The mighty Hoe had been lying across THE Farmer's knees when he wrote it, and so she had felt every word. She had felt his finger touch the pale scroll and the words come out of him one by one, not invented but simply set down, plain records of what he had already been doing every day, and she had understood each of them the moment it was written. A farmer who owed existence nothing. An existence that owed him nothing back. A gift that came back larger than it had gone.
Then she had felt it happen. The giving had gone out of him in a long warm wave, into the soil and the rivers and the Fallow and every distant place he had ever touched, and she had felt existence take it in, and turn it over, and give it back, and what it gave back was more. He gave that too. It came back greater still, and every time it went around, it passed through her on its way, because she was lying across his knees and she was part of him.
