Inkheart Read Free Page A

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 goodbye 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 9

    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 Silver-tongue?"
    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.
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    Chapter 2 – Secrets
    "What do these children do without storybooks?" Naftali asked.
    And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them."
    "I couldn't live without them," Naftali said.
    – Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus
    It was early dawn when Meggie woke up. Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the