They found the Finders asleep in a clearing with a campfire dying down between them. The white-haired Finder was curled up on his bedroll. The black-haired Finder must've been left on watch; he was snoring away leaning against a tree. Their horses were asleep not far off. Alvin stopped them before they got close enough to disturb the animals.
Arthur Stuart was wide awake, sitting there staring into the fire.
Alvin sat there a minute, trying to figure how to do this. He wasn't sure how smart the Finders might be. Could they find scraps of dried skin, fallen-off hairs, something like that, and use it for a new cachet? Just in case, it wouldn't do no good to change Arthur right where he was; nor would it be too smart to head on out into the clearing where they might leave bits of their own selves, as proof of who stole Arthur away.
So from a distance, Alvin got inside the iron of the manacles and made cracks in all four parts, so they fell away to the ground at once, with a clank. The noise bothered the horses, who nickered a bit, but the Finders were still sleeping like the dead. Arthur, though, it didn't take him a second to figure out what was happening. He jumped to his feet all at once and started looking around for Alvin at the clearing's edge.
Alvin whistled, trying to match the song of a redbird. It was a pretty bad imitation, as birdcalls go, but Arthur heard it and knew that it was Alvin calling him. Without a moment's waiting or worrying, Arthur plunged right into the woods and not, five minutes later, with a few more bad birdcalls to guide him, he was face to face with Alvin.
Of course Arthur Stuart made as if to give Alvin a big old hug, but Alvin held up a hand. “Don't touch anybody or anything,” he whispered, “I've got to make a change in you, Arthur Stuart, so the Finders can't catch you again.”
“I don't mind,” said Arthur.
“I don't dare have a single scrap of the old way you used to be. You got hairs and skin and such all over in your clothes. So strip them off.”
Arthur Stuart didn't hesitate. In a few moments his clothes were in a pile at his feet.
“Excuse me for not knowing a bit about this,” said Po, “but if you leave those clothes a-lying there, them Finders'll know he come this way, and that points north to them sure as if we painted a big white arrow on the ground.”
“Reckon you're right,” said Alvin.
“So have Arthur Stuart bring them along and float them down the river,” said Horace.
“Just make sure you don't touch Arthur or nothing,” said Alvin. “Arthur, you just pick up your clothes and follow along slow and careful. If you get lost, give me a redbird whistle and I'll whistle back till you find us.”
“I knew you was coming, Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart. “You too, Pa.”
“So did them Finders,” said Horace, “and much as I wish we could arrange it, they ain't going to sleep forever.”
“Wait a minute anyway,” said Alvin. He sent his bug back into the manacles and drew them back together, fit them tight, joined the iron again as if it had been cast that way. Now they lay on the ground unbroken, fastened tight, giving no sign of how the boy got free.
“I don't suppose you're maybe breaking their legs or something, Alvin,” said Horace.
“Can he do that from here?” asked Po.
“I'm doing no such thing,” said Alvin. “What we want is for the Finders to give up searching for a boy who as far as they can tell doesn't exist no more.”
“Well that makes sense, but I still like thinking of them Finders with their legs broke,” said Horace.
Alvin grinned and plunged off into the forest, deliberately making enough noise and moving slow enough that the others could follow him in the near-darkness; if he wanted to, he could've moved like a Red man through the woods, making not a sound, leaving no whiff of a trail that anyone could follow.
They got to the river and stopped. Alvin didn't want Arthur getting into the boat in his present skin, leaving traces of himself all over. So if he was going to change him, he had to do it here.
“Toss them clothes, boy,” said Horace. “Far as you can.”
Arthur took a step or two into the water. It made Alvin scared, for with his inward eye he saw it as if Arthur, made of light and earth and air, suddenly got part of himself disappeared into the blackness of the water. Still, the water hadn't harmed them none on the trip here, and Alvin saw as how it might even be useful.
