Seventh Son

Chapter Eleven—Millstone

Taleswapper woke up to somebody shaking him. Still full dark outside, but it was time to be moving. He sat, flexed himself a little, and took some pleasure in how few knots and pains he had these days, sleeping on a soft bed. I could get used to this, he thought. I could enjoy living here.

The bacon was so fat he could hear it sizzling clear from the kitchen. He was just about to pull his boots on when Mary knocked at the door. "I'm presentable, more or less," he said.

She came in, holding out two pair of long thick stockings. "I knotted them myself," she said.

"I couldn't buy socks this thick in Philadelphia."

"Winter gets right cold here in the Wobbish country, and—" She didn't finish. Got too shy, ducked her head, and scampered out of the room.

Taleswapper pulled on the stockings, and his boots over them, and grinned. He didn't feel bad about accepting a few things like this. He worked as hard as anybody, and he'd done a lot to help ready this farm for winter. He was a good roof man—he liked climbing and didn't get dizzy. So his own hands had made sure the house and barns and coops and sheds all were tight and dry.

And, without anybody ever deciding to do it, he had prepared the millhouse to receive a millstone. He had personally loaded all the hay from the mill floor, five wagons full. The twins, who really hadn't got their two farms going yet, since they married only that summer, did the unloading up in the big barn. It was all done without Miller himself ever touching a pitchfork. Taleswapper saw to that, without making a fuss over it, and Miller never insisted.

Other things, though, weren't going so well. Ta-Kumsaw and his Shaw-Nee Reds were driving off so many folks from down Carthage way that everybody had the jitters. It was fine for the Prophet to have his big town of thousands of Reds across the river, all talking about how they'd never again raise their hands in war for any reason. But there were a lot of Reds who felt the way Ta-Kumsaw did, that the White man ought to be forced to the shores of the Atlantic and floated back to Europe, with or without boats. There was war talk, and word was that Bill Harrison down in Carthage was only too happy to fan that particular flame, not to mention the French in Detroit, always urging the Reds to attack the American settlers in land the French claimed was part of Canada.

Folks in the town of Vigor Church talked about this all the time, but Taleswapper knew that Miller didn't take it all that seriously. He thought of Reds as country clowns that wanted nothing more than to guzzle such whisky as they could find. Taleswapper had seen that attitude before, but only in New England. Yankees never seemed to realize that New England Reds with any gumption had long since moved to the state of Irrakwa. It would surely open Yankee eyes to see that the Irrakwa were working heavily with steam engines brought straight from England, and up in the Finger Lakes country a White named Eli Whitney was helping them make a factory that could turn out guns about twenty times faster than it had ever been done before. Someday those Yankees were going to wake up and find out that the Reds weren't all likker-mad, and some White folks were going to have to scramble fast to catch up.

In the meantime, though, Miller didn't take the war talk very seriously. "Everybody knows there's Reds in the woods. Can't stop them from skulking around, but I haven't missed any chickens so it's no problem yet."

"More bacon?" asked Miller. He shoved the bacon board across the table toward Taleswapper.

"I'm not used to eating so much in the morning," said Taleswapper. "Since I've been here I've had more food at every meal than I used to eat in a whole day."

"Put some meat on your bones," said Faith. She slapped down a couple of hot scones with honey smeared on them.

"I can't eat another bite," protested Taleswapper.

The scones slid right off Taleswapper's plate. "Got em," said Al Junior.

"Don't reach across the table like that," said Miller. "And you can't eat both those scones."

Al Junior proved his father wrong in an alarmingly short time. Then they washed the honey off their hands, put on their gloves, and went out to the wagon. The first light was just showing in the east as David and Calm, who lived townward from the farm, rode up. Al Junior climbed in the back of the wagon, along with all the tools and ropes and tents and supplies—it would be a few days before they came back.

"So—do we wait for the twins and Measure?" asked Taleswapper.

Miller swung up onto the wagon seat. "Measure's on ahead, felling trees for the sledge. And Wastenot and Wantnot are staying back here, riding circuit from house to house." He grinned. "Can't leave the womenfolk unprotected, with all the talk of wild Reds prowling around, can we?"

Taleswapper grinned back. Good to know that Miller wasn't as complacent as he seemed.

It was a good long way up to the quarry. On the road they passed the ruins of a wagon with a split millstone right in the middle of it. "That was our first try," said Miller. "But an axle dried out and jammed up coming down this steep hill, and the whole wagon fell in under the weight of the stone."

They came near a good-sized stream, and Miller told about how they had tried to float two millstones down on a raft, but both times the raft just up and sank. "We've had bad luck," said Miller, but from the set of his face he seemed to take it personally, as if someone had set out to make things fail.

"That's why we're using a sledge and rollers this time," said Al Junior, leaning over the back of the seat. "Nothing can fall off, nothing can break, and even if it does, it's all just logs, and we got no shortage of replacements."

"As long as it don't rain," said Miller. "Nor snow."

"Sky looks clear enough," said Taleswapper.

"Sky's a liar," said Miller. "When it comes to anything I want to do, water always gets in my way."

They got to the quarry when the sun was full up, but still far from noon. Of course, the trip back would be much longer. Measure had already felled six stout young trees and about twenty small ones. David and Calm set right to work, stripping off branches and rounding them smooth as possible. To Taleswapper's surprise, it was Al Junior who picked up the sack of stonecutting tools and headed up into the rocks.

"Where are you going?" asked Taleswapper.

"Oh, I've got to find a good place for cutting," said Al Junior.

"He's got an eye for stone," said Miller. But he wasn't saying all he knew.

"And when you find the stone, what'll you do then?" asked Taleswapper.

"Why, I'll cut it." Alvin sauntered on up the path with all the arrogance of a boy who knows he's about to do a man's job.

"Got a good hand for stone, too," said Miller.

"He's only ten years old," said Taleswapper.

"He cut the first stone when he was six," said Miller.

"Are you saying it's a knack?"

"I ain't saying nothing."

"Will you say this, Al Miller? Tell me if by chance you are a seventh son."

"Why do you ask?"

"It's said, by those who know such things, that a seventh son of a seventh son is born with the knowledge of how things look under the surface. That's why they make such good dowsers."

"Is that what they say?"

Measure walked up, faced his father, put his hands on his hips, and looked plain exasperated. "Pa, what harm is there in telling him? Everybody in the whole country roundabout here knows it."

"Maybe I think Taleswapper here knows more than I want him to know already."

"That's a right ungracious thing to say, Pa, to a man who's proved himself a friend twice over."

"He doesn't have to tell me anything he doesn't want me to know," said Taleswapper.

