Only a Picture
- Neither Elinor nor Mo notices Meggie at first. They're bent over the book, and Elinor is saying that she didn't think there were any copies left since dealers had been reporting theirs stolen.
- Meggie can hear in Mo's voice that this news doesn't surprise him. He sounds relieved when Elinor agrees to take the book for a while, and he sounds especially relieved when she describes her state-of-the-art alarm system.
- That's when they notice Meggie. She angrily asks why Elinor is allowed to see the book but she isn't. Mo relents, and Maggie sees that the book is bound in light green linen, and it has some illustrations—but that's all she really gets to see before Elinor closes the book.
- Mo escorts Meggie out of the library, and shows her to her room. The next morning, she has breakfast with Mo and Elinor, and then goes to look for Dustfinger; she finds him outside, juggling. Dustfinger says that he makes his living juggling, and then he grills her about where Elinor hid the book.
- Meggie asks him why Gwin—Dustfinger's little horned critter—looks like one of the animals she saw in the book, an illustration of a little horned creature that was drawn on top of a letter. Dustfinger answers her with a question: does her father often read to her aloud?
- The answer is no, and so Dustfinger tells Meggie to ask her father why that is. Then he offers to perform for her, but it has to be late at night when it's completely pitch-black. They make a date for 11:00PM that night.
- Meggie finds Mo and asks why he's never read to her, but he just says that he doesn't like reading out loud, and then he tells her that he needs to get to work.
- Meggie reads some of Elinor's books about animals, but she can't find any mention of martens with horns.