Arthur Stuart pitched his wad of clothes out into the river. The current wasn't all that strong; they watched the clothes turn lazily and float downstream, gradually drifting apart. Arthur stood there, up to his butt in water, watching the clothes. No, not watching them– he didn't turn a speck when they drifted far to the left. He was just looking at the north shore, the free side of the river.
“I been here afore,” he said. “I seen this boat.”
“Might be,” said Horace. “Though you was a mite young to remember it. Po and I, we helped your mama into this very boat. My daughter Peggy held you when we got to shore.”
“My sister Peggy,” said Arthur. He turned around and looked at Horace, like as if it was really a question.
“I reckon so,” said Horace, and that was the answer.
“Just stand there, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin. “When I change you, I got to change you all over, inside and out. Better to do that in the water, where all the dead skin with your old self marked in it can wash away.”
“You going to make me White?” asked Arthur Stuart.
“Can you do that?” asked Po Doggly.
"I don't know what all is going to change," said Alvin. "I hope I don't make you White, though. That'd be like stealing away from you the part of you your mama gave you.
“They don't make White boys be slaves,” said Arthur Stuart.
“They ain't going to make this partickler mixup boy a slave anyhow,” said Alvin. “Not if I can help it. Now just stand there, stand right still, and let me figure this out.”
They all stood there, the men and the boy, while Alvin studied inside Arthur Stuart, finding that tiny signature that marked every living bit of him.
Alvin knew he couldn't just go changing it willy-nilly, since he didn't rightly understand what all that signature was for. He just knew that it was somehow part of what made Arthur himself, and you don't just change that. Maybe changing the wrong thing might strike him blind, or make his blood turn to rainwater or something. How could Alvin know?
It was seeing the string still connecting them, heart to heart, that gave Alvin the idea– that and remembering what the Redbird said, using Arthur Stuart's own lips to say it. “The Maker is the one who is part of what he Makes.” Alvin stripped off his own shirt and then stepped out into the water and knelt down in it, so be was near eye-to-eye with Arthur Stuart, cool water swirling gently around his waist. Then he put out his hands and pulled Arthur Stuart to him and held him there, breast to breast, hands on shoulders.
“I thought we wasn't supposed to touch the boy,” said Po.
“Hush up you blame fool,” said Horace Guester. “Alvin knows what he's doing.”
I wish that was true, thought Alvin. But at least he had an idea what to do, and that was better than nothing. Now that their living skin was pressed together, Alvin could look and compare Arthur's secret signature with his own. Most of it was the same, exactly the same, and the way Alvin figured, that's the part that makes us both human instead of cows or frogs or pigs or chickens. That's the part I don't dare change, not a bit of it.
The rest– I can change that. But not any old how. What good to save him if I turn him bright yellow or make him stupid or something?
So Alvin did the only thing as made sense to him. He changed bits of Arthur's signature to be just like Alvin's own. Not all that was different– not all that much, in fact. Just a little– But even a little meant that Arthur Stuart had stopped being completely himself and started being partly Alvin. It seemed to Alvin that what he was doing was terrible and wonderful at the same time.
How much? H
ow much did he have to change till the Finders wouldn't know the boy? Surely not all. Surely just this much, just these changes. There was no way to know. All that Alvin could do was guess, and so he took his guess and that was it. That was only the beginning, of course. Now he started in changing all the other signatures to match the new one, each living bit of Arthur, one by one, as fast as he could. Dozens of them, hundreds of them; he found each new signature and changed it to fit the new pattern.
Hundreds of them, and hundreds more, and still he had changed no more than a tiny patch of skin on Arthur's chest. How could he hope to change the boy's whole body, going so slow?
“It hurts,” whispered Arthur.
Alvin drew away from him. “I ain't doing nothing to hurt you, Arthur Stuart.”
Arthur looked down at his chest. "Right here, " he said, touching the spot where Alvin had been working.
Alvin looked in the moonlight and saw that indeed that spot seemed to be swollen, changed, darkened. He looked again, only not with his eyes, and saw that the rest of Arthur's body was attacking the part that Alvin changed, killing it bit by bit, fast as it could.