"Then I'll tell you," said Measure. "Pa is a seventh son, all right."

"And so is Al Junior," said Taleswapper. "Am I right? You've never mentioned it, but I'd guess that when a man gives his own name to a son other than his firstborn, it's bound to be his seventh born."

"Our oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River only a few minutes after Al Junior was born," said Measure.

"Hatrack," said Taleswapper.

"Do you know the place?" asked Measure.

"I know every place. But for some reason that name makes me think I should have remembered it before now, and I can't think why. Seventh son of a seventh son. Does he conjure the millstone out of the rock?"

"We don't talk about it like that," said Measure.

"He cuts," said Miller. "Just like any stonecutter."

"He's a big boy, but he's still just a boy," said Taleswapper.

"Let's just say," said Measure, "that when he cuts the stone it's a mite softer than when I cut it."

"I'd appreciate it," said Miller, "if you'd stay down here and help with the rounding and notching. We need a nice tight sledge and some smooth true rollers." What he didn't say, but Taleswapper heard just as plain as day, was, Stay down here and don't ask too many questions about Al Junior.

So Taleswapper worked with David and Measure and Calm all morning and well into the afternoon, all the time hearing a steady chinking sound of iron on stone. Alvin Junior's stonecutting set the rhythm for all their work, though no one commented on it.

Taleswapper wasn't the sort of man who could work in silence, though. Since the others weren't too conversational at first, he told stories the whole time. And since they were grown men instead of children, he told stories that weren't all adventure and heroics and tragic death.

Most of the afternoon, in fact, he devoted to the sap of John Adams: How his house was burnt down by a Boston mob after he won the acquittal of ten women accused of witchcraft. How Alex Hamilton invited him to Manhattan Island, where the two of them set up a law practice together. How in ten years they managed to maneuver the Dutch government to allow unlimited immigration of non-Dutch-speaking people, until English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish were a majority in New Amsterdam and New Orange, and a large minority in New Holland. How they got English declared a second official language in 1780, just in time for the Dutch colonies to become three of the seven original states under the American Compact.

"I'll bet the Dutchmen hated those boys, by the time they were through," said David.

"They were better politicians than that," said Taleswapper. "Why, both of them learned to speak Dutch better than most Dutchmen, and had their children grow up speaking Dutch in Dutch schools. They were so dadgum Dutch, boys, that when Alex Hamilton ran for governor of New Amsterdam and John Adams ran for president of the United States, they both did better in the Dutch parts of New Netherland than they did among the Scotch and Irish."

"Reckon if I run for mayor, I could get those Swedes and Dutchmen downriver to vote for me?" said David.

"I wouldn't even vote for you," said Calm.

"I would," said Measure. "And I hope someday you do run for mayor."

"He can't run for mayor," said Calm. "This ain't even a proper town."

"It will be," said Taleswapper. "I've seen it before. Once you get this mill working, it won't be long before three hundred people dwell between your mill and Vigor Church."

"You think so?"

"Right now people come in to Armor's store maybe three or four times a year," said Taleswapper. "But when they can get flour, they'll come in much more often. They'll prefer your mill to any other around here for some time, too, since you've got a smooth road and good bridges."

"If the mill makes money," Measure said, "Pa's sure to send for a Buhr Stone from France. We had one back in West Hampshire, before the flood broke up the mill. And a Buhr Stone means fine white flour."

"And white flour means good business," said David. "We older ones, we remember." He smiled wistfully. "We were almost rich there, once."

"So," said Taleswapper. "With all that traffic here, it won't be just a store and a church and a mill. There's good white clay down on the Wobbish. Some potter's bound to go into business, making redware and stoneware for the whole territory. "

"Sure wish they'd hurry with that," said Calm. "My wife is sick unto death, she says, of having to serve food on tin plates."

"That's how towns grow," said Taleswapper. "A good store, a church, then a mill, then a pottery. Bricks, too, for that matter. And when there's a town—"

"David can be mayor," said Measure.

"Not me," said David. "All that politics business is too much. It's Armor wants that, not me."

"Armor wants to be king," said Calm.

"That's not kind," said David.

"But it's true," said Calm. "He'd try to be God, if he thought the job was open."

Measure explained to Taleswapper. "Calm and Armor don't get along."

"It ain't much of a husband that calls his wife a witch," said Calm bitterly.

"Why would he call her that?" asked Taleswapper.

"It's sure he doesn't call her that now," said Measure. "She promised him to give them up. All her knacks in the kitchen. It's a shame to make a woman run a household with just her own two hands."

"That's enough," David said. Taleswapper caught just a corner of his warning look.

Obviously they didn't trust Taleswapper enough to let him in on the truth. So Taleswapper let them know that the secret was already in his possession. "It seems to me that she uses more than Armor guesses," said Taleswapper. "There's a clever hex out of baskets on the front porch. And she used a calming on him before my eyes, the day I arrived in town."

Work stopped then, for just a moment. Nobody looked at him, but for a second they did nothing. Just took in the fact that Taleswapper knew Eleanor's secret and hadn't told about it to outsiders. Or to Armor-of-God Weaver. Still, it was one thing for him to know, and something else for them to confirm it. So they said nothing, just resumed notching and binding the sledge.

Taleswapper broke the silence by returning to the main topic. "It's just a matter of time before these western lands have enough people in them to call themselves states, and petition to join the American Compact. When that happens, there'll be need for honest men to hold office."

"You won't find no Hamilton or Adams or Jefferson out here in the wild country," said David.

"Maybe not," said Taleswapper. "But if you local boys don't set up your own government, you can bet there'll be plenty of city men willing to do it for you. That's how Aaron Burr got to be governor of Suskwahenny, before Daniel Boone shot him dead in ninety-nine."

"You make it sound like murder," said Measure. "It was a fair duel."

"To my way of thinking," said Taleswapper, "a duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other."

"Not when one of them is an old country boy in buckskin and the other is a lying cheating city man," said Measure.

"I don't want no Aaron Burr trying to be governor over the Wobbish country," said David. "And that's what kind of man Bill Harrison is, down there in Carthage City. I'd vote for Armor before I'd vote for him."

"And I'd vote for you before I'd vote for Armor," said Taleswapper.

David grunted. He continued weaving rope around the notches of the sledge logs, binding them together. Taleswapper was doing the same thing on the other side. When he got to the knotting place, Taleswapper started to tie the two ends of the rope together.

"Wait on that," said Measure. "I'll go fetch Al Junior." Measure took off at a jog up the slope to the quarry.

