Inkheart
by Cornelia Funke
Chapter 1
A Stranger in
the Night
The moon shone in the rocking horse's eye, and in the mouse's
eye, too, when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to
see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he thought
he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter
and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book
being turned over.
L. M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe
Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later,
Meggie had only to close her eyes and she could still hear it,
like tiny fingers tapping on the windowpane. A dog barked
somewhere in the darkness, and however often she tossed and
turned Meggie couldn't get to sleep.
The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing
its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.
"I'm sure it must be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular
thing like that under your head," her father had teased
the first time he found a book under her pillow. "Go on, admit it,
the book whispers its story to you at night."
"Sometimes, yes," Meggie had said. "But it only works for
children." Which made Mo tweak her nose. Mo. Meggie had
never called her father anything else.
That night when so much began and so many things
changed forever Meggie had one of her favorite books under
her pillow, and since the rain wouldn't let her sleep she sat up,
rubbed the drowsiness from her eyes, and took it out. Its pages
rustled promisingly when she opened it. Meggie thought this
first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another,
depending on whether or not she already knew the story it was
going to tell her. But she needed light. She had a box of matches
hidden in the drawer of her bedside table. Mo had forbidden her
to light candles at night. He didn't like fire. "Fire devours
books," he always said, but she was twelve years old, she surely
could be trusted to keep an eye on a couple of candle flames.
Meggie loved to read by candlelight. She had five candlesticks on
the windowsill, and she was just holding the lighted match to one
of the black wicks when she heard footsteps outside. She blew out
the match in alarm oh, how well she remembered it, even
many years later and knelt to look out of the window, which
was wet with rain. Then she saw him.
The rain cast a kind of pallor on the darkness, and the stranger
was little more than a shadow. Only his face gleamed white as he
looked up at Meggie. His hair clung to his wet forehead. The rain
was falling on him, but he ignored it. He stood there motionless,
arms crossed over his chest as if that might at least warm him a little.
And he kept on staring at the house.
I must go and wake Mo, thought Meggie. But she stayed put,
her heart thudding, and went on gazing out into the night as if
the stranger's stillness had infected her. Suddenly, he turned his
head, and Meggie felt as if he were looking straight into her eyes.
She shot off the bed so fast the open book fell to the floor, and she
ran barefoot out into the dark corridor. This was the end of May,
but it was chilly in the old house.
There was still a light on in Mo's room. He often stayed up
reading late into the night. Meggie had inherited her love of
books from her father. When she took refuge from a bad dream
with him, nothing could lull her to sleep better than Mo's calm
breathing beside her and the sound of the pages turning. Nothing
chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.
But the figure outside the house was no dream.
The book Mo was reading that night was bound in pale blue
linen. Later, Meggie remembered that, too. What unimportant
little details stick in the memory.
"Mo, there's someone out in the yard!"
Her father raised his head and looked at her with the usual
absent expression he wore when she interrupted his reading. It
always took him a few moments to find his way out of that other
world, the labyrinth of printed letters.
"Someone out in the yard? Are you sure?"
"Yes. He's staring at our house."
Mo put down his book. "So what were you reading before you
went to sleep? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
Meggie frowned. "Please, Mo! Come and look."
He didn't believe her, but he went anyway. Meggie tugged
him along the corridor so impatiently that he stubbed his toe on a
pile of books, which was hardly surprising. Stacks of books were
piled high all over the house not just arranged in neat rows on
bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no! The books
in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs,
in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and
books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small
piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old
and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly
opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather
was bad. And sometimes you fell over them.
"He's just standing there!" whispered Meggie, leading Mo
into her room.
"Has he got a hairy face? If so he could be a werewolf."
"Oh, stop it!" Meggie looked at him sternly, although his
jokes made her feel less scared. Already, she hardly believed anymore
in the figure standing in the rain until she knelt down
again at the window. "There! Do you see him?" she whispered.
Mo looked out through the raindrops running down the pane
and said nothing.
"Didn't you promise burglars would never break into our
house because there's nothing here to steal?" whispered Meggie.
"He's not a burglar," replied Mo, but as he stepped back from
the window his face was so grave that Meggie's heart thudded
faster than ever. "Go back to bed, Meggie," he said. "This visitor
has come to see me."
He left the room before Meggie could ask what kind of visitor,
for goodness sake, turned up in the middle of the night? She followed
him anxiously. As she crept down the corridor she heard
her father taking the chain off the front door, and when she
reached the hall she saw him standing in the open doorway. The
night came in, dark and damp, and the rushing of the rain
sounded loud and threatening.
"Dustfinger!" called Mo into the darkness. "Is that you?"
