Alvin Journeyman

Chapter 18 -- Journeys

Two days later they were ready to light out. They made no secret about the carriage Armor-of-God hired in Wheelwright, ready to take them off the ferry as soon as they crossed the Hio. That would be enough to decoy the stupid ones. As for the clever ones, well, Mike Fink had his own plan, and even Margaret allowed as how it might well work.

Friends came to the roadhouse all that evening to bid goodbye. Alvin and Peggy and Arthur were well known to them all; Armor-of-God had a few friends here, from business traveling; and Verily had made some new friends, having been the spokesman for the winning side in a highly emotional trial. If Mike Fink had local friends, they weren't the sort to show up in Horace Guester's roadhouse; as Mike confided to Verily Cooper, his friends were most of them the very men Alvin's enemies had hired to kill him and take the plow once he got out on the road tomorrow.

When the last soul had left, Horace embraced his daughter and his new son-in-law and the adopted son he had helped to raise, shook hands with Verily, Armor, and Mike, and then went about as he always did, dousing the candles, putting the night log on the fire, checking to make sure all was secure. As he did, Measure helped the travelers, make their way, lightly burdened, quietly down the stairs and out the back, finding the path with only the faintest sliver of moon. Even at that, they walked at first toward the privy, so that anyone casually glancing wouldn't think a thing amiss, unless they noticed the satchel or bag each one carried. Meantime, Measure kept watch, in case someone else was thinking to snatch Alvin that night while he was relieving himself. He kept watch even though Peggy Larner—or was it Goody Smith now? --assured him that not a soul was watching the back of the house.

"All my teaching is in your hands now, Measure," Alvin whispered as he was about to step off the back porch into the night. "I leave you behind this time again, but you know that we set out on the real journey together as true companions, and always will be to the end."

Measure heard him, and wondered if Peggy maybe whispered to him something she had seen in his heartfire, that Measure worried lest Alvin forget how much Measure loved him and wanted to be on this journey by his side. But no, Alvin didn't need Peggy to tell him he had a brother who was more loyal than life and more sure than death. Alvin kissed his brother's cheek and was gone, the last to go.

They met up again in the woods behind the privy. Alvin went about among them, calming them with soft words, touching them, and each time he touched them they could hear it just a little clearer, a kind of soft humming, or was it the soughing of the wind, or the call of a far-off bird too faint to hear, or perhaps a distant coyote mumbling in its sleep, or the soft scurry of squirrel feet on a tree on the next rise? It was a kind of music, and finally it didn't matter what it was that produced the sound, they fell into the rhythm of it, all holding each other's hands, and at the head of the line, Alvin. They moved swift and sure, keeping step to the music, sliding easily among the trees, making few sounds, saying nothing, marveling at how they could have walked past these woods before and never guessed that such a clear and well-marked path was here, except when they looked back, there was no path, only the underbrush closed off again, for the path was made by Alvin's progress in the midst of the greensong, and behind his party the forest relaxed back into its ordinary shape.

They came to the river, where Po Doggly waited, watching over two boats. "Mind you," he whispered, "I'm not sheriff tonight. I'm only doing what Horace and I done so many times in the past, long before I had me a badge—helping folks as ought to be free get safe across the river." Po and Alvin rowed one of them and Mike and Verily the other, for though he was unaccustomed to such labor, no wooden oar would ever leave a blister on Verily's hands. Silently they moved out across the Hio. Only when they got to the middle did anyone speak. Peggy, controlling the tiller, whispered to Alvin, "Can we talk a little now?"

"Soft and low," said Alvin. "And no laughing."

How had he known she was about to laugh? "We passed a dozen of them as we walked through the woods, all of them asleep, waiting for first light. But there's none on the opposite shore, except the heartfire we're looking for."

Alvin nodded, and gave a thumbs up to the men in the other boat.

They skirted the shore on the Appalachee side for about a quarter mile before coming to the landing site they looked for. Once it had been a putting-in place for flatboats, before the Red fog on the Mizzipy and the new railroad lines slowed and then stopped most of the flatboat traffic. Now an elderly couple lived there mostly from fishing and an orchard that still produced, poorly, but enough for their needs.

Dr. Whitley Physicker was waiting in the front yard of that house with his carriage and four saddled horses; he had insisted on buying or lending them himself, and refused any thought of reimbursement. He also paid the old folks who lived there for the annoyance of having visitors arrive so late at night.

He had a man with him—Arthur Stuart recognized him at once and called him by name. John Binder smiled shyly and shook hands all around, as did Whitley Physicker. "I'm not much for rowing, at my age," Dr. Physicker explained. "So John, being as trustworthy a man as ever there was, agreed to come along, asking no questions. I suppose all the questions he didn't ask are answered now."