Taleswapper dropped the ends of the rope. "Alvin Junior ties the knots? I would have thought grown men like you could tie them tighter."

David grinned. "He's got a knack."

"Don't any of you have knacks?" asked Taleswapper.

"A few."

"David's got a knack with the ladies," said Calm.

"Calm's got dancing feet at a hoedown. Ain't nobody fiddles like him, neither," said David. "It ain't on tune all the time, but he keeps that bow busy."

"Measure's a true shot," said Calm. "He's got an eye for things too far off for most folks to see."

"We got our knacks," said David. "The twins have a way of knowing when trouble's brewing, and getting there just about in time."

"And Pa, he fits things together. We have him do all the wood joints when we're building furniture."

"The womenfolk got women's knacks."

"But," said Calm, "there ain't nobody like Al Junior."

David nodded gravely. "Thing is, Taleswapper, he don't seem to know about it. I mean, he's always kind of surprised when things turn out good. He's right proud when we give him a job to do. I never seen him lord it over nobody because he's got more of a knack than they do."

"He's a good boy," said Calm.

"Kind of clumsy," said David.

"Not clumsy," said Calm. "Most times it isn't his fault."

"Let's just say that accidents happen more common around him."

"I wouldn't say jinx or nothing," said Calm.

"No, I wouldn't say jinx."

Taleswapper noted that in fact they both had said it. But he didn't comment on their indiscretion. After all, it was the third voice that made bad luck true. His silence was the best cure for their carelessness. And the other two caught on quickly enough. They, too, held their silence.

After a while, Measure came down the hill with Alvin Junior. Taleswapper dared not be the third voice, since he had taken part in the conversation before. And it would be even worse if Alvin himself spoke next, since he was the one who had been linked with a jinx. So Taleswapper kept his eye on Measure, and raised his eyebrows, to show Measure that he was expected to speak.

Measure answered the question that he thought Taleswapper was asking. "Oh, Pa's staying up by the rock. To watch."

Taleswapper could hear David and Calm breathe a sigh of relief. The third voice didn't have jinx in his mind, so Alvin Junior was safe.

Now Taleswapper was free to wonder why Miller felt he had to keep watch at the quarry. "What could happen to a rock? I've never heard of Reds stealing rocks."

Measure winked. "Powerful strange things happen sometimes, specially with millstones."

Alvin was joking with David and Calm now, as he tied the knots. He worked hard to get them as tight as he could, but Taleswapper saw that it wasn't in the knot itself that his knack was revealed. As Al Junior pulled the ropes tight, they seemed to twist and bite into the wood in all the notches, drawing the whole sledge tighter together. It was subtle, and if Taleswapper hadn't been watching for it, he wouldn't have seen. But it was real. What Al Junior bound was bound tight.

"That's tight enough to be a raft," said Al Junior, standing back to admire.

"Well, it's floating on solid earth this time," said Measure. "Pa says he won't even piss into water no more."

Since the sun was low in the west, they set to laying the fire. Work had kept them warm today, but tonight they'd need the fire to back off the animals and keep the autumn cold at bay.

Miller didn't come down, even at supper, and when Calm got up to carry food up the hill to his father, Taleswapper offered to come along.

"I don't know," said Calm. "You don't need to."

"I want to."

"Pa—he don't like lots of people gathered at the rock face, time like this." Calm looked a little sheepish. "He's a miller, and it's his stone getting cut there."

"I'm not a lot of people," said Taleswapper. Calm didn't say anything more. Taleswapper followed him up among the rocks.

On the way, they passed the sites of two early stonecuttings. The scraps of cut stone had been used to make a smooth ramp from the cliff face to ground level. The cuts were almost perfectly round. Taleswapper had seen plenty of stone cut before, and he'd never seen one cut this way—perfectly round, right in the cliff. Most times it was a whole slab they cut, then rounded it on the ground. There were several good reasons for doing it that way, but the best of all was that there was no way to cut the back of the stone unless you took a whole slab. Calm didn't slow down for him, so Taleswapper didn't have a chance to look closely, but as near as he could tell there was no possible way that the stonecutter in this quarry could have cut the back of the stone.

It looked just the same at the new site, too. Miller was raking chipped rock into a level ramp in front of the millstone. Taleswapper stood back and, in the last specks of daylight, studied the cliff. In a single day, working alone, Al Junior had smoothed the front of the millstone and chipped away the whole circumference. The stone was practically polished, still attached to the cliff face. Not only that, but the center hole had been cut to take the main shaft of the mill machinery. It was fully cut. And there was no way in the world that anybody could get a chisel in position to cut away the back.

"That's some knack the boy has," said Taleswapper.

Miller grunted assent.

"Hear you plan to spend the night up here," said Taleswapper.

"Heard right."

"Mind company?" asked Taleswapper.

Calm rolled his eyes.

But after a little bit, Miller shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Calm looked at Taleswapper with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, as if to say, Miracles never cease.

When Calm had set down Miller's supper, he left. Miller set aside the rake. "You et yet?"

"I'll gather wood for tonight's fire," said Taleswapper. "While there's still light. You eat."

"Watch out for snakes," said Miller. "They're mostly shut in for the winter now, but you never know."

Taleswapper watched out for snakes, but he never saw any. And soon they had a good fire, laid with a heavy log that would burn all night.

They lay there in the firelight, wrapped in their blankets. It occurred to Taleswapper that Miller might have found softer ground a few yards away from the quarry. But apparently it was more important to keep the millstone in plain sight.

Taleswapper began talking. Quietly, but steadily, he talked about how hard it must be for fathers, to watch their sons grow, so full of hope for the boys, but never knowing when death would come and take the child away. It was the right thing to talk about, because soon it was Alvin Miller doing the talking. He told the story of how his oldest boy Vigor died in the Hatrack River, only a few minutes after Alvin Junior was born. And from there, he turned to the dozens of ways that Al Junior had almost died. "Always water," Miller said at the end. "Nobody believes me, but it's so. Always water."

"The question is," said Taleswapper, "is the water evil, trying to destroy a good boy? Or is it good, trying to destroy an evil power?"

It was a question that might have made some men angry, but Taleswapper had given up trying to guess when Miller's temper would flare. This time it didn't. "I've wondered that myself," said Miller. "I've watched him close, Taleswapper. Of course, he has a knack for making people love him. Even his sisters. He's tormented them unmerciful since he was old enough to spit in their food. Yet there's not a one of them who doesn't find a way to make him something special, and not just at Christmas. They'll sew his socks shut or smear soot on the privy bench or needle up his nightshirt, but they'd also die for him."

