Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,287

climb inland away from the stream, adding miles to the trek.

Roper—the member of the crew who had saved Adam, earlier, by calling out his name—became especially despondent. It had always been in his nature to take a gloomy view of things and to require encouragement from his fellows and chastisement from the boss. “It cannot possibly be so far to Eltown,” he moaned. “Surely we have got lost and are going down some other river now, taking us to strange places where people, if there are any, speak in gibberish.”

“That makes no sense,” Adam pointed out. “There is but one river; we have kept it to our left the whole time and never been out of the hearing of it.”

“Do not be so sure,” said Bluff.

“Water runs downhill,” insisted Adam. “We may have strayed now and then from the bank, but we cannot have crossed over into some other streambed.”

“That may be true where you come from,” growled Feller, “but you forget that Eltown was founded by cursed souls who came here to escape El’s wrath. Honey saw El’s light and adored it, building her white tower above, but the others slunk into this dark vale to be out of El’s sight, and made their habitation in places they knew to be infested with wild souls who would not even obey Egdod, to say nothing of El. This river may be one such, for all we know. I have always sensed something uncanny about it. It hates us for what we have done to the forests along its banks and it would not surprise me if it had switched its course when we were not looking, so as to lead us into despair and danger.”

“That is a mad notion,” Adam muttered.

“Still it is easier going down than up, and so down it is,” Feller answered. “To wherever this cursed river would have us end.”

More such cheerful predictions followed from Roper, until Edger began to mock him. In the blessed silence that followed they soon heard rapids, and hastened toward the sound to the place where the West Fork rushed into the more placid Middle Fork. “Finally we are rid of that cursed river,” Feller said, though the fact that it had taken them here seemed to prove it was not cursed at all.

Downstream of that place the water roamed to and fro over a floodplain and the going was somewhat easier, though still impeded by brush. The range of mountains that hemmed in the valley to the west made for an early sunset, and they walked in shadow for some while even though the land across the river was still sunlit. The white tower of Elkirk came into view briefly, then was hidden again for a long while. But they had all seen it and there was no further talk of wicked ancient souls haunting the land.

Or so Adam assumed until they came around a bend and looked far downriver to the place where the East Fork flowed in. Just beyond there was the beginning of Eltown, whose towers of smoke caught the red light of the nearly set sun. And just before it, plainly in view, was the hill that stood above the junction of the rivers. Its denuded, stump-stubbled lower reaches were in shadow, but its crown was still lit, as if by a dying fire, and the great tree’s scarred trunk rose up above that, its winter-bare branches raised up into the sky as if grasping at the last traces of the day’s light.

“You have mocked me for the last time, old one,” said Feller.

It took Adam some few moments to understand that he was addressing the tree.

“If my boat is no more, why then so be it. We shall seek what is nearer to hand. Tonight our iron bars we will reforge into axe heads ready to be made keen by Edger, and tomorrow we will come for you.”

46

The plan of Feller was much slower in coming to pass than he had first imagined. His crew were too exhausted to do anything at all the next day, and the day after that they awoke thinking of the complications that would be entailed, not just in cutting down the big tree, but in reducing its carcass to pieces small enough to be got down to the river. Adam had little interest in the plan and correspondingly little knowledge of its particulars, but when he crossed the river a few days later, everyone in Eltown seemed to know