Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,374

looked to have been crafted in different historical epochs by artisans with clashing views as to what the point was.

The preparations involved in grappling this thing to Weaver just after breakfast and checking out its various systems had led to a lot of foreboding and dreadful glances between Mard and Lyne. Even Prim, who enjoyed Weaver’s singing, set forth on the day’s journey with a certain amount of trepidation as to the scale and duration of the planned entertainments. But when Weaver began to play some little marching ditties on the Road Organ, Prim thought that they blended so naturally into the mood of the place that it wasn’t at all like enduring a performance.

They were hiking very slightly uphill, and as they gained altitude, dark evergreens supplanted leafy sorts of trees. The latter were now in the full brilliant color of the fall, just at the point when enough leaves were on the ground to paint it with reds, purples, yellows, and oranges that had not yet faded. Yet enough were still clinging to the trees that the branches did not look bare. Walking all day through such gaudy color would have inured them to it. But as they went on, dark stands of evergreens were more and more frequently interspersed with the deciduous trees, so that when they would top a ridge or traverse round the flank of a hill and suddenly come in view of a deciduous stand, they had it in them to be surprised and delighted all over again by its glory. The leaves called to Prim in a way she did not understand, and she kept picking individual ones off the ground and gazing at length into the subtle and tiny variegations in their color and the repeating patterns in their veins, shot like branched lightning through the flesh of a cloud. Weaver’s improvisations on the Road Organ were in harmony with this hypnotic condition of mind. To the point where Prim was somewhat discomposed—almost offended—when Weaver began to talk.

“Now, if you were one of the sorts of souls to whom this was originally sung, you’d already know the first part. Namely that the vast scope of work entailed in converting the Fastness into an ironbound prison for Egdod reverberated all through the Land, as Beedles went here and there to mine in places where Pluto had deemed it good to situate ore, and Autochthons ventured into remote and wild places to recruit hill-giants and make them into blacksmiths, or to round up and enslave great beasts of burden. It didn’t last for long—perhaps three falls—but it touched all parts of the Land. And so at last Spring came to know of it. She did not know at first the nature of the undertaking, but she could see well enough that it was affecting her creations. Trees that she had planted were being toppled to build ore wagons, and beasts she had created with the intention that they should roam free upon the Land were being yoked together under the whips of Beedle teamsters. Starting from a very remote place in the Asking—where she had been trying to create plants and animals more capable of dwelling in that harsh place—she began to make her way in toward the center, following wheel ruts of ore caravans, footprints of migrating giants, carpets of tree stumps.

“By the time she at last came under the Evertempest, El had finished his work and pitched the key off the Precipice. He and his angels and the Autochthons were already long gone. Beedles were marching away in long columns, headed back to the places whence they had been mustered. Hill-giants, released from bondage, were stomping about aimlessly. Beasts of burden, no longer needed for anything, had simply been turned loose in harsh country where forage was scarce. Spring by then had come to understand that Egdod had returned to the Land, not just once but many times, and had roamed up and down it in diverse guises looking for her to no avail.”

The ground shook beneath their feet, and not just with the footfalls of Edda, to which they had grown accustomed. Because of the nature of Weaver’s narration, more than a few of them were predisposed to interpret it as the approach of something really bad. Mab flinched and fluttered. But then a long chortling rumble reached their ears and they understood that they were now close enough to the Evertempest that they could hear its thunder as well as