Dustfinger? What kind of a name was that? Meggie couldn't
remember ever hearing it before, yet it sounded familiar, like a
distant memory that wouldn't take shape properly.
At first, all seemed still outside except for the rain falling, murmuring
as if the night had found its voice. But then footsteps
approached the house, and the man emerged from the darkness of
the yard, his long coat so wet with rain that it clung to his legs. For
a split second, as the stranger stepped into the light spilling out of
the house, Meggie thought she saw a small furry head over his
shoulder, snuffling as it looked out of his backpack and then
quickly disappearing back into it.
Dustfinger wiped his wet face with his sleeve and offered Mo
his hand.
"How are you, Silvertongue?" he asked. "It's been a long
time."
Hesitantly, Mo took the outstretched hand. "A very long
time," he said, looking past his visitor as if he expected to see
another figure emerge from the night. "Come in, you'll catch
your death. Meggie says you've been standing out there for some
time."
"Meggie? Ah yes, of course." Dustfinger let Mo lead him into
the house. He scrutinized Meggie so thoroughly she felt quite
embarrassed and didn't know where to look. In the end she just
stared back.
"She's grown."
"You remember her?"
"Of course."
Meggie noticed that Mo double-locked the door.
"How old is she now?" Dustfinger smiled at her. It was a
strange smile. Meggie couldn't decide whether it was mocking,
supercilious, or just awkward. She didn't smile back.
"Twelve," said Mo.
"Twelve? My word!" Dustfinger pushed his dripping hair
back from his forehead. It reached almost to his shoulders. Meggie
wondered what color it was when it was dry. The stubble
around his narrow-lipped mouth was gingery, like the fur of the
stray cat Meggie sometimes fed with a saucer of milk outside the
door. Ginger hair sprouted on his cheeks, too, sparse as a boy's
first beard but not long enough to hide three long, pale scars.
They made Dustfinger's face look as if it had been smashed and
stuck back together again.
"Twelve," he repeated. "Of course. She was . . . let's see, she
was three then, wasn't she?"
Mo nodded. "Come on, I'll find you some dry clothes."
Impatiently, as if he were suddenly in a hurry to hide the man
from Meggie, he led his visitor across the hall. "And, Meggie,"
he said over his shoulder, "you go back to sleep." Then, without
another word, he closed his workshop door.
Meggie stood there rubbing her cold feet together. Go back to
sleep. Sometimes, when they'd stayed up late yet again, Mo
would toss her down on her bed like a bag of walnuts. Sometimes
he chased her around the house after supper until she escaped
into her room, breathless with laughter. And sometimes he was
so tired he lay down on the sofa and she made him a cup of coffee
before she went to bed. But he had never ever sent her off to her
room so brusquely.
A foreboding, clammy and fearful, came into her heart as if,
along with the visitor whose name was so strange yet
somehow familiar, some menace had slipped into her life. And
she wished so hard it frightened her that she had never
gone to get Mo and Dustfinger had stayed outside until the rain
washed him away.
When the door of the workshop opened again she jumped.
"Still there, I see," said Mo. "Go to bed, Meggie. Please." He
had that little frown over his nose that appeared only when something
was really worrying him, and he seemed to look straight
through her as if his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. The
foreboding in Meggie's heart grew, spreading black wings.
"Send him away, Mo!" she said as he gently propelled her
toward her room. "Please! Send him away. I don't like him."
Mo leaned in her open doorway. "He'll be gone when you get
up in the morning. Word of honor."
"Word of honor no crossed fingers?" Meggie looked him
straight in the eye. She could always tell when Mo was lying,
however hard he tried to hide it from her.
"No crossed fingers," he said, holding both hands out to show
her.
Then he closed her door, even though he knew she didn't like
that. Meggie put her ear to it, listening. She could hear the clink
of china. So the man with the sandy beard was getting a nice cup
of tea to warm him up. I hope he catches pneumonia, thought
Meggie . . . though he needn't necessarily die of it. Meggie heard
the kettle whistling in the kitchen and Mo carrying a tray of clattering
crockery back to the workshop. When that door closed she
forced herself to wait a few more seconds, just to be on the safe
side. Then she crept back out into the hallway.
There was a sign hanging on the door of Mo's workshop, a
small metal plaque. Meggie knew the words on it by heart. When
she was five she had often practiced reading the old-fashioned,
spindly lettering:
Some books should be tasted
some devoured,
but only a few
should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
Back then, when she still had to climb on a box to read the
plaque, she had thought the chewing and digesting were meant
literally and wondered, horrified, why Mo had hung on his workshop
door the words of someone who vandalized books. Now she
knew what the plaque really meant, but tonight, she wasn't interested
in written words. Spoken words were what she wanted to
hear, the words being exchanged in soft, almost inaudible whispers
by the two men on the other side of the door.
