Adam was less glum than Eve, but he had to admit that there was something to her words. “I had been wondering,” he admitted, “why El did not send out more angels to cut me, as Messenger of El cut our boys. Now I see it. He can make as many of these new souls as he chooses. We, and our offspring, simply do not matter; we may continue to exist in the nooks and crannies of the Land, as Cairn and other old souls do here in Camp, but it is the Autochthons who are meant to prosper and to rule.”

It had been a long while since Adam and Eve had copulated, but they did so on the day that the Autochthons came down from Elkirk, and after that made a habit of it.

The Autochthons made camp in the cleared land surrounding Eltown. This had become overgrown with low scrubby vegetation considered inedible and useless. But the mounts of the Autochthons could seemingly subsist on any kind of vegetation that they could get into their mouths, and so it suited them. When their beasts had cleared an area, the Autochthons, rather than allowing the weeds to grow back, would plant it thickly with seeds that they had brought with them in sacks. Concerning these there was much curiosity among the people of Eltown. Adam did not need to wait for them to sprout and grow to know that it would be some manner of new plant invented by El to sustain his people and that it would grow well and feed them more abundantly than the crops traditionally raised, and the wild plants gathered, by the folk of Eltown.

The Autochthons kept coming, a few at a time. According to Mab, who flew far and wide across the sea of grass, they issued from the base of the Hive every day in scores, each score behind a Captain, and formed up in columns that headed off in several directions. Some rode straight for Elkirk, but others strayed off toward parts of the Land of which Mab knew nothing.

Before long, Eltown was surrounded on all sides, save the riverfront, by fields cleared and sown by the Autochthons. This gave fresh impetus to Feller’s project. For until then it had been the habit of the people of Eltown to assume that they could go on forever sprawling out into the treeless waste that they had made around them. But the enclosure of the town changed their thinking and made them of a mind to build more on what space was still to be had. The result was a demand for more logs. Feller renewed his planning and preparations, which had languished as his enterprise had grown more ambitious. His promise to build a new town on the site was of interest to those who now felt hemmed in by the Autochthons and their mounts and their farms.