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loved very much, gradually I actually started to like the hissing. It was exciting to try out new sibilations and, when I succeeded, thrilling to see the eagles circling high in the sky and coming down to me, the owls in the middle of the day sticking their heads out of the tree hollows, and the mother wolves stopping on the spot and stretching out their legs, so as to be milked more easily.
    It was only insects that didn’t understand the Snakish words, since their brains were too small for that sort of wisdom, no bigger than a speck of dust. So Snakish words were no use against mosquitoes or horseflies, or to treat beestings. Crab lice couldn’t grasp the ancient tongue at all; they had their own disgusting whine. Even today I can still hear it when I go to the well for water, for although the Snakish words have now inexorably died away, the whining remains.
    But then, young and eager to learn, I didn’t pay any attention to insects and I simply swatted them when they attacked me. Crab lice didn’t seem to belong to the forest; they were like flying garbage. What entranced me were the changes I noticed in the forest thanks to the Snakish words. Whereas I had once simply scampered around in it, now I could talk to the forest. The fun seemed endless.
    Uncle Vootele was pleased with me; he was assured that I had a knack for Snakish, and when our meat ran out, he let me call a new goat to us. I hissed, the goat ran docilely toward me, and Uncle Vootele killed it, while Mother looked on, gratified. I was then nine years old.
    The best part of my studies, of course, was that I got to know Ints.
    The day I met Ints I was alone. Uncle Vootele had given me a few new hisses to practice and learn by heart and I was resting by the little well, hissing diligently, so that my tongue got tied. Suddenly I heard someone else hissing—loudly and in terror.
    It was a young adder being attacked by a hedgehog. I hissed my most forbidding injunction at the hedgehog, and it seemed to come out very well. The word I had hissed would make any animal freeze on the spot, but the hedgehog took no notice ofmy utterance. Then I understood that that same hiss had been used by the little adder, and that it was extremely silly of me to try to use Snakish words to help a snake. No matter what skill a human could manage with Snakish words, against a real snake it came to nothing. It was snakes who taught us the art, not the other way around.
    The little snake was expecting another kind of help from me. You see hedgehogs are the stupidest of all animals, and in the millions of years that their species has been running around, they have never learned Snakish. Therefore both my own and the young adder’s hisses were falling on deaf ears. Paying no heed to the hissing, the hedgehog had attacked the snake, and probably would have finished him off if I hadn’t given it a good kick into the bushes.
    “Thank you,” panted the young snake. “Those hedgehogs are endless trouble; they’re as stupid as pinecones and tussocks. You can hiss yourself to death and it does no good.”
    My Snakish was by no means good yet, but with clumsy hisses I managed to ask the young adder why he hadn’t stung the hedgehog.
    “That does no good either. As I said, they’re like pinecones and tussocks, completely dumb. Our poison has no effect on them; they just keep on doing their tricks. Once again, many thanks! By the way, your Snakish is pretty good. I haven’t met a human for ages who knows it so well. My father tells me that in the old days he had a lot of talks with humans, but now people don’t know any more than how to kill a goat with Snakish words.”
    I was slightly ashamed, because I had just recently used Snakish words for that very purpose, but I didn’t tell that to the littleadder. I explained to him as best I could that I was being taught by Uncle Vootele, and I told him my own name.
    “I’ve seen that Vootele,” said the adder. “My father knows him