Authoress: Soon I have starred all the characters, but I can not help it. Oh and as probably every reader of this story, I am so awaiting the release of "Inkblood", this September as I have gathered. But the third title of the trioligy really gives me the creeps "Inkdeath", heck, who is going to die? Okay, so r&r, you will recognize the pov soon enough anyway!

I had been content with my life before. When I was only a simple widower with a lovely daughter and her naughty but equally loveable children. And my mind had blossomed in writing. Creating stories in my head and putting them onto paper. Thinking up characters, giving them a face, a name and a personality. And believing they were all mine, that I had banished them onto paper and they would have to obey my sheer will.

What an old fool I am!

Out of all the books I have written, none ever came close to Inkheart – it was my best piece of work, a perfect story with the greatest of all villains.

Capricorn came to me one night in my wicked dreams, there he stood before me, a pale young man, almost a boy, blonde and with cold and empty eyes. He grinned sickeningly at me and seemed to order me to write his story. I gave him an appearance and I gave him a character, an endless cruelity and the will to rule, the ever-demanding wish for power and glory. And I gave him hate and spite, directed at the whole world and even at his own mother, whom he denied any right to claim him as her son.

But on paper I did not give him a past, only in my mind. The readers were not given the chance to understand him. I did not allow them to see the hurt and abused child, scolded and told off by his frustrated mother, the lonely and beautiful boy, I kept this part of him to myself. I will always regret not giving him this small streak of humanity. It was I who created him to be a cruel and heartless murderer!

Capricorn was my prime villain and he was such a good one. I could not bear killing him off, because I felt I would tear out a part of myself. Capricorn would live!

My wife, god bless her soul, tried to rise me from my sheets of paper, but without success. She told me that I was obsessed, that these characters had grabbed my attention much more than she ever could. And they did. You should understand, I loved my wife, but she was right, another world had taken hold of me and did so until the day she died.

Capricorns mother reminded me of my own. She was a frustrated old woman, her blossom long gone and all love in her heart turned to ice. But inspite of her cold and bossy exterieur, there was the need and longing she felt for her only child, the want of his respect and acknowledgement. He was her son after all and all she expected was the gratitude he ought to pay her for bearing him. But it never came. Her life was lonely and bossing the maids around gave her the only kind of wicked pleasure in her life.

Dustfinger was meant to be a clown, a happy and loveable character in comparision to the villains. But he turned out quite different.

My wife died, she had been sick for weeks but I had been too obsessed with my writing. The world I had created had taken me too far away from the real one, my wife had been suffering and I had not noticed. Or had I not cared? "Do you love your Capricorn more than you love me?" she had asked and I had not noticed her fading, ignored her coughing. "Of course not" I had answered absent-mindedly "he is not real." Oh I wish he had not been! And that she had been more real to me!

"It is not your fault" my daughter told me at our shared supper one week after the funeral. But I saw the look in her eyes, the silent reproach. "You killed her" her gaze told me and the eyes never lie!

"You should try to rest, put your work aside for some time, you can help me with the child." she offered. Only two weeks before she had given birth to a wonderful baby boy and it was I who had denied him the right to ever get to know his grandmother.

But I could not accept. I had to distract myself. I wanted to forget. I could not look at my daughter, she was the spiting image of her mother, the same hair, the same mannerism, the same lovely green eyes.

I sat down to write, in order to ignore the world that kept turning around me. And it influenced the book in a way I never could have imagined. Capricorn become a powerful ruler and he stood for all the evils that haunted my life, the devil that suceeded in winning over the decent people. Capricorn was the ugly and hurtful reality called fate.

And I transformed Dustfinger into someone, I had never intended him on becoming. I was sad and so he had to be as well. He had to suffer, because I did, his life should be harsh and cruel and unfair because mine seemed like that. I denied him any kind of love or happiness. His only friend was a furry and silent, biting animal with small devil horns. Yes, he should be alone, he should have to grovel and entertain Capricorn and suffer.

And after I had a terrible row with my daughter, who accused me of not even visiting her mothers grave and only caring about words on paper instead of my own daughter and grandchild, I killed him off. It is too easy for a writer to end the life of one of his creatures.

Dustfinger had to die just as he had lived - alone. He died in a futile attempt to rescue his pet, his only friend and he was killed by an unknown servant of Capricorn. There was nothing glorious about his death, it was quick and in his world it was meaningless. I gave him noone who would mourn for him, he did not even get a grave.

