Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,216

of the Front Yard toward the Fastness. This was not a neat rectangle like Town. It grew narrower as it bored in under the cover of the mountain arch and curved gently to the left, so that with each step more of the Fastness came into view. In the early going it was bare rocky ground covered with snow, but as Egdod passed beneath the shelter of the Overhang, the air warmed and the ground softened into proper soil. And in that soil, plants of various kinds grew, including great old trees as he drew closer to the Front Porch.

The part of the Front Yard closest to the Porch lay beneath a sea of brilliant red, silent and damp now. But in that silence Egdod’s keen ears discerned shiftings from below. With a sweep of his wing, he made a gust of wind that drove all but a few of the leaves and laid the ground bare.

Revealed was a flower that had sprouted beneath the shelter of the leaves and been growing there. It swayed and even seemed to quail under Egdod’s wing blast. Its slender stem did not snap but sprang back, remaining bent slightly away as if to gaze upward at the face of Egdod. No face did it have as such, but a disk in its center, round like the sun, enwreathed by petals that were arrayed in a curiously symmetrical and regular way. Below that, sprouting from each side of its thin stem was a long green leaf that in some way recalled the form of an arm. Egdod recognized the flower and yet knew with certainty that it was not of this Land; neither he nor Spring nor any of the other members of the Pantheon had conceived these shapes and so arranged them. Somehow he knew that it was called Daisy and that it was a thing of the other world where he and all of the other souls had dwelled before they had died. There he had seen her, and there she had meant something to him. With as great certainty he knew that Daisy was imbued with a soul of her own; the fringes of her petals and the middle of her round face were not of any one fixed color but responded to his inspection in the ever-shifting manner of the modulated chaos that was aura. “A soul is in you,” Egdod said, “and despite the untimely manner of your coming now in the season of fall, I see no cause why you should be counted as unworthy to dwell in my Front Yard; I shall let you alone and see in due course whether you make yourself into something.”

He then raised a wall of adamant out of the ground to enclose this patch of the Front Yard in a sort of forecourt, and put a gate upon it, and locked the gate against any stick swingers who might venture this far. When he was satisfied that Daisy was safe, he climbed the steps to his Front Porch and entered his home. As he did, the stem of the new flower swayed toward him as if drawn, and its face turned as if to watch him go.

The Fastness had once been as spare and empty as the Palace, but because it had become the workshop of Thingor and Knotweave and the talented souls who learned from them, it had filled with clever and beautiful objects that they had made. Other parts of it had become the haunt of Greyhame and his apprentice Pestle. They had covered many pages with writing and stored them on shelves in a room devoted to such things. Pluto had learned the arts of making ink and paper from them and drawn renderings of various parts of the Land and stored them in yet another room. These improvements and many more had gradually transformed the Fastness into an abode that in many ways was more enjoyable for Egdod than the Palace. All it lacked was Spring and her grove and her garden. Part of him wished to remain and abide here. But he had a Feast to organize, and just beyond the Front Yard of this very dwelling was a great and troubling mystery. So he went into the room where the disciples of Greyhame and Pestle scratched out words on paper, and told them to go through all of their documents and make him aware of any mention they might find of angels, or the One