Return to Eden

like Vaintè, wanted the story to be long in the telling in order to extract the maximum amount of diversion.
    Vaintè for her part wanted to learn everything she could about the city and the Eistaa. After the long, bleak time of silence it was pleasure magnified to speak and to listen. By avoiding those topics that caused her pain of memory she healed herself. Yebèisk was a fine city to be in. Like all other cities it was centered on the ambesed. Around and above the ambesed there grew the city tree, the complex web of life that nourished and formed the city. To one side, there was the sea, as in all cities, always ocean or river, where the birth beaches were. On all the other flanks the fields and forests stretched away until they reached the outermost rampart of the city. A living wall of trees and poisonous plants—and great indestructible animals like nenitesk and onetsensast, living fossils of bygone ages, that protected the city from the creatures of the wild forests. The city ended at the wall. Beyond it were the mountains, deserts and dry plains, unsuitable for Yilanè, stretching into the unmeasurable distance, uncharted and unmapped; although there were those few who knew ways across them. Then, when the soil and the climate became amenable again, there would be another wall and another city. All across the great continent of Entoban*
    the wild country stretched between the cities of the Yilanè.
    One day there appeared, out of the trackless forest, a hunter of great skill by the name of Fafnepto. She was not of Yebèisk, or of any city that anyone knew of, for she moved from one to the other as it pleased her. Fafnepto had just arrived from one of these distant cities and all present listened to her with eagerness.
    "You have returned, Fafnepto," Saagakel said, with modifiers of appreciation, rewards pending.
    "I have, Eistaa, as I said I would." She touched the container on the grass next to her with one foot. Tall and strong, her skin scarred by her years beyond the cities, she reminded Vaintè of one who had been very close to her, one Stallan, once her staunchest ally and friend. A hunter as well; it was no chance resemblance. Although Fafnepto did bear a disfigurement that made her unique. Some creature, she never spoke of it and none dared ask, had lashed her across the head and rib cage, leaving an immense length of scar. This cut across her face and had removed her left eye. It was said that she saw better with the remaining eye than others did with two, which was undoubtedly true.
    "I have brought that which you requested, Eistaa. The eggs lie safe in here."
    Saagakel moved with gratitude and pleasure. "Fafnepto, first among Yilanè of strength and wisdom, do you speak of the eggs of the okhalakx?" She signed pleasure unbounded at Fafnepto's affirmative answer.
    The listeners echoed the pleasure, all except for Vaintè.
    "You are not familiar with the okhalakx?" Saagakel asked.
    "Apologies for ignorance," Vaintè said.
    "Lack of information, one day to be replaced by pleasure. It is one of the older animals, found in very few cities. Solid of body, strong of skull—and most important—tasty of flesh. We had a small herd, they grow slowly, but they were destroyed by disease. A tragedy turned now to a happiness by Fafnepto, for whom the city's gratitude is boundless. Requests of any magnitude granted."
    "One," Fafnepto said in a plain-spoken, rough but not impolite manner. She turned a penetrating eye on Vaintè. "I have been told that this visitor has great knowledge of Gendasi*, land across the sea. And of the ustuzou and other animals there. I have questions about them I would ask."
    "My knowledge is yours," Vaintè said, and Saagakel was gratified by her loyalty and clarity of speech.
    Fafnepto signed her away from the group and they walked by the stream.
    "The ustuzou I know are small and covered with fur," Fafhepto said. "It is said that they are different in Gendasi*."
    "Some are just as you have said. But there are larger ones with branching horns that make the best eating.
    We kept them in the city for that. Then there are the others of some intelligence and much guile.
    Poisonous creatures, fit only to be destroyed. As they destroyed Alpèasak, though it grew again."
    "Those are the ones of which I heard. Are they yilanè?"
    "No. It has been said that they converse with each other, but none can understand it. There was one once who was yilanè, a creature of great destruction."
    When