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.