This was wonderful in itself. Writing held Words, and one never knew when one might encounter such a powerful thing: writing like this was to fear, and hold carefully, and puzzle over, because some shapes were like Maurylʼs writing and many had tails and straight, strong lines where Maurylʼs had twists; and more had shapes he could not quite tell apart, or where one letter stopped and another began.
Certainly it was not Maurylʼs writing.
Someone elseʼs. Someone of strong and straight strokes, lacking those whips and tails heʼd thought were part of the letters, which heʼd copied in his shaky attempts that turned the quill in wrong directions and spattered ink, or left a bead of ink that took sometimes a day to dry.
Another wizard? he asked himself. Mauryl said he was a wizard, and he, Tristen, was a boy, and that being a wizard, Mauryl knew what a boy needed to know.
Had he never heard what Mauryl had said? Not, The wizard; but, A wizard. Of course there was more than one of everything. Mauryl had always implied so. Mauryl had never told him there was only one.
Mauryl had said there were dangers and they came from outside. As the shadows did. And there was more than one of them. There were many more things in the world than one of each.
Mauryl spoke of this book as if it were a Word, filled with more and greater meanings than other books. This book was, Mauryl said, the source of what he needed. The Book itself might come from elsewhere and tell him what those other things were. Mauryl had said he need not go away if he could find the answers in this Book.
But try as he would to hook the letters together into words, puzzling out the strange ones, and trying them as this letter and that he found not one word in it he could read.
The pigeons held the floor of the loft, and the doves held the highest rafters, up by the roof, in nooks the pigeons couldnʼt fit, living on different levels of the loft and filling it with their soft voices. The loft was a wonderful, dusty place. Shingles covered part of it. Slates covered one wing. Thatch covered some of the holes, but the birds that stole the blackberries stole the straw for nests, which they tucked into inaccessible nooks along the other rafters, and squabbled and flapped their wings along the dusty boards when they both wanted the same place.
All the birds of whatever sort had learned that he brought crumbs. So had a furtive few mice, which dared the owl oh, the owl! that held sway in the west end of the loft. But an inside wall divided the two, and the owl, which ruled the sunset side alone and grumpy, seemed not to hunt among the mice and the pigeons on this side, although, Mauryl said, owls ate mice.
That seemed cruel.
But the owl would take nothing that he brought and was a sullen and retiring bird, solitary on his side. He wanted not, evidently, to be disturbed, and glared with angry yellow eyes at a boyʼs offerings, and let them lie. Mauryl said he slept by day and hunted by night, and he was probably angry, Tristen thought, at being waked.
The owl flew out among the shadows at night and came back safely to sleep in the loft. But that not one bird and not one mouse crossed into Owlʼs side, and that all the boards were bare of nests or straw, might tell a boy finally that Owl wanted no company.
It might tell a boy that Owl was, if not content, not a bird like the other birds, but rather a mover among the Shadows, and possibly a bird other birds feared. Perhaps, Tristen thought, Owl was theirShadow, and the reason they flew home at twilight to stay until the sunrise. Perhaps there was a Shadow that hunted wizards, and one that hunted boys, and one that wanted mice and birds, and heʼd stumbled on its daytime sleeping place he supposed that, like Owl, Shadows had to have them. But if Owl was one of the dreadful things, he thought he should be glad Owl only flared his wings and glared at him.
Perhaps up in the rafters were other Shadows asleep, and if he waked them, theyʼd pounce on him. But there were rules for Shadows, as he could guess, that by day they had to sleep, and if one forbore to rouse them, then they forbore to wake.
So he went no more to Owlʼs side. He told Mauryl that he thought the Shadows might sleep in the loft: Mauryl said the Shadows slept in all sorts of places, but certainly he should be out of the loft well before the sun set, and he should be careful up there, Mauryl said, because the boards were rotten with age, and he might fall straight through and break his neck.
Mauryl was always thinking of disasters. That was what wizards did, Tristen thought, and boys had to learn to read, so he took his Book there and sat in the sunlight.
The mice grew tame, and the birds (besides Owl) liked the bread he offered, and fluttered and fought for it quite rudely (at least the sparrows), while the pigeons (better-mannered, Mauryl would say) puffed their chests and ducked and dodged about. The sparrows were full of tricks. But the pigeonsʼ gray chests shone with green rainbows in the sun, and they learned to come close to him, and sit on his legs in the warm sunlight, and take bread from his fingers. The doves tried the same, but were far more timid, and the sparrows hung back and squabbled, thieves, Mauryl called them. Silly birds.
But the pigeons grew rather too bold in a very few days, and would land on his head, or fight over room on his shoulders, and he discovered there were disadvantages to birds. Mauryl said then that they were taking advantage of him, which was what creatures did if one gave and asked nothing like some boys, Mauryl said. So perhaps he could learn to be thoughtful and to think ahead, which birds didnʼt do, which was why they had birdsʼ wits, and not the wisdom of wicked Owl.
Be stern with them, Mauryl advised him. Bid them mind their manners.
So he became like Mauryl with them, well, most times. He shrugged them off his shoulders; he swept them off his knees. He tolerated one or two polite and careful ones and, he discovered, once the bread ran out, most were far less interested in his company. So he grew wiser about birds.
He said to Mauryl that the mice were more polite. But Mauryl said the mice were only smaller, and afraid of him because he might step on them by accident. Mauryl said that if they had the chance they might be rude, too, which was the difference between mice and boys; boys could learn to be polite because they should be polite, but mice were polite only because they were scared, and might be dangerous if they were as big as boys, being inherently thieves.
That saying made him unhappy. He lay on his stomach on the floor and tried to coax the mice out to him, but they were afraid of him and came only so far as they ever had. So he thought that Mauryl was right and that they expected harm of him, when he had never done any. He wondered why that was, and thought that Mauryl might be right about their character.
He read his Book in the intervals of these matters, or at least he studied it. He grew angry sometimes that he could understand nothing of it. Sometimes he found little words that he thought he knew. Sometimes he made notes to himself in the dust with his fingers.
And the silly pigeons came and walked on them, so they never lasted long.
Pigeons had no respect for writing, nor for boys. They feared him not even when he swept them off. They thought of him, he began to think, not as a boy, but like the other pigeons, flapping their wings to secure a place. And his wing-flapping, like theirs, did nothing but overbalance a pigeon. It never drove one away for good, not so long as there was the chance of more bread crumbs.