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"Careful, careful!" whispered Dustfinger, putting Jasper onto Farid’s shoulder.
"You’re still as clumsy as a young calf. You have your glass friend to thank for my being here. He told Brianna what Orpheus was planning to do to you, and she rode to Roxane." "Brianna?" The glass man blushed when Farid put him on his arm. "Thank you, Jasper!"
Then he spun around. Orpheus’s voice came ringing down the cellar stairs. "A stranger? What are you talking about? How did he get past you?"
"It’s the maid’s fault!" Farid heard Oss protesting. "The red-haired maid let him in through the back door!"
Dustfinger listened to the sounds above, smiling the old mocking smile that Farid had missed so much. Sparks were dancing on his shoulders and his hair. They seemed to be shining even under his skin, and Farid’s own skin was hot, as if the fire had been licking it since he touched Dustfinger.
"The fire . . ." he whispered. "Is it in you?"
"Maybe," Dustfinger whispered back. "I’m probably not entirely what I was, but I can do a few interesting new things." "New things?"
Farid looked at him, eyes wide, but the voice of Orpheus came down again from above. "Smells of fire, does he? Let me past, you human rhinoceros! Is his face scarred?"
"No. Why?" Oss sounded offended.
And footsteps came down the stairs again, heavy and uncertain footsteps this time.
Orpheus hated climbing either up or down stairs, and Farid heard him cursing.
"Meggie read Orpheus here!" he whispered as he pressed close to Dustfinger’s side.
"I asked her to do it because I thought he could bring you back!"
"Orpheus?" Dustfinger laughed again. "No, it was only Silvertongue’s voice I heard."
‘His voice perhaps, but it was my words that brought you back!" Orpheus stumbled down the last few steps, his face red from the wine. "Dustfinger. It really is you!"
There was genuine delight in his voice.
Oss appeared behind Orpheus, fear and rage on his coarse face. "Look at him, my lord!" he managed to get out, "He’s not human. He’s a demon, or a spirit of the night.
See those sparks on his hair? When I tried to hold on to him I almost burned my fingers — as if the executioner had put red-hot coals in my hands!"
"Yes, yes" was all Orpheus said. "He comes from far away, very far away. Such a journey can change a man." He was staring at Dustfinger as if afraid he might dissolve into thin air at any moment — or, more likely, into a few lifeless words on a sheet of paper.
"I’m so glad you’re back!" he stammered, his voice awkward with longing. "And your scars have gone! How amazing. I didn’t write that. Well, anyway.. . you’re back! This world is worth only half as much without you, but now it will all be as wonderful as it was when I first read about you in Inkheart. It was always the best of all stories, but now you’ll be its hero — you alone, thanks to my art, that took you home and now has even brought you back from the realm of Death!"
"Your art? More likely Silvertongue’s courage." Dustfinger made a flame dance on his hand. It took on the shape of a White Woman so distinctly that Oss cowered against the cellar wall in terror.
"Nonsense!" For a moment Orpheus sounded like a boy with hurt feelings, but he soon had himself in hand again. "Nonsense!" he repeated, with more self-control this time, although his tongue was still rather thick from the wine. "Whatever he told you, it isn’t true. I did it all."
"He didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t have to. He was there, he and his voice.
"But I had the idea — and I wrote the words! He was only my tool." Orpheus spluttered the last word as furiously as if he were spitting it into Silvertongue’s face.
"Ah yes . . . your words! Very cunning words, according to all I’ve heard from him."
The image of the White Woman was still burning on Dustfinger’s hand. "Maybe I ought to take those words to Silvertongue so that he can read them once more and find out what kind of part you intended him to play in all this."
Orpheus stood up very straight. "I wrote them like that for you, only for you!" he cried in an injured voice. "That was all I cared about — for you to come back. Why would that bookbinder interest me? After all, I had to offer Death something!"
Dustfinger blew gently into the flame burning on his hand. "Oh, I understand you very well!" he said quietly, while the fire formed the shape of a bird, a golden bird with a red breast. "I understand a good deal now that I’ve been on the other side, and I know two things for sure: Death obeys no words, and Silvertongue —not you —
went to the White Women."
"He was the only one who could call them. What was I supposed to do?" cried Orpheus. "And he did it for his wife! Not for you!" "Well, now, I’d call that a good reason." The fiery bird fell apart in Dustfinger’s hand. "And as for the words.., to be honest, I like his voice so much better than yours, even if the sound of it didn’t always make me happy. Silvertongue’s voice is full of love. Yours speaks only of yourself. Quite apart from the fact that you’re much too fond of reading words no one knows about, or forgetting a few you promised to read. Isn’t that so, Farid?"
Farid just stared at Orpheus, his face rigid with hate.
"Be that as it may," Dustfinger went on as the flame in his hand licked out of the ashes again, forming the shape of a tiny skull, "I’ll take the words with me. And the book."
"The book?" Orpheus stepped back as if the fire on Dust-finger’s hand had turned into a snake.
"Yes, Inkheart. You stole it from Farid, remember? That hardly makes it yours.., even if you seem to be busily making use of it, from all I hear. Rainbow-colored fairies, spotted brownies, unicorns . . . They say there are even dwarves in the castle now. What’s the idea of all that? Weren’t the blue fairies beautiful enough for you?
The Milksop kicks the dwarves, and you bring unicorns here only to die."
"No, no!" Orpheus raised his hands defensively. "You don’t understand! I have great plans for this story. I’m still working on them, but believe me, it will be wonderful!
Fenoglio left so much unsaid, there was so much he didn’t describe — I’m going to change it all, I’m going to improve it. . . ."
Dustfinger turned his hand over and dropped the ashes on the floor of Orpheus’s cellar. "You sound like Fenoglio himself— but I’d guess you’re much worse than he is. This world is spinning its own threads. The two of you only confuse them— take them apart and put them together again in ways that don’t really fit, instead of leaving it to the people who live in the place to improve it."
"Like who, for instance?" Orpheus’s voice turned vicious. "The Bluejay? Since when has he belonged here?"
Dustfinger shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? Perhaps all of us belong in more than one story. Now, bring me the book. Or shall I ask Farid to go and get it?"
Orpheus was staring at him as bitterly as a rejected lover.
"No!" he got out at last. "I need it. The book stays here. You can’t take it away from me. I’m warning you. Fenoglio’S not the only one who can write words to harm you!
