‘Well, well, who have we here?’ a well-remembered voice murmured in his ear. ‘Didn’t I last see you with Silvertongue? It seems you helped Dustfinger to steal the book for him, isn’t that so? What a fine little fellow you are!’ The knife scratched Farid’s skin, and the man breathed peppermint into his face. If he hadn’t known Basta by his voice, then that stinking breath would have identified the man. His knife and a few mint leaves – Basta was never without them. He chewed the leaves and then spat out what remained. He was dangerous as a rabid dog, and not too bright, but how did he come to be here? How had he found them?
‘Well, how do you like my new knife?’ Basta purred into Farid’s ear. ‘I’d have liked to introduce the fire-eater to it too, but Orpheus here has a weakness for him. Never mind, I’ll find Dustfinger again. Him and Silvertongue, and Silvertongue’s witch of a daughter. They’ll all pay …’
‘Pay for what?’ said Farid. ‘Saving you from the Shadow?’
But Basta only pressed the blade more firmly against his neck. ‘Saving me? They brought me bad luck, nothing but bad luck!’
‘For heaven’s sake put that knife away!’ Orpheus interrupted, sounding sickened. ‘He’s only a boy. Let him go. I have the book as we agreed, so—’
‘Let him go?’ Basta laughed aloud, but the laughter died in his throat. A snarling sound came from the woods behind them, and the hell-hound laid its ears back. Basta spun round. ‘What the devil …? You damned idiot! What have you let out of the book?’
Farid didn’t want to know the answer. He felt Basta loosen his grip for a moment. That was enough: he bit the man’s hand so hard that he tasted blood. Basta screamed and dropped the knife. Farid jerked back his elbows, rammed them into the man’s narrow chest and ran. But he had entirely forgotten the little wall by the roadside; he stumbled on it and fell to his knees, so hard that he was left gasping for breath. As he picked himself up he saw the paper lying on the asphalt, the sheet of paper that had carried Dustfinger away. The wind must have blown it into the road. With quick fingers, he reached for it. I just left out what I’d written about you. Understand? Orpheus’s words still rang in his head, mocking him. Farid clutched the sheet of paper to his chest and ran on, over the road and towards the dark trees waiting on the other side. The hell-hound was growling and barking behind him. Then it howled. Something snarled again, so fiercely that Farid ran even faster. Orpheus screamed, fear making his voice shrill and ugly. Basta swore, and then the snarl came again, wild as the snarling of the great cats that had lived in Farid’s old world.
Don’t look round, he thought. Run, run! he told his legs. Let the cat eat the hell-hound, let it eat them all, Basta and Cheeseface included, just keep running. The dead leaves lying under the trees were damp and muffled the sound of his footsteps, but they were slippery too, and made him lose his balance on the steep slope. Desperately he caught hold of a tree trunk, pressed himself against it, knees trembling, and listened to the sounds of the night. Could Basta hear him gasping?
A sob escaped his throat. He pressed his hands to his mouth. The book, Basta had the book! He’d been supposed to look after it – and how was he ever going to find Dustfinger again now? Farid felt the sheet of paper that held Orpheus’s words. He was still holding it tight. It was damp and dirty – and now it was his only hope.
‘Hey, you little bastard! Bite me, would you?’ Basta’s voice reached him through the quiet night air. ‘You can run but I’ll get you yet, do you hear? You, the fire-eater, Silvertongue and his hoity-toity daughter – and the old man who wrote those accursed words! I’ll kill you all! One by one! The way I’ve just slit open the beast that came out of the book.’
Farid hardly dared to breathe. Go on, he told himself. Go on! He can’t see you! Trembling, he felt for the next tree trunk, sought a handhold, and was grateful to the wind for blowing through the leaves and drowning out his footsteps with their rustling. How many times do I have to tell you? There aren’t any ghosts in this world. One of its few advantages. He heard Dustfinger’s voice as clearly as if he were still following the fire-eater. Farid kept repeating the words as the tears ran down his face and thorns gashed his feet: There are no ghosts, there are no ghosts!
A branch whipped against his face so hard that he almost cried out. Were they following him? He couldn’t hear anything except the wind. He slipped again, and stumbled down the slope. Nettles stung his legs, burrs caught in his hair. And something jumped up at him, furry and warm, pushing its nose into his face.
‘Gwin?’ Farid felt the little head. Yes, there were the tiny horns. He pressed his face into the marten’s soft fur. ‘Basta’s back, Gwin!’ he whispered. ‘And he has the book! Suppose Orpheus reads him into it again? He’s sure to go back into the book some time, don’t you think? How are we going to warn Dustfinger about him now?’