"Don't underestimate him!" she heard Dustfinger say. His
voice was so different from Mo's. No one else in the world had a
voice like her father's. Mo could paint pictures in the empty air
with his voice alone.
"He'd do anything to get hold of it." That was Dustfinger
again. "And when I say anything,' I can assure you I mean anything."
"I'll never let him have it." That was Mo.
"He'll still get his hands on it, one way or another! I tell you,
they're on your trail."
"It wouldn't be the first time. I've always managed to shake
them off before."
"Oh yes? And for how much longer, do you think? What
about your daughter? Are you telling me she actually likes moving
around the whole time? Believe me, I know what I'm talking
about."
It was so quiet behind the door that Meggie scarcely dared
breathe in case the two men heard her.
Finally, her father spoke again, hesitantly, as if his tongue
found it difficult to form the words. "Then what do you think I
ought to do?"
"Come with me. I'll take you to them." A cup clinked. The
sound of a spoon against china. How loud small noises sound in a
silence. "You know how much Capricorn thinks of your talents.
He'd be glad if you took it to him of your own free will, I'm sure he
would. The man he found to replace you is useless."
Capricorn. Another peculiar name. Dustfinger had uttered it
as if the mere sound might scorch his tongue. Meggie wriggled
her chilly toes and wrinkled her cold nose. She didn't understand
much of what the two men were saying, but she tried to memorize
every single word of it.
It was quiet again in the workshop.
"Oh, I don't know," said Mo at last. He sounded so weary it
tore at Meggie's heart. "I'll have to think about it. When do you
think his men will get here?"
"Soon!"
The word dropped like a stone into the silence.
"Soon," repeated Mo. "Very well. I'll have made up my mind
by tomorrow. Do you have somewhere to sleep?"
"Oh, I can always find a place," replied Dustfinger. "I'm
managing quite well these days, although it's still all much too
fast for me." His laugh was not a happy one. "But I'd like to know
what you decide. May I come back tomorrow? About midday?"
"Yes, of course. I'll be picking Meggie up from school at one-thirty.
Come after that."
Meggie heard a chair being pushed back and scurried back to
her room. When the door of the workshop opened she was just
closing her bedroom door behind her. Pulling the covers up to
her chin, she lay there listening as her father said good-bye to
Dustfinger.
"And thank you for the warning anyway," she heard him add as
Dustfinger's footsteps moved away, slowly and uncertainly, as if he
were reluctant to leave, as if he hadn't said everything he'd wanted
to say. But at last he was gone, and only the rain kept drumming its
wet fingers on Meggie's window.
When Mo opened the door of her room she quickly closed her
eyes and tried to breathe as slowly as you do in a deep, innocent
sleep. But Mo wasn't stupid. In fact, he was sometimes terribly
clever.
"Meggie, put one of your feet out of bed," he told her. Reluctantly,
she stuck her toes out from under the blanket and laid
them in Mo's warm hand. They were still cold.
"I knew it!" he said. "You've been spying. Can't you do as I
tell you, just for once?" Sighing, he tucked her foot back underneath
the nice warm blankets. Then he sat down on her bed,
passed his hands over his tired face, and looked out of the window.
His hair was as dark as moleskin. Meggie had fair hair like
her mother, whom she knew only from a few faded photographs.
"You should be glad you look more like her than me," Mo always
said. "My head wouldn't look good at all on a girl's neck." But
Meggie wished she did look more like him. There wasn't a face in
the world she loved more.
"I didn't hear what you were saying anyway," she murmured.
"Good." Mo stared out of the window as if Dustfinger were
still standing in the yard. Then he rose and went to the door.
"Try to get some sleep," he said.
But Meggie didn't want to sleep. "Dustfinger! What sort of a
name is that?" she asked. "And why does he call you Silvertongue?"
Mo did not reply.
"And this person who's looking for you I heard what
Dustfinger called him. Capricorn. Who is he?"
"No one you want to meet." Her father didn't turn around. "I
thought you didn't hear anything. Good night, Meggie."
This time he left her door open. The light from the hallway
fell on her bed, mingling with the darkness of the night that
seeped in through the window, and Meggie lay there waiting for
the dark to disappear and take her fear of some evil menace away
with it. Only later did she understand that the evil had not
appeared for the first time that night. It had just slunk back in
again.
Copyright (c) 2004, Scholastic Books Inc. Reproduced with the permission of Scholastic Books
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