Of course. What did he expect? The signature was the way the body recognized itself– that's why every living bit of a body had to have that signature in it. If it wasn't there, the body knew it had to be a disease or something and killed it. Wasn't it bad enough that changing Arthur was taking so long? Now Alvin knew that it wouldn't do no good to change him at all– the more he changed him, the sicker he'd get and the more Arthur Stuart's own body would try to kill itself until the boy either died or shed the new changed part.
It was just like Taleswapper's old story, about trying to build a wall so big that by the time you got halfway through building it, the oldest parts of it had already crumbled to dust. How could you build such a wall if it was getting broke down faster than you could build it up?
“I can't,” said Alvin. “I'm trying to do what can't be done.”
"Well if you can't do it," said Po Doggly, "I hope you can fly, cause that's the only way you can get that boy to Canada before the Finders catch up with you. "
“I can't,” said Alvin.
"You're just tired, " said Horace. "We'll all just hush up soyou can think.
“Won't do any good,” said Alvin.
“My mama could fly,” said Arthur Stuart.
Alvin sighed in impatience at this same old story coming back again.
“It's true, you know,” said Horace. “Little Peggy told me. That little black slave girl, she diddled with some ash and blackbird feathers and such, and flew straight up here. That's what killed her. I couldn't believe it the first time I realized the boy remembers, and we always kept our mouths shut about it hoping he'd forget. But I got to tell you, Alvin, it'd be a pure shame if that girl died just so you could give up on us at this same spot in the river seven years later.”
Alvin closed his eyes. “Just shut your mouth and let me think,” he said.
“I said that's what we'd do,” said Horace.
“So do it,” said Po Doggly.
Alvin hardly even heard them. He was looking back inside Arthur's body, inside that patch that Alvin changed. The new signature wasn't bad in itself– only where it bordered on the skin with the old signature, that was the only place the new skin was getting sick and dying. Arthur'd be just fine if Alvin could somehow change him all at once, instead of bit by bit.
The way that the string came all at once, when Alvin thought of it, pictured where it started and where it ended and what it was. All the atoms of it moving into place at the same time. Like the way Po Doggly and Horace Guester fit together all at once, each doing his own task yet taking into account all that the other man did.
But the string was clean and simple. This was hard– like he told Miss Larner, turning water into wine instead of iron into gold.
No, can't think of it that way. What I did to make the string was teach all the atoms what and where to be, because each one of them was alive and each one could obey me. But inside Arthur's body I ain't dealing with atoms, I'm dealing with these living bits, and each one of them is alive. Maybe it's even the signature itself that makes them alive, maybe I can teach them all what they ought to be– instead of moving each part of them, one at a time, I can just say, Be like this, and they'll do it.
He no sooner thought of it than he tried it. In his mind he thought of speaking to all the signatures in Arthur's skin, all over his chest, all at once; he showed them the pattern he held in his mind, a pattern so complex he couldn't even understand it himself, except that he knew it was the same pattern as the signatures in this patch of skin he had changed bit by bit. And as soon as he showed them, as soon as he commanded them– Be like this! This is the way!– they changed. It all changed, all the skin on Arthur Stuart's chest, all at once.
Arthur gasped, then howled with pain. What had been a soreness in a patch of skin was now spread across his whole chest.
“Trust me,” Alvin said. “I'm going to change you sure now, and the pain will stop. But I'm doing it under the water, where an the old skin gets carried off at once. Plug your nose! Hold your breath!”
Arthur Stuart was panting from the pain, but he did what Alvin said. He pinched his nose with his right hand, then took a breath and closed his mouth. At once Alvin gripped Arthur's wrist in his left hand and put his right hand behind the boy and plunged him under the water. In that instant Alvin held Arthur's body whole in his mind, seeing all the signatures, not one by one, but all of thenr, he showed them the pattern, the new signature, and this time thought the words so strong his lips spoke them. “This is the way! Be like this!”
