The secret to knowledge is in the letters. The priests don't know. Or, if they do, they keep secrets. Father and John always keep secrets.

I saw them one night, heads together, their whispers like the light flyers who flutter in and out of light and make me chase them. Just like with the light flyers, I have to become one with silence if I want to catch secrets.

Yet it is very hard to hear everything. I only heard John say "The Place of the Gods" and father, with all his wisdom, tell John that John's knowledge will "eat him".

In that moment, I really didn't understand Father, but I do not scare about my ignorance because ignorance comes and goes like the night. I think a person only never sees the day if she chooses to stay still.

I am not still. I am Aeleah, and I am no priest, I am a hunter. Hunters do not stay still unless the hunt calls for it.

So I went, like a shadow, trekking John's footsteps, his swim across the The Great River, and finally to the still burning cracks of metal and stone.

I discovered what John did, but of course I had already suspected. There were no spirits, no sacredness of The Dead Places, for I had gone to them many times.

I am not to become a priest, but my curious does eat me up. When Father told John that knowledge may eat a person, consume him, I thought, "Oh aye, Father, but it is the other way!"

I am Aeleah. I will hunt knowledge like I hunt the doe. I will shoot at knowledge so that is may fall from the air. It just takes practice and my aim is true.

You see, John would never have survived without me. It was I who lured the panther away so that John could go on. It was I who pulled an unconscious John away from the ashes. I got my brother safely through his journey and he didn't even know.

I am a shadow. I am a hunter, and that is why I know we must lern the letters. Those people we though were gods used the letters. If we learn the letters, we would be wiser than them, becaue we know. We know already what happened after the Great Burning.

Our destiny is not to burn again. We are the survivors because we must eat the knowledge that is good and destroy the rest.

John plans to keep the knowledge from the others, but that is a foolish plan.

I will learn the letters and teach others about them. Those who are worthy.

Letti Stokes