Binder smiled and chuckled. "Reckon so, all but one. I heard about how you was teaching folks about Makery away out there in Vigor Church, and I hoped you might teach some of it here. Now you're going."

Alvin reassured him. "My brother is holed up in the roadhouse. Nobody's to know he's there, but if you go to Horace Guester and tell him I sent you, he'll let you go up and talk to Measure. There's a hard tale he'll have to tell you—"

"I know about the curse."

"Well good," said Alvin. "Cause once that's done, he can teach you just what I was teaching in Vigor Church."

Po Doggly and John Binder pushed the boats off the shore before the others were even mounted on their horses or properly seated in the carriage; Whitley Physicker waved from Binder's boat. Alvin shook hands with the old couple, who had got up from their beds to see them off. Then he climbed up into the front seat of the carriage with Margaret; Verily and Arthur sat behind. Armor and Mike rode two of the horses; Verily's horse and the horse that Alvin and Arthur would ride together were tied to the back of the carriage.

As they were about to leave, Mike brought his horse—stamping and fuming, since Mike was a sturdy load and not much of a horseman—beside the carriage and said to Alvin, "Well this plan worked too well! I was looking forward to scaring some poor thug half to death before the night was through!"

Peggy leaned over from the other side of the front seat and said, "You'll get your wish about a mile up the road. There's two fellows there who saw Dr. Physicker's carriage come here this afternoon and wondered what he was doing with four horses tied behind. They're just keeping watch on the road, but even if they don't stop us, they'll give the alarm and then we'll be chased instead of getting away clean."

"Don't kill them, Mike," said Alvin.

"I won't unless they make me," said Mike. "Don't worry, I ain't loose with other folks' lives no more." He rode to Armor, gave him the reins, and said, "Here, bring this girl along with you. I do better on my feet for this kind of work." Then he dismounted and took off running.

Near as I can gather from Mike Fink's tale of the event—and you got to understand that a fellow who wants his story to be truthful has to allow for a lot of brag before deciding what's true in a tale of Mike Fink's heroic exploits—those two smarter-than-normal thugs was dozing while sitting with their backs to opposite sides of the same stump when all of a sudden they both felt their arms pretty near wrenched right out of their sockets and then they were dragged around, grabbed by the collars, and smacked together so hard their noses bled and they saw stars.

"You're lucky I took me a vow of nonviolence," said Mike Fink, "or you'd be suffering some pain right now."

Since they were already suffering something pretty excruciating, they didn't want to find out what this night-wandering fellow thought of as pain. Instead, they obeyed him and held very still as he tied their hands to a couple of lengths of rope, so that the one man's right hand was tied on one end of a rope that held the other man's left, with about two feet of rope between them; and the same with their other two hands. Then Fink made them kneel, picked up a huge log, and laid it down across the two lengths of rope that joined them. What he could lift alone they couldn't lift together. They just knelt there as if they were praying to the log, their hands too far apart even to dream of untying their bonds.

"Next time you want gold," said Fink, "you ought to get yourself a pick and shovel and dig for it, stead of lying in wait in the night for some innocent fellow to come by and get himself robbed and killed."

"We wasn't going to rob nobody," burbled one of the men.

"It's a sure thing you wasn't," said Fink, "cause any man ever wants to get at Alvin Smith has to go through me, and I make a better wall than window, I'll tell you that right now."

Then he jogged back to the road, waved to the others, and waited for them to come alongside so he could mount his horse. In a couple of minutes it was done, and they rode briskly south along a lacework of roads that would completely bypass Wheelwright—including the fancy carriage waiting all day empty by the river, until Horace Guester crossed over, got in the carriage, and used it to shop for groceries in the big-city market that was Wheelwright's pride and joy. That's when the ruffians knew they had been fooled. Oh, some of them lit out in search of Alvin's group, but they had a whole day's head start, or nearly so, and not a one of them found anything except a couple of men kneeling before a log with their butts in the air.

All the way to the coast, Calvin expected to be accosted by Napoleon's troops, the carriage blown to bits with grapeshot or set afire or some other grisly end. Why he expected Napoleon to be ungrateful he didn't know. Perhaps it was simply a feeling of general unease. Here he was, not yet twenty years old, and already he had moved through the salons of London and Paris, had spent hours alone discussing a thousand different things with the most powerful man in the world, had learned as many of the secrets of that powerful man as he was likely ever to tell, spoke French if not fluently then competently, and through it all had remained aloof, untouched, his life's dream unchanged. He was a Maker, far more so than Alvin, who remained at the rough frontier of a crude upstart country that couldn't properly call itself a nation; who had Alvin known, except other homespun types like himself? Yet Calvin felt vaguely afraid at the thought of going back to America. Something was trying to stop him. Something didn't want him to go.

