“From the land of the living I bring knowledge that you would do well to fold into your plan,” she announced. “Too I bring a dreadful power that not even El can be said to possess.”

“Speak then of your knowledge and your power,” Dodge invited her. “For my defeat at the hand of El has stripped me of pride and opened my ears to counsel.”

“Your plan of going into the Land through the back door is well conceived,” Sophia said, “but it will fail in the same way as your attempts to approach from other quarters. The eyes that watch the sky and the buzzing mind that searches for any trace of your return do not work as ours do. Blind and stupid in some respects, they possess an uncanny power of perception and recognition that I fear will find you out the moment you appear anywhere in the Land, even if that be in the depths below the Fastness where you suppose El did not think to post watchers.”

“It is for this reason that I mean to disguise my form,” Dodge said.

Sophia shook her head. “The sentinels of El do not look for form; they cannot even perceive it. They can see your identity very well, however, and know you by the thread of consciousness that was spun beginning from the first moment many years ago when you began to collect yourself out of chaos.”

Dodge considered it. “Your knowledge is hard news if truth be in it. I shall consider what you have said. But at first blush it suggests that my stay here in the Firmament will be a long one, possibly eternal. If that is so, we should give up all hope of returning to the Land and instead devote ourselves to the building of a new Land here, one forged of black minerals and lit by fire. Perhaps one day it will grow to rival or even surpass the beauty of the Land we first built and were thrown out of.”

“Before you commit yourself to exile, Dodge, there is another thing I would tell you of,” said Sophia. But her face was downcast and her tone did not bode well.

“You spoke before of possessing some power exceeding even that of El,” Dodge said.

“I have the power,” Sophia said, “to snip that thread of consciousness that makes you you.”

Long was the silence of Dodge. “You have the power of life and death,” he said at last. “No wonder El feared you.”

“All of the souls who dwell in the Land can have their threads snipped at any time, and to me has been given the power of doing it.”

“Why do you not kill El then?”