"I've found," said Taleswapper, "that some people have a knack for winning love without ever earning it."

"I feared that, too," said Miller. "But the boy doesn't know he has that knack. He doesn't trick people into doing what he wants. He lets me punish him when he does wrong. And he could stop me, if he wanted."

"How?"

"Because he knows that sometimes when I see him, I see my boy Vigor, my firstborn, and then I can't do him any harm, even harm that's for his own good."

Maybe that reason was partly true, Taleswapper thought. But it certainly wasn't the whole truth.

A bit later, after Taleswapper stirred the fire to make sure the log caught well, Miller told the story that Taleswapper had come for.

"I've got a story," he said, "that might belong in your book."

"Give it a try," said Taleswapper.

"Didn't happen to me, though."

"Has to be something you saw yourself," said Taleswapper. "I hear the craziest stories that somebody heard happened to a friend of a friend."

"Oh, I saw this happen. It's been going on for years now, and I've had some discussions with the fellow. It's one of the Swedes downriver, speaks English good as I do. We helped him put up his cabin and his barn when he first come here, the year after us. And I watched him a little bit even then. See, he has a boy, a blond Swede boy, you know how they get."

"Hair almost white?"

"Like frost in the first morning sun, white like that, and shiny. A beautiful boy."

"I can see him in my mind," said Taleswapper.

"And that boy, his papa loved him. Better than his life. You know that Bible story, about that papa who gave his boy a coat of many colors?"

"I've heard tell of it."

"He loved his boy like that. But I saw them two walking alongside the river, and the father all of a sudden lurched kind of, just bumped his boy, and sent the lad tumbling down into the Wobbish. Now, it happened that the boy caught onto a log and his father and I helped pull him in, but it was a scary thing to see that the father might have killed his own best-loved child. It wouldn't've been a-purpose, mind you, but that wouldn't make the boy any less dead, or the father any less blameful."

"I can see the father might never get over such a thing."

"Well, of course not. Yet not long after that, I seen him a few more times. Chopping wood, and he swung that axe wild, and if the boy hadn't slipped and fell right at that very second, that axe would've bit into the boy's head, and I never seen nobody live after something like that."

"Nor I."

"And I tried to imagine what must be happening. What that father must be thinking. So I went to him one day, and I said, ‘Nels, you ought to be more careful round that boy. You're likely to take that boy's head off someday, if you keep swinging that axe so free.'

"And Nels, he says to me, ‘Mr. Miller, that wasn't no accident.' Well, you could've blowed me down with a baby's burp. What does he mean, no accident? And he says to me, ‘You don't know how bad it is. I think maybe a witch cursed me, or the devil takes me, but I'm just working there, thinking how much I love the boy, and suddenly I have this wish to kill him. It came on me first when he was just a baby, and I stood at the top of the stairs, holding him, and it was like a voice inside my head, it said, "Throw him down," and I wanted to do it, even though I also knew it would be the most terrible thing in the world. I was hungry to throw him off, like a boy gets when he wants to smash a bug with a stone. I wanted to see his head break open on the floor.

"'Well, I just fought off that feeling, just swallowed it back and held that boy so tight I like to smothered him. Finally when I got him back into his cradle, I knew that from then on I wasn't going to carry him up those stairs no more.

"'But I couldn't just leave him alone, could I? He was my boy, and he grew up so bright and good and beautiful that I had to love him. If I stayed away, he cried cause his papa didn't play with him. But if I stayed with him, then those feelings came back, again and again. Not every day, but many a day, sometimes so fast that I did it afore I even knew what I was doing. Like the day I bumped him into the river, I just took a wrong step and tripped, but I knew even as I took that step that it was a wrong step, and that I'd trip, and that I'd bump him, I knew it, but I didn't have time to stop myself. And someday I know that I won't be able to stop myself, I won't mean to do it, but someday when that boy is under my hand, I'll kill him.'"

Taleswapper could see Miller's arm move, as if to wipe tears away from his cheek.

"Ain't that the strangest thing." Miller asked. "A man having that kind of feeling for his own son."

"Does that fellow have any other sons?"

"A few. Why?"

"I just wondered if he ever felt a desire to kill them."

"Never, not a speck. I asked him that, matter of fact. I asked him, and he said not a speck."

"Well, Mr. Miller, what did you tell him?"

Miller breathed in and out a few times. "I didn't know what to tell him. Some things are just too big for a man like me to understand. I mean, the way that water is out to kill my boy Alvin. And then this Swede fellow with his son. Maybe there's some children that wasn't meant to grow up. Do you think so, Taleswapper?"

"I think there are some children that are so important, that someone—some force in the world—may want them dead. But there are always other forces, maybe stronger forces, that want them alive."

"Then why don't those forces show theirselves, Taleswapper? Why don't some power from heaven come and say—come to that poor Swedish man and say, ‘Don't you fear no more, your boy is safe, even from you!'"

"Maybe those forces don't speak out loud in words. Maybe those forces just show you what they're doing."

"The only force that shows itself in this world is the one that kills."

"I don't know about that Swedish boy," said Taleswapper, "but I'd guess that there's a powerful protection on your son. From what you said, it's a miracle he isn't dead ten times over."

"That's the truth."

"I think he's being watched over."

"Not well enough."

"The water never got him, did it?"

"It came so close, Taleswapper."

"And as for that Swedish,boy, I know he's got somebody watching over him."

"Who?" asked Miller.

"Why, his own father."

"His father is the enemy," said Miller.

"I don't think so," said Taleswapper. "Do you know how many fathers kill their sons by accident? They're out hunting, and a shot goes wrong. Or a wagon crushes the boy, or he takes a fall. Happens all the time. Maybe those fathers just didn't see what was happening. But this Swedish man is sharp, he sees what's happening, and he watches himself, catches himself in time."

Miller sounded a little more hopeful. "You make it sound like maybe the father ain't all bad."

"If he were all bad, Mr. Miller, that boy would be dead and buried long ago."

"Maybe. Maybe."

Miller thought for a while more. So long, in fact, that Taleswapper dozed a little. He snapped awake with Miller already talking.

"—and it's just getting worse, not better. Harder to fight off those feelings. Not all that long ago, he was standing up in a loft in the—in his bam—and he was pitching down hay. And there below him was his boy, and all it would take is to let fly with the pitchfork, easiest thing in the world, he could say the pitchfork slipped and no one would ever know. Just let it fly, and stick that boy right through. And he was going to do it. Do you understand me? It was so hard to fight off those feelings, harder than ever before, and he just gave up. Just decided to have it done with, to give in. And in that very moment, why, a stranger appeared in the doorway, and shouted, ‘No,' and I set down the pitchfork—that's what he said, ‘I set down the pitchfork, but I was shaking so bad I could hardly walk, knowing that the stranger saw me with murder in my heart, he must think I'm the most terrible man in the world to think of killing my own boy, he can't even guess how hard I've struggled all those years before—‘"

"Maybe that stranger knew something about the powers that can work inside a man's heart," said Taleswapper.