"It is nerves," said Honor'. "You will face your brother. You know now that he is a provincial clown, but still he remains your nemesis, the stick against which you must measure yourself. Also you are traveling with me, and you are constantly aware of the need to make a good impression."

"And why would I need to impress you, Honor'?"

"Because I am going to write you into a story someday, my friend. Remember that the ultimate power is mine. You may decide what you will do in this life, up to the point. But I will decide what others think of you, and not just now but long after you're dead."

"If anyone still reads your novels," said Calvin.

"You don't understand, my dear bumpkin. Whether they read my novels or not, my judgment of your life will stand. These things take on a life of their own. No one remembers the original source, or cares either."

"So people will only remember what you say about me—and you they won't remember at all."

Honord chuckled. "Oh, I don't know about that, Calvin. I intend to be memorable. But then, do I care whether I'm remembered? I think not. I have lived without the affection of my own mother; why should I crave the affection of strangers not yet born?"

"It's not whether you're remembered," said Calvin. "It's whether you changed the world."

"And the first change I will make is: They must remember me!" Honor"s voice was so loud that the coachman slid open the panel and inquired whether they wanted something from him. "More speed," cried Honor', "and softer bumps. Oh, and when the horses relieve themselves: Less odor."

The coachman growled and closed the panel shut.

"Don't you intend to change the world?" asked Calvin.

"Change it? A paltry project, smacking of weak ambition and much self-contempt. Your brother wants to build a city. You want to tear it down before his eyes. I am the one with vision, Calvin. I intend to create a world. A world more fascinating, engrossing, spellbinding, intricate, beautiful, and real than this world."

"You're going to outdo God?"

"He spent far too much time on geology and botany. For him, Adam was an afterthought—oh, by the way, is man found upon the Earth? I shall not make that mistake. I will concentrate on people, and slip the science into the cracks."

"The difference is that your people will all be confined to tiny black marks on paper," said Calvin.

"My people will be more real than these shallow creatures God has made! I, too, will make them in my own image—only taller—and mine will have more palpable reality, more inner life, more connection to the living world around them than these mud-covered peasants or the calculating courtiers of the palace or the swaggering soldiers and bragging businessmen who keep Paris under their thumbs."

"Instead of worrying about the emperor stopping us, perhaps I should worry about lightning striking us," said Calvin.

It was meant as a joke, but Honor' did not smile. "Calvin, if God was going to strike you dead for anything, you'd already be dead by now. I don't pretend to know whether God exists, but I'll tell you this—the old man is doddering now! The old fellow talks rough but it's all a memory. He hasn't the stuff anymore! He can't stop us! Oh, maybe he can write us out of his will, but we'll make our own fortune and let the old boy stand back lest he be splashed when we hurtle by!"

"Do you ever have even a moment of self-doubt?"

"None," said Honor'. "I live in the constant certainty of failure, and the constant certainty of genius. It is a species of madness, but greatness is not possible without it. Your problem, Calvin, is that you never really question yourself about anything. However you feel, that's the right way to feel, and so you feel that way and everything else better get out of your way. Whereas I endeavor to change my feelings because my feelings are always wrong. For instance, when approaching a woman you lust after, the foolish man acts out his feelings and clutches at an inviting breast or makes some fell invitation that gets him slapped and keeps him from the best parties for the rest of the year. But the wise man looks the woman in the eye and serenades her about her astonishing beauty and her great wisdom and his own inadequacy to explain to her how much she deserves her place in the exact center of the universe. No woman can resist this, Calvin, or if she can, she's not worth having."

The carriage came to a stop.

Honor' flung open the door. "Smell the air!"

"Rotting fish," said Calvin.

"The coast! I wonder if I shall throw up, and if I do, whether the sea air will have affected the color and consistency of my vomitus."

Calvin ignored his deliberately crude banter as he reached up for their bags. He well know that Honor' was only crude when he didn't much respect his company; when with aristocrats, Honor' never uttered anything but bon mots and epigrams. For the young novelist to speak that way to Calvin was a sign, not so much of intimacy, but of disrespect.

When they found an appropriate ship bound for Canada, Calvin showed the captain the letter Napoleon had given him. Contrary to his worst fears, after seeing a production of a newly revised and prettied-up script of Hamlet in London, the letter did not instruct the captain to kill Calvin and Honor' at once—though there was no guarantee that the fellow didn't have orders to strangle them and pitch them into the sea when they were out of sight of land.

Why am I so afraid?

"So the Emperor's treasurer will reimburse me for all expenses out of the treasury when I come back?"

"That's the plan," said Honor'. "But here, my friend, I know how ungenerous these imperial officials can be. Take this."

He handed the captain a sheaf of franc notes. Calvin was astonished. "All these weeks you've pretended to be poor and up to your ears in debt."

