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The last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled and reached for her hand I was far, far more hoie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold the drive back to Elinor’s house, and it was many days before they faded

Elinor hadn’t been able to reconcile herself to the idea of another walk all the way down through the thorny hills where the snakes lived ‘Do you think I’ht of it’ So she and Meggie had set off again in search of a telephone It was a strange feeling to walk through the village – a truly deserted village now – past Capricorn’s smoke-blackened house and the half-charred church porch Water lay in the square outside The blue sky was reflected in it, and made it look alht The hoses Capricorn’s e snakes in the pools of water In fact the fire had ravaged only the ground floor, but all the sao in, and when they had searched over a dozen other houses in vain Elinor bravely went through the charred door on her own Meggie told her where to find the Magpie’s rooun just in case the old woman had come back to save what she could of her own and her robber son’s treasures But the Magpie was long gone, just like Basta, and Elinor ca a cordless phone

They called a taxi It was rather difficult to persuade the driver that he nore the road barrier when he came to it, but luckily he had never believed any of the sinister stories that were told of the village They arranged to wait for him by the roadside, so he wouldn’t see any of the fairies and trolls Meggie and her e while Mo and Elinor went in the taxi to the nearest town, and ca the two small buses they had hired For Elinor had decided to offer a hoe creatures who had landed in her world ‘After all,’ she said, ‘ for their fellow hus who are only superficially different to them – so hoould it be for little people with blue skins who can fly?’

It took some time for them all to understand Elinor’s offer – which was, of course, also made to the men, women and children out of the book – but e It obviously reminded theet, and of course they could use the treasure that Meggie told the childrenin the cellars of Capricorn’s house It would probably be enough to keep thes and cats who had eo disappeared into the surrounding hills, while a few fairies and two of the little glass men, enchanted by the broom blossoms, the scent of rosemary, and the narrow alleys where the ancient stones whispered their stories to thee their home

In the end, however, forty-three blue-skinned fairies with dragonfly wings fluttered into the buses and settled on the backs of the grey-patterned seats Capricorn had obviously swatted fairies as carelessly as other people swat flies Tinker Bell was a those who didn’t coie, for she had realised that Peter Pan’s fairy was very self-centred Her tinkling really got on your nerves, too, and she tinkled alet what she wanted

In addition to four trolls who looked like very slass men and women climbed into Elinor’s buses – and so did Darius, the unhappy stae with its new inhabitants, and it held too many painful memories for hiain, and she accepted Meggie suspected that she was secretly toying with the idea of getting Darius to read aloud again, now that Capricorn’s ie looked back for a long tie behind theht of it, just as you never forget h – or perhaps because – they have scared you

Before they left Mo had asked her, with concern in his voice, whether she ie did not h, she felt more homesick for Elinor’s house than for the old farmhouse where she and Mo had lived for the last few years

The scar left by the bonfire was still to be seen on the lawn behind the house, where Capricorn’s men had piled up the books and burned them But before Elinor had the ashes taken away, she had filled a jarey dust, and it stood on the bedside table in her room

Many of the books that Capricorn’s men had only swept off the shelves were already back in their old places, others aiting on Mo’s workbench to be rebound, but the library shelves were eie saw the tears in Elinor’s eyes, even though she was quick to wipe the over the next feeeks She bought books She travelled all over Europe in search of them Darius was alith her, and so house with herout at the garden where the fairies were building the the branches of the trees The glasscaves aarden She told them all that if possible they should never leave her property, warning thees that enclosed it, but soon the fairies were flying down to the lake by night, the trolls alking along its banks and stealing into the sleeping villages, and the little glass people would disappear into the tall grass that covered the slopes of the mountains around the lake

‘Don’t worry too much,’ said Mo, whenever Elinor bewailed their stupidity ‘After all, the world they caers’

‘But it was different!’ cried Elinor ‘There were no cars – suppose the fairies fly into a windscreen? And there were no hunters with rifles shooting at anything that moves, just for the fun of it’

By now Elinor knew everything about the world of Inkheart Meggie’s reat deal of paper to write down her ie asked her to tell ether while Teresa wrote and Meggie read the words, and sometimes even tried to paint pictures of what her mother described

The days went by, and Elinor’s shelves filled up onderful new books Soun to draw up a catalogue of Elinor’s printed treasures, kept interrupting his oork to watch Mo at his He sat there wide-eyed as Mo freed a badly worn book frolued the spines in place and did whatever else was necessary to preserve the books for ie couldn’t have said exactly when they had decided to stay on with Elinor Perhaps not for many weeks, or perhaps they had known froiven the roo for her, and which still had her book-box standing under it She would have loved to read aloud to her mother from her own favourite books, but of course she understood why Mo very seldoet to sleep, because she thought she saw Basta’s face out in the dark, she sat down at the desk in front of herand began to write, while the fairies played in Elinor’s garden and the trolls rustled in the bushes For Meggie had a plan: she wanted to learn to lio She wanted to learn to fish for words so that she could read aloud to her ht come out of the stories and look at her with hoie decided that words would be her trade