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, I can't be sure, but maybe that stranger also saw how much that father loved the boy. Maybe the stranger was confused for a long time, but finally began to realize that the child was extraordinary, with powerful enemies. And then maybe he came to understand that no matter how many enemies the boy had, his father wasn't one of them. Wasn't an enemy. And he wanted to say something to that father."

"What did he want to say?" Miller brushed his eyes with his sleeve again. "What do you think that stranger might want to say?"

"Maybe he wanted to say, ‘You've done all you can do, and now it's too strong for you. Now you ought to send that boy away. To relatives back east, maybe, or as a prentice in some town.' That might be a hard thing for the father to do, since he loves the boy so much, but he'll do it because he knows that real love is to take the boy out of danger."

"Yes," said Miller.

"For that matter," said Taleswapper, "maybe you ought to do something like that with your own boy, Alvin."

"Maybe," said Miller.

"He's in some danger from the water around here, wouldn't you say? Somebody's protecting him, or something. But maybe if Alvin weren't living here—"

"Then some of the dangers would go away," said Miller.

"Think about it," said Taleswapper.

"It's a terrible thing," said Miller, "to send your boy away to live with strangers."

"It's a worse thing, though, to put him in the ground."

"Yes," said Miller. "That's the worst thing in the world. To put your child in the ground."

They didn't talk any more, and after a while they both slept.

The morning was cold, with a heavy frost, but Miller wouldn't even let Al Junior come up to the rock until the sun burned it away. Instead they all spent the morning preparing the ground from the cliff face to the sledge, so they could roll the stone down the mountain.

By now, Taleswapper was sure that Al Junior used a hidden power to get the millstone away from the cliff face, even if he didn't realize it himself. Taleswapper was curious. He wanted to see just how powerful this power was, so he could understand more about its nature. And since Al Junior didn't realize what he was doing, Taleswapper's experiment had to be subtle, too. "How do you dress your stone?" asked Taleswapper.

Miller shrugged. "Buhr Stone is what I used before. They all come with sickle dress."

"Can you show me?" asked Taleswapper.

Using a corner of the rake, Miller drew a circle in the frost. Then he drew a series of arcs, radiating from the center of the circle out to the edges. Between each pair of arcs he drew a shorter arc, which began at the edge but never came closer than two-thirds of the way toward the center. "Like, that," said Miller.

"Most millstones in Pennsylvania and Suskwahenny are quarter dress," said Taleswapper. "You know that cut?"

"Show me."

So Taleswapper drew another circle. It didn't show up as well, since the frost was burning off now, but it was good enough. He drew straight lines instead of curved ones from the center to the edge, and the shorter lines branched directly from the long ones and ran straight to the edge. "Some millers like this better, because you can keep it sharp longer. Since all the lines are straight, you get a nice even draw when you're tooling the stone."

"I can see that," said Miller. "I don't know, though. I'm used to those curvy lines."

"Well, suit yourself," said Taleswapper. "I've never been a miller, so I don't know. I just tell stories about what I've seen."

"Oh, I don't mind you showing me," said Miller. "Don't mind a bit."

Al Junior stood there, studying both circles.

"I think if we once get this stone home," said Miller "I'll try that quarter dress on it. Looks to me like it might be easier to keep up a clean grind."

Finally the ground was dry, and Al Junior walked to the cliff face. The other boys were all down below, breaking camp or bringing the horses up to the quarry. Only Miller and Taleswapper watched as Al Junior finally carried his hammer to the cliff face. He had a little more cutting to do, to get the circle to its full depth all around.

To Taleswapper's surprise, when Al Junior set the chisel in place and gave a whang with the hammer, a whole section of stone, some six inches long, split away from the cliff face and crumbled to the ground.

"Why, that stone's as soft as coal," said Taleswapper. "What kind of millstone can it make, if it's as weak as that?"

Miller grinned and shook his head.

Al Junior stepped away from the stone. "Oh, Taleswapper, it's hard stone, unless you know just the right place to crack it. Give it a try, you'll see."

He held out the chisel and hammer. Taleswapper took them and approached the rock. Carefully he laid the chisel onto the stone, a slight angle away from perpendicular. Then, after a few trial taps, he laid on a blow with the hammer.

The chisel practically jumped out of his left hand, and the shock of impact was so great that he dropped the hammer. "Sorry," he said, "I've done this before, but I must have lost the skill—"

"0h, it's just the stone," said Al Junior. "It's kind of temperamental. It only likes to give in certain directions."

Taleswapper inspected the place where he had tried to cut. He couldn't find the spot. His mighty blow had left no mark at all.

Al Junior picked up the tools and laid the chisel against the stone. It looked to Taleswapper as though he put it in exactly the same place. But Al acted as though he had placed it quite differently. "See, it's getting just the angle on it. Like this."

He whanged with the hammer, the iron rang out, there was a cracking of stone, and once again crumbled stone pattered on the ground.

"I can see why you have him do all the cutting," Taleswapper said.

"Seems like the best way," said Miller.

In only a few minutes, the stone was fully rounded. Taleswapper said nothing, just watched to see what Al would do.

He set down his tools, walked to the millstone, and embraced it. His right hand curled around the lip of it. His left hand probed back into the cut on the other side. Alvin's cheek pressed against the stone. His eyes were closed. It looked for all the world as though he were listening to the rock.

He began to hum softly. A mindless little tune. He moved his hands. Shifted his position. Listened with the other ear.

"Well," Alvin said, "I can't hardly believe it."

"Believe what?" asked his father.

"Those last few cuts must have set up a real shiver in the rock. The back is already split right off."

"You mean that millstone is standing free?" asked Taleswapper.

"I think we can rock it forward now," said Alvin. "It takes a little rope work, but we'll get it out of there without too much trouble."

The brothers arrived with the ropes and horses. Alvin passed a rope back behind the stone. Even though not a single cut had been made against the back, the rope dropped easily into place. Then another rope, and another, and soon they were all tugging, first left, then right, as they slowly walked the heavy stone out of its bed in the cliff face.

"If I hadn't seen it," murmured Taleswapper.

"But you did," said Miller.

