The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI

by Orson Scott Card

  But she pretended to believe her mother’s stories because it made her mother happy to tell them. And Marie was actually relieved, because she had always been afraid that someday Napoleon would fall from power or die, and the Portuguese royal family would be restored to the throne and they’d come looking for them and find them and it would be fine for Mother, she could go back to being what she was raised to be, but Marie wasn’t good at curtseying and her French was not elegant and fine and she was dirty and always covered in skeeter bites and they would despise her and mock her in the royal court, just like they did here on the streets of Barcy. Only it would be worse, because it would be fine ladies and gentlemen doing it. So she hated the idea of being royalty. It was better just to be the daughter of a cheap Portuguese whore in Nueva Barcelona.

  But now, far from being the most despised people in Barcy, they were actually important. Because Alvin and Arthur Stuart and La Tia treated them with respect, because they were the ones who went to the doors of the houses, everyone looked up to them. They got to wear fine clothes and act like royalty, and even though it didn’t really fool people because the clothes weren’t fine enough, it was still fun to pretend that Mother’s story had been a little bit true after all.

  The third day, though, as they approached the house La Tia said, “This house is not good. Pass it by.” And they would have done it, but then three men came out on the porch with muskets and aimed them and demanded that they surrender.

  So Arthur Stuart—such a clever boy, bless him—made the ends of all three of their muskets go soft and droop, so they couldn’t shoot anymore. The men threw them down and drew swords and began to run at them, and Arthur Stuart made the swords soft too, like willow wands, and La Tia laughed and laughed.

  But there was no pretending this time. The people of this house, of the whole neighborhood, had heard of the huge army of runaway slaves who captured plantations and raped the women and killed the men and let the slaves burn everything to the ground. Of course it wasn’t true, not a bit of it—except for the part about how two French women would come to the door and get themselves invited inside, and while they were in there the two slaves that traveled with them, a mammy slave and a young buck, would go provoke a rebellion among the slaves of the plantation and then it was all murder and rape and burning.

  There’d be no more deception at the door. Every house would be more like a military campaign from then on.

  So that third night, with all the white men tied up in the barn and all the white women locked in the upstairs of the house and not a slave to be found because they had all been sent away, La Tia and Arthur Stuart and Mother and Marie met with the council of colonels to decide what to do.

  “If we could hear the greensong,” said Arthur Stuart, “we could travel by night and not get hungry—like we did crossing Pontchartrain.”

  “I don’t remember no greensong,” said La Tia.

  “Yes you do,” said Arthur Stuart. “Only you didn’t know that’s what you were hearing.”

  “What be in this song?” said La Tia. “What make it green?”

  “It’s the song of the life around you. Not the human life, that’s just noise, most of the time. Not machines, either. But the music of the trees and the wind and the heat of the sun, the music of fish and birds and bugs and bees. All the life of the world around you, and you let yourself be part of the song. I can’t do it alone, but when I’m with Alvin, he can catch me up in the song and then I hear it and it feels like my body is running itself, you know what I mean? I can just run and run and at the end I feel like I just woke up from a good long nap. And I’m not hungry, not while I’m running. Not thirsty, either. I’m just part of the world, turning around from night to day, wind blowing over me, plants growing up out of me, animals moving through and over me.”

  It was lovely to hear him talk about it, his face so lighted up like it got. This young half-black man, he loved his friend, his brother-in-law Alvin, even more than Marie did. Oh, to hold Alvin’s hand and run through the trees and hear that greensong and see the bushes and branches bend out of the way and the ground become smooth and soft under her feet….

  But La Tia, she didn’t get dreamy hearing it. She was making a list. “Fish, birds, trees,” she said when Arthur Stuart was done. “You don’t get hungry, you don’t get thirsty. Wind. And bugs, yes? Heat of the sun. What else? Anything?”

  “You think you can make a charm that does the same thing?”

  “I give it a try,” said La Tia. “Best I can do.” She grinned wickedly. “This my ‘knack,’ boy.”

  She immediately sent her friend Michele and a half dozen others who had obviously run her errands before, looking for the things she needed. Feather of a bird, fin of a fish—that was the hardest one—a living beetle, leaves of a tree. A pinch of dirt, a drop of water, ash from a fire, and when it was all in a little sachet she would blow into it and then seal it closed with the hair of a long-haired woman, who happened to be Marie herself.

  By morning she had made a sachet for Arthur Stuart and one for herself, and sachets for each of the colonels. “Now we see if we hear this greensong as we walk,” she said.

  “What about me?” asked Marie. “And my mother?”

  “You hold my hand,” said La Tia. “Your mama, she hold Arthur hand. I do it otherway, but you get thinking about love, you.”

  Arthur looked at her and raised his eyebrows as if the idea were ridiculous. Ignorant boy.

  She held La Tia’s hand and Arthur held Mother’s hand and they started walking and…nothing happened. It was nothing like what she had felt crossing the bridge.