Farid twice found himself back at the road that wound down the mountain, but he dared not walk along it, and instead made his way on through the prickly undergrowth. Soon every breath he drew hurt, but he did not stop. Only when the first rays of the sun made their way through the trees, and Basta still hadn’t appeared behind him, did he know that he had got away.
Now what? he thought as he lay in the damp grass, gasping for breath. Now what? And suddenly he remembered another voice, the voice that had brought him into this world. Silvertongue. Of course. Only Silvertongue could help Farid now, he or his daughter. Meggie. They were living with the bookworm woman these days. Farid had once been there with Dustfinger. It was a long way to go, particularly with the cuts on his feet. But he had to get there before Basta did …
3
Dustfinger Comes Home
‘What is this?’ said the Leopard, ‘that is so ’sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?’
Rudyard Kipling,
Just So Stories
For a moment Dustfinger felt as if he had never been away – as if he had simply had a bad dream, and the memory of it had left a stale taste on his tongue, a shadow on his heart, nothing more. All of a sudden everything was back again: the sounds, so familiar and never forgotten; the scents; the tree-trunks dappled in the morning light; the shadow of the leaves on his face. Some were turning colour, like the leaves in that other world, so autumn must be coming here too, but the air was still mild. It smelled of over-ripe berries, fading blossoms, a thousand or more flowers dazing his senses – flowers pale as wax glimmering under the shade of the trees, blue stars on stems so thin and delicate that he walked carefully so as not to tread on them. Oaks, planes, tulip trees towering to the sky all around him! He had almost forgotten how huge a tree could be, how broad and tall its trunk, with a leaf canopy spreading so wide that a whole troop of horsemen could shelter beneath it. The forests of the other world were so young, their trees still children. They had always made him feel old, so old that the years covered him like cobwebs. Here he was young again, just a child among the trees, not much older than the mushrooms growing among their roots, not much taller than the thistles and nettles.
But where was the boy?
Dustfinger looked around, searching for him, calling his name again and again. ‘Farid!’ It was a name that had become almost as familiar to him as his own over these last few months. But there was no reply. Only his own voice echoing back from the trees.
So that was it. The boy had been left behind. What would he do now, all alone? Well, thought Dustfinger as he looked round in vain one last time, what do you think? He’ll manage better in that world than you ever did. The noise, the speed, the crowds of people, he likes all that. And you’ve taught him enough of your craft, he can play with fire almost as well as you. Yes, the boy will manage very well. But for a moment the joy of his home-coming wilted in Dustfinger’s heart like one of the flowers at his feet, and the morning light that had welcomed him only a moment ago now seemed wan and lifeless. The other world had cheated him again: yes, it had let him go after all those years, but it had kept the only beings to whom he
had given his heart there …
Well, and what does that teach you? he thought, kneeling in the dewy grass. Better keep your heart to yourself, Dustfinger. He picked up a leaf that glowed red as fire on the dark moss. There hadn’t been any leaves like that in the other world, had there? So what was the matter with him? Angry with himself, he straightened up again. Listen, Dustfinger, you’re back! he told himself firmly. Back! Forget the boy – yes, you’ve lost him, but you have your own world back instead, a whole world. You’re back, can you finally believe it?
If only it wasn’t so difficult. It was far easier to believe in unhappiness than in happiness. He would have to touch every flower, feel every tree, crumble the earth in his fingers and feel the first gnat-bite on his skin before he really believed it.
But yes, he was back. He really was back. At last. And suddenly happiness went to his head like a glass of strong wine. Even the thought of Farid couldn’t cloud it any more. His ten-year nightmare was over. How light he felt, light as one of the leaves raining down from the trees like gold!
He was happy.
Remember, Dustfinger? This is what it feels like. Happiness.
Sure enough, Orpheus had read him to the very place he had described. There was the pool, shimmering among grey and white stones, surrounded by flowering oleander, and only a little way from the bank stood the plane tree where the fire-elves nested. Their nests seemed to cluster more densely around the trunk than he remembered. A less practised eye might have taken them for bees’ nests, but they were smaller and rather paler, almost as pale as the bark peeling from the tall trunk to which they clung.
Dustfinger looked round, once again breathing the air he had missed so much these last ten years. Scents he had almost forgotten mingled with those that could be found in the other world too. And you could find trees like the ones around the pool there too, although smaller and much younger. Branches of eucalyptus and alder reached out over the water as if to cool their leaves. Dustfinger cautiously made his way through the trees until he reached the bank. A tortoise made off at a leisurely pace when his shadow fell on its shell. The tongue of a toad, sitting on a stone, shot out and swallowed a fire-elf. Swarms of them were whirring about over the water, with their high-pitched buzzing that always sounded so angry.
