"Don’t do that," he said, horrified, when she’d stopped, but what he actually produced was birdsong, shrill and urgent. But then he realized that what she’d told him was that the "ticket," which they could only use here, and the one time, admitted him to their morphing encryption, hers and Ossian’s, which was as impenetrable as anything in the world, so that even Lowbeer and her omnipotent aunties were unlikely to learn what was said. And then she began to tell him more.