Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,335

the veracity of the story you’re telling. Write it as Pestle would. Go ahead.”

Prim had written out hundreds of pages of flowing confident script in the old alphabet, the new, and others besides, and understood perfectly well all that had just been explained to her. But to show this would have contradicted her story. So she dipped the quill into the ink and copied “Primula” out with a deliberation that must have been as frustrating to the lady as it was to Prim, making sure that the quill dumped stray puddles of ink here and there. At last she sat back so that her work could be inspected.

“Well,” said the lady, “the Academy has its work cut out for it.” The Autochthon took the page and examined Prim’s work. But her response was curiously delayed, in a way that gave Prim the feeling she had somehow made a poor choice.

“Primula is your name?”

“Prim for short, if you please. May I know your name?”

The Autochthon looked sharply at her, as if this were an exceedingly odd question. “My full name is Sooth of El.” She seemed bemused that anyone would not already know this. “In the kind of speech used by Sprung, it is unwieldy, and so you may call me Sooth.”

“Thank you,” said Prim, a little preoccupied now as she wondered what other kinds of speech the lady might have in mind.

“You are from some far northern Bit.”

“Shatterberg.”

Sooth gave a little shiver. “No wonder you go about wrapped in a blanket. The language you speak up there must be very queer and old. Primula is what we would refer to, in these parts, as the common daisy.”

“Yes, that is so. You call it ‘daisy’ here.”

“Is that a common flower, then, up on Shatterberg?”

“The growing season is short,” said Prim. “Only a few simple flowers have time to spring up and grow.”

Sooth was gazing at her fixedly. “The name has a . . . complicated history that goes back to very ancient times and that is particularly important to us. If your parents had studied the ancient myths, they might have known as much, and thought better of calling you Daisy. But to them, yes, it would just be the name of a local weed. They wouldn’t mean anything by bestowing it on a daughter. A daughter they never expected to leave Shatterberg and find herself among cultivated people.”

Prim could feel herself blushing. She well knew the legends of which the lady spoke. Daisy was the last member of the Pantheon of Egdod. According to the old myths, she had appeared suddenly on the very eve of the coming of El, and tried to warn the Pantheon of what was coming, and been cast out along with Egdod and the others.

“Well, Primula, I am calling you Prim when we are in polite company, and hoping that no one else knows it is a synonym for Daisy.”

“Polite company?”

“Others like me,” Sooth explained.

“I thought that I might simply be on my way,” said Prim.

“Why so hasty? The Academy of Pestle has been there since the dawn of this age.”

“I was told it is best not to stay in the city after dark,” said Prim, trying to cast her best worried-country-bumpkin look out the window, where the shadows were stretching across the street.

“Good advice for a girl on her own,” said Sooth. “As my guest, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I’m . . . your guest?”

“I believe that is what I just said, Prim.”

“Why would you bother? With one such as I?”

“It is a sensible question and I shall give you a plain answer,” said the lady. “I am cultivating you. Recruiting you. Even one as backward as you must have heard that El’s domain extends here”—she divided the tabletop with a downward slice of her hand—“And no farther. That way”—she gestured toward the waterfront, and by extension all the Shivers and Bits that lay beyond—“is the domain of giants, wild souls. Rumors there are, even, of a giant talking raven who flies about trying to deceive the ignorant Sprung who live in those parts into believing all sorts of claptrap that is an abomination to El. Autochthons we send across the First Shiver are as apt to fall into dark doings as they are to remain faithful. When I meet a young, unspoiled Sprung from those parts, of a decent family, already somewhat literate and wishing to become more so, I consider it my sacred duty to make her welcome in this city.