You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.
Philip PullmanIorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must. Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse.
Philip PullmanI wanted to avoid what some modern tellers have done, quite legitimately, to make fairy tales more like novels and short stories, to characterize the heroes and the heroines much more than they are characterized in Grimm. I like the psychological flatness of them, the fact that they're more like masks than individuals.
Philip Pullman