"I am poor! I am in debt. If I didn't owe money, why would ever steel myself to write? No, I simply borrowed the price of my passage from my mother and my father—they never talk, so they'll never find out—and from two of my publishers, promising each of them a completely exclusive book about my travels in America."

"You borrowed to pay our passage, knowing all along that the Emperor would pay it?"

"A man has to have spending money, or he's not a man," said Honor'. "I have a wad of it, with which I have every intention of being generous with you, so I hope you won't condemn my methods."

"You're not terribly honest, are you?" said Calvin, half appalled, half admiring.

"You shock me, you hurt me, you offend me, I challenge you to a duel and then take sick with pneumonia so that I can't meet you, but I urge you to go ahead without me. Keep in mind that because I had that money, the captain will now invite us into his cabin for dinner every night of the voyage. And in answer to your question, I am perfectly honest when I am creating something, but otherwise words are mere tools designed to extract what I need from the pockets or bank accounts of those who currently but temporarily possess it. Calvin, you've been too long among the Puritans. And I have been too long among the Hypocrites."

It was Peggy who found the turnoff to Chapman Valley, found it easily though there was no sign and she was coming this time from the other direction. She and Alvin left the others with the carriage under the now-leafless oak out in front of the weavers' house. For Peggy, coming to this place now was both thrilling and embarrassing. What would they think of the way things had turned out since they set her on this present road?

Then, just as she raised her hand to knock on the door, she remembered something.

"Alvin," she said. "It slipped my mind, but something Becca said when I was here a few months ago."

"If it slipped your mind, then it was supposed to slip your mind."

"You and Calvin. You need to reclaim Calvin, find him and reclaim him before he turns completely against the work you're doing."

Alvin shook his head. "Becca doesn't know everything."

"And what does that mean?"

"What makes you think Calvin wasn't already the enemy of our work before he was born?"

"That's not possible," said Peggy. "Babies are born innocent and pure."

"Or steeped in original sin? Those are the choices? I can't believe that you of all people believe either idea, you who put your hands on the womb and see the futures in the baby's heartfire. The child is already himself then, the good and bad, ready to step into the world and make of himself whatever he wants most to be."

She squinted at ffim. "Why is it that when we're alone, talking of something serious, you don't sound so much the country bumpkin?"

"Because maybe I learned everything you taught me, only I also learned that I don't want to lose touch with the common people," said Alvin. "They're the ones who are going to build the city with me. Their language is my native language—why should I forget it, just because I learned another? How many educated folks do you think are going to come away from their fine homes and educated friends and roll up their sleeves to make something with their own hands?"

"I don't want to knock on this door," said Peggy. "My life changes when I come into this place."

"You don't have to knock," said Alvin. He reached out and turned the knob. The door opened.

When he made as if to step inside, Peggy took his arm. "Alvin, you can't just walk in here!"

"If the door wasn't locked, then I can walk in," said Alvin. "Don't you understand what this place is? This is the place where things are as they must be. Not like the world out there, the world you see in the heartfires, the world of things that can be. And not like the world inside my head, the world as it might be. And not like the world as it was first conceived in the mind of God, which is the world as it should be."

She watched him step over the threshold. There was no alarm in the house, nor even a sound of life. She followed him. Young as he was, this man she had watched over from his infancy, this man whose heart she knew more intimately than her own, he could still surprise her by what he did of a sudden without thought, because he simply knew it was right and had to be this way.

The endless cloth still lay folded in piles, linked each to each, winding over furniture, through halls, up and down stairs. They stepped over the spans and reaches of it. "No dust," said Peggy. "I didn't notice that the first time. There's no dust on the cloth."

"Good housekeepers here?" asked Alvin.

"They dust all this cloth?"

"Or maybe there's simply no passage of time within the cloth. Always and forever it exists in that one present moment in which the shuttlecock flew from side to side."

As he said these words, they began to hear the shuttlecock. Someone must have opened a door.

"Becca?" called Peggy.

They followed the sound through the house to the ancient cabin at the house's heart, where an open door led into the room with the loom. But to Peggy's surprise, it wasn't Becca seated there. It was the boy. Her nephew, the one who had dreamed of this. With practiced skill he drove the shuttlecock back and forth.

"Is Becca..." Peggy couldn't bring herself to ask about the weaver's death.

"Naw," said the boy. "We changed the rules a little here. No more pointless sacrifice. You done that, you know. Came here as a judge—well, your judgment was heeded. I take my shift for a while, and she can go out a little."

"So is it you we talk to now?" asked Alvin.

"Depends on what you want. I don't know nothing about nothing, so if you want answers, I don't think I'm it."

"I want to use the door that leads to Ta-Kumsaw."

"Who?" the boy asked.

"Your uncle Isaac,".said Peggy.

"Oh, sure." He nodded with his head. "It's that one."