  “I guess we just need Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart. “Though you’d think it was something that could be learned. I mean, he wasn’t born with it. He learned it from Ta-Kumsaw himself.”

  La Tia groaned loudly and smacked him softly on the forehead. “You silly boy, why you no tell La Tia this be red man thing, this greensong? Get the colonels, all they, bring they sachet to me.”

  Soon the march was again halted and the colonels were gathered while the people mumbled and murmured about another delay in their journey.

  One by one, La Tia opened each person’s sachet and said, “All right, you. One drop of you blood, right now.”

  Well, how many people could do that without an argument? But Arthur Stuart, he came up and he said, “I can let a drop of your blood go from your finger, and it won’t hurt, but only if you say yes.” Well of course they all said yes, and sure enough, Arthur held their hand and closed his eyes and thought real hard and one single drop came out from under their fingernail and dropped into the sachet.

  Once again La Tia blew into the sachet and closed it, but this time she added a blade of grass to the strand of Marie’s hair to tie the top. “Now maybe,” said La Tia.

  And this time as they walked, the charm seemed to have some effect. Marie couldn’t be sure she was actually responding to the greensong—she hadn’t heard it, really, crossing the bridge. It had been more like a sort of intensity inside her as she pushed the wheelbarrow, so that her hands never got sore from the chafing of the handles, and her back never got weary, she just stepped on and on.

  Well, something like that began to happen now. She had long since given up the wheelbarrow, and she and her mother had taken turns carrying the ball of bloodwater Alvin had created for her. But now she didn’t need her mother to spell her off. The burden was still heavy, it just didn’t make her tired. Didn’t even make her shoulders ache where the straps dug in.

  But she did get hungry and hot and thirsty during the day. Yet she didn’t mind being hungry and thirsty and hot. And her feet always seemed to find the right place to step.

  The only person it didn’t work for was Arthur Stuart, until he finally took off the sachet and gave it to Mother. “I reckon while I’m spending all my thinking on making this fog stay ahead of us and behind us, and watching for heartfires of them as might mean us harm, this charm just don’t affect m
e.”

  “Too bad for you, child,” said La Tia. “Keep doing what you doing, we all pray for you.”

  Arthur Stuart tipped his hat to her and grinned and then strode on ahead.

  Marie wanted to run to him and hold his hand and walk with him. But that was foolishness. For one thing, she needed the sachet to help her. For another thing, he needed to keep his mind on his work. And for a third thing, he probably wouldn’t want her to.

  As for the rest of the people, the sachets seemed to help. Little children kept up better. Adults who carried babies didn’t get so tired. There weren’t people constantly dropping out to rest and then losing their place in the company. So even though nobody walked faster than before, they actually made far more progress during the day.

  They also waited until later to pick a plantation to be their host for the evening. “We’ve gone so far,” said Arthur Stuart, “maybe the people here will think they’re safe and not be looking out for us.”

  “You think I gonna walk up to no house?” said La Tia. “Wake up from you dream, you.”

  “What else can we do?” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Kill them in their houses.”

  They all turned at the voice. It was Old Bart, the butler from the Cottoner house. “You heard me. You got this knack, boy. Use it. Reach into they hearts and stop them from beating no more.”

  “That would be murder,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “It ain’t murder,” said Old Bart. “It’s war, and they be winning it, less you do what soldiers do, and kill them as would kill you.”

  “Not here,” said Arthur Stuart. “Not today.”

  “You kill them, we win,” insisted Old Bart. “Nothing but what they deserve, what they done to us.”

  “You dead?” asked La Tia. “Your heart stop beating?”

  Old Bart whirled on her. “Don’t you tell me how angry to be. I was dead inside for all them years, me a man, and couldn’t act like one.”

  “Funny way to be dead, you got. Stand there talking. Bet you piss three time a day, too, you! How many dead man do that?”

  Old Bart probably had an answer for that, but the laughter of those nearby convinced him that this wasn’t the day to argue with her. But Marie saw that he hadn’t changed his mind. Just changed his mind about talking about it.

  “Kill them in they house,” La Tia went on scornfully. “We want food. We want a place to sleep. Kill somebody for that in they own house?”

  Arthur Stuart shook his head. “If I was in his place, I think I might feel the same.”

  “You men,” said La Tia. “Killing just a thing you do.”

  “You know that ain’t so,” said Arthur Stuart. “But when it needs doing, I bet you glad you got somebody to do it.”

  This had gone far enough. “I know,” said Marie. “I go alone.”

  “No!” her mother cried.

  “They look for two women with two slaves. I go alone, and Arthur Stuart and La Tia, they come another way. Arthur, you look out for me, won’t you?”

  “I will,” he said.

  “I just go and explain to them. We only want food and a place to sleep. Only…maybe you show power to them, while I’m talking. Put fog at every window. Show them it’s better just to let us stay one night and go away.”

  They thought about it, and Arthur only improved on it a little. “All the windows but one,” he said. “Clear sky through one window.”

  “Then we better do it before the sun goes all the way down,” said Marie.

