“I was there to act out the kinetic memory of the time when Loki learned some great secret from a Christian hermit in Egypt. A Coptic-speaker, but a scholar all the same. A collector of ancient Egyptian lore. Secret stuff that isn’t in the inscriptions, it isn’t in the books of the dead, it isn’t anywhere. It’s just known, and he told it to Loki, and the gates can’t give it to me in language, they can only help me recover Loki’s mental state when he learned it. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think you understand, sweetie,” said Veevee.

“I don’t,” said Danny. “But let me talk it through. Because it was working. There at the end when you shook me, I was finally getting it. After starting over again and again.”

“Sorry I saved your life,” said Hermia.

“Please, please let me tell it.” He almost cried with desperation.

“He’s asking you to shut up, dear,” said Veevee.

“I know what he’s asking.”

“If you don’t want to listen,” said Veevee sweetly, “then will you please leave and let him tell me?”

Hermia buried her face in her hands.

“It’s going to be a jumble,” said Danny. “I feel it slipping away like a dream. It’s about the ka and the ba. The ka is the inself, the ba is the outself.”

“Everybody knows that,” said Hermia.

“I didn’t!” said Danny.

“Shut up, please, Hermia,” said Veevee. Her voice sounded so sweet that it was clear she was murderously angry.

“And it’s not the same. That was what was so hard,” said Danny. “We think of the ka as being tied to the body, part of the body. So we send out the ba into our heartbeasts, into our clants, into our gates. But neither ka nor ba is part of our body. Neither one.”

“That’s absurd,” said Hermia. Then she clapped her own hand over her mouth.

“This is what Loki heard that made him so excited and frightened,” said Danny. “I remember how he felt about it. I remember him understanding this. The ka and the ba are bound to each other. Together, they’re both the thing we actually are. The body is just—a dwelling place. A tool set. It has a life of its own, a mind of its own, but it isn’t us. Any of us. Mages and drowthers alike. We are ka, we are ba, we are not these animals that we wear.”

“We’re listening,” said Veevee.

“Sounds very gnostic,” said Hermia.

“No it doesn’t,” said Danny. “It doesn’t sound gnostic at all. Or Coptic. It sounds like the thing that made Loki close all the gates.”

“If the ka and ba aren’t part of our human body,” said Veevee, “then where do they come from?”

“From the world of the Belmages,” said Danny.

“In other words,” said Hermia, “from ‘heaven.’”