“You should. But you are young—and not a Yilanè. I have puzzled about you since you first started to speak, and your existence is still a puzzle to me. You are not a Yilanè, yet you are not a bestial ustuzou since you can speak. I don’t know what you are or how you fit into the scheme of greater things.”

Kerrick was beginning to be sorry that he had found Enge. Little of what she said made any sense to him. But now that she was speaking, for her own benefit more than his, she could not be stopped.

“Our belief must be true because there is a power in it that passes the comprehension of the nonbeliever. It was Ugunenapsa who came first to this understanding, spent her life ordering her mind, forcing herself to understand. To bring a new thing into the world where none had been before. She talked to others about her belief and they laughed at her. Word reached the Eistaa of her city about her strange ways and she was called before the Eistaa who commanded her to speak. And she did. She spoke of the thing within all of us that cannot be seen, the thing that enables us to speak and separates us from the unthinking animals. Animals do not have the thing within which is why they cannot speak. Therefore speaking is the voice of the thing within and that thing within is life and the knowledge of death. Animals have no knowledge of life or death. They are, then they aren’t. But the Yilanè know—and now you know. Which is the great puzzle that I must grapple with. Who are you? What are you? Where do you fit into the design?”

Enge turned to face Kerrick, looked into his eyes as though she might find the answer to her question there. But there was nothing that he could say in answer, and she realized that.

“Someday you may know,” she said. “Now you are too young. I strongly doubt if you can comprehend the wonder of the vision that Ugunenapsa had, a vision of a truth that she could explain to others. And the proof as well! For she angered the Eistaa who ordered her to set aside these false beliefs and live as all Yilanè have done since the egg of time. Ugunenapsa refused and thereby put her beliefs ahead of her city and the commands of her Eistaa. The Eistaa saw disobedience and stripped her of her name, ordered her from the city. Do you know what this means? No, you cannot. A Yilanè cannot live without her city and her name once she has attained it. To leave is to die. Since the egg of time a Yilanè turned away from her city has suffered a deadly change. The rejection is so strong that the Yilanè collapses instantly, quickly falls unconscious and soon dies. It was always that way.”