Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,277

would pass from view around the last bend of the river and they would pull up on the floodplain where the great fires burned and the logs they had brought down the river would be counted and sorted and stacked into piles. The logs were marked with glyphs hacked into their bark to say who owned which. Adam learned to make his own mark and to recognize it. For the most part, his pile grew. Sometimes, though, when he went to inspect it he would find that logs had been removed while he had been absent. He mentioned this perplexing phenomenon to Feller, who was ready with an explanation: from time to time it was necessary to “dock” the log piles of crew members, as for example when they did not work hard enough.

It all made sense, and yet Adam felt troubled by it somehow. He felt himself diminished. Feller seemed to understand this. He went on to admit that being docked was by no means an agreeable thing, and to say that he regretted having to do it. But such was the way of things now. Eltown had grown crowded and the distance to the edge of the forest kept growing. Some had abandoned the town altogether and lived now in the woods like wild beasts; Thunk, for example, was the leader of a whole band of such wretches, stealing logs from the honest woodcutters of Eltown and assaulting them in the wild places. A conflict was shaping up in which all the people of Eltown must choose whether to stay here and improve the place or disperse into the woods. Feller’s boat was the answer. It was already being copied by some who envied his success.

After that conversation Adam went back home across the river. Eve looked upon him with concern, and said that he seemed tired and worn down. Adam tried to put her at ease by explaining that his log pile continued to grow, and that when it reached a certain size he would lash them together into a raft and bring it across the river to Camp so that they could enlarge their cabin.

Walksfar visited Adam, Eve, and Mab in their cabin frequently. As well they became acquainted with other old souls of Camp, but many of them were forgettish. The growth of Eve’s belly could not be concealed. Walksfar said that it reminded him strongly of what happened when four-legged beasts spawned more of their kind. After that, Adam and Eve’s secrets all came out in a rush, as when an ice dam melts on a river and all that has been pent up is released in one moment. They let Walksfar know that they were in fact the children of Spring and of Egdod, spawned in a different manner from every other soul in the Land; that they were born and bred in the Garden, expelled therefrom by El himself; and that the swelling of Eve’s belly was, just as Walksfar had guessed, the spawning of more of their kind.

When Walksfar inquired as to why El had expelled them, they related the story of the worm that had somehow found its way into the Garden and spoken to them of the First Age and given them names that were relics of an even more ancient past, and finally been slain by the lightning sword of Defender of El.

Walksfar was astonished by each of these revelations, most of all the last. And yet he admitted that he had known from their first day in Camp that Adam and Eve and their guardian sprite must be of some altogether different order of creation from any of the other souls that made their way down from the kirk; that they were so peculiar, in fact, that only a tale as strange as the one they had just told him could possibly serve to explain them.

Thus winter passed into the first stirrings of spring. One night Eve went into a great passion that consumed her mind and body to such a degree that Adam feared she might be torn asunder; her aura burned and burgeoned about her like the great fires where steel was made in the forge, and her form below her breasts and above her knees reverted to chaos that writhed about the limbs of those who sought to comfort her. At the moment when they feared she would dissolve altogether, they heard the small cry of a voice not before known in the Land,