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Which we must learn laboriously.
The Creatures need no lesson books,
For God instructs their Minds and Souls:
The sunlight hums to every Bee,
The moist clay whispers to the Mole.
And each one seeks its meat from God,
And each enjoys the Earth's sweet fare;
But none does sell and none does buy,
And none does foul its proper lair.
The Serpent is an arrow bright
That feels the Earth's vibrations fine
Run through its armoured shining flesh,
And all along its twining spine.
Oh, would I were, like Serpents, wise --
To sense the wholeness of the Whole,
Not only with a thinking Brain,
But with a swift and ardent Soul.
From The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook
43
TOBY. THE FEAST OF SERPENT WISDOM
YEAR TWENTY-FIVE
The Feast of Serpent Wisdom. Old Moon. Toby enters the Feast Day and the moon phase on her pink notepaper with the winky eyes and kissy lips. Old moon is a pruning week, said the Gardeners. Plant by the new, slash by the old. A good time to apply sharp tools to yourself, hack off any extraneous parts that might need trimming. Your head, for instance.
"A joke," she says out loud. She should avoid such morbid thoughts.
Today she will pare her fingernails. Toenails, as well: they shouldn't be permitted to run rampant. She could give herself a manicure: there are lots of cosmetic supplies in this place, whole shelves of them. AnooYoo Luscious Polish. AnooYoo Plum Skin Plumper. AnooYoo Fountain of Yooth Total Immersion: Shed That Scaly Epidermis! But why bother to polish or plump or shed? But why not bother? Either choice is equally pointless.
Do it for Yoo, AnooYoo used to croon. The Noo Yoo. I could have a whole new me, thinks Toby. Yet another whole new me, fresh as a snake. How many would that add up to, by now?
She trudges up the stairs to the rooftop, hoists her binoculars, surveys her visible realm. There's motion in the weeds, over by the forest edge: could it be the pigs? If so, they're keeping a low profile. Vultures are still clustering around the dead boar. There'll be lots of nanobioforms at work on it: it must be getting ripe by now.
Here's something different. Closer to the building, a clump of sheep is grazing. Five of them: three Mo'Hairs -- a green one, a pink one, and a bright purple one -- and two other sheep that appear to be conventional. The long hair of the Mo'Hairs isn't in good shape -- there are clot-like snarls in it, and twigs and dry leaves. Onscreen, in advertisements, their hair had been shiny -- you'd see the sheep tossing its hair, then a beautiful girl tossing a mane of the same hair. More hair with Mo'Hair! But they're not faring so well without their salon treatments.
The sheep clump together, lift their heads. Toby sees why: crouching low in the weeds, two liobams are on the hunt. Maybe the sheep smell them, but the scent must be confusing -- part lion, part lamb.
The purple Mo'Hair is the most jittery. Don't look like prey, Toby thinks at it. Sure enough, it's the purple one the liobams go after. They cut it out from the group and chase it for a short distance. The pathetic beast is impeded by its coiffure -- it looks like a purple fright wig on legs -- and the liobams quickly pull it down. Finding the throat under all that hair padding takes them a while, and the Mo'Hair scrambles to its feet several times before the liobams finish it off. Then they settle down to eat. The other sheep have run awkwardly away in a muddle of bleating, but now they're grazing again.
She'd intended to do some gardening today, pick some greens: her stock of preserved and dried foods is waning like the moon. But she decides against it because of the liobams. Cats of all kinds will set ambushes: one frisks around in the open to distract your attention while another one slips quietly up behind.
