Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,271

when it had strode across the plain to rescue them from the wolves.

“Others here look more like trees or flowers,” Walksfar added, “and some go on four legs, though they prefer living in wilder places. But I, and others who spawned at about the same time, looked to Ward or others of the Pantheon for our shapes.”

“What stories you must have of that age!” Eve exclaimed.

“Only some of us. Many are forgettish. That woman there, carrying the bucket—she’s older than I but remembers less.”

“If you are not forgettish, would you tell us the story of First Town and how Camp and Eltown came to be?” Eve asked.

Walksfar by now was well advanced in some complex undertaking of heating water and throwing dried leaves into it, evidently with an eye toward later decanting it into three smaller containers. “Souls came into being as they do. None of this existed.”

“Camp?”

He shook his head. “The Land. The entire Land. In those days it was nothing more than a street lined with trees. The number of souls grew and Egdod came down from time to time and caused houses to come into being, where we lived.”

“Did you know Egdod well?”

Walksfar shook his head. “By the time of my spawning, he had raised walls about his abode, and, as is implied by his name, Ward was there to prevent the new souls of Town from wandering about the place. Egdod spent much time farther afield, in places we knew not of. We would see his great wings flapping away into the distance until he disappeared over the horizon. From this I conceived the idea that other places might exist, as worth seeing as First Town, and so one day I walked away, and kept walking. This was where I left off roaming. It suited me better than Town, which had become crowded.”

“Did the wolves come for you?” Adam asked, at the same time as Eve was saying, “What did you eat?”

“This was before eating, and before wolves,” Walksfar said. “All that came later. I came back to Town after a long sojourn to find everyone putting things into their mouths and shitting from the other end, which explained the smell I had noticed on the east wind several days out. I became an eater and a shitter myself. Later Spring made various creatures, including ones that were predisposed to eat us.”

“Did you know Spring?” Eve asked.

Walksfar shook his head. “No one did—save by her works. Spring never visited Town. At the time of the Fall, rumor had it that she was working on creating two-legged creatures, such as us. After that, of course, nothing further was heard of the Pantheon.”

There was so much curious in what he had just said that Adam and Eve were unable to choose from among a diversity of questions. Walksfar poured hot brown stuff from the larger container into the small ones and indicated that they might partake if they wished. He treated his own serving with caution, as if it might bite him. The fire had put much heat into it.

“The Fall?” Adam asked.

“Of the Old Gods,” Walksfar said, and when this did not seem to register, added, “of Egdod and his Pantheon, when El came in glory with his host and threw them into the sky.” He eyed them for a few moments and risked a sip. “You two really are from some remote place if you have not heard some telling of that story.”

Eve’s face reddened. “We are not so ignorant as all that. We know that El resides with his host in the Palace, high in the clouds above the humming soul hive. We know that Egdod and Spring and others of the Pantheon were there first, and were cast out by El, and seek to return.”

“Do they, now?” Walksfar exclaimed. “How strange that you can speak with confidence of a thing as momentous as that would be, were it true, and yet of so many other matters you know nothing.”

This brought them to an impasse for a time, and they took sips of the hot stuff.

“The Fall,” Walksfar said finally, “is a matter of common knowledge, and I’ll not withhold what is easily learned. First Town changed into a kind of hive, which grew to rival Egdod’s Palace. A bright thunderbolt he flung, and brought it down. The survivors dispersed all over the Land, dividing up by their kind and the manner of their speech. I led a number of them hither, for it was