Chapter 12 – Uninvited Guests

“You people with hearts,” he said once, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.”

– L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz

On the day when Meggie disappeared, silence moved back into Elinor’s house, but not the silence of the old days when only her books lived there with her. The silence that now filled the rooms and corridors tasted of sorrow. Resa wept a great deal, and Mortimer said nothing, as if paper and ink had swallowed up not just his daughter, but all the words in the world with her.

He spent a lot of time in his workshop, ate little, hardly slept – and on the third day Darius, looking very anxious, went to Elinor and told her that Silvertongue was packing up all his tools.

When Elinor entered his workshop, out of breath because Darius had been tugging her along behind him so fast, Mortimer was throwing the stamps he used for gold leaf into a crate, pell-mell – tools that he normally handled as carefully as if they were made of glass.

“What the devil are you doing?” inquired Elinor.

“What does it look like?” he replied and began clearing away his sewing frame. “I’m going to find another profession. I never want to touch a book again, curse them all. Other people can listen to the stories they tell and mend the clothes they wear. I want nothing more to do with them.”

When Elinor went to fetch Resa to help her, Resa just shook her head.

“Well, I can understand why those two are useless just now,” commented Elinor, as she and Darius sat at breakfast by themselves yet again. “How could Meggie do a thing like that to them?

What was her idea – did she want to break her poor parents’ hearts? Or prove once and for all that books are dangerous?” Darius had no answer but silence. He had been the same all these last few sad days.

“For heaven’s sake, all of you silent as the grave!” Elinor snapped at him. “We must do something to get the silly creature back. Anything. Good God, it can’t be as difficult as all that! After all, there are no fewer than two Silvertongues under this roof!”

Darius looked at her in alarm and choked on his tea. He had left his gift unused for so long that no doubt it seemed like a dream to him, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it. “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.