Mo’s voice sounded as cool as the air making its way in through the tent’s ragged fabric. "But you and Meggie wouldn’t hear of another one."
"How was Ito know what this story would turn you into?" Resa’s voice sounded as if she hardly knew how to hold back her tears. Go back to sleep, Meggie told herself.
Leave the two of them alone. But she stayed where she was, freezing in the cold night air. "What are you talking about? What’s it supposed to have made me into?"
Mo spoke softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the silence of the night, but Resa seemed to have forgotten where she was.
"What’s it made you into?" Her voice was rising with every word. "You wear a sword at your belt! You hardly sleep, you’re out all night. Do you think I can’t tell the cry of a real Bluejay from a human imitation? I know how often Battista or the Strong Man came to fetch you when we were at the farm.., and the worst of it is, I know how happy you are to go with them. You’ve found you have a taste for danger!
You went to Ombra although the Prince warned you not to. And now you come back, after they almost caught you, and act as if it were all a game!"
"What else is it?" Nib was still speaking so softly that Meggie could hardly hear him.
"Have you forgotten what this world is made of?"
"I couldn’t care less what it’s made of. You can die in it, Mo.
You know that better than I do. Or have you forgotten the White Women? No, you even talk about them in your sleep. Sometimes I almost think you miss them."
Mo did not reply, but Meggie knew Resa was right. Mo had talked to her about the White Women only once. "They’re made of nothing but longing, Meggie," he had said. "They fill your heart to the brim with longing, until you just want to go with them, wherever they take you."
"Please, Mo!" Resa’s voice was shaking. "Ask Fenoglio to write us back again! He’ll try to do it for you. He owes you that!" One of the robbers coughed in his sleep, another moved closer to the fire.., and Mo said nothing. When at last he did reply he sounded as if he were talking to a child. Even to Meggie he didn’t speak like that.
"Fenoglio isn’t writing at all these days, Resa. I’m not even sure whether he still can."
"Then go to Orpheus! You’ve heard what Farid says. Orpheus has written rainbow-colored fairies into this world, and Unicorns and—"
"So? Maybe Orpheus can add something to Fenoglio’s story here and there. But he’d have to write something of his own to take us back to Elinor. I doubt if he can do that. And even if he can — from all Farid says, he’s not interested in anything but making himself the richest man in Ombra. Do you have the money to pay him for his words?"
This time it was Resa who remained silent — for so long that she might have been mute again, as she was when she left her voice behind in the Inkworld.
It was Mo who finally broke the silence.
"Resa!" he said. "If we go back now I’ll be sitting in Elinor’s house doing nothing but wondering how this story goes on, day in, day out. And no book in the world will be able to tell me that!"
"You don’t just want to know how it goes on." Now it was Resa’s voice that sounded cool. "You want to decide what happens. You want to be part of it! But who knows whether you’ 11 ever find your way out of the letters on the page again, if you tangle yourself up in them even more."
"Even more? What do you mean? I’ve seen Death here, Resa— and I have a new life."
"If you won’t do it for me"--Meggie could hear how hard it was for her mother to go on — "then go back for Meggie. . . and for our second child. I want my baby to have a father, I want the baby’s father to be alive when it’s born — and I want him to be the same man who brought up its sister."
Once more Meggie had to wait a long time for Mo’s answer. A tawny owl hooted.
Gecko’s crows cawed sleepily in the tree where they roosted at night. Fenoglio’s world seemed so peaceful. And Mo stroked the bark of the tree against which he was leaning, as tenderly as he usually caressed the spine of a book.
"How do you know Meggie doesn’t want to stay? She’s almost grown-up. And in love. Do you think she wants to go back while Farid stays here? Because stay he will."
In love. Meggie’s face was burning. She didn’t want Mo to say what she herself had never put into words. In love — it sounded like a sickness without any cure, and wasn’t that just how it sometimes felt? Yes, Farid would stay. She had so often told herself that, when she felt a wish to go back: Farid will stay even if Dustfinger doesn’t return from the dead. He’ll go on looking for him and longing for him, much more than he longs for you, Meggie. But how would it feel never to see him again?
Would she leave her heart here and go around with an empty hole in her breast ever after? Would she stay alone—like Elinor —and only read about being in love in books?
‘She’ll get over it!" she heard Resa say. "She’ll fall in love with someone else."
What was her mother talking about? She doesn’t know me! thought Meggie. She never knew me. How could she? She was never there with us.
"What about your second child?" Resa went on. "Do you want the baby born in this world?"
Mo looked around him, and once more Meggie felt something she had long known: By now her father loved this world as much as she and Resa had once done. Perhaps he even loved it more.
"Why not?" he retorted. "Do you want it born in a world where what it longs for can be found only in books?"
Resa’s voice shook when she replied, but now it was with anger. "How can you say such a thing? Everything you find here was born in our world. Where else did Fenoglio get it all from?"
"How should T know? Do you really still think there’s only one real world, and the others are just pale offshoots?" Somewhere a wolf howled and two others responded.
One of the guards came through the trees and put wood on the dying fire. His name was Wayfarer. None of the robbers went by the names they had been born with. He moved away again, after casting a curious glance at Mo and Resa.
"I don’t want to go back, Resa. Not now!" Mo’s voice sounded determined, but at the same time Meggie could tell he was trying to win her mother over, as if he still hoped to convince her that they were in the right place. "It will be months yet before the baby’s born, and maybe we’ll all be back in Elinor’s house by then. But right now, this is where I want to be."
He kissed Resa on the forehead. Then he went away, over to the men standing guard among the trees at the far end of the camp. And Resa dropped into the grass where she stood and buried her face in her hands. Meggie wanted to go to her and comfort her, but what could she say? I want to stay with Farid, Resa. I don’t want to find someone else. No, that would hardly be much comfort to her mother. And Mo didn’t come back, either.
CHAPTER 16
THE PIPERS OFFER
At last. Here they came. Trumpets rang out in a fanfare from the city gates, an arrogant metallic sound. Just like the man it announced, Fenoglio thought. The Milksop — the common people always found the most suitable names. He couldn’t have thought of a better one himself, but then he hadn’t invented this pallid upstart, either! Not even the Adderhead had his arrival announced by long-stemmed trumpets, but his pigeonchested brother-in-law had only to ride around the castle and they struck up.
