I locked the windows but did not feel safe enough to sleep so I got some of the books I had placed aside earlier and went to the couch on which Kothar had stretched his long body. I began with one titled The Monster in a Circle, but when I opened it, I discovered it was a children’s book with squat illustrations of ogres peeping behind hedges at goats and turkeys and children at play. Nevertheless, I found its childish sincerity quite funny and I caught myself smiling at the ogre’s earnest speculations about the taste of everything arrayed on the other side of the hedge. I finished it in an hour or so, placed it aside and reached for another, The Exuberant Life.
It was thicker than the others and the illustrations, in fountain pen, were more detailed with lush, swerving strokes delineatin
