He didn’t know how to cipher or write.
At least, that had been true yesterday. He picked up a stick, and rather clumsily wrote the words – I – can – write – in the loose dirt of the ground. What language was that? It wasn’t the common Altongue that everyone spoke day-to-day. It was some other language. He was puzzled. How could he know this? And then the memories came creeping back, on tiptoe paws of dream-stuff. He had dreamed that the old leather book with the beautiful illustrations had opened before him. And a little old man came out of the book, and taught him things about letters and sounds, and the ways that spoken words are made into shapes. With more than a touch of fear now tingling the tips of his fingers, the boy fumbled for the book in his belongings. His hand brushed the warm, leather tooling, and he took it out. He pulled the cover open and looked at the first story.
He understood it now.
He could very clearly read it.
It was written in an archaic style of the Old Northangar tongue. He could read it. So, he did so–voraciously. It was a wonderful story: all about a hero and a monster, and a king’s hall, and there was a swamp, and many other things aside. But when he turned the last page of the tale, he found that the next story was written in a different language altogether. These letters were harshly jagged, all full of ornate angular flourishes. He couldn’t make out a single word of the second story. He flipped through the book, and as he did, he remembered from his earlier perusal that all the stories were in different languages, written in different scripts. “Oh,” said the boy with a touch of trepidation and wonder. “It’s a magic book.” Would it teach him all of the scripts or just some of them?
And how was it even working on him, given the magical ‘slipperiness’ of his namelessness?
With a feeling of owning a precious, tiny secret, he closed the book and slipped it back in amongst his things. He needed to talk to someone about it, but didn’t want to talk to Caewen or Dapple, or the fetch for that matter. He would talk to Fleat when they had a moment together. In the meantime, he decided that he would definitely sleep with the book beside his head tonight, just as he had the night before. Was that an important part of the magic? Maybe? And what would happen if he kept the book nearby every night? He felt giddy at the prospect, but he was also wondrously excited as he anticipated finding out.