“You are certainly right about Lookseast,” Eve returned, “but my recollection of the Garden differs from yours. Yes, when we were younger El was pleased to answer questions about the names of flowers and other such matters, but in the last days before he threw us out he seemed uneasy with what we asked concerning Spring and the other Beta Gods.”

“That is very true,” admitted Adam. There was a brief pause while they negotiated an awkward turn in the path. “Perhaps it is well that the conversation ended when it did, for I was about to correct Lookseast.”

“Correct him as to what?” Eve said. “For so much of what he said wanted correcting.”

“As to why you and I are shaped as we are,” Adam said. “According to Lookseast, the common form of souls—two legs, two arms, a head and a face, and so on—was ordained by El. But El himself told us that we were created not by him but by Spring, with some help from Egdod. El came along later. The form adopted by you, me, Lookseast, and all the people of Eltown is not El’s work at all.”

“If it were,” said Eve, “it would be more perfect than those crude effigies in the kirk. Say what you will of El, his creations are more symmetrical and elegantly formed than anything in that place.”

“To the people down there,” Adam reminded her, gesturing to the town below, “they are beautiful and we are crude, and so we may just have to get used to being looked on as Lookseast looked on us.”