That world of eternal dusk was slipping away now. There still were reaches of primeval wood, where Red men wandered more quietly than deer and Taleswapper felt himself to be in the cathedral of the most well-worshipped God. But such places were so rare that in this last year of wandering, Taleswapper had not journeyed a single day in which he could climb a tree and see no interruption in the forest roof. All the country between the Hio and the Wobbish was being settled, sparsely but evenly, and even now, from his perch atop a willow at the crest of a rise, Taleswapper could see three dozen cookfires sending pillars of smoke straight up into the cold autumn air. And in every direction, great swatches of forest had been cleared, the land plowed, crops planted, tended, harvested, so that where once great trees had shielded the earth from the sky's eye, now the stubbled soil was naked, waiting for winter to cover its shame.
Taleswapper remembered his vision of drunken Noah. He had engraved it for an edition of Genesis for Scottish rite Sunday schools. Noah, nude, his mouth lolling open, a cup half-spilled still dangling from his curled fingers; Ham, not far off, laughing derisively; and Japheth and Shem, walking backward to draw a robe over their father, so they would not see what their father had exposed in his stupefaction. With an electric excitement, Taleswapper realized that this, now, is what that prophetic moment foreshadowed. That he, Taleswapper, perched atop a tree, was seeing the naked land in its stupor, awaiting the modest covering of winter. It was prophecy fulfilled, a thing which one hoped for but could not expect in one's own life.
Or, then again, the story of drunken Noah might not be a figure of this moment at all. Why not the other way around? Why not cleared land as a figure for drunken Noah?
Taleswapper was in a foul mood by the time he reached the ground. He thought and thought, trying to open his mind to see visions, to be a good prophet. Yet every time he thought he had got something firm and tight, it shifted, it changed. He thought one thought too many, and the whole fabric came undone, and he was left as uncertain as ever before.
At the base of the tree he opened his pack. From it he took the Book of Tales that he had first made for Old Ben back in '85. Carefully he unbuckled the sealed portion, then closed his eyes and riffled the pages. He opened his eyes and found his fingers resting among the Proverbs of Hell. Of course, at a time like this. His finger touched two proverbs, both written by his own hand. One meant nothing, but the other seemed appropriate. “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
Yet the more he tried to study out the meaning of that proverb at this moment, the less connection he saw, except that it included mention of trees. So he tried the first proverb after all. “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
Ah. This was speaking to him, after all. This was the voice of prophecy, recorded when he lived in Philadelphia, before he ever began his journey, on a night when the Book of Proverbs came alive for him and he saw as if in letters of flame the words that should have been included. That night he had stayed up until dawn's light killed the fires of the page. When Old Ben came thumping down the stairs to grouch his way in for breakfast, he stopped and sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he said. “You haven't been trying to burn down the house, have you, Bill?”
“No sir,” answered Taleswapper. “But I saw a vision of what God meant the Book of Proverbs to say, and wrote them down.”
“You are obsessed with visions,” said Old Ben. “The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind. Write that down as a proverb, if you want. It's far too agnostic for me to use it in Poor Richard's Almanac.”
“Look,” said Taleswapper.
Old Ben looked, and saw the last flames as they died. “Well, now, if that's not the most remarkable trick to do with letters. And you told me you weren't a wizard.”
“I'm not. God gave this to me.”
“God or the devil? When you're surrounded by light, Bill, how do you know whether it's the glory of God or the flames of hell?”
“I don't know,” said Taleswapper, growing confused. Being young then, not yet thirty, he was easily confused in the presence of the great man.
“Or perhaps you, wanting truth so badly, gave it to yourself.” Old Ben tilted his head to examine the pages of Proverbs through the lower lenses of his bifocals. “The letters have been burned right in. Funny, isn't it, that I'm called a wizard, who am not, and you, who are, refuse to admit it.”
“I'm a prophet. Or– want to be.”
“If one of your prophecies comes true, Bill Blake, then I'll believe it, but not until.”
In the years since then, Taleswapper had searched for the fulfilment of even one prophecy. Yet whenever he thought he had found such a fulfilment, he could hear Old Ben's voice in the back of his mind, providing an alternate explanation, scoffing at him for thinking that any connection between prophecy and reality could be true.
“Never true,” Old Ben would say. “Useful_now, there's something. Your mind might make a connection that is useful. But true is another matter. True implies that you have found a connection that exists independent of your apprehension of it, that would exist whether you noticed it or not. And I must say that I have never seen such a connection in my life. There are times when I suspect that there are no such connections, that all links, bonds, ties, and similarities are creatures of thought and have no substance.”
“Then why doesn't the ground dissolve beneath our feet?” asked Taleswapper.
“Because we have managed to persuade it not to let our bodies by. Perhaps it was Sir Isaac Newton. He was such a persuasive fellow. Even if human beings doubt him, the ground does not, and so it endures.” Old Ben laughed. It was all a lark to him. He never could bring himself to believe even his own skepticism.