Alvin strode toward it.

"You ever used one of these doors before?" asked the boy.

"No," said Alvin.

"Well then ain't you the stupid one, heading right for it like it was some ordinary door."

"What's different? I know it leads to the Red lands. I know it leads to the house where Ta-Kumsaw's daughter weaves the lives of the Reds of the west."

"Here's the tricky part. When you pass through the door, you can't have no part of yourself touching anything here but air. You can't brush up against the doodamb. You can't let a foot linger on the floor. It's not a step through the door, it's a leap."

"And what happens if some part of me does touch?"'

"Then that part of this place drags you down just a little, slows you, lowers you, and so instead of you passing through the door in one smooth motion, you go through in a couple of pieces. Ain't nobody can put you together after that, Mr. Maker."

Peggy was appalled. "I never realized it was so dangerous."

"Breathing's dangerous too," said the boy, "if'n you breathe in something to make you sick." He grinned. "I saw you two get all twined up together here. Congratulations."

"Thanks," said Alvin.

"So what do they call you now, judge woman?" the boy asked Peggy. "Goody Smith?"

"Most still call me Peggy Larner. Only they say Miz Larner now, and not Miss."

"I call her Margaret," said Alvin.

"I reckon you'll really be married when she starts to think of herself by the name you call her, instead of the name her parents called her by." He winked at Peggy. "Thanks for getting me my job. My sisters are glad, too, they had nightmares, I'll tell you. There ain't no love of the loom in them." He turned back to Alvin. "So are you going or what?"

At that moment the door flew open and a tied-up bundle flew through it.

"Uh-oh," said the boy. "Best turn your back. Becca's coming through, and she travels stark nekkid, seeing as how women's clothing can't fit through that door without touching."

Alvin turned his back, and so did Peggy, though unlike Alvin she cheated and allowed herself to watch anyway. It was not Becca who caine through the door first, however. It was Ta-Kumsaw, a man Peggy had never met, though she had seen him often enough in Alvin's heartfire. He was not naked, but rather clothed in buckskins that clung tightly to his body. He saw them standing there and grunted. "Boy Renegado comes back to see the most dangerous Red man who ever lived."

"Howdy, Ta-Kumsaw," said Alvin.

"Hi, Isaac," said the boy. "I warned him about the door like you said."

"Good boy," said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned his back on them then, just in time for Becca to leap through the door wearing only thin and clinging underwear. He gathered her at once into his arms. Then together they untied the bundle and unfolded it into a dress, which she drew down over her head. "All right," said Ta-Kurnsaw. "She's dressed enough for a White woman now."

Alvin turned around and greeted her. There were handshakes, and even a hug between women. They talked about what had happened in Hatrack River over the past few months, and then Alvin explained his errand.

Ta-Kumsaw showed no emotion. "I don't know what my brother will say. He keeps his own counsel."

"Does he rule there in the west?" asked Alvin.

"Rule? That's not how we do things. There are many tribes, and in each tribe many wise men. My brother is one of the greatest of them, everyone agrees to that. But he doesn't make law just by deciding what it should be. We don't do anything as foolish as you do, electing one president and concentrating too much power in his hands. It was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it."

"Which is going to happen on New Year's day when Harrison—"

Ta-Kumsaw glowered. "Never say that name, that unbearable name."

"Not saying it won't make him go away,"

"It will keep his evil out of this house," said Ta-Kurnsaw. "Away from the people I love."

In the meantime, Becca had finished dressing. She came to the boy and bumped him with her hip. "Move over, stubbyfingers. That's my loom you're tangling."

"Tightest weave ever," the boy retorted. "People will always know which spots I wove."

Becca settled onto the chair and then began to make the shuttlecock dance. The whole music of the loom changed, the rhythm of it, the song. "You came for a purpose, Maker? The door's still open for you. Do what you came to do."

For the first time Peggy really looked at the door, trying to see what lay beyond it; and what lay beyond was nothing. Not blackness, but not daylight either. Just... nothing. Her eyes couldn't look at it; her gaze kept shifting away.

"Alvin," she said. "Are you sure you want to—"

He kissed her. "I love it when you worry about me."

She smiled and kissed him back. As he took off his cap and his boots, and his long coat that might flap against the doodamb, he couldn't see how she reached into the small box she kept in a pocket of her skirt; how she held the last scrap of his birth caul between her fingers and then watched his heartfire, ready to spring into action the moment he needed her, to use his power to heal him even if he, in some dire extremity, could not or dared not or would not use it himself.

He ran for the door, leapt toward it left-foot-first, his right foot leaving the ground before any part of him broke the plane of the door. He sailed through with his head ducked down; he missed the top of the door by an inch.

"I don't like it when people leap through all spread out like that," said Ta-Kumsaw. "Better to spring from both feet at once, and curl up into a ball as you go."

