There are more illiteracies than script, reader: Ancelet can read numbers, Headmaster Faust the subtleties of face and phrasing, Madame blushes, Eureka Weeksbooth her ten billion balls of light, while others read stones, DNA, star streaks, the flights of birds—all hen scratch to the untrained. I think all humans feel rage at our finitude when we see others read what we cannot. In some eras fire was the solution, to burn, like infected sheets, the witches and heretic philosophers who read too well the signs and stars. But wiser eras hold such prophets dear.
