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‘She’s grown’

‘You reie noticed that Mo double-locked the door

‘How old is she now?’ Dustfinger sie couldn’t decide whether it was , supercilious, or just aard She didn’t ser pushed his dripping hair back froie wondered what colour it hen it was dry The stubble round his narrow-lipped ie soer hair sprouted on his cheeks, too, sparse as a boy’s first beard but not long enough to hide three long, pale scars They er’s face look as if it had been sain ‘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 ie,’ 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 Soain, Mo would toss her down on her bed like a bag of walnuts Sometimes he chased her round the house after supper until she escaped into her roohter 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 roo, cla with the visitor whose nae yet somehow familiar, some menace had slipped into her life And she wished – so hard it frightened her – that she had never fetched Mo, and Dustfinger had stayed outside until the rain washed hiain she juie Please’ He had that little frown over his nose that appeared only when soht through her as if his thoughts were sorew, spreading black wings

‘Send hiently propelled her towards her room ‘Please! Send him away I don’t like hiet up in theWord of honour’

‘Word of honour – no crossed fingers?’ Meggie looked hi, however hard he tried to hide it fro 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 thea nice cup of tea to warh 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 passage

There was a notice hanging on the door of Mo’s workshop, a sie knew the words on it by heart When she was five she had often practised reading the old-fashioned, spindly lettering:

Some books should be tasted

soested thoroughly

Back then, when she still had to cli and digesting wereon his workshop door the words of someone who vandalised books Now, she knehat the plaque really ht she wasn’t interested in written words Spoken words hat 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 underestier 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 eet hold of it’ That was Dustfinger again ‘And when I say anything, I can assure you I ’