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Dustfinger, shortly before the beginning of Inkheart
There is night and for such a long time only the night. He would look for stars, but the constellations overhead are not the same and he feels betrayed. Or like a betrayer, perhaps. He is the one not belonging in the end. Always a vagrant.
He rests his head against treetrunk and closes his eyes. The air is noisy with the distant humming of a city. Flying machines. Loud banging from music in passing metallic carts.
There are so many people in this world, yet he has never felt more alone. It's clutching at his heart, mocking him. In his dreams he recalls voices from long ago, and longer it gets by each passing day.
He tries not to forget her. When the sun sinks below the horison of the cityscape- casting a red glow over the ugly concrete buildings, over the lonely tops of skyscrapers- then he rubs his hands together. It's like a prayer now. He never had to hope for the fire before he came here. It was natural. Like breathing.
Finally he gives up and makes a small monument of sticks instead. The soil beneath is wet and the sticks thin. They make a patethic fire once he gets it going. But it was never about the warmth of it, he supposes. What's it's really about is feeling a little less alone.
In the flames he imagines her.
When he first came into this world he could imagine her smiling. Over the time her smile had faded along with her facial features. They all blend together and becomes dream- like. In his dreams he finds himself in his old home where she strokes his hair and sings. There are children beside her, but none of them have faces.
He dreams.
Meggie, age six
She never really finds her family odd until her classmates remind her. She is old enough to know how to read and she reads a lot, so much so that the librarians are the first friends she makes whenever they move to a new place. They have lived a fair while at the current one and she is getting thoughts that this might be it. Home. She really wants that.
The downside of staying anywhere, she learns, is that people begin to know you.
She is leaving the classroom with a stack of school books in one hand and a friend's hand in the other. They are headed to the parking lot by the school yard, where the mother of her classmate is waiting in her car. They are going to rent a vhs, maybe about animated dogs saving the day, or a superhero.
Fast running steps approach them from behind and catches up to them when they are opening the car door.
Meggie's teacher has a red face from all the running. In her hand is a paper slip, somewhat rumpled now. She holds it out to Meggie.
"Meggie, this was really important. Both your parents have to sign it. Originally, I was supposed to have it delivered to the administration today, but your parents will have to sign it and bring it by before school closes. Do you understand me?"
She does. She knows a lot of things, maybe even things children her age won't normally know. She knows poems from long dead poets and she knows how to bind a book that's sick, as her father says. She knows people have mothers,yet she has never really thought of herself as motherless before. As lacking anything.
Beside her there is a laugh. Meggie looks to her friend, who is laughing from silly disbelief.
"Meggie doesn't have one. Everyone know's Meggie doesn't have a mom."
Deep inside her, something stings. She will go home to her father later that afternoon and for the first time be really upset at Mo for reasonings she can't really explain. He will make her hot cocoa and wrap her up in a blanket and kiss her forehead afterwards, and she will let it be. All she needs is Mo and besides, how can she miss something she has never experienced? Even so, there are times when other people remind her she is different.
Everyone know's Meggie doesn't have a mom.
Roxane, a decade and some after the events in Inkdeath
She awakes by the sound of someone bringingher small fireplace to life. When she openes her eyes a figure is standing by the bed. A tightframed body, narrow shoulders. A sharp face, dirty, just like their clothes. "Giorgia."
"You should take better care to the fire this time of the year. Your house is cold as The Wayless Wood a moonlit winter night," they say flatly. Yet as someone that have known them for many years, Roxane could tell there was concern behind the statement, and it is enough to warm her heart.
She raises up from her bed and keeps her blanket around her, waiting for the single room to warm up. Meanwhile, Giorgia is flying about fetching fresh milk from Roxane's cow, some eggs from the hens and pulling up cheese and bread from a tattered sack.
"The bread is still warm. The baker gave me some for free as a compensation for an old favour," they say.
Roxane feels herself smile. "What kinds of work have you been doing lately?" she asks.
Every tale she hears about Giorgia were odd, random and unpredictable.
For a time they served Jacopo as a personal guard. Then for some time they traveled out North, coming back with stories of great beasts rooming wast forests and enchanted princesses.Their restlessness could have reminded her of a certain fire- eater were it not for Jehan.
