Knotweave had cleverly woven twisted bundles of grass into containers called baskets. The souls of the table went out to the Garden and filled several of them with apples. As Egdod had predicted, these were now of a size to fit in the palm of a hand, and mostly red. They carried the baskets into the Palace and upended them onto the table, which Knotweave had covered with a woven cloth the color of autumn leaves. Thingor had made a tool called “knife,” which he demonstrated the use of in cutting the apples into smaller pieces. They discovered hard pellets in the middle of each fruit, which Spring caressed with a fingertip for a moment before announcing that life was within them and that they were the beginnings of new trees of the same kind, and therefore should not be eaten. Then finally they began to experiment with introducing the pieces of the apples into their mouths, which until then they had used only for the shaping of words.

Thus did Egdod discover yet a new way in which the Land could talk to him. He had begun with seeing and hearing, then learned to feel the ground with his feet, and with his nose to smell the fragrance of the pine trees in the mountains. Now he tasted food for the first time since he had died. As always when he discovered, or rediscovered, a new sense, the astonishment of it lasted for some time. But when he had recovered his ability to think about these matters, he began to wonder where the pieces of the apple, having been swallowed, had gone. They were in him now. New forms must come into existence within his body to digest the apple and expel the parts of it that were of no use to him. Or perhaps those forms had been latent within him all along, and were only now being roused to wakefulness.

Like things must have been going on in the bodies of all the souls in Town who had consumed honey.

He told the others to pick the remainder of the apples and bring them in baskets after him. Then he took wing and flew down the Street toward Town. As he drew near, a new fragrance came into his nostrils. It was not one that he loved, but neither could he identify its source. He looped around the Park and saw many souls gathered about the tower in its center, trying to find a way in. Their purpose was clear: they had heard from the killers of the bees about the desirability of honey and craved it now. The bees, sensing that they were under attack, had issued from the small portals in the tower’s sides and were stinging souls and being squashed.