"Faraday," DareWing said, his voice now nearly a death whisper, "of all of us here, you have been the only one who has been thoroughly taught in the ways of Artor the Ploughman. I only fought against it, and Goldman ..."

"Was but a boy of twelve when Azhure ran Artor into his grave," Goldman said. "Faraday, what can you tell us?"

Faraday sat in silence for a while, remembering her childhood lessons in the Way of the Plough, and her allegiance to, and love for, Artor the Ploughman. The months, months that, in all, amounted to years, she'd spent studying the Book of Field and Furrow. How blind I was, she thought.

But the faith of the Plough was so comforting. Why?

"We loathed and feared the landscape," she eventually said, "and Artor gave us a face and a name for that fear. Untamed landscape, mountain, forest and marsh, was the haunt of evil creatures — the Forbidden — who were undoubtedly Planning to swarm over all that was good and beautiful ... all o ver us."

DareWing's mouth curled in a bitter smile, and he turned his head aside.

"Having defined our fear — the wild landscape and all that lived within it — we felt comforted, and so we took to the forests with our axes, and to the mountains with our armies, and to the marshes with our engineers, and we pushed back the wild landscape as far as we could. We tamed the earth and made it our slave."

"We enslaved it with the plough," Gwendylyr said.

"Yes," Faraday said, "with the plough, and the neat square fields, and the straight and tightly-controlled furrow."

"'Furrow wide, furrow deep'," Goldman said. "I remember my father saying that constantly."

"Must we make amends?" Gwendylyr asked.

Faraday looked to Dare Wing. "Must we?"

"No," he eventually said. "Not as such. The earth does not require 'amends'."

"It merely requires us to let go our hatred and our fear," Goldman said.

"But I don't hate and fear the landscape!" Leagh said.

"There is still something deep within each of us," Faraday said, "that corrupts us. It is the legacy of a thousand generations of unthinking worship of Artor. We must let that corruption go."

"How?" Leagh said. She looked about at the other witches in the circle, then down at DareWing. He looked worse than she'd ever seen him, and Leagh realised that they must correct whatever was wrong very shortly.

Faraday smiled. "I think I know," she said, and in the ploughed field DragonStar raised his head and smiled also.

"We still fear some aspect of the landscape," Faraday said. "All of us. We must confront the fear, and let it go."

"But —" Gwendylyr began.

"We all fear some aspect of the landscape," Faraday said again, and looked at Gwendylyr steadily.

"All of us."

"I know what I fear," DareWing said, but Faraday would not let him finish, either.

She stopped him with a gentle hand, leaving her chair to kneel beside him. "DareWing, I think I know what you fear, and I think I know how strong that fear is."

Faraday grinned, but sadly. "No wonder you have ground fever." Then she raised her head and looked at the other three, keeping her hand on DareWing's shoulder. "We must confront our fears first, and then, stronger, be ready to support Dare Wing. Goldman?"

"What? Oh ... I, ah ..." Goldman lapsed into silence, his eyes unfocused, then his mouth thinned and his hands clenched on his knees.

"I loathe dead ends," he said, and Faraday nodded. Goldman was ever the aggressive, determinedly successful businessman.

"There is nothing worse," Goldman said, and his eyes were now flinty and hard, "than walking through the countryside and finding yourself in some dead end gully, and having to retrace your steps to find another way forward. It's so time wasting*. "

"Non-productive," Leagh said, understanding a little more the process they must all endure.

"Yes!" Goldman said, and he stood and paced about the dome. "Dead ends are so frustrating! So pointless!"

Faraday watched him carefully. It seemed almost as if hate consumed Goldman, and she realised that somewhere here was a deeper lesson they must all learn.

"So pointless," Goldman said again, and then he vanished.

Goldman found himself standing before the infuriatingly calm — and very high and very steep —

rock wall of the canyon, and he raged.

He had walked hours to get to this point, put in effort and time that could have been spentmore profitably elsewhere.

He had walked and walked down this canyon, thinking it would lead him to a better life, moremoney, and even, perhaps, a profounder understanding of life itself, and all it had presented himwith was a dead end, a rock wall, a point past which Goldman could not walk.

He raged. Was it possible to demolish the dead end? Perhaps a force of several hundred menarmed with pickaxes and shovels could clear it in a week or so. Perhaps a smaller force of menarmed with fire powder could destroy it in less time. Something had to be done to force this rockwall to give way to Goldman's needs and ambitions and ...

... and Goldman quailed at the force of his rage. Why did he think such things? Why was heso angry?

He was railing at a stand of rock, for the Field's sake!

Goldman stared at the rock wall and wondered how best to combat his inner frustration andanger.

Youhave walked to this rock wall, he thought, and thus there must needs be a purpose to thisdead end. What is it?

He sat down cross-legged on the ground and stared at the rock.

"What do you have to teach me?" he asked, and instantly all his frustration and hate fellaway and he felt a great joy fill him.

The rock absorbed the joy ... and then it leaned forward and began to speak to Goldman in avery earnest manner.

Goldman dusted off his tunic, and smiled at the four faces staring at him.

"Your turn," he said to Gwendylyr.

She was in the garden, almost incandescent with fury.

How long had she tended that hedge? How many hours had she pruned and clipped? Howmany days had she spent carefully digging in the soil about its roots to add light and airand fertiliser?

And the hedge was so necessary! Its (once) neatly-clipped length had tidily divided field fromgarden (and what a neat garden, with its carefully measured garden beds and precise rows ofstakes), providing the line that everyone needed between order and disorder.

But now disorder had invaded the garden.