Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,217

Who Comes, or Daisy, or death. They should then bring that information with them to the Feast, to which they would all be brought in three days’ time; and, finally, they should see to it that the Daisy growing in the forecourt was well watered.

Having seen to all of that, he flew back through the storm to the Palace. There, all was just as he had left it, save that preparations were advancing. More strange wild souls had arrived from remote parts of the Land. Some lurked in the Forest as beasts, some hovered above the Pinnacle as whirlwinds, others were indistinguishable from mounds of rocks or hummocks of earth. Most were ill equipped to assist the ones who were making ready the Feast and so merely looked on.

Thingor had conceived a way of building tables from the wood of trees, and Knotweave a way of making chairs by plaiting strips taken from certain vines. They had imparted these skills to other souls who had for some weeks applied themselves to making many of both. As these were completed they were moved into place for the Feast, filling the great hall of the Palace and adjoining parts of the Garden. As quickly as these could be set in place, they were filled, by other willing souls, with the produce of the Land: to begin with a layer of bright red leaves to clothe the bare wood of the tabletops, then woven baskets filled with apples as well as various other kinds of fruit that had lately begun to thrive in other regions. In cool cavities that Pluto had hollowed out beneath the Palace, infusions of aromatic herbs were stored in pots, as well as juice expressed from berries.

On the day before the Feast, winged souls of the Pantheon began flying north to the Fastness, where they collected the ones who dwelled and worked there but lacked the power of flight. Those arrived a few at a time, carrying small clever things they had made in the forges and ateliers of the Fastness to decorate the tables and delight the guests. They, and others who had just arrived, lent hands to the laying of the tables so that the Feast could begin all the sooner the next morning.

These final preparations were in clear view of Daisy. She had been carefully dug up from the forecourt where she had sprouted and transferred into a clay pot fashioned by Knotweave. Pestle had brought her to the Palace, hugging the pot to her chest with one arm and supporting Daisy’s frail stem with her other as Ward had flown them through the storm. From a place at Egdod’s high table inside the Palace she watched the others working through the night. And meanwhile the other souls watched Daisy, in pride and fascination. For Daisy refined her form and her being out of chaos with greater speed than any soul before known in the Land. Below, where her stem forked into roots, she was developing legs, and it was clear that very soon she would uproot herself from the soil where she had sprouted and begin to ambulate. Above, she patterned her form after that favored by most of the Pantheon, with the usual number and arrangement of limbs, and a stature that was well suited for conversation with the rest. But from some of the wild souls she adopted the ways of the Land. The long green leaves that had sprouted from her stalk became elongated wings. The petals that had surrounded her face gave up their sameness and adopted different forms, framing her visage, and she began to develop the organs of vision, hearing, and speech shared by nearly all of the other souls. When a thing of beauty came into her view, or when Paneuphonium, perched up on the wall, played a lively tune, she turned her face toward it.

As was commonly the case, the power of speech was longer in coming to Daisy than the ability to hear what others said, but then it came on swiftly. For as soon as she could move she made it her practice to turn her attention toward Speaksall and to listen to his voice, which had ever been the most supple and expressive.

Yet Daisy was not the newest soul to attend the Feast. For in the dark hours before the dawn of the day it was to take place, a light came over the horizon, not in the east where the sun would later