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 he
r. 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.
Chapter Twelve – Book
They kept a three-log fire, night and day, so the stones of the wall seemed to glow with heat, and the air in his room was dry. Alvin lay unmoving on his bed, his right leg heavy with splints and bandages, pressing into the bed like an anchor, the rest of his body afloat, adrift, pitching and rolling and yawing. He was dizzy, and a little sick.
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