Ever since Roxane let Giorgia in all those years ago, Jehan and Giorgia had become as close as siblings of blood. Not many knows Giorgia's business, but whenever Jehan visits his mother's farm with herbs from the castle gardens, he also bring news of Giorgia. Jehan always do this seemingly nonchalantly, probably knowing his mother won't' otherwise ask.
Truth be told she values freedom too much to pry. Or maybe she is afraid that they will fly away from her for good if they feel pressured- her Giorgia and her vagabond husband.
And as expected-
Giorgia shakes their head undecidedly.
"Some days ago I ran errands for Minerva's son, Ivo. There is no coin in that house nowadays, still that is all the same to me. Since he has come of age, he will be going to Argenta with the envoys to discuss the peace treaty. He is good with a sword, I am told."
"Just as a precaution," they add when they see Roxane's eyes darken. Roxane do not feel reassured.
"You didn't live here when the Adderhead spread his terror into these lands like a venomous bite from a snake. If his child has even the tenth of his nack for wickedness we have yet much to fear. The Silver Prince, as he once was called, had a heart so corrupt, they say it spewed black blood once they cut it out of him. And cut it out of him they did, the common folk that raided the castle after the White Ladies had had their due. Payback for all the horrible things he had done.
He was worse, I will tell you, even than the Fire- raisers, and I knew them well."
At the mention of the Fire- Raisers, a dark shadow passes over Giorgia. Most common folk had forgotten the band of mobsters that once terrorised both Ombra and Argenta. Their castle is nothing but a ruin now, a skeleton building of grand horror. Still, the castle casts long shadows and so do the dead. Not all are lucky enough to forget.
Giorgia shifts in their seat and puts back a wild lock of black hair behind their ear. "We can't judge the living for the mistakes of the departed. The Child Prince has a mother known for her kindness to her subjects, she won't see them into a new war. Jacopo isn't fool enough for that either. But, if it should come to it, I will be there to protect him. I have sworn it by my dagger. Just as I made Jehan swear to me he wouldn't be late this morning, yet he still isn't here."
Roxane furrows her brows. "Jehan is coming as well?"
Giorgia nodds solemny. "Of course. It is Mother's day after all."
Something warm settles in Roxane's chest and she finds herself eating some bread without really tasting it or the butter. Soon there is a nock at the door, but Jehan doesn't wait for any reply to enter. He stumbles in, closely followed by someone draped in a pretty silk cloak and pretty red hair running like a cascade from the hood.
The pair is so busy discussing something that neither of them even utters so much as 'good morning.' Finally Brianna gets the last word and Jehan shuts his mouth with a face red as tomato.
Brianna threwthrows her hood back, exposing her face to the others. Her skin is sun kissed and she is wearing a smile someone might have called sly, others cunning. She is just happy knowing whatever they had argued about, she had been right, or so Roxane reckones.
She hugs her mother and unpacks a piece of cake she has brought. Jehan slips quietly into a chair next to Giorgia who offered him some breakfast.
"You should have some food. Keeping to a losing argument must be tiresome," they say, making Jehan even redder.
"Don't- say- a- word!" he hisses in fake rage, yet a smile is creeping into his cheeks. Soon they are talking and laughing together. Dustfinger enters without saying anything with The Black Prince right behind him. Roxane looks at him, trying to decipher his shrewd smile.
"Is there anything funny, Dustfinger?" she asks and her husbands sends a cryptic look to The Black Prince. They gesture to the door. "It might be fun to have a look outside."
Outside the rest of them are waiting. Meggie and Doria, accompanied by the Strong Man. The Bluejay is beside them, talking to that funny old lady that Roxane has learned has the literary knowledge of a scholar, the same as Mortimer and everyone else in that family. The old lady's niece, Roxane's best friend is there, playing with her son along with Darius, a man who is not but might as well be Elinor's husband. As soon as Dustfinger steps out again they all become silent.
He has been practicing a new show, it turns out and although he doesn't say it, Roxane can feel that it is meant for her. The fire roars her name in strange tongues and morhps into shapes of animals she has only ever heard of and in the end they transform into flowers. He smiles at her as he dances with the flames.