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the strolling players usually did.
    When twilight fell he looked around for a safe place to sleep. Finally, he climbed up onto a fallen oak with its root-ball towering so high into the air that it offered good shelter for the night. The root-ball was like a great rampart of earth, yet some of the roots still clung to the ground as if unwilling to let go of life. The crown of the fallen tree had put out new shoots, although they now pointed to the ground and not the sky. Dustfinger nimbly clambered along the mighty trunk, digging his fingers into its rough bark.
    When he reached the roots, which were now thrusting up into the air as if they could find nourishment there, a few fairies flew up, chattering crossly. They had obviously been looking for 22
     
    building materials for their nests. Of course: It would soon be autumn, time for a more weatherproof sleeping place. The blue fairies took no particular trouble over the nests they built in spring, but as soon as the first leaf turned color they began improving them, padding them with animal fur and birds’ feathers, weaving more grass and twigs into the walls, sealing cracks with moss and fairy spit.
    Two of the tiny blue creatures didn’t fly away when they saw him. They stared avidly at his sandy hair as the evening light, falling through the treetops, tinged their wings with red.
    “Ah, of course!” Dustfinger laughed softly. “You want some of my hair for your nests.” He cut off a lock with his knife. One of the delighted fairies seized the hair in her delicate, insect like hands and fluttered quickly away with it. The other fairy, so tiny that she could only just have hatched from her mother-of-pearl egg, followed her. He had missed those bold little blue creatures, he’d missed them so much.
    Down below among the trees, night was falling, but in the light of the setting sun the treetops overhead were turning red as sorrel in a summer meadow. Soon the fairies would be asleep in their nests, the mice and rabbits in their holes and burrows. The cool of the night would make the lizards’ legs stiff, the birds would fall silent, predators would prepare to go hunting, their eyes like yellow lights in the darkness. Let’s hope they don’t fancy a fire-eater for dinner, thought Dustfinger, stretching his legs out on the fallen trunk. He thrust his knife into the cracked bark beside him, wrapped himself in the cloak he hadn’t worn for ten years, and stared up at the leaves. They were growing darker and darker now. An owl rose from an oak and swooped away, little more than a shadow among the branches. A tree whispered in its sleep, words that no human ear could understand.
    Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.
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    Chapter 4 – Silvertongue’s Daughter
     
    Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?
    – Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
    Meggie hated quarrelling with Mo. It left her shaking inside, and nothing could comfort her – not a hug from her mother, not the licorice candies Resa’s aunt Elinor gave her if their loud voices had carried to the library, not Darius, who firmly believed in the miraculous healing powers of hot milk and honey in such cases.
    Nothing helped.
    This time it had been particularly bad, because Mo had really only come to see her to say good-bye. He had a new job waiting, some sick books too old and valuable to be sent to him. In the past Meggie would have gone with him, but this time she had decided to stay with Elinor and her mother.
    Why did he have to come to her room just when she was reading the notebooks again? They’d often quarreled over those notebooks recently, although Mo hated a quarrel as much as she did.
    Afterward, he usually disappeared into the workshop that Elinor had had built behind the house for him, and a time would come, once Meggie couldn’t bear to be angry with him anymore, when she would follow him there. He never raised his head when she slipped