iii

There were others here, once. Eve remembers the way they looked at her (she who walked amongst mortal men, to their great trouble). She had found their images so strange, and their fixation stranger still. She taught them to move, to tilt their heads, to close one eye, to climb. She taught them as the serpent taught her, as the shepherd taught the serpent, as she had taught the shepherd, as the serpent had taught her.