It was only a few inches clear when they changed the ropes, passing four lines through the center hole and hitching them to a team of horses uphill of the stone. "It'll roll on downhill just fine," Miller explained to Taleswapper. "The horses are there as a drag, pulling against it."

"It looks heavy."

"Just don't lie down in front of it," said Miller.

They started it rolling, very gently. Miller took hold of Alvin's shoulder and kept the boy well back from the stone—and uphill of it, too. Taleswapper helped with the horses, so he didn't get a good look at the back surface of the stone until it was down on level ground by the sledge.

It was smooth as a baby's backside. Flat as ice in a basin. Except that it was scored in a quarter dress pattern, straight lines radiating from the lip of the center hole to the edge of the stone.

Alvin came up to stand beside him. "Did I do it right?" he asked.

"Yes," said Taleswapper.

"It was the luckiest thing," said the boy. "I could just feel that stone ready to split right along those lines. It just wanted to split, easy as you please."

Taleswapper reached out and drew his finger gently along the edge of a dress cut. It stung. He brought his finger to his mouth, sucked, and tasted blood.

"Stone holds a nice sharp edge, don't it?" said Measure. He sounded as if this sort of thing happened every day. But Taleswapper could see the awe in his eyes.

"Good cut," said Calm.

"Best one yet," said David.

Then, with horses bracing against a rapid fall, they gently tipped it to lie on the sledge, dress side up.

"Will you do me a favor, Taleswapper?" asked Miller.

"If I can."

"Take Alvin back home with you now. His work's done."

"No, Papa!" Alvin shouted. He ran over to his father. "You can't make me go home now."

"Don't need no ten-year-old boys underfoot while we're manhandling a stone that size," said his father.

"But I've got to watch the stone, to make sure it don't split or chip, Pa!"

The older sons looked at their father, waiting. Taleswapper wondered what they hoped for. They were too old now, surely, to resent their father's particular love for his seventh son. They also must hope to keep the boy safe from harm. Yet it meant much to all of them that the stone arrive safely, unbroken, to begin its service in the mill. There could be no doubt that young Alvin had the power to keep it whole.

"You can ride with us till sundown," Miller finally said. "By then we'll be close enough to home that you and Taleswapper can head back and spend the night in beds."

"Fine with me," said Taleswapper.

Alvin Junior plainly wasn't satisfied, but he didn't answer back.

They got the sledge under way before noon. Two horses in front and two behind, for stopping, were hitched to the stone itself. The stone rested on the wooden raft of the sledge, and the sledge rode atop seven or eight of the small rollers at a time. The sledge moved forward, passing over new rollers waiting in front. As the rollers emerged from the back, one of the boys immediately yanked the roller out from under the ropes hitched to the trailing team, raced to the front, and laid it in place directly behind the lead team.

It meant that each man ran about five miles for every mile the stone traveled.

Taleswapper tried to take his turn, but David, Calm, and Measure wouldn't hear of it. He ended up tending the trailing team, with Alvin perched atop one of the horses. Miller drove the leading team, walking backward half the time to make sure he wasn't going too fast for the boys to keep up.

Hour after hour they went on. Miller offered to let them stop and rest, but they seemed not to tire, and Taleswapper was amazed to see how the rollers held up. Not a one split on a rock or from the sheer weight of the stone. They got scuffed and dented, but that was about all.

And as the sun sank to about two fingers above the horizon, awash in the ruddy clouds of the western sky, Taleswapper recognized the meadow opening up before them. They had made the whole journey in a single afternoon.

"I think I got the strongest brothers in the whole world," Alvin murmured.

I have no doubt of it, Taleswapper said silently. You who can cut a stone from the mountain without hands, because you "find" the right fractures in the rock, it's no surprise that your brothers find in themselves exactly as much strength as you believe they have. Taleswapper tried again, as he had tried so many times before, to puzzle out the nature of the hidden powers. Surely there was some natural law that governed their use—Old Ben had always said so. And yet here was this boy who, by mere belief and desire, could cut stone like butter and give strength to his brothers. There was a theory that the hidden power came from friendship with a particular element, but which was it that could do all that Alvin did? Earth? Air? Fire? Certainly not water, for Taleswapper knew that Miller's stories were all true. Why was it that Alvin Junior could wish for something, and the earth itself would bend to his will, while others could long for things and never cause so much as a breeze to blow?

They needed lanterns inside the millhouse by the time they rolled the stone through the doors. "Might as well lay it in place tonight," said Miller. Taleswapper imagined the fears that ran through Miller's mind. If he left the stone upright, it would surely roll in the morning and crush a particular child as he innocently carried water up to the house. Since the stone had miraculously come down from the mountain in a single day, it would be foolish to leave it anywhere but in its proper place, on the foundation of rammed earth and stone in the millhouse.

They brought a team inside and hitched it to the stone, as they had when they lowered it on the sledge back by the quarry. The team would pull against the weight of the stone as they levered it downward onto the foundation.

At the moment, though, the stone was resting on built-up earth just outside the circle of foundation stones. Measure and Calm were working their lever poles under the outside edge of the stone, ready to pry it up and make it fall into place. The stone rocked a little as they worked. David was holding the horses, since it would be a disaster if they pulled too soon and rocked the stone over the wrong way, to lie on its dress face in the plain dirt.

Taleswapper stood aside, watching as Miller directed his sons with useless calls of "Careful there" and "Steady now." Alvin had been beside him ever since they brought the millstone inside. One of the horses got jumpy. Miller reacted at once. "Calm, go help your brother with the horses!" Miller also took a step that way.

At that moment, Taleswapper realized that Alvin was not beside him, after all. He was carrying a broom, walking briskly toward the millstone. Perhaps he had seen some loose stones lying on the foundation; he had to sweep them away, didn't he? The horses backed up; the lines went slack. Taleswapper realized, just as Alvin got behind the stone, that with ropes so slack there'd be nothing to keep the stone from falling all the way over, if it should fall at just this, moment.

Surely it would not fall, in a reasonable world. But Taleswapper knew by now that it was not a reasonable world at all. Alvin Junior had a powerful, invisible enemy, and it would not miss such a chance as this.

Taleswapper bounded forward. Just as he came level with the stone, he felt a lurching in the earth under his feet, a collapse of the firm dirt. Not much, just a few inches, but it was enough to let the inside lip of the millstone fall that much, which rocked the top of the great wheel more than two feet, and so quickly that the momentum could not be stopped. The millstone would fall all the way down, right into its proper place on the foundation, with Alvin Junior underneath, ground like grain under the stone.

