“We must get to an inn as soon as we can!” he declared. “We must get paper and ink! We must make a record of exactly what was written upon you before. You must search every corner of your memory!”

Vinculus stared at him as if he thought he must have taken leave of his senses. “Why?” he asked.

“Because it is John Uskglass’s magic! John Uskglass’s thoughts! The only record any one ever had of them. We must preserve every scrap we can!”

Vinculus remained unenlightened. “Why?” he asked again. “John Uskglass did not think it worth preserving.”

“But why should you change all of a sudden? There is no rhyme or reason in it!”

“There is every sort of reason,” said Vinculus. “I was a Prophecy before; but the things that I foretold have come to pass. So it is just as well I have changed – or I would have become a History! A dry-as-dust History!”

“So what are you now?”

Vinculus shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps I am a Receipt-Book! Perhaps I am a Novel! Perhaps I am a Collection of Sermons!” He was excessively diverted by these thoughts and cackled to himself and capered about some more.

“I hope you are what you have always been – a Book of Magic. But what are you saying? Vinculus, do you mean to tell me that you never learnt these letters?”

“I am a Book,” said Vinculus, stopping in mid-caper. “I am the Book. It is the task of the Book to bear the words. Which I do. It is the task of the Reader to know what they say.”

“But the last Reader is dead!”

Vinculus shrugged as if that were none of his concern.

“You must know something!” cried Childermass, growing almost wild with exasperation. He seized Vinculus’s arm. “What about this? This symbol like a horned circle with a line through it. It occurs over and over again. What does it mean?”

Vinculus pulled his arm away again. “It means last Tuesday,” he said. “It means three pigs, one of ’em wearing a straw hat! It means Sally went a-dancing in the moon’s shadow and lost a little rosy purse!” He grinned and wagged a finger at Childermass. “I know what you are doing! You hope to be the next Reader!”

“Perhaps,” said Childermass. “Though I cannot, for the life of me, tell how I shall begin. Yet I cannot see that any one else has a better claim to be the next Reader. But whatever else happens, I shall not let you out of my sight again. Henceforth, Vinculus, you and I shall be each other’s shadow.”

Vinculus’s mood soured upon the instant. Gloomily he dressed himself again.