"You athletic men can do that," said Becca. "But I can't see myself hitting the floor like that and rolling. Besides, you leap half the time yourself."

"I'm not as tall as Alvin," said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned to Peggy. "He grew to be very tall."

But Peggy didn't answer him.

"She's watching his heartfire," said Becca: "Best leave her alone till he comes back."

Alvin tumbled and fell when he hit the floor on the other side he sprawled into a pile of cloth and heard the sound of laughter. He got up and looked around. Another cabin, but a newish one and the girl at the loom was scarcely older than he was. She was a mixup like Arthur, only half-Red instead of half-Black, and the combination of Ta-Kumsaw and Becca was becoming in her.

"Howdy, Alvin," she said. He had expected her voice to sound like Ta-Kumsaw's and Tenskwa-Tawa's, accented when she spoke in English, but she spoke like Becca, a bit old-fashioned sounding but like a native speaker of the tongue.

"Howdy," he said.

"You sure came through like a ton of bricks," she said.

"Made a mess of the piles of cloth here."

"Don't fret," she said. "That's why they're there. Papa always smacks into them when he comes through like a cannonball."

With that he ran out of conversation, and so did she, so he stood there watching as she ran her loom.

"Go find Tenskwa-Tawa. He's waiting for you."

Alvin had heard so much about the fog on the Mizzipy that he had halfway got it into his head that the whole of the western lands was covered with fog. When he opened the cabin and stepped outside, though, he found that far from being foggy, the sky was so clear it felt like he could see clear into heaven in broad daylight. There were high mountains looming to the east, and he could see them so crisp and clear that he felt as though he could trace the crevices in the bare granite near the top, or count the leaves on the oak trees halfway up their craggy flanks. The cabin stood at the brow of a hill separating two valleys, both of which contained lakes. The one to the north was huge, the far reaches of it invisible because of the curve of the Earth, not because of any haze or thickness of the air; the lake to the south was smaller, but it was even more beautiful, shining like a blue jewel in the cold sunlight of late autumn.

"The snow is late," said a voice behind him.

Alvin turned. "Shining Man," he said, the name slipping from his lips before he could think.

"And you are the man who learned how to be a man when he was a boy," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

They embraced. The wind whistled around them. When they parted, Alvin glanced around again. "This is a pretty exposed place to build a cabin," he said.

"Had to be here," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "The valley to the south is Timpa-Nogos. Holy ground, where there can be no houses and no wars. The valley to the north is grazing land, where the deer can be hunted by families that run out of food in the winter. No houses either. Don't worry. Inside a weaver's house is always warm." He smiled. "I'm glad to see you."

Alvin wasn't sure if he could remember Tenskwa-Tawa ever smiling before. "You're happy here?"

"Happy?" Tenskwa-Tawa's face went placid again. "I feel as though I stand with one foot on this earth and the other foot in the place where my people wait for me."

"Not all died that day at Tippy-Canoe," said Alvin. "You still have people here."

"They also stand with one foot in one place, one foot in the other." He glanced toward a canyon that led up into a gap between the impossibly high mountains. "They live in a high mountain valley. The snow is late this year, and they're glad of that, unless it means poor water for next year, and a poor crop. That's our life now, Alvin Maker. We used to live in a place where water leapt out of the ground wherever you struck it with a stick."

"But the air is clear. You can see forever."

Tenskwa-Tawa put his fingers to Alvin's lips. "No man sees forever. But some men see farther. Last winter I rode a tower of water into the sky over the holy lake Timpa-Nogos. I saw many things. I saw you come here. I heard the news you told me and the question you asked me."

"And did you hear your answer?"

"First you must make my vision come true," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

So Alvin told him about Harrison being elected president by bragging about his bloody hands, and how they wondered if Tenskwa-Tawa might release the people of Vigor Church from their curse, so they could leave their homes, those as wanted to, and become part of the Crystal City when Alvin started to build it. "Was that what you heard me ask you?"

"Yes," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

"And what was your answer?"

"I didn't see my answer," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "So I have had all these months to think of what it was. In all these months, my people who died on that grassy slope have walked before my eyes in my sleep. I have seen their blood again and again flow down the grass and turn the Tippy-Canoe Creek red. I have seen the faces of the children and babies. I knew them all by name, and I still remember all the names and all the faces. Each one I see in the dream, I ask them, Do you forgive these White murderers? Do you understand their rage and will you let me take your blood from their hands?"

Tenskwa-Tawa paused. Alvin. waited, too. One did not rush a shaman as he told of his dreams.

"Every night I have had this dream until finally last night the last of them came before me and I asked my question."