With a shout, Taleswapper caught hold of Alvin's arm and yanked him back, away from the stone. Only then did Alvin see the great stone falling upon him. Taleswapper had enough force in his movement to carry the boy several feet back, but it was not quite enough. The boy's legs still lay in the stone's shadow. It was falling fast now, too fast for Taleswapper to respond, to do anything but watch it crush Alvin's legs. He knew that such an injury was the same as death, except that it would take longer. He had failed.

In that moment, though, as he watched the stone in its murderous fall, he saw a crack appear in the stone and, in less than an instant, it became a clean split right through the stone. The two halves leapt apart from each other, each with such a movement that it would fall beside Alvin's leg, not touching him.

No sooner had Taleswapper seen lantern light through the middle of the stone than Alvin himself cried, "No!"

To anyone else, it would seem the boy was shouting at the fall of the stone, at his impending death. But to Taleswapper, lying on the ground beside the boy, with the light of the lantern dazzling through the split in the millstone, the cry meant something else altogether. Heedless of his own danger, as children usually are, Alvin was crying out against the breaking of the millstone. After all his work, and the labors in bringing the stone home, he could not bear to see it breaking.

And because he could not bear it, it did not happen. The halves of the stone jumped back together like a needle umping at a magnet, and the stone fell in one piece.

The shadow of the stone had exaggerated its footprint on the ground. It did not crush both Alvin's legs. His left leg, in fact, was completely clear of the stone, tucked up under him as it was. The right leg, however, lay so that the rim of the stone overlapped his shin by two inches at the widest point. Since Alvin was still pulling his legs away, the blow from the stone pushed it further in the direction it was already going. It peeled off all the skin and muscle, right down to the bone, but it did not catch the leg directly when it came to rest. The leg might not even have broken, had the broom not been lying crosswise under it. The stone drove Alvin's leg downward against the broom handle, just hard enough to snap both bones of the lower leg clean in half. The sharp edges of the bone broke the skin and came to rest like two sides of a vise, gripping the broom handle. But the leg was not under the millstone, and the bones were broken cleanly, not ground to dust under the rock.

The air was filled with the crash of stone on stone, the great-throated shouts of men surprised by grief, and above all the piercing cry of agony from one boy who was never so young and frail as now.

By the time anyone else could get there, Taleswapper had seen that both Alvin's legs were free of the stone. Alvin tried to sit up and look at his injury. Either the sight or the pain of it was too much for him, and he fainted. Alvin's father reached him then; he had not been nearest, but he had moved faster than Alvin's brothers. Taleswapper tried to reassure him, for with the bones gripping the broom handle, the leg did not look broken. Miller lifted his son, but the leg would not come, and even unconscious the pain wrung a cruel moan from the boy. It was Measure who steeled himself to pull on the leg and free it from the broom handle.

David already held a lantern, and as Miller carried the boy, David ran alongside, lighting the way. Measure and Calm would have followed, but Taleswapper called to them. "The womenfolk are there, and David, and your father," he said. "Someone needs to see to all this."

"You're right," said Calm. "Father won't be eager to come down here soon."

The young men used levers to raise the stone enough that Taleswapper could pull out the broom handle and the ropes that were still tied to the horses. The three of them cleared all the equipment out of the millhouse, then stabled the horses and put away the tools and supplies. Only then did Taleswapper return to the house to find that Alvin Junior was sleeping in Taleswapper's bed.

"I hope you don't mind," said Anne anxiously.

"Of course not," said Taleswapper.

The other girls and Cally were clearing away the supper dishes. In the room that had been Taleswapper's, Faith and Miller, both ashen and tight-lipped, sat beside the bed, where Alvin lay with his leg splinted and bandaged.

David stood near the door. "It was a clean break," he whispered to Taleswapper. "But the cuts in the skin—we fear infection. He lost all the skin off the front of his shin. I don't know if bare bone like that can ever heal."

"Did you put the skin back?" asked Taleswapper.

"Such as was left, we pressed into place, and Mother sewed it there."

"That was well done," said Taleswapper.

Faith lifted her head. "Do you know aught of physicking, then, Taleswapper?"

"Such as a man learns after years trying to do what he can among those who know as little as he."

"How could this happen?" Miller said. "Why now, after so many other times that did him no injury?" He looked up at Taleswapper. "I had come to think the boy had a protector."

"He has."

"Then the protector failed him."

"It did not fail," said Taleswapper. "For a moment, as the stone fell, I saw it split, wide enough that it wouldn't have touched him."

"Like the ridgebeam," whispered Faith.

"I thought I saw it too, Father," said David. "But when it came down whole, I decided I must have seen what I wished for, and not what was."

"There's no split in it now," said Miller.

"No," said Taleswapper. "Because Alvin Junior refused to let it split."

"Are you saying he knit it back together? So it would strike him and wreck his leg?"

"I'm saying he had no thought of his leg," said Taleswapper. "Only of the stone."

"Oh, my boy, my good boy," murmured his mother, gently caressing the arm that extended thoughtlessly toward her. As she moved his fingers, they limply bent as she pushed them, then sprang back.

"Is it possible?" asked David. "That the stone split and was made whole again, as quickly as that?"

"It must be," said Taleswapper, "because it happened."

Faith moved her son's fingers again, but this time they did not spring back. They extended even further, then flexed into a fist, then extended flat again.

"He's awake," said his father.

"I'll fetch some rum for the boy," said David. "To slack the pain. Armor'll have some in his store."

"No," murmured Alvin.

"The boy says no," said Taleswapper.

"What does he know, in pain as he is?"

"He has to keep his wits about him, if he can," said Taleswapper. He knelt by the bed, just to the right of Faith, so he was even nearer to the boy's face. "Alvin, do you hear me?"

Alvin groaned. It must have meant yes.

"Then listen to me. Your leg is very badly hurt. The bones are broken, but they've been set in place—they'll heal well enough. But the skin was torn away, and even though your mother has sewn it back in place, there's a good chance the skin will die and take gangrene, and kill you. Most surgeons would cut off your leg to save your life."

Alvin tossed his head back and forth, trying to shout. It came out as a moan: "No, no, no."

"You're making things worse!" Faith said angrily.

Taleswapper looked at the father for permission to go on.

"Don't torment the boy," said Miller.

"There's a proverb,",said Taleswapper. "The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse, how he shall take his prey."

"What does that mean?" asked Faith.

"It means that I have no business trying to teach him how to use powers that I can't begin to understand. But since he doesn't know how to do it himself, I'll have to try, won't I?"

Miller pondered a moment. "Go ahead, Taleswapper. Better for him to know how bad it is, whether he can heal himself or not."