But I cried when the dagger was slammed into his backside. It was the first time I had allowed myself to grieve, not only for my deceased wife, but for myself. My daughter had vowed to never speak to me again and at that moment I was Dustfinger and I believed I would die just the way he had - alone. But I had deserved it after all, he had not. But he was not real or so I thought.

Still life got better somehow, I apologized, more like grovelled, to my daughter and she teary-eyed accepted her old father back in her family. I spent almost all of my time at their house and later the children would always come over to my house to play. They were a nuisance, especially Pip, who was the trouble on two legs, but I adored them and loved them with all my heart. I was content.

Until this man and his daughter came. Of course I did not believe them, when they told me that the man had read Capricorn, his mother and Dustfinger out of my story. But for a joke it seemed quite too weird and they seemed very desperate and not amused at all. And they could even proove it, Dustfinger was just outside. I wanted, no I needed to see him, although I feared to face him. What could I possibly say?

He looked exactly the way I had imagined him except for the three ugly scars across his face. I had not intended of him being good-looking in any way and he certainly was not. But it pained me to see him, almost as much as it fascinated me. So often had I imagined what it would be like to actually meet my characters, to see and talk to them.

But this was not what I had intended on feeling, on doing. I was so absorbed, I wanted to reach out to him, to assure myself that he was real, that he was my Dustfinger, but he shoved me back and I fell to the floor. I felt his anger, distrust and hate, but worse, I knew he was right. I would have detested this man who believed that he could play god with his life as well, if I had been him.

I could have given him a happy life, he could have found a girl and have children, he could have gotten a decent job and stop having to work for Capricorn. I could have let him live.

But I had not done that, instead I had made him a creature that impersonated all my sadness , grief, regret and anger. Depression had written him. I had made his life miserable and then I had ended it the same way. I had pretended to be a god who toyed with his beings.

And I felt a small twinge of relief that he was here and not in the book. At least he could survive in this world. If he went back he would die. But still he wanted to return.

A bad conscience is not something that leaves you, it gnaws, aches and does not intend on passing, a pain that remains. I definitely had one. Maybe that made me human!

Not a dream, but a nightmare was what followed. An adventure I could have done without, it made me feel even more tired and incredibly old. Being locked up, caged in a cell of my own creature. Without the girl, Meggie, I would probably have gone mad.

How can an inventor hate his own creation? A father his own son? A writer an idea that sprang up in his mind? But I did, I hated Capricorn. I detested his mother. I pitied Dustfinger.

And I did the only thing I was capable of, good at, although I had never hated it more than now. I had to change the story, put an end to Capricorn and let his men vanish. Restless nights and countless thoughts were spent on figuring out how exactly I could achieve all I had to and time was sitting in my neck.

"Read this instead of the book" I told Meggie and gave her the papers. She did not understand, even though she is a very clever girl, but she trusted me and accepted. How much she reminded me of my daughter. And alone in my cell I prayed for all to turn out alright, for the story to have a happy ending.

But no story really ever ends.

The love for my creatures lingers on. Although I am glad that Capricorn is gone, I do hope that somewhere that is not here, best in a very far away galaxy, he might be fine, for all my hate I did not wish his demise, an inventor can not kill off its creation, it would break him.

His mother has managed to escape and I often wonder where she has gone. I imagine her roaming around somewhere with that knife-loving Basta and I know her well enough not to underestimate her, she will return. But in a way I am her father just as well as I am Capricorns and I want this Basta to maybe show her the small amount of respect she should have earned from her son.

Dustfinger has left, he has stolen the book and took his flight in the night, like the thief I created him to be. I am glad that Arabian boy, Farid if I remember correctly, is with him. I try to have hope for him. Maybe he can become more than the miserable man I wrote him to be, maybe he can learn to accept a son when fate has given him one.

I have rewritten his story. Not that he does know, or ever will, for I very much doubt that someone could ever read him back. But if by some miracle it can be achieved, then he will be surprised to find a loving home and meet a girl that resembles this Resa. And he will live.

It was the last paper that I have ever used to write a story. My ink bottle and writing papers are gone now, my daughter calls me paranoid, but she does not know. After all, how could she understand when I had just taken an unplanned trip to a lecturing in Canada?

I fear writing, who knows, the characters could appear out of the sheets and haunt me.

And when Pip asks me to tell him a story, it only features happy and lucky people, that live without fear and there are no villains. My grandson considers them boring and wants the characters to die or at least suffer. But I only stroke his wild curls and tell him that there is enough death and suffering in the world already, without me adding to it.