It was time to raid their nests.
Dustfinger knelt down on one of the damp stones. Something rustled behind him, and for a moment he caught himself looking for Farid’s dark hair and Gwin’s head with its little horns, but it was only a lizard pushing its way out of the leaves and crawling up on to one of the stones to bask in the autumn sunlight. ‘Idiot!’ he muttered, leaning forward. ‘Forget the boy – and as for the marten, he won’t miss you. Anyway, you had good reasons for leaving him behind. The best of reasons.’
His reflection trembled on the dark water. His face was the same as ever. The scars were still there, of course, but at least he had suffered no further injuries: his nose hadn’t been smashed in, he didn’t have a stiff leg like Cockerell in the other story, everything was in the right place. He even still had his voice – so the man Orpheus obviously knew his trade.
Dustfinger bent lower over the water. Where were they? Had they forgotten him? The blue fairies forget every face, often just minutes after seeing it, but what about these others? Ten years is a long time, but did they count years?
The water moved, and his reflection mingled with other features. Toad-like eyes were looking up at him from an almost human face, with long hair drifting in the water like grass, and equally green and fine. Dustfinger took his hand out of the cool water, and another hand stretched up – a slender, delicate hand almost like a child’s, covered with scales so tiny that you could scarcely see them. A damp finger, cool as the water from which it had risen, touched his face and traced the scars on it.
‘Yes, it’s not easy to forget my face, is it?’ Dustfinger spoke so quietly that his voice was scarcely more than a whisper. Loud voices frighten water-nymphs. ‘So you remember the scars. And do you remember what I asked you and your sisters to do for me, when I was here before?’
The toad-like eyes looked at him, black and gold, and then the water-nymph sank and vanished as if she had been a mere illusion. But a few moments later, three of them appeared together in the dark water. Shoulders white as lily petals shimmered beneath the surface, fish-tails with rainbow scales like the belly of a perch flicked, barely visible, in the water below. The tiny gnats dancing above the water stung Dustfinger’s face and arms, as if they had been waiting just for him, but he hardly felt it. The nymphs hadn’t forgotten him – neither his face nor what he needed from them to help him summon fire.
They reached their hands up out of the water. Tiny air bubbles rose to the surface, the sign of their laughter, as silent as everything else about them. They took his hands between their own, stroked his arms, his face, his bare throat, until his skin was almost as cool as theirs, and covered with the same fine, slimy deposit that protected their scales. Then, as suddenly as they had come, they disappeared again. Their faces sank down into the dark pool, and Dustfinger might have thought, as always, that he had only dreamed them, but for the cool sensation on his skin, the shimmering of his hands and arms.
‘Thank you!’ he whispered, although only his own reflection now quivered on the water. Then he straightened up, made his way through the oleander bushes on the bank, and moved towards the fire-tree as silently as possible. If Farid had been here, he’d have been prancing through the wet grass like a foal in his excitement.
Cobwebs wet with dew clung to Dustfinger’s clothes as he stood under the plane tree. The lowest nests hung so far down that he could easily reach into one of the entrance holes. The first elves came swarming angrily out when he put in the fingers that the water-nymphs had covered with moist slime, but he calmed them by humming quietly. If he could hit the right note, their agitated swirling soon turned to a tumbling flight, their own humming and buzzing becoming drowsy, until their tiny, hot bodies settled on his arms, burning his skin and leaving a tiny deposit of soot. However much it hurt he must not flinch, mustn’t scare them away, must reach even further into the nest until he found what he was looking for: their fiery honey. Bees stung, but fire-elves burned holes in your skin if the water-nymphs hadn’t touched it first. And even with their protection, it was prudent not to be too greedy when you stole the elves’ honey. If a robber took too much they would fly in his face, burn his skin and hair, and wouldn’t let him go until he was writhing in pain at the foot of their tree.
But Dustfinger was never greedy enough to annoy them. He took only a tiny piece of honeycomb from the nest, scarcely larger than his thumbnail. That was all he needed for now. He went on humming quietly as he wrapped the honey in some leaves.
The fire-elves woke as soon as he stopped humming. They whirred around him faster and faster, while their voices rose to a sound like bumble-bees buzzing angrily. However, they did not attack him. You had to ignore them, act as if you hadn’t even seen them as you turned and walked away at your leisure, slowly, very slowly. They went on whirling in the air around Dustfinger for some time, but in the end they fell behind him, and he followed the small stream that flowed out of the water-nymphs’ pool and wound slowly away through willows, reeds and alders.
