“Mrs. Danvers?” repeated Thursday5, studying a pullout guide to reading tea leaves. “I’ve got one or two in my books, but I think they’re meant to be there.”

“Tell me,” I said by way of conversation, “is there any aspect of the BookWorld that you’d like to learn about as part of your time with me?”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “I’d like to have a go and see what it’s like inside a story during a recitation in the oral tradition—I’ve heard it’s really kind of buzzing.”

She was right. It was like sweaty live improv theater—anything could happen.

“No way,” I said, “and if I hear that you’ve been anywhere near OralTrad, you’ll be confined to The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. It’s not like books where everything’s laid out and orderly. The oral tradition is dynamic like you’ve no idea. Change anything in there and you will, quite literally, give the narrator an aneurysm.”

“A what?”

“A brain hemorrhage. The same can be said of Poetry. You don’t want to go hacking around in there without a clear head on your shoulders.”

“Why?”

“It’s like a big emotion magnifier. All feelings are exacerbated to a dangerous level. You can find things out about yourself that you never knew—or never wanted to know. We have a saying: ‘You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.’ It’s like being able to see yourself when drunk.”

“Aha,” she said in a quiet voice.

There was a pause.

“You’ve never been drunk, have you?”

She shook her head. “Do you think I should try it?”

“It’s overrated.”

I had a thought. “Have you ever been up to the Council of Genres?”

“No.”

“A lamentable omission. That’s where we’ll go first.”

I pulled out my mobilefootnoterphone and called TransGenre Taxis to see where my cab had gone. The reason for a taxi was not altogether obvious to Thursday5, who, like most residents of the BookWorld, could bookjump to any novel previously visited with an ease I found annoying. My intrafictional bookjumping was twenty times better than my transfictional jumps, but even then a bit ropey. I needed to read a full paragraph to get in, and if I didn’t have the right section in my TravelBook, then I had to walk via the Great Library or get a taxi—as long as one was available.

“Wouldn’t it be quicker just to bookjump?” asked Thursday5 with annoying directness.

“You young things are always in a hurry, aren’t you?” I replied. “Besides, it’s more dignified to walk—and the view is generally better. However,” I added with a sense of deflated ego, “in the absence of an available cab, we shall.”

I pulled out my TravelBook, turned to the correct page and jumped from Sense and Sensibility to the Great Library.