  Only after everyone agreed and they headed for the house they had chosen did Marie start to realize what she had just done. What if they had shotguns this time? How fast was Arthur Stuart?

  Just before they got within sight of the house, Arthur stopped them. “There’s four grown men in this house, and six women. And no shortage of guns. And no children.”

  That was a bad sign, Marie knew. The children most likely had been sent away.

  “Good sign,” said La Tia. “They don’t sent away the women. They don’t think we come tonight.”

  “Fog as soon as I get inside,” Marie reminded Arthur Stuart.

  He squeezed her hand. “Count on me,” he said.

  Then he let go and she walked alone down the road and turned up the long drive to the house.

  Long before she got to the house she had been spotted and three men were on the porch, holding muskets.

  “You crazy, girl?” said the oldest of them. “Don’t you know there’s an army of raping and pillaging runaways coming this way?”

  “My papa’s wagon overturned up the road, I need help.”

  “Your papa’s out of luck,” said the biggest of the men. “We ain’t leaving this porch for nobody.”

  “But he’s hurt, when he try to stand up, he falls down.”

  “What’s that accent?” said the youngest man. “You French?”

  “My parents are from Nueva Barcelona,” she said.

  “Being a Frenchwoman in these parts ain’t such a good idea this week.”

  She smiled at them. “Can I change who I am? Oh, you must help me. At least send a couple of servants with me to help right the wagon and bring my father here, can’t you do that?”

  “Slaves are all locked up, ready to be marched away in the morning, and we ain’t letting any of them out on the road, neither,” said the big man.

  “Then I see that Providence brought me to a house with no Christian charity,” she said. She turned her back and started back down the road.

  It sort of made sense that when she seemed willing to leave, that was what convinced them. “Ain’t never turned folks in trouble away from my house before,” said the old man.

  “Ain’t never been no slave revolt, neither,” said the big man.

  “But even during a time of slave revolt,” said the young man, “wagons can still overturn and honest men can still be hurt and need help.”

  Marie didn’t like lying to these men. The old man wanted to be kind, and the young man wanted to trust her. The big man was doing no worse than looking after his people. And since his suspicions were all completely justified, it hardly seemed fair that he was the one made to seem uncharitable. Well, it would all be clear soon enough. She hoped that this one bad experience would not put them off helping their neighbor in the future. It would be a shame if their journey did nothing but make the world worse.

  “Come back,” shouted the old man.

  “No, stay there!” shouted the big man. “We’ll go with you.” And he and the young man bounded down from the porch and started trotting toward her.

  This was not the plan. What would she do with them out here? “But we need to bring him water.”

  “Plenty of time for that when we’ve got him to the house.”

  Now they were beside her, and there was nothing she could do but lead them down the drive.

  Suddenly a fog came up. Out of nowhere, and then there was a chill in the air and a fog so thick she couldn’t even see the men beside her.

  “What the hell,” said the big man.

  “I can’t see my feet on the drive,” said the young man.

  Marie, however, said nothing, for the moment the fog came in, she turned around and started walking back toward the house.

  In a moment she was out of the fog. She did not glance back to see what it looked like, to have a single thick cloud—she wondered if it was like the Bible story, a pillar of smoke.

  The old man wasn’t on the porch.

  And then, as she got closer, there he was, with a musket in his hands. “I know devil’s work when I see it, you witch!” he shouted.

  He fired the musket.

  It was pointed right at her. And the barrel was not soft. She thought she must surely die on this spot.

  But when the noise of the gunshot died down, she felt nothing, and kept walking toward the porch.

  That was when the lead bullet popped out of the barrel of the musket and went maybe two yards and plunked on the groun
d. It made a pool of lead there, flat as a silver dollar.

  “I’m no witch,” she said. “And you are a kind and good man. Do you think anybody will hurt you or the people you love? Nobody will hurt anybody.”

  From inside the fog came shouts. “Who’s shooting! Where’s the house?”

  Now she did look back. Two thick clouds barely taller than a man were moving swiftly across the lawns, but neither one was headed for the porch, and neither one was holding a straight course, either.

  “We heard what you done in those other places, you liar!” shouted the old man.

  “You heard lies,” she said. “Think about it. If we killed everybody, who would tell you there was two French women and two slaves that came to the door? That’s what you were watching for, no?”

  The old man was no fool. He could listen pretty well.

  “We want food,” she said. “And we will have food from this house. You have plenty, but we don’t take all. Your neighbors will help you replenish the lack. And you won’t need as much food, anyway.”

  “Because you’re gonna take all our slaves, is that it?”

  “Take them?” said Marie. “We can’t take them. What would we do, put them in our apron pockets? We let them travel with us if they choose to. If they choose to stay with you, then they can stay. They do what they want, like the children of God that they are.”

  “Abolitionist bastards,” said the old man.

  “Abolitionists, yes. In my case, also a bastard.” She deliberately pronounced the word with a thick French accent. “And you, a man who knows to be kind to strangers, but keeps human beings as property. Even as you do it to the least of these, my brethren.”