Ellie, the Woman He Left the Book With
She did not go looking for any of this. It walked into her kitchen.
Who she is
Ellie is a nurse. She has worked night shifts for ten years. She knows what three in the morning sounds like in a hospital, and she knows what people look like when they are frightened and trying not to show it.
She is not a scholar. She had never heard of the Watchers or the Charter. She is not in the story the book tells. She is the one the book was left with.
The man in her kitchen
Three weeks ago she came home and he was already there. She did not hear the door. A tall man, very pale, in a long robe. He did not quite look at her. He looked through her.
He put a book on her table. He said one thing.
Read it. Then show them. I cannot.
Then he was gone.
Two days behind a locked door
Ellie did what most of us would do. She locked herself in the bedroom. She stayed there for two days. In the end it was hunger that brought her out.
The book was still on the table. Still open.
So she read it. All of it. His name is in there. Soren, a Watcher. So is everything else: who the Watchers are, what the Keepers did with the Charter, and who holds it now.
Why she is talking
He asked her to show us. He said he could not do it himself. So Ellie sat down in front of a camera and told her story, with her face hidden. She does not claim to understand all of it. She read it, and she cannot unread it.
This is the book he left on her table. Read the full story, and then ask yourself why he chose a stranger.