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'Anything!' replied the Mother Jaguar.
'If you make a rhyme out of it he might be able to remember.'
The Mother Jaguar sighed.
'It won't help. Yesterday he forgot he was a Painted Jaguar. He makes my spots ache, really he does.'
'How about this?' I said, making up a rhyme on the spot:
'Can't curl, but can swim –
Slow-Solid, that's him!
Curls up, but can't swim –
Stickly-Prickly, that's him!'
The Mother Jaguar stopped lashing her tail and asked me to write it down. She was still trying to get her son to remember it when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and
we got out.
'I thought we were going to the Jurisfiction offices?' I said as we walked along the corridors of the Great Library, the wooden shelves groaning under the weight of the collected imaginative outpourings of nearly two millennia.
'The next roll-call is tomorrow,' she replied, stopping at a shelf and dropping the grammasites' waistcoats into a heap before picking out a roughly bound manuscript, 'and I told Perkins you'd help him feed the minotaur.'
'You did?' I asked, slightly apprehensively.
'Of course. Fictionalzoology is a fascinating subject and, believe me, it's an area about which you should know more.'
She handed me the book which, I noticed, was hand-written.
'It's codeword protected,' announced Havisham, 'mumble Sapphire before you read yourself in.'
She gathered up the waistcoats again.
'I'll pick you up in about an hour. Perkins will be waiting for you on the other side. Please pay attention and don't let him talk you into looking after any rabbits. Don't forget the password – you'll not get in or out without it.'
'Sapphire,' I repeated.
'Very good,' she said, and vanished.
I placed the book on one of the reading desks and sat down. The marble busts of writers that dotted the Library seemed to glare at me and I was just about to start reading when I noticed, high up on the shelf opposite, an ethereal form that was coalescing, wraith-like, in front of my eyes. At home this might be considered a matter of great pith and moment, but here it was merely the Cheshire Cat making one of his celebrated appearances.
'Hello!' he said as soon as his mouth had appeared. 'How are you getting along?'
The Cheshire Cat was the librarian and the first person I had met in the BookWorld. With a penchant for non sequiturs and obtuse comments, it was hard not to like him.
'I'm not sure,' I replied. 'I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the minotaur his breakfast.'
'Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?'
'How long have you got?'9
I tapped my ears.
'Problems?'
'I can hear two Russians gossiping, right here inside my head.'
