Then he was at a complete loss. Never in all of his life, had he ever had a moment when he was not doing something, except when he was asleep. It was a strange feeling, unsettling, and once again he felt as if the world had suddenly turned upside down. And although he still found himself wrapped in that calm lassitude, he wasn’t sleepy as such. He finished cleaning up the room where the baths were so that it was in the same pristine state it had been before, and then stood there in the damp heat, wondering what to do with himself. His hands twitched a little. His body knew what it expected to be doing—it expected him to be down in the mine. What was he supposed to do with himself?

:Would you like to read a real book?:

Of all the things that Dallen could have said, that was one that took him utterly by surprise. His mute assent led Dallen to direct him down a hall and up two flights of stairs to a small room that was comfortably warm and lit with two of those large glazed windows. There were heavily cushioned benches beneath both of them, and the walls were lined with cases crammed with something he had never seen before, but which the memories he had gotten poured into his mind told him were those mysterious objects—books. Row upon row of them, thick ones, thin ones, bound in all manner and colors of cloth and leather. The room had a smell like nothing he had ever known; leather, but also an odd, faint, sharpish smell, and a hint of dust. The scent Dallen identified for him as peculiar to books. He stared at them avidly. There must be so many things in those books, and he wanted to read them all.

But which one to start with? There was no way of telling what was inside any of them.

:Let me look through your eyes,: Dallen suggested, and when Mags gave him a puzzled assent, he got a most peculiar sensation, as his own eyes flickered over the backs of the books without his own volition.

:That one,: Dallen suggested, and his eyes rested on the back of one in dull blue leather. Carefully, Mags pulled it out and carried it over to one of the benches.

He was almost afraid to touch the pages with his rough hands, they seemed so fragile to him. When he opened the book, he wasn’t sure what he was going to see. But his speculations were not what met his eyes; what he saw was long strings of words in sentences, written small, like rows and rows of ants on the page. It took him a breathless moment to realize that these were words he knew, that he recognized, that he had written. Most of them, anyway.