Disclaimer: Inkheart, Dustfinger, Farid, Gwin, Resa, Mo, and Meggie all belong to Cornelia Funke. (Goes off and screams with bad-tempered frustration.)
A/N: I did this as a kind of warm-up for a longer fic featuring Dusty. Please tell me if he's in character, or if I need to make changes.
Only Words
Dustfinger tossed and turned. The boy was sleeping peacefully on the other side of the fire. He was as eager to play with fire as Dustfinger had been when he was a child, but he had never known the language of the flames, had never felt the longing that Dustfinger had felt for ten years, like a raw, open wound.
He didn't feel as though the flames were laughing at him when they crackled in their strange, sullen voices, as though they didn't want him to hear…
The boy had found a home now, with Dustfinger, however much he had tried to drive him away, to convince him that life with a melancholy, desperate, old fire-eater wasn't what he wanted.
Dustfinger had to admit that he was actually beginning to enjoy the boy's company; it helped to lessen the loneliness left by the crackling fire, the fading memories. But the faces he'd tried desperately to cling to for ten years were fading, decaying… until he was left only with the book.
The book with the torn paper dust jacket. It called to him, taunted him, dared him to read his fate, dared him to remember that he was made of words, only words, and words controlled him, and words would destroy him.
He covered his ears, closed his eyes, as if to shut out the rustling song of the printed pages lying motionless in his backpack.
He wished Resa was with him. Her stories had driven away the darkness and despair. Even without her voice, she had made the letters come alive.
Yet she had never felt for him what she felt for Silvertongue, had never loved him as he'd loved her. As, he had to admit, he still loved her.
Time and time again, he tried to shut her out of his mind, out of his heart. But he couldn't help wondering if it was his fate to lose all love…
His fate. Silvertongue's daughter had told him of it.
What did it matter if he read the words?
He reached for his backpack, upsetting Gwin. The marten chattered crossly at him, beady black eyes inspecting him reproachfully.
Maybe it would be a good idea to leave Gwin behind when I go, he thought, not allowing himself to think that he might never go back, that he might die here amid the speed and noise and brightly lit nights.
His fingers trembled as he fumbled for the page, not wanting to see it, but at he same time, desperately longing to know, to see his death in black in white, to lock it away in his mind and keep it from being a barrier in his journey back to his own world.
There!
He had found it. The last chapter but one.
…and the knife in his back plunged deep into his heart…
Breathing more rapidly, Dustfinger stood, trying to still the pounding of his heart which was beating faster as if to prove that it was still, indeed, beating.
He slammed the book shut and let it fall to the grass. The sound made the boy start in his sleep. Dustfinger hadn't told him about the words, and wouldn't. Farid was a being of paper and ink, too.
He stuffed the book away, shutting his life, his love, and his doom where he couldn't see it anymore, couldn't here its voice.
They were only words, after all. Maybe they'd come true, maybe not.
But for Dustfinger, words were a whole world.