resa, just so long as he has plenty of muscles!”
As if on cue, Sugar put his head around the door. Elinor was constantly amazed to see that it was not much wider than his neck. “Orpheus wants to know where dinner is.”
“Just ready,” replied Darius, handing him one of the steaming plates. “Rice again?” growled Sugar.
“Yes, sorry about that,” said Darius, as he pushed past him with Orpheus’s plate.
“And you see about the dessert!” Sugar ordered Elinor as she was about to put the first forkful into her own mouth.
No, this just couldn’t go on. Acting the kitchen maid in her own house, with a horrible man in her library throwing her books on the floor, treating them like boxes of chocolates, nibbling something from one book here, another there.
There must be a way to do it, she thought, spooning walnut ice cream into two dishes with a gloomy expression on her face. There must. There must. Why couldn’t her stupid brain work it out?
Chapter 41 – The Captives
“Then you don’t think he’s dead, then?”
He put on his hat. “Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look at him, and when I come back we’ll get together and decide.”
– Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Night had fallen long ago when Meggie and Farid set out to follow Dustfinger. Go south, keep going south, Cloud Dancer had told them, but how did you know you were going south when there was no sun to show you the way, no stars shining through the black leaves? The darkness seemed to have devoured everything: the trees, even the ground before their feet. Moths fluttered into their faces, attracted by the fire that Farid was nursing in his fingers like a little animal. The trees seemed to have eyes and hands, and the wind carried voices to their ears, soft voices whispering words to Meggie that she didn’t understand. On any other night a point would probably have come when she just stopped or ran back to where CloudDancer and Nettle might still be sitting by the fire; but tonight she knew only that she must find Dustfinger and her parents, for neither night nor the forest could hold any terrors for her greater than the fear that had taken root in her heart when she saw Mo’s blood on the straw.
At first, and with the fire to help him, Farid kept finding traces: a print left by one of Dustfinger’s boots, a broken twig, a marten’s trail. . but the time came when he stood there at a loss, not sure which way to go. Tree grew beside tree in the pale moonlight whichever way you looked, so close together that you couldn’t make out any path between their trunks, and Meggie saw eyes: eyes above her, behind her, beside her . . hungry eyes, angry eyes, so many of them that she wished the moon wouldn’t shine so brightly through the leaves.
“Farid!” she whispered. “Let’s climb a tree and wait for sunrise. We’ll never find Dustfinger’s trail again if we just go on like this.”
“My own opinion exactly!” Dustfinger appeared among the trees without a sound, as if he had been standing there for some time already. “I’ve been able to hear you plowing through the forest behind me like a herd of wild boar for the last hour,” he said, as Jink pushed past his legs.
“This is the Way less Wood, and not the safest part of it, either. You can think yourselves lucky I managed to convince the elves in the ash trees that you weren’t breaking their branches just for fun. And how about the Night-Mares? Do you think they don’t pick up your scent? If I hadn’t sent them packing you’d probably be lying stiff as dead wood among the trees by now, caught in bad dreams like two flies in a spider’s web.”
“Night-Mares?” whispered Farid, as the sparks at his fingertips went out. Night-Mares. Meggie came closer to him. She was remembering a story that Resa had told her. What a good thing it hadn’t come into her mind earlier…
“Yes, did I never tell you about them?” Jink ran to Dustfinger as he walked toward them and greeted Gwin with a delighted chatter. “They may not eat you alive like those desert ghosts you kept telling me about, but they’re not exactly friendly, either.”
“I’m not going back,” said Meggie, looking at him resolutely. “Whatever you say I’m not going back.”
Dustfinger looked at her. “No, I know,” he said. “Your mother all over.” That was all.
All night they followed the broad track left by the men-at-arms as they had marched through the forest – all night and the following day. Dustfinger let them stop for a brief rest only when he saw that Meggie was staggering with exhaustion. When the sun was once again so low in the sky that it touched the treetops they reached the crest of a hill, and Meggie saw the dark ribbon of a road running through the green of the forest down below. A collection of buildings stood beside it: a long, low house, with stables around a yard.
“The only inn close to the border,” Dustfinger whispered to them. “They probably left their horses there. You can move considerably faster on foot in the forest. Everyone who wants to go south and down to the sea stops to rest at this inn: couriers, traders, even a few of the strolling players, though everyone knows that the landlord is one of the Adderhead’s spies. If we’re lucky we’ll be there before the party we’re following, because they won’t be able to get down the slopes with the handcart and the prisoners. They’ll have to go the long way around, but we can take the direct route and wait for them at the inn.”
“And then what?” For a moment Meggie thought she saw the same anxiety in his eyes that had driven her into the woods by night. But who was he anxious about? The Black Prince, the other strolling players .. her mother? She still clearly remembered that day in Capricorn’s crypt when he had begged Resa to escape with him and leave her daughter behind. .
Perhaps Dustfinger had remembered it, too. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she murmured, bending her head. “I’m just worried.”
“And for good reason,” he said, abruptly turning his back on her.
“But what are we going to do when we’ve caught up with them?” Farid was hurrying unsteadily after him.
