They studied more pictures, leaning together over the little book. A river dolphin, several kinds of seal and an animal Amity recognised – a water buffalo with a pink, hairless hide, a stiff dark crest crowning its head and a pair of tusks curling to the left and right of its snout. It was a relative of the forest hogs, Pilgrim told Amity, and one of the fiercest and most dangerous animals known, even though it ate nothing but grass and water hyacinths. Amity nodding, saying that water buffalos lived in the lake and you had to keep well away from them, asking if it was true that they could fight off spotted cats.

‘They are so fierce that their children sometimes chew on a crocodile’s tail for practice,’ Pilgrim said. ‘And the crocodile lets them, because if it objected that would be the end of it.’

‘Are crocodiles the little rat’s children too?’

‘No, they are very old and wise animals who knew how to hide from the worst of the fire.’

At last Amity fell asleep, and Pilgrim tucked the book into the straw at the bottom of his sleeping niche. Willow said that it was an overgenerous present; Pilgrim told her that one of the things that had surprised him most, living in Highwater Reach in the shadow of the Library, was how cheap books could be. There was a narrow street in the old quarter where shops sold books authorised by the Library, self-published tracts, theses and pamphlets produced by the so-called bootleg print shops, and the contents of the personal libraries of scholars who had died or moved away. He had spent many happy hours browsing there.

‘I had to sell most of my little collection to pay for my train ticket, and put what was left in the care of my friends. But I kept the bestiary for Amity because your letters mentioned that he is keen on natural history.’

Pilgrim and Willow were sitting under one of the Hearth’s grandmother trees, looking out across the fields towards the slow sunset. Willow said, ‘I’m not sure if it’s a phase or something more serious, but he loves to collect bird feathers and snail shells.’

‘As I saw.’

‘You had your fossils, and the animal skeletons you wired together,’ Willow said. ‘And that ant farm you kept between two sheets of glass.’

‘I employed the ants to strip the flesh from the bones of dead mice and birds,’ Pilgrim said. ‘A very useful arrangement.’

‘Until one of our teachers made you throw it out because of the stink.’

‘And with no better place to live the ants made nests under the classroom, and got everywhere.’

They smiled at the shared memory.