Inkheart: Chapters 46-59

He had looked so different in the black suit Farid had stolen for him—like one of Capricorn’s men, which of course was the point of the masquerade.

“A woman would be conspicuous, Elinor! You’ve seen for yourself—there are never any women in the streets at night. Only the guards. Ask the boy.”

As soon as his breath sounded peaceful and regular, Elinor took off the stupid dress, got into her own clothes, combed her tousled hair, and wrote him a note.

He sounded angry, as if it were beneath his dignity to carry out such a trivial task.

“And let me tell you," Basta whispered to Meggie before he knocked on the door, “if you’re as impertinent to Mortola as you are to me she’ll leave you in one of those nets in the church until you’re so hungry you’ll be gnawing at the ropes. Compared to her heart, mine’s as soft as a little girl’s cuddly toy."

With slow but firm steps, the Magpie walked over to a chest of drawers that looked much too heavy for its gracefully curved legs. Two lamps stood on it, their shades patterned with flowery tendrils.

But there was too much of everything—too many golden candlesticks, too many lamps, rugs, pictures, vases, china ornaments, silk flowers, gilded bells.

The Magpie looked at her smugly. In her plain black dress she sat there like a cuckoo that has forced its way into another bird's nest.

“Visitor for you, Dustfinger,” he announced derisively as he lit the lantern.

Meggie saw her mother get up and come toward her, walking tentatively, as if she were treading on broken glass.
“She’s still alive,” said Basta sullenly.

Having described the precise situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when he got into the yard take the door up the steps on the right-hand side, and pull off his hat as he went into the room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.

Occasionally, he absentmindedly kneaded his right earlobe.

He has three small children, right? It ought to be compulsory for all policemen to have small children.

"Well, come on, out with it!" growled Cockerell, seizing her by the nape of the neck as if to shake the answer out of her.

At first, Elinor couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Basta’s wiry figure pressed up against the iron bars.

He had forced his way through holes in walls, crawled through cellars, and ducked down behind the parapets of balconies that were no longer used.

Downstairs, he found enough food in Basta’s kitchen to quell the hunger that had been gnawing like a worm at the walls of his stomach.

This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.

This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.

But now Farid was going to use something else that Dustfinger thought him too foolhardy to handle.

A kind of rostrum had been set up in the middle of this arena with a cage opposite it, perhaps for the monster that Silvertongue’s daughter was to read out of the book, perhaps for the prisoners.

It had pictures stuck in it, cutout pictures of fairies and witches, trolls and dragons, goblins, nymphs, and ancient trees.

Smoke billowed out of the broken window, stinging Farid’s eyes.

A single chair stood on the rostrum, looking as forlorn as if someone had left it there and forgotten it.

Elinor had always thought more of books than their authors, and she looked at the old man without much goodwill as Flatnose led him past their cage.

My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapour of death in the night.

My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapour of death in the night.

His face was even more haggard than usual as he opened the casket and held it out to the Magpie, his head bowed humbly.

His face was even more haggard than usual as he opened the casket and held it out to the Magpie, his head bowed humbly.

“Cockerell will cut the old man’s throat. Capricorn may not give the order himself, because he believes the stupid lies the old man told him, but I don’t, and Cockerell will do as I say. Understand me, my little cherub?”

Fenoglio pushed him away and looked at Meggie as if one look could convey everything he wanted to say to her and give her: encouragement, comfort, and maybe even amusement in the face of all the horrors surrounding them.

He tried to sound composed, ironic, like a man amused at some childish prank, but his face told a different story.

All things decay and pass with time...
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.

Only the Shadow stood perfectly still, as if killing his master had sapped all his power.

Meggie saw the arena filling up with them. More and more of them were gathering in a throng where the Shadow had collapsed, all looking around as if they'd just woken from a deep sleep.

So he sat on the tiles of a dilapidated roof, his back against the cold chimney, his face blackened with soot (for the face is treacherously pale by night), and watched smoke rise into the sky from Capricorn’s house.

She turned and preened in the air, ran her fingers through her hair, and examined herself as if delighted by her own beauty all over again.

At last, they stopped for a rest and ate the food Dustfinger had brought from Basta’s larder: some red spicy sausage, a piece of cheese, bread, olive oil.

"...A famous writer once wrote, 'An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or a magician—but the magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.' I always thought he was right about that.”

“Don’t worry too much," said Mo, whenever Elinor bewailed their stupidity.