He knew where the stream would take him: out of the Wayless Wood, where you hardly ever met another soul of your own kind, and then on northwards, to places where the forest belonged to human beings, and its timber fell to their axes so fast that most trees died before their canopies could offer shelter to so much as a single horseman. The stream would lead him through the valley as it slowly opened out, past hills where no man had ever set foot because they were full of giants and bears and creatures that had never been given a name. At some point the first charcoal-burners’ huts would appear on the slopes, Dustfinger would see the first patch of bare earth among the dense green, and then he would be reunited not just with fairies and water-nymphs but, he ho
ped, with some of those human beings he had missed for so long.
He moved into cover when a sleepy wolf appeared between two trees in the distance, and waited, motionless, until its grey muzzle had disappeared. Yes, bears and wolves – he must learn to listen for their steps again, to sense their presence nearby before they saw him – not forgetting the big wildcats, dappled like tree-trunks in the sunlight, and the snakes as green as the foliage where they liked to hide. They let themselves down from the branches with less sound than his hand would make brushing a leaf off his shoulder. Luckily the giants generally stayed in their hills, where not even he dared go. Only in winter did they sometimes come down. But there were other creatures too, beings less gentle than the water-nymphs, and they couldn’t be lulled by humming, like the fire-elves. They were usually invisible, well hidden among timber and green leaves, but they were no less dangerous for that: Tree-Men, Trows, Black Bogles, Night-Mares … some of them even ventured as far as the charcoal-burners’ huts.
‘Take a little more care!’ Dustfinger whispered to himself. ‘You don’t want your first day home to be your last.’
The sheer intoxication of being back gradually died down, allowing him to think more clearly again. But the happiness remained in his heart, soft and warm like a young bird’s downy plumage.
He took his clothes off beside a stream and washed the water-nymphs’ slimy deposit off his body, together with the fire-elves’ soot and the grime of the other world. Then he put on the clothes he hadn’t worn for ten years. He had looked after them carefully, but there were a few moth-holes in the black fabric all the same, and the sleeves had already been threadbare when he first took them off in that other world. These garments were all red and black, the colours worn by fire-eaters, just as tightrope-walkers clothed themselves in the blue of the sky. He stroked the rough material, put on the full-sleeved doublet, and threw the dark cloak over his shoulders. Luckily everything still fitted; getting new clothes made was an expensive business, even if you just took your old clothes to the tailor to be patched up again, as the strolling players usually did.
When twilight fell he looked around for a safe place to sleep. Finally he climbed up on to a fallen oak with its root-ball towering so high into the air that it offered good shelter for the night. The root-ball was like a great rampart of earth, yet some of the roots still clung to the ground as if unwilling to let go of life. The crown of the fallen tree had put out new shoots, although they now pointed to the ground and not the sky. Dustfinger nimbly clambered along the mighty trunk, digging his fingers into its rough bark.
When he reached the roots, which were now thrusting up into the air as if they could find nourishment there, a few fairies flew up, chattering crossly. They had obviously been looking for building materials for their nests. Of course: it would soon be autumn, time for a rather more weatherproof sleeping-place. The blue fairies took no particular trouble over the nests they built in spring, but as soon as the first leaf turned colour they began improving them, padding them with animal fur and birds’ feathers, weaving more grass and twigs into the walls, sealing cracks with moss and fairy spit.
Two of the tiny blue creatures didn’t fly away when they saw him. They stared avidly at his sandy hair as the evening light, falling through the tree-tops, tinged their wings with red.
‘Ah, of course!’ Dustfinger laughed softly. ‘You want some of my hair for your nests.’ He cut off a lock with his knife. One of the delighted fairies seized the hair in her delicate, insect-like hands and fluttered quickly away with it. The other fairy, so tiny that she could only just have hatched from her mother-of-pearl egg, followed her. He had missed those bold little blue creatures, he’d missed them so much.
Down below among the trees, night was falling, but in the light of the setting sun the treetops overhead were turning red as sorrel in a summer meadow. Soon the fairies would be asleep in their nests, the mice and rabbits in their holes and burrows. The cool of the night would make the lizards’ legs stiff, the birds would fall silent, predators would prepare to go hunting, their eyes like yellow lights in the darkness. Let’s hope they don’t fancy a fire-eater for dinner, thought Dustfinger, stretching his legs out on the fallen trunk. He thrust his knife into the cracked bark beside him, wrapped himself in the cloak he hadn’t worn for ten years, and stared up at the leaves. They were growing darker and darker now. An owl rose from an oak and swooped away, little more than a shadow among the branches. A tree whispered in its sleep, words that no human ear could understand.
Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened.
He was home again.
4
Silvertongue’s Daughter