Again, a silence. Again, Alvin waited patiently. Not patiently the way a White man waits, showing his patience by looking around or moving his fingers or doing something else to mark the passage of time. Alvin waited with a Red man's patience, as if this moment were to be savored in itself, as if the suspense of waiting was in itself an experience to be marked and remembered.

"If even one of them had said, I do not forgive them, do not lift the curse, then I would not lift the curse," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "if even one baby had said, I do not forgive them for taking away my days of running like a deer through the meadows, I would not lift the curse. If even one mother had said, I do not forgive them for the baby that was in my womb when I died, who never saw the light of day with its beautiful eyes, I would not lift the curse. If even one father had said, The anger still runs hot in my heart, and if you lift the curse I will still have some hatred left unavenged, then I would not lift the curse."

Tears flowed down Alvin's face, for he knew the answer now, and he could not imagine himself ever being so good that even in death he could forgive those who had done such a terrible thing to him and his family.

"I also asked the living," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "Those who lost father and mother, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, child and friend, teacher and helper, hunting companion, and wife, and husband. If even one of these living ones had said, I cannot forgive them yet, Tenskwa-Tawa, I would not lift the curse."

Then he fell silent one last time. This time the silence lasted and lasted. The sun had been at noon when Alvin arrived; it was touching the tops of the mountains to the west when at last Tenskwa-Tawa moved again, nodding his head. Like Alvin, he, too, had wept, and then had waited long enough for the tears to dry, and then had wept again, all without changing the expression on his face, all without moving a muscle of his body as the two of them sat facing each other in the tall dry autumn grass, in the cold dry autumn wind. Now he opened his mouth and spoke again. "I have lifted the curse," he said.

Alvin embraced his old teacher. It was not what a Red man would have done, but Alvin had acted Red all afternoon, and so Tenskwa-Tawa accepted the gesture and even returned it. Touched by the Red Prophet's hands, his cheek against the old man's hair, the old man's face against his shoulder, Alvin remembered that once he had thought of asking Tenskwa-Tawa to strengthen the curse on Harrison, to stop him from misusing his bloody hands. It made him ashamed. If the dead could forgive, should not the living? Harrison would find his own way through life, and his own path to death. Judgment would have to come, if it came at all, from someone wiser than Alvin.

When they arose from the grass, Tenskwa-Tawa looked north toward the larger lake. "Look, a man is coming."

Alvin saw where he was looking. Not far off, a man was jogging lightly along a path through the head-high grass. Not running in the Red man's way, but like a White man, and not a young one. His hatless bald head glinted momentarily in the sunset.

"That ain't Taleswapper, is itT' asked Alvin.

"The Sho-sho-nay invited him to come and trade stories with them," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

Instead of asking more questions, Alvin waited with Tenskwa-Tawa until Taleswapper came up the long steep path. He was out of breath when he arrived, as might have been expected. But as Alvin sent, his doodlebug through Taleswapper's body, he was surprised at the old man's excellent health. They greeted each other warmly, and Alvin told him the news. Taleswapper smiled at Tenskwa-Tawa. "Your people are better than you thought they were," he said.

"Or more forgetful," said Tenskwa-Tawa ruefully.

"I'm glad I happened to be here, to hear this news," said Taleswapper. "If you're going back through the weaver's house, I'd like to go with you."

When Alvin and Taleswapper returned to Becca's cabin within the heart of the weaver's house, it had been dark for two hours. Ta-Kumsaw had gone outside and invited Peggy's and Alvin's friends to come in and eat with his family. Becca's sister and her daughters and her son joined them; they ate a stew of bison meat, Red man's food cooked the White man's way, a compromise like so much else in this house. Ta-Kumsaw had introduced himself by the name of Isaac Weaver, and Peggy was careful to call him by no other name.

Alvin and Taleswapper found them all lying on their bedrolls on the floor of the parlor, except for Peggy, who was sitting on a chair, listening as Verily Cooper told them tales of his life in England, and all the subterfuges he had gone through in order to conceal his knack from everyone. She turned to face the door before her husband and their old friend came through it; the others also turned, so all eyes were on them. They knew at once from the joy on Alvin's face what Tenskwa-Tawa's answer had been.

"I want to ride out tonight and tell them," said Armor-of-God. "I want them to know the good news right now."

"Too dark," said Ta-Kumsaw, who came in from the kitchen where he had been helping his sister-in-law wash the dishes from supper.

"There's no more rules, now, the curse is lifted free and clear," said Alvin. "But he asks that we do something all the same. That everyone who used to be under the curse gather their family together once a year, on the anniversary of the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, and on that day eat no food, but instead tell the story as it used to be told to all strangers who came through Vigor Church. Once a year, our children and our children's children, forever. He asks that we do that, but there'll be no punishment if we don't. No punishment except that our children will forget, and when they forget, there's always the chance that it might happen again."

