Inkheart by Cornelia Funke Page B

and it spat at me when I came into the kitchen. I wasn't expecting anything like that. I made it clear to your peculiar friend that flies are the only animals I'll allow anywhere near my kitchen table, and so he took the furry creature outside."
    "What do you want him for?" asked Mo.
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    "Oh, nothing special. I — I just wanted to ask him something," said Meggie. She hastily ate half a slice of bread, drank some of the horribly bitter cocoa Elinor had made, and went out.
    She found Dustfinger behind the house, standing on a lawn of short, rather rough grass where a solitary deck chair stood next to a plaster angel. There was no sign of Gwin. A few birds were quarreling among the red flowers of the rhododendron, and there stood Dustfinger looking lost to the world, and juggling. Meggie tried to count the colored balls — four, six, eight. He plucked them out of the air so swiftly that it made her dizzy to watch him. He stood on one leg to catch them, casually, as if he didn't even have to look. Only when he spotted Meggie did a ball escape his fingers and roll at her feet. Meggie picked it up and threw it back.
    "Where did you learn to do that?" she asked. "It looked — well, wonderful."
    Dustfinger made her a mocking bow. There was that strange smile of his again. "It's how I earn my living," he said. With the juggling and a few other things."
    "How can you earn a living that way?"
    "At markets and fairs. At children's birthday parties. Did you ever go to one of those fairs where people pretend they're still living in medieval times?"
    Meggie nodded. Yes, she had once been to a fair like that with Mo. There had been wonderful things there, so strange that they might have come from another world, not just another time.
    Mo had bought her a box decorated with brightly colored stones and a little fish made of shiny green-and-gold metal, with its mouth wide open and a jingle in its hollow body that rang like a little bell when you shook it. The air had smelled of freshly baked bread, smoke, and damp clothes, and Meggie had watched a smith making a sword and had hidden behind Mo's back from a woman in a witch's costume.
    Dustfinger picked up his juggling balls and put them back in his bag, which was standing open on the grass behind him. Meggie went over to it and looked inside. She saw some bottles, some white cotton wool, and a carton of milk, but before she could see any more Dustfinger closed the bag.
    "Sorry, trade secrets," he said. "Your father's given the book to this Elinor, hasn't he?"
    Meggie shrugged her shoulders.
    "It's all right, you can tell me. I know anyway. I was listening. He's mad to leave it here, but what can I do?" Dustfinger sat down on the deck chair. His backpack was on the grass next to him, with a bushy tail spilling out of it.
    "I saw Gwin," said Meggie.
    "Did you?" Dustfinger leaned back, closing his eyes. His hair looked even paler in the sunlight.
    "So did I. He's in the backpack. It's the time of day when he sleeps."
    "I mean I saw him in the book." Meggie didn't take her eyes off Dustfinger's face as she said this, but it didn't move a muscle. His thoughts couldn't be read on his brow in the same way as she could read Mo's. Dustfinger's face was a closed book, and Meggie had the feeling that if anyone tried reading it he would rap their knuckles. "He was sitting on a letter," she went on. "On a capital N. I saw his horns."
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    "Really?" Dustfinger didn't even open his eyes. "And do you know which of her thousands of shelves that bookmad woman put it on?"
    Meggie ignored his question. "Why does Gwin look like the animal in the book?" she asked. "Did you really stick those horns on him?"
    Dustfinger opened his eyes and blinked up at the sun.
    "Hm, did I?" he inquired, looking at the sky. A few clouds were drifting over Elinor's house. The sun disappeared behind one of them, and its shadow fell across the green grass like an ugly mark.
    "Does your father often read aloud to you, Meggie?" asked