Reading opened so many more doors for Spencer. There was a world of knowledge for him to peruse, all of the survival skills he could ever need, if he could only find it.
He started with the dictionary in the living room of the orphanage. Old and battered, with pages missing, it was still helpful in expanding his vocabulary. He'd waste less time looking up words later if he could sound them out and memorize the meanings now. And best of all, every entry had the pronunciation right next to the word, making it much easier to sound out when the spelling looked weird to him.
Spencer scrounged around for whatever children's books he could find in the orphanage, building up his comprehension before browsing through the library. He became familiar with its organization of books, beginning again with the children's nonfiction, though there wasn't much of what he was looking for.
Adult nonfiction, on the other hand, was a treasure trove.
He learned what plants and parts of plants were edible, during what season, and where they could be found (She knew mainly what plants were poisonous, what could be used in healing, and their magical properties).
He memorized a variety of traps, the blueprints of constructing them and where to do so, though it would take practice and time before his weak, clumsy child's hands could do so effectively (She, with her teeth and claws, had no need nor ability to create man-made traps).
He studied descriptions on skinning and preparing wild game for food, as well as the best ways to construct and maintain a fire (what She took satisfaction in eating raw would make him sick, and he had no fur to keep himself warm).
It was difficult, of course, and there was so much he didn't understand, especially in the adult books. But She was there to help him. To explain and paraphrase and parse it down to the essentials, anything that might help him to survive into adulthood.
He learned even more besides, a little bit of everything as he browsed children's books on anything from history to animals.
Too much. It started becoming too much.
Spencer's head began to ache more and more often. Words, whole sentences, swam before his eyes. Sometimes he found himself muttering sections of something he had read before, which prompted more name-calling and bullying about him being crazy.
It was lucky She had already begun to teach him meditation. One afternoon the pain in his head spiked and became more than just an ache for the first time. It sent him seeking his bed, the darkness under the covers, and She reached out.
It was because he remembered too much. More than he could handle. Spencer's mind was chaos, facts and memories and experiences piled everywhere and spilling over, mingling and mixing randomly. With meditation and Her help, he could organize his mind. Could create his own mindscape, store and file everything in ways that made sense, put everything in what he thought of as its proper space. Make space for growth, and recall what he wanted as he wanted it.
And then once he had his mind organized and a system in place to assist his eidetic memory, She could teach him to create defenses.
Spencer is about 4-5 years old in this chapter.