One day Egdod was sitting next to a flower bed examining a pair of glass and metal wings so small that they barely stretched over the width of a fingertip when he sensed the approach of another soul, and looked up to see Longregard gazing at him. “Come down into the Forest,” she said, “things are stirring in it to which you would do well to pay heed.”

Egdod was aware that Longregard had lately shifted her attention from goings-on in Town to the Forest that sloped away from the Palace on its opposite side. He did not know what about it had drawn her eye. The snow was melting, as it had done every year since it had first dissolved into freshets and rills and creeks to make the first river. Plants were sprouting from the bare ground between the trees; many of these had, over the years, spread down the hill from the Garden, so they were of more various kinds here than anywhere else in the Land. As such the place would naturally be of interest to Longregard, the steady and patient observer. But many things were of interest to her that she did not bring to Egdod’s attention. She was a solitary soul who did not lightly interrupt others. So Egdod now rose and walked with Longregard out the back gate of the Garden. They entered into the budding trees and walked among the sprouting green things toward a place that Egdod knew well, since it was uppermost of all, where water erupted from the ground; it was the headwater of the first stream that Egdod, many years ago, had discovered at the melting of the first snow. By ranging far afield and following all of the river’s tributaries to their sources, he could find others of its kind, high up in mountains. Some were at greater elevation or produced a larger flow. But in Egdod’s mind this place, which he called the spring, was nonetheless the place where the river began. It was in the trickle of its water that he had first heard his name pronounced, and known what to call himself.

Very early—perhaps even before Egdod had become aware of Ward—a soul had taken up residence in the spring. As he now approached it with Longregard, he sensed that many of the trees that had grown up around the spring had also become the homes of souls. The presence of one attracted more. The water in the ground made the trees grow strongly; they were taller and more elaborately developed here than anywhere else in the Land. The word “grove” came to him and he sensed that in its oldness, the size of its trees, and the number of souls present here, it was different from every other place. In its center was the dark wet fold in the earth from which the spring emerged.