Inkheart by Cornelia Funke Page A

him. "Please forget that book, Meggie!"
    he whispered. "It's an unlucky story. I'll get you a hundred others."
    Meggie just nodded. Before Mo closed the door behind them, she caught a last glance of Elinor standing there looking at the book lovingly, the way Mo sometimes looked at her when he put her to bed in the evening.
    Then the door was closed.
    "Where will she put it?" asked Meggie as she followed Mo down the corridor.
    "Oh, she has some very good hiding places for such things," replied Mo evasively. "But they're secret, as hiding places should be. Suppose I show you your room now?" He was trying to sound 30

    carefree, and not succeeding particularly well. "It's like a room in an expensive hotel. No, much better."
    "Sounds good," murmured Meggie, looking around, but there was no sign of Dustfinger. Where had he gone? She had to ask him something. At once. That was all she could think of while Mo was showing her the room and telling her that everything was all right now; he just had to do his bookbinding work, then they'd go home. Meggie nodded and pretended to be listening, but her mind was full of the question she wanted to ask Dustfinger. It burned on her lips so fiercely she was surprised Mo didn't see it there.
    When Mo left her to go and get their bags from the camper van Meggie went into the kitchen, but Dustfinger wasn't there either. She even looked for him in Elinor's bedroom, but however many doors in the huge house she opened there was no sign of him. Finally, she was too tired to go on searching. Mo had gone to bed long ago, and Elinor had disappeared into her own bedroom. So Meggie went to her room and lay down on the big bed. She felt very lost in it, like a dwarf, as if she had shrunk. Like Alice in Wonderland, she thought, patting the floral sheets. Otherwise she liked the room. It was full of books and pictures, and there was even a fireplace, although it looked as if no one had used it for at least a hundred years. Meggie swung her legs out of bed again and went over to the window. Outside, night had fallen long ago, and when she pushed the window shutters open a cool breeze blew on her face. The only thing she could make out in the dark was the gravel forecourt in front of the house. A lamp cast pale light over the gray and white pebbles. Mo's striped van stood beside Elinor's gray car like a zebra lost in a horse's stable. Meggie thought of the house they had left in such a hurry, and her room there, and school, where her desk would have been empty today. She wasn't sure whether she felt homesick or not.
    She left the shutters open when she went back to bed. Mo had put her book box beside her.
    Wearily, she took out a book and tried to make herself a nice nest in its familiar words, but it was no good. Again and again the thought of that other book blurred the words, again and again Meggie saw the big initial letters before her — large, colorful letters surrounded by figures whose story she didn't know because the book hadn't had time to tell it to her.
    I must find Dustfinger, she thought sleepily. He must be here somewhere. But then the book slipped from her fingers and she fell asleep.
    The sun woke her the next morning. The air was still cool from the night before, but the sky was cloudless, and when Meggie leaned out of the window she could see the lake gleaming in the distance beyond the branches of the trees. The room Elinor had given her was on the first floor.
    Mo was sleeping only two doors farther along, but Dustfinger had to make do with an attic room.
    Meggie had seen it when she was looking for him yesterday. It held nothing but a narrow bed surrounded by crates of books towering up to the rafters. Mo was already sitting at the table with Elinor when Meggie came down to the kitchen for breakfast, but Dustfinger wasn't there.
    "Oh, he's had breakfast already," said Elinor sharply, when Meggie asked about him. "Along with some animal like a Pomeranian dog. It was sitting on the table