Now, sitting at the base of the tree, his eyes closed, Taleswapper connected again: The tale of Noah with Old Ben. Old Ben was Ham, who saw the naked truth, limp and shameful, and laughed at it, while all the loyal sons of church and university walked backward to cover it up again, so the silly truth would not be seen. Thus the world continued to think of the truth as firm and proud, never having seen it in a slack moment.
That is a true connection, thought Taleswapper. That is the meaning of the story. That is the fulfilment of the prophecy. The truth when we see it is ridiculous, and if we wish to worship it, we must never allow ourselves to see it.
In that moment of discovery, Taleswapper sprang to his feet. He must find someone at once, to tell of this great discovery while he still believed it. As his own proverb said “The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.” If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.
Which way? The forest road, not three rods off, led toward a large white church with an oak-high steeple– he had seen it, not a mile away, while up the tree. It was the largest building Taleswapper had seen since he last visited in Philadelphia. Such a large building for people to gather in implied that folks in this part of the land felt they had plenty of room for newcomers. A good sign for an itinerant teller of tales, since he lived by the trust of strangers, who might take him in and feed him when he brought nothing with him to pay with, except his book, his memory, two strong arms, and sturdy legs that had carried him ten thousand miles and were good for at least five thousand more.
The road was rutted with wagon tracks, which meant it was often used, and in the low places it was firmed up with rails, making a good strong corduroy so that wagons wouldn't mire in rain-soaked soil. So this was on its way to being a town, was it? The large church might not mean openness at all– it might speak more of ambition. That's the danger of judging anything, thought Taleswapper: There are a hundred possible causes for every effect, and a hundred possible effects from every cause. He thought of writing down that thought, but decided against it. It had no traces on it save the prints of his own soul– neither the marks of heaven nor of hell. By this he knew that it hadn
't been given to him. He had forced the thought himself. So it couldn't be prophecy, and couldn't be true.
The road ended in a commons not far from a river. Taleswapper knew that from the smell of rushing water– he had a good nose. Around the commons were scattered several buildings, but the largest of all was a whitewashed clapboard two-story building with a small sign that said “Weaver's.”
Now when a house has a sign on it, Taleswapper knew, that generally means the owners want people to recognize the place though they've never been shown the way, which is the same as to say that the house is open to strangers. So Taleswapper went right up and knocked.
“Minute!” came a shout from inside. Taleswapper waited on the porch. Toward one end were several hanging baskets, with the long leaves of various herbs dangling. Taleswapper recognized many of them as being useful in various arts, such as healing, finding, sealing, and reminding. He also recognized that the baskets were arranged so that, seen from a spot near the base of the door, they would form a perfect hex. In fact, this was so pronounced an effect that Taleswapper squatted and finally lay prone on the porch to see it property. The colors daubed on the baskets at exactly the correct points proved that it was no accident. It was an exquisite hex of protection, oriented toward the doorway.
Taleswapper tried to think of why someone would put up such a powerful hex, and yet seek to conceal it. Why, Taleswapper was probably the only person around likely to feel the whiff of power from something as passive as a hex, and so be drawn to notice it. He was still lying there on the floor, puzzling about it, when the door opened and a man said, “Are you so tired, then, stranger?”
Taleswapper leapt to his feet. “Admiring your arrangement of herbs. Quite an aerial garden, sir.”
“My wife's,” said the man. “She fusses over them all the time. Has to have them just so.”
Was the man a liar? No, Taleswapper decided. He wasn't trying to hide the fact that the baskets made a hex and the trailing leaves intertwined to bind them together. He simply didn't know. Someone– his wife, probably, if it was her garden– had set up a protection on his house, and the husband didn't have a clue.
“They look just right to me,” said Taleswapper.
“I wondered how someone could arrive here, and me not hear the wagon nor the horse. But from the looks of you, I'd guess you came afoot.”
“That I did, sir,” said Taleswapper.
“And your pack doesn't look full enough to hold many articles to trade.”
“I don't trade in things, sir,” said Taleswappe
"What, then? What but things can be traded?
“Work, for one thing,” said Taleswapper. “I work for food and shelter.”
“You're an old man, to be a vagrant.”
“I was born in fifty-seven, so I still have a good seventeen years until I've used up my three-score and ten. Besides, I have a few knacks.”
At once the man seemed to shrink away. It wasn't in his body. It was his eyes that got more distant, as he said, “My wife and I do our own work here, seeing how our sons are right small yet. We've no need of help.”
There was a woman behind him now, a girl still young enough that her face hadn't grown hard and weathered, though she was solemn. She held a baby in her arms. She spoke to her husband. “We have enough to spare another place for dinner tonight, Armor–”
At that the husband's face went firm and set. “My wife is more generous than I am, stranger. I'll tell you straight out. You spoke of having a few knacks, and in my experience that means you make some claim to hidden powers. I'll have no such workings in a Christian house.”
Taleswapper looked hard at him, and then looked a bit softer at the wife. So that was the way of it here: she working such hexes and spells as she could hide from her husband, and he flat rejecting any sign of it. If her husband ever realized the truth, Taleswapper wondered what would happen to the wife. The man– Armor? –seemed not to be the murderous kind, but then, there was no telling what violence would flow in a man's veins when the flood of rage came undammed.