"I'll tell them that too," said Armor. "They'll all take a vow to do that, you can be sure, Alvin." He turned to Ta-Kumsaw. "You can tell your brother that for me when next you see him, that they'll all take that vow."

Ta-Kumsaw grunted. "So much for calling myself Isaac in order to conceal from you who I really am."

"We've met before," said Armor, "and even if we hadn't, I know a great leader when I see one, and I knew who it was Alvin came to see."

"You talk too much, Armor-of-God, like all White men," said Ta-Kumsaw. "But at least what you say isn't always stupid."

Armor nodded and smiled to acknowledge the compliment.

Alvin and Peggy were given a bedroom and a fine bed, which Peggy suspected was Ta-Kumsaw's and Becca's own. The others slept on the floor in the parlor—slept as best they could, which wasn't well, what with all the excitement and the way Mike Fink snored so loud and the way Armor had to get up to pee about three times an hour it seemed like, till Peggy heard the activity, woke Alvin up, and Alvin did something with his doodlebug inside Armor's body so he didn't feel like his bladder was about to bust all the time. When morning came the men in the parlor slept a little late, and woke to the smell of a country breakfast, with biscuits and gravy and slabs of salted ham fried with potatoes.

Then it was time for parting. Armor-of-God was like an eager horse himself, stamping and snorting till they finally told him to go on. He mounted and rode out of Chapman Valley, waving his hat and whooping like those damn fools on election night the week before.

Alvin's and Peggy's parting was harder. She and Taleswapper would take Whitley Physicker's carriage and drive, it to the next town of any size, where she'd hire another carriage and Taleswapper would drive this one north to Hatrack River to return it to the good doctor. From there Peggy intended to go to Philadelphia for a while. "I hope that I might turn some hearts against Harrison's plans, if I'm there where Congress meets. He's only going to be president, not king, not emperor—he has to win the consent of Congress to do anything, and perhaps there's still hope." But Alvin knew from her voice that she had little hope, that she knew already along what dark roads Harrison would lead the country.

Alvin felt nearly as bleak about his own prospects. "Tenskwa-Tawa couldn't tell me a thing about how to make the Crystal City, except to say a thing I already knew: The Maker is a part of what he Makes."

"So... you will search," said Peggy, "and I will search."

What neither of them said, because both of them knew that they both knew, was that there was a child growing already in Margaret's womb; a girl. Each of them could calculate nine months as well as the other.

"Where will you be next August?" asked Alvin.

"Wherever I am, I'll make quite sure you know about it."

"And wherever you are, I'll make quite sure I'm there."

"I think the name should be Becca," said Peggy.

"I was thinking to call her after you. Call her Little Peggy."

Peggy smiled. "Becca Margaret, then?"

Alvin smiled back, and kissed her. "People talk about fools counting chickens before they hatch. That's nothing. We name them."

He helped her up into the carriage, beside Taleswapper, who already had the reins in hand. Arthur Stuart led Alvin's horse to him, and as he mounted, the boy said, "We made up a song about us last night, while you two was upstairs!"

"A song?" said Alvin. "Let's hear it then."

"We made it up like as if it was you singing it," said Arthur Stuart. "Come on, you all got to sing! And at the end I made up a chorus all by myself, I made up the last part alone without no help from nobody."

Alvin reached down and hauled the boy up behind him. Arthur Stuart's arms went around his middle. "Come on," the boy shouted. "Let's all sing."

As they began the song, Alvin reached down and took hold of the harness of the carriage's lead horse, starting the parade up the road leading out of Chapman Valley.

A young man startin' on his own, Must leave his home so fair. Better not go wand'rin' all alone, Or you might get eaten by a bear!

I'm wise enough to heed that song, But who'll make up my pair? If I choose my boon companion wrong, Then I might get eaten by a bear!

I'll take a certain mixup lad, He's small, but does his share, And I'll watch him close, cause I'd be sad, If the boy got eaten by a bear!

I'll take along this barrister, With lofty learned air, And I'll make of him a forester, So he won't get eaten by a bear!

Behold this noble river rat, With brag so fine and rare! He's as dangerous as a mountain cat, He will not get eaten by a bear!

Now off we go, where'er we please. We're heroes, so we dare, To defy mosquitoes, wasps, and fleas, And we won't get eaten by a bear!

They reached the main road and Peggy turned right, heading north, while the men took their horses south. She waved from the driver's seat, but did not look back. Alvin stopped to watch her, just for a moment, just for a lingering moment, as Arthur Stuart behind him shouted, "Now I get to sing the last part that I made up all by myself! I get to!"

"So sing it," said Alvin. So Arthur Stuart sang.

Grizzly bear, grizzly bear, Run and hide, you sizzly bear! We'll take away your coat of hair, And roast you in your underwear!

Alvin laughed till tears streamed down his face.