He couldn't feel it with his hands– Arthur's body didn't change a whit that he could sense with his natural senses. But Alvin could still see the change, all at once, all in an instant, every signature in the boy's body, in the organs, in the muscles, in the blood, in the brain; even his hair changed, every part of him that was connected to himself. And what wasn't connected, what didn't change, that was washed away and gone.
Alvin plunged himself under the water, to wash off any part of Arthur's skin or hair that might have clung to him. Then he rose up and lifted Arthur Stuart out of the water, all in one motion. The boy came up shedding waterdrops like a spray of cold pearls in the moonlight. He stood there gasping for breath and shaking from the cold.
“Tell me it don't hurt no more,” said Alvin.
“Any more,” said Arthur, correcting him just like Miss Larner always did. “I feel fine. Except cold.”
Alvin scooped him up out of the water and carried him back to the bank. “Wrap him in my shirt and let's get out of here.”
So they did. Not a one of them noticed that when Arthur imitated Miss Larner, he didn't use Miss Larner's voice.
* * *
Peggy didn't notice either, not right away. She was too busy looking inside Arthur Stuart's heartfire. How it changed when Alvin transformed him! So subtle a change it was that Peggy couldn't even tell what it was Alvin was changing– yet in the moment that Arthur Stuart emerged from the water, not a single path from his past remained– not a single path leading southward into slavery. And all the new paths, the new futures that the transformation had brought to him– they led to such amazing possibilities.
During all the time it took for Horace, Po, and Alvin to bring Arthur Stuart back across the Hio and through the woods to the smithy, Peggy did nothing more than explore in Arthur Stuart's heartfire, studying possibilities that had never before existed in the world. There was a new Maker abroad in the land; Arthur was the first soul touched by him, and everything was different. Moreover, most of Arthur's futures were inextricably tied with Alvin. Peggy saw possibilities of incredible journeys– on one path a trip to Europe where Arthur Stuart would be at Alvin's side as the new Holy Roman Emperor Napoleon bowed to him; on another path a voyage into a strange island nation far to the south where Red men lived their whole lives on mats of floating seaweed; o
n another path a triumphant crossing into westward lands where the Reds hailed Alvin as the great unifier of all the races, and opened up their last refuge to him, so perfect was their trust. And always by his side was Arthur Stuart, the mixup boy– but now trusted, now himself gifted with some of the Maker's own power.
Most of the paths began with them bringing Arthur Stuart to her springhouse, so she was not surprised when they knocked at her door.
“Miss Larner,” called Alvin softly.
She was distracted; reality was not half so interesting as the futures revealed now in Arthur Stuart's heartfire. She opened the door. There they stood, Arthur still wrapped in Alvin's shirt.
“We brought him back,” said Horace.
“I can see that,” said Peggy. She was glad of it, but that gladness didn't show up in her voice. Instead she sounded busy, interrupted, annoyed. As she was. Get on with it, she wanted to say. I've seen this conversation as Arthur overheard it, so get on with it, get it over with, and let me get back to exploring what this boy will be. But of course she could say none of this– not if she hoped to remain disguised as Miss Larner.
“They won't find him,” said Alvin, “not as long as they don't actually see him with their eyes. Something– their cachet don't work no more.”
“Doesn't work anymore,” said Peggy.
“Right,” said Alvin. “What we come for– came for– can we leave him with you? Your house, here, Ma'am, I've got it hexed up so tight they won't even think to come inside, long as you keep the door locked.”
“Don't you have more clothes for him than this? He's been wet– do you want him to take a chill?”
“It's a warm night,” said Horace, “and we don't want to be fetching clothes from the house. Not till the Finders come back and give up and go away again.”
“Very well,” said Peggy.
“We'd best be about our business,” said Po Doggly. “I got to get back to Dr. Physicker's.”
“And since I told Old Peg that I'd be in town, I'd better be there,” said Horace.
Alvin spoke straight to Peggy. “I'll be in the smithy, Miss Larner. If something goes wrong, you give a shout, and I'll be up the hill in ten seconds.”
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