“I understand your caution, sir,” said Taleswapper.
“I know you have protections on you,” said Armor. “A lone man, afoot in the wild for all this way? The fact that your hair is still on your head says that you must have warded off the Reds.”
Taleswapper grinned and swept his cap off his head, letting his bald crown show. “Is it a true warding, to blind them with the reflected glory of the sun?” he asked. “They'd get no bounty for my scalp.”
“Truth to tell,” said Armor, “the Reds in these parts are more peaceable than most. The one-eyed Prophet has built him a city on the other side of the Wobbish, where he teaches Reds not to drink likker.”
“That's good advice for any man,” said Taleswapper.
And he thought: A Red man who calls himself a prophet. “Before I leave this place I'll have to meet that man and have words with him.”
“He won't talk to you,” said Armor. “Not unless you can change the color of your skin. He hasn't spoke to a White man since he had his first vision a few years back.”
“Will he kill me if I try?”
“Not likely. He teaches his people not to kill White men.”
“That's also good advice,” said Taleswapper.
“Good for White men, but it may not have the best result for Reds. There's folks like so-called Governor Harrison down in Carthage City who mean naught but harm for all Reds, peaceable or not.” The truculence had not left Armor's face, but he was talking anyway, and from his heart, too. Taleswapper put a great deal of trust in the sort of man who spoke his mind to all men, even strangers, even enemies. “Anyway,” Armor went on, “not all Reds are believers in the Prophet's peaceable words. Them as follow Ta-Kumsaw are stirring up trouble down by the Hio, and a lot of folks are moving north to the upper Wobbish country. So you won't lack for houses willing to take a beggar in– you can thank the Reds for that, too.”
“I'm no beggar, sir,” said Taleswapper. “As I told you, I'm willing to work.”
“With knacks and hidden shiftiness, no doubt.”
The man's hostility was the plain opposite of his wife's gentle welcoming air. “What is your knack, sir?” asked the wife. “From your speech you're an educated man. You'd not be a teacher, would you?”
“My knack is spoken with my name,” he said. “Taleswapper. I have a knack for stories.”
“For making them up? We call that lying, hereabouts.” The more the wife tried to befriend Taleswapper, the colder her husband became.
“I have a knack for remembering stories. But I tell only those that I believe are true, sir. And I'm a hard man to convince. If you tell me your stories, I'll tell you mine, and we'll both be richer for the trade, since neither one of us loses what we started with.”
“I've got no stories,” said Armor, even though he had already told a tale of the Prophet and another of Ta-Kumsaw.
“That's sad news, and if it's so, then I've come to the wrong house indeed.” Taleswapper could see that this truly wasn't the house for him. Even if Armor relented and let him in, he would be surrounded by suspicion, and Taleswapper couldn't live where people looked sharp at him all the time. “Good day to you.”
But Armor wasn't letting him go so easily. He took Taleswapper's words as a challenge. “Why should it be sad? I live a quiet, ordinary life.”
“No man's life is ordinary to himself,” said Taleswapper, “and if he says it is, then that's a story of the kind that I never tell.”
“You calling me a liar?” demanded Armor.
“I'm asking if you know a place where my knack might be welcome.”
Taleswapper saw, though Armor didn't, how the wife did a calming with the fingers of her right hand, and held her husband's wrist with her left. It was smoothly done, and the husband must have become quite attuned to it, because he visibly relaxed as she stepped a bit forward to reply. “Friend,” she said, “if you take the track behind that hill yo
nder, and follow it to the end, over two brooks, both with bridges, you'll reach the house of Alvin Miller, and I know he'll take you in.”
“Ha,” said Armor.
“Thank you,” said Taleswapper. “But how can you know such a thing?”
“They'll take you in for as long as you want to stay, and never turn you away, as long as you show willingness to help out.”
“Willing I always am, milady,” said Taleswapper.
“Always willing?” said Armor. “Nobody's always willing. I thought you always spoke true.”
“I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.”
“Then how do you call me 'sir,' when I'm no knight, and call her 'milady,' when she's as common as myself?”
“Why, I don't believe in the King's knightings, that's why. He calls a man a knight because he owes him a favor, whether he's a true knight or not. And all his mistresses are called 'ladies' for what they do between the royal sheets. That's how the words are used among the Cavaliers– lies half the time. But your wife, sir, acted like a true lady, gracious and hospitable. And you, sir, like a true knight, protecting your household against the dangers you most fear.”
Armor laughed aloud. “You talk so sweet I bet you have to suck on salt for half an hour to get the taste of sugar out of your mouth.”
“It's my knack,” said Taleswapper. “But I have other ways to talk, and not sweetly, when the time is right. Good afternoon to you, and your wife, and your children, and your Christian house.”
Taleswapper walked out onto the grass of the cornmons. The cows paid him no mind, because he did have a warding, though not of the sort that Armor would ever see. Taleswapper sat in the sunlight for a little while, to let his brain get warm and see if it could come up with a thought. But it didn't work. Almost never had a thought worth having, after noon. As the proverb said, “Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.” Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.
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