The way she was looking at him! As incredulously as she used to when he had yet again tried to explain where he had been for weeks on end. “You mean magic, an inkspell?” she whispered.

“No. I mean reading aloud.”

She didn’t understand a word of this, of course, which was not surprising. Perhaps she would if she heard Meggie read, if she saw the words suddenly trembling in the air, if she could smell them, feel them on her skin. .

“I’d like to be alone when I read it,” said Meggie, looking at Farid. Then she turned and went back to the infirmary with Fenoglio’s letter in her hand. Farid wanted to follow her, but Dustfinger detained him.

“Let her!” he said. “Do you think she’ll disappear into the words? That’s nonsense. We’re all up to our necks in the story she’s going to read, anyway. She only wants to make sure the wind changes, and it will – if the old man has written the right words!”

Chapter 56 – The Wrong Ears

Song lies asleep in everything

That dreams the day and night away, And the whole world itself will sing If once the magic word you say.

– Joseph von Eichendorff, “The Divining Rod”

Roxane brought Meggie an oil lamp before leaving her alone in the room where they would be sleeping. “Written words need light, that’s the awkward thing about them,” she said. “But if these words are really as important as you all say, I can understand that you want to read them alone. I’ve always thought my singing voice sounds best when I’m on my own, too.” She was already in the doorway when she added, “Your mother – do she and Dustfinger know each other well?”

Meggie almost replied: I don’t know. I never asked my mother. But at last she said, “They were friends.” She did not mention the resentment she still felt when she thought of how Dustfinger had known where Resa was, all those years, and hadn’t told Mo. But Roxane asked no more questions, anyway. “If you need any help,” was all she said before she left the room, “you’ll find me with the Barn Owl.”

Meggie waited until her footsteps along the dark corridor had died away. Then she sat down on one of the straw mattresses and put the sheets of parchment on her lap. What would it be like, she couldn’t help thinking as the words lay spread out before her, simply to do it for fun, just once? What would it be like to feel the magic of the words on her tongue when it wasn’t a matter of life or death, good or bad luck? Once, in Elinor’s house, she had been almost unable to resist that temptation, when she had seen a book that she’d loved as a small child – a book with mice in frilly dresses and tiny suits making jam and going for picnics. She had stopped the first word from forming on her lips by closing the book, though, because she’d suddenly seen some dreadful pictures in her mind. One of the dressed-up mice in Elinor’s garden surrounded by its wild relations, who would never in a million years dream of making jam. And an image of a little frilly dress, complete with a gray tail, in the jaws of one of the cats that regularly roamed among Elinor’s rhododendron bushes. Meggie had never brought anything out of the words on the page just for fun, and she wasn’t going to do it this evening, either.

“The whole secret, Meggie,” Mo had once told her, “is in the breathing. It gives your voice strength and fills it with your life. And not just yours. Sometimes it feels as if when you take a breath you are breathing in everything around you, everything that makes up the world and moves it, and then it all flows into the words.” She tried it. She tried to breathe as calmly and deeply as the sea – the sound of the surf came into the room from outside – in and out, in and out, as if she could capture its power in her voice. The oil lamp that Roxane had brought in filled the bare room with warm light, and outside one of the women healers walked softly by.

“I’m just going on with the story!” whispered Meggie. “I’m going on with the story. That’s what it’s waiting for. Come on!”

She pictured the massive figure of the Adderhead pacing sleeplessly up and down in the Castle of Night, never guessing that there was a girl who planned to whisper his name in Death’s ear this very night.

She took the letter that Fenoglio had written her from her belt. It was as well that Dustfinger hadn’t read it.

Dear Meggie, it said, I hope that what I’m sending won’t disappoint you. It’s odd, but I have found that obviously I can write only what doesn’t contradict anything I wrote about the Inkworld earlier. I have to keep the rules I made myself, even though I often made them unconsciously.

I hope your father is all right. From what I hear he is now a prisoner in the Castle of Night – and I must admit that I am not entirely blameless there. Yes, I admit it. After all, as you will have found out by now, I used him as a living model for the Bluejay. I am sorry, but I really did think it was a good idea at the time. He made an excellent and noble robber in my imagination, and how could I guess that he would ever really come into my story? Well, be that as it may, he’s here, and the Adderhead won’t set him free just because I write a new passage saying so. I didn’t make him that way, Meggie. The story must be true to itself, that’s the only way to do it, so I can only send you these words. At first they may do no more than delay your father’s execution, but I hope they will ultimately lead to his freedom after all. Trust me. I believe the words I enclose are the only possible way of bringing this story to a truly happy ending, and you like stories with happy endings, don’t you?

Go on with my story, Meggie, before it goes on with itself!

I would have liked to bring you the words myself, but I have to keep an eye on Cosimo. I am rather afraid that in his case we made it a little too easy for ourselves. Take care of yourself, give my good wishes to your father when you see him again (which I hope will be soon) and to the boy who worships the ground under your feet, too oh yes, and tell Dustfinger, though I don’t suppose he’ll like it, that his wife is much too beautiful for him.

Love and kisses,

Fenoglio

P.S. Since your father is still alive, I have wondered whether perhaps the words I gave you for him in the forest worked after all? If so, Meggie, then that could be only because I made him. one of my characters, in a way – which would mean that some good came of the whole Bluejay story, don’t you think?

Oh, Fenoglio. What a master he was in the art of turning everything to his own advantage!

A breath of wind came through the window as Meggie reread the letter, making the sheets of parchment move as if the story itself were impatient and wanted to hear the new words. “Yes, all right. Here I go,” whispered Meggie.

She had not often heard her father read aloud, but she remembered exactly how Mo gave every word the right sound, every single word. .

It was quiet in the room, very quiet. The whole Inkworld every fairy, every tree, even the sea –

seemed to be waiting for her voice. ” Night after night, ” Meggie began, ” the Adderhead could get no rest. His wife slept soundly and deeply. She was his fifth wife, and younger than his three eldest daughters. Her body, pregnant with his child, was a mound under the bedclothes. It must be a boy this time; she had already borne him two daughters. If this child was another girl he would disown her, just as he had repudiated his other wives. He would send her back to her father or to some lonely castle in the mountains.