Taleswapper held the boy's hand gently between his own. "Alvin, you want to keep your leg, don't you? Then you have to think of it the way you thought of the stone. You have to think of the skin of your leg, growing back, attaching to the bone as it should. You have to study it out. You'll have plenty of time for it, lying here. Don't think about the pain, think about the leg as it should be, whole and strong again."

Alvin lay there, squinting his eyes closed against the pain.

"Are you doing that, Alvin? Can you try?"

"No," said Alvin.

"You have to fight against the pain, so you can use your own knack to make things right."

"I never will," said Alvin.

"Why not!" cried Faith.

"The Shining Man," said Alvin. "I promised him."

Taleswapper remembered Alvin's oath to the Shining Man, and his heart sank.

"What's the Shining Man?" asked Miller.

"A—visitation he had, when he was little," said Taleswapper.

"How come we never heard of this afore now?" Miller asked.

"It was the night the ridgebeam split," said Taleswapper. "Alvin promised the Shining Man that he'd never use his power for his own benefit."

"But Alvin," said Faith. "This isn't to make you rich or nothing, this is to save your life."

The boy only winced against the pain and shook his head.

"Will you leave me with him?" said Taleswapper. "Just for a few minutes, so I can talk to him?"

Miller was rushing Faith out the door of the room before Taleswapper even finished his sentence.

"Alvin," said Taleswapper. "You must listen to me, listen carefully. You know I won't lie to you. An oath is a terrible thing, and I'd never counsel a man to break his word, even to save his own life. So I won't tell you to use your power for your own good. Do you hear me?"

Alvin nodded.

"Just think, though. Think of the Unmaker going through the world. Nobody sees him as he does his work, as he tears down and destroys things. Nobody but one solitary boy. Who is that boy, Alvin?"

Alvin's lips formed the word, though no sound came out. Me.

"And that boy has been given a power that he can't even begin to understand. The power to build against the enemy's unbuilding. And more than that, Alvin, the desire to build as well. A boy who answers every glimpse of the Unmaker with a bit of making. Now, tell me, Alvin, those who help the Unmaker, are they the friend or the enemy of mankind?"

Enemy, said Alvin's lips.

"So if you help the Unmaker destroy his most dangerous foe, you're an enemy of mankind, aren't you?"

Anguish wrung sound from the boy. "You're twisting it," he said.

"I'm straightening it," said Taleswapper. "Your oath was never to use your power for your own benefit. But if you die, only the Unmaker benefits, and if you live, if that leg is healed, then that's for the good of all mankind. No, Alvin, it's for the good of the world and all that's in it."

Alvin whimpered, more against the pain in his mind than the pain in his body.

"But your oath was clear, wasn't it? Never to your own benefit. So why not satisfy one oath with another, Alvin? Take an oath now, that you will devote your whole life to building up against the Unmaker. If you keep that oath—and you will, Alvin, you're a boy who keeps his word—if you keep that oath, then saving your own life is truly for the benefit of others, and not for your private good at all."

Taleswapper waited, waited, until at last Alvin nodded slightly.

"Do you take an oath, Alvin Junior, that you will live your life to defeat the Unmaker, to make things whole and good and right?"

"Yes," whispered the boy.

"Then I tell you, by the terms of your own promise, you must heal yourself."

Alvin gripped Taleswapper's arm. "How," he whispered.

"That I don't know, boy," said Taleswapper. "How to use your power, you have to find that out inside yourself. I can only tell you that you must try, or the enemy has his victory, and I'll have to end your tale with your body being lowered into a grave."

To Taleswapper's surprise, Alvin smiled. Then Taleswapper understood the joke. His tale would end with the grave no matter what he did today. "Right enough, boy," said Taleswapper. "But I'd rather have a few more pages about you before I put finis to the Book of Alvin."

"I'll try," whispered Alvin.

If he tried, then surely he would succeed. Alvin's protector had not brought him this far only to let him die. Taleswapper had no doubt that Alvin had the power to heal himself, if he could only figure out the way. His own body was far more complicated than the stone. But if he was to live, he had to learn the pathways of his own flesh, bind the fissures in the bones.

They made a bed for Taleswapper out in the great room. He offered to sleep on the floor beside Alvin's bed, but Miller shook his head and answered, "That's my place."

Taleswapper found it hard to sleep, though. It was the middle of the night when he finally gave up, lit a lantern with a match from the fire, bundled on his coat, and went outside.

The wind was brisk. There was a storm coming, and from the smell in the air, it would be snow. The animals were restless in the big barn. It occurred to Taleswapper that he might not be alone outside tonight. There might be Reds in the shadows, or even wandering among the buildings of the farm, watching him. He shuddered once, then shrugged off the fear. It was too cold a night. Even the most bloodthirsty, White-hating Choc-Taws or Cree-Eks spying from the south were too smart to be outside with such a storm coming.

Soon the snow would fall, the first of the season, but it would be no slight trace. It would snow all day tomorrow, Taleswapper could feel it, for the air behind the storm would be even colder than this, cold enough for the snow to be fluffy and dry, the kind of snow that piled deeper and deeper, hour after hour. If Alvin had not hurried them home with the millstone in a single day, they would have been trying to sledge the stone home in the midst of the snowfall. It would have become slippery. Something even worse might have happened.

Taleswapper found himself in the millhouse, looking at the stone. It was so solid-looking, it was hard to imagine anyone ever moving it. He touched the face of it again, being careful not to cut himself. His fingers brushed over the shallow dress cuts, where flour would collect when the great water wheel turned the shaft and made the grindstone roll around and around atop the millstone, as steadily as the Earth rolled around and around the sun, year after year, turning time into dust as surely as the mill turned grain into flour.

He glanced down, to the place where the earth had given way slightly under the millstone, tipping it and nearly killing the boy. The bottom of the depression glistened in the lantern light. Taleswapper knelt and dipped his finger into a half-inch of water. It must have collected there, weakening the ground, carrying away the soil. Not so that it would ever be visibly moist. Just enough that when great weight was placed on it, it would give way.

Ah, Unmaker, thought Taleswapper, show yourself to me, and I'll build such a building that you'll be trussed up and held captive forever. But try as he might, he could not make his eyes see the trembling air that had shown itself to Alvin Miller's seventh son. Finally Taleswapper took up the lantern and left the millhouse. The first flakes were falling. The wind had almost died. The snow came faster and faster, dancing in the light of his lantern. By the time he reached the house, the ground was grey with snow, the forest invisible in the distance. He went inside the house, lay down on the floor without removing even his boots, and fell asleep.