Authoress note: Thanks so much for all of your encouraging comments. I really had not realized there are so many Dustfinger fans out there. It scares me, what about my image to fall for strange characters? Anyway, I like the title and somehow it fits even better after I posted this chapter. Although if I ever post a third, I will have to change it. Okay, I choose a rather different pov this time and to write her is somehow very easy. Hit the review button!
She awoke each night, her hands clinging tightly to the bedsheets. And each time she awaited to awaken to the harsh shoutings of her captors, to another day of working without any goal in sight. But when she found herself in a soft, comfortable bed in a warm and cozy room, it scared her even more.
There was a family that loved her now. An older sister who owned and read tons of books. Who treated them like her children, loved them in the place of what might have once been her own family. Eleanor, who tried to make her comfortable, talked to her and reassured her of support. But Eleanor could not understand, her temper got to her quickly and she did not see how afraid Resa was when books where read to her.
After being kept in one for so long, she no longer liked the books. Books tended to look so harmless, just pieces of papers stuck together, with black lines written onto them, books seemed so innocent and pure. But they were not. Books told of suffering, of death and sickness and evil creatures. And they were all the more dangerous as they could pose as harmless pass-time objects.
There was a husband, a man she was married to, who seemed like a complete stranger to her. Oh, she liked him, he was kind and gentle, his words were those of warmth and comfort. And when she looked at him, something within her stirred, wanted her to remember the time they had spent and enjoyed in each others company, the love they had shared. But it seemed like a million years ago, to her.
She knew that it was not Mos fault that he had read her into Inkheart. But if it had not been for his reading, for Silvertongues gift that had become her curse, she would never have had to leave her family. She could have led a happy family life instead of the pains she had endured. And she could still speak. She would still be the woman she had been so many years ago.
Of course she liked him, a lot, there was no denying it, but she was still getting to know him. So many things she wanted to express, to say, but she could not and her message did not get across. She so wanted him to understand, but he never would and she knew. But she tried.
There was a daughter she barely knew, a wonderful, beautiful, perfect young girl named Meggie. "Can I get you something, Mom?" "Can I help you, Mom?" Meggie loved the word "Mom", it sounded so foreign and yet so good, so real, like the way it should have always been. It was so easy to like her daughter, her curiosity and friendliness, her seated mannerism. A lot of her father was in her.
And Resa caught herself looking for traits of her own personality in her daughter. But she did not find them, except the obvious looks. It made her wonder, was that the way she had been like before? Had she been such a laughing, charming keen reader once?
All the time her memories seemed to hunt her down. The endless number of black-clad men who laughed at her. The other women, who knew and let her know that she did not belong.
Capricorn, in her mind his name stood for the devil himself, for pure and raw evilness. She had not known why he had taken a special liking to her, maybe it was the fact that she could not retort his cruel speeches or how he kept her hostage,knowing how she had been ripped from her family.
A young girl had once told her how lucky she was to be Capricorns favourite maid, that she received a sort of preferantial treatment. The girl had not understood, she did not know what it meant to be "his favourite maid". It meant pain.
Capricorns mother had not favoured her in any way, quite the contrary, she had shouted at her and told her off for everything she did. She even picked on her more than on any of the other girls. At times Resa had wondered, whether in a strange and twisted way, she was jealous of the attention her son had choosen to give this woman instead of his own mother.
Basta, playing with his knife, grinning in that sickening way. "If you do not behave, I could sharpen my knife a bit on your face" he had suggested, when she had tried to flee and he had brutally grabbed her. "But on second thought" he had taken hold of her jaw "your face is much too pretty to be wasted away like this. There is much better use for it." and he had pressed his cold, thin lips against hers, pressing her body onto his. She had bit him into the lip. "Damned woman!" Basta hissed and held his bleeding lower lip. "You will pay for that one!" and his knife was out again.
"Another woman who seems not too keen about your company. Does that not give you to think?" Afterwards she had wondered whether he was incredibly stupid or incredibly brave. At that moment she had only hoped that his bloodlust was not as high as Bastas.
"One would believe that you have learned your lesson by now, or did my dear souvenir not give you the right hint, Dustfinger?" Basta hissed at the stranger who unconsciously rubbed the three ugly scars in his beardy face.
In an instant a small furry animal appeared out of Dusfingers robes and bit Basta in the leg, who started cursing. A small piece of a mirror, fell out of his clothing and smashed onto the floor. It was just a mirror breaking on the cold stones and shedding into (how else could it be) thirteen small pieces, but Basta stared at it, as if he had never seen anything worse. A kind of panicking fear spread across his pale face and when he ran off, his arms were trembling. How the cruelest people tend to be afraid of the smallest things.
"Are you alright?" Dustfinger questioned and she nodded slowly. She was not sure what to make of him, but he was the first one who had been kind to her in this place. Of course, it could all be a show. One never knew.
It had taken time until she had learned to trust him. Dusfinger brought her food and even a necklace once. She was certain that he had stolen it from somewhere, but did not ask, it had been a gift and in a place of total and utter darkness, it held a meaning. She still wore the necklace, although she had not told anyone where she had gotten it from.
In return she taught him how to read. He was very keen on it, but not very good at learning, he tended to get angry each time he could not do it. She often wondered why he insisted on it, when it was so clear he detested having to decipher the meaning of printed words.
But what counted was, that he talked to her. Not shouted or ordered or hissed, but talked. Never anything personal, but he informed her of the going-ons in the village, of rumours or Bastas latest encounter with a black cat.
Resa suspected that Dusfinger was in love with her. He was kind to the other maids as well, who, with very few exceptions, preferred his company over Bastas but never took his words serious, but he never acted the way he did around her.
But she knew that he held something from her. That he knew much more than she did, a sort of guilty conscience he displayed. He never told her anything when she asked him. And she so needed to know about her life before, she knew he did and still he withheld her that information. And that was what kept the ever-seperating gap between them.
That and the feeling that came to her in those endless nights. The faint remembering of a pair of strong arms around her that she connected with warmth. The sound of giggling from a small girl. She knew that she had a family somewhere and that she missed them. And she wanted them to miss her as well. Even when she hoped they were happy.
And now she had found that family again, she was with them and they loved her and took care of her. But there was no completeness for her, no closure, she could not forget. And some part of her did not want to forget either.
"Dustfinger has stolen Inkheart" Mo had exclaimed after he found himself no longer in the possession of the book. "Of course, could we have expected any less from that fire-stick-eater!" Eleanor frowned. "Farid should have stayed with us instead" Meggie said and blushed slightly. So this was her daughters first crush on a boy. And she was glad to be there to see it.
She knew why Dustfinger had stolen Inkheart just as she now knew why he had insisted on her teaching him how to read. His only desire was still to return into his own world and to meet his fate there. And Resa felt guilty, because she did not want him to die, even if it doomed him to forever wander around their world to search for someone who could read him back into his world. She hoped Farid would take good care of him.
"Have you slept well, darling?" Mo, no, her husband, asked her and there was something touching and loveable in his concerned face. She nodded and smiled just slightly.
This was her world, Eleanor, Mo and Meggie, they were her family and she promised to try to get to know them again, she wanted to be the sister, wife and mother they deserved. But without forgetting what had been.
