Alvin sat in the ensuing silence, recognizing his foolishness. “I spose I’m a plain fool for not heeding Miss Larner.” And then, stiffening his back, he closed his eyes, and said, “There’s another way. So I don’t have to leave at all.”
“What’s that?” asked Measure.
“I could marry her.”
“No!” cried Mother and Father at once.
“Why not just sign a confession?” asked Armor-of-God.
“You can’t marry her,” said Measure.
“It’s what she wants,” said Alvin. “You can bet she’d say yes, and her father and mother would have to agree to it.”
“Agree to it—and then despise you ever after,” said Father.
“Doesn’t matter about his reputation or what people think of him or anything, compared to this,” said Measure. “Waking up every morning and seeing Amy Sump in bed next to you, and knowing the only reason she’s there is because she slandered you—tell me what kind of home you’ll make, the two of you, for your babies?”
Alvin thought about that for a moment and nodded. “I guess marriage ain’t much of a solution. More like starting a whole new set of problems.”
“Ah, good,” said Father. “I was afraid we’d raised us a fool.”
“So I sneak off like a thief, and everybody reckons Amy was telling the truth and I ran off.”
“Not likely,” said Measure. “We’ll let it be known that you left because your work is too important to be distracted by this nonsense. You’ll be back when Amy starts telling the truth, and in the meantime, you’ll be studying up on... whatever. Learning something.”
“Learning how to build the Crystal City,” murmured Taleswapper.
They all looked at him.
“You don’t know how, do you, Alvin?” asked Taleswapper. “While you’re busy trying to make Makers out of these people, you don’t even know yourself what the Crystal City really is, or how to make it.”
Alvin nodded. “That’s right.”
“So... it isn’t even a lie,” said Taleswapper. “You do have much to learn, and you’re overdue to learn it. Why, you’re even grateful to Amy for showing you that you’ve been hanging around here far too long. Measure’s been learning right good. He’s far enough ahead of the others that he can go on teaching in your absence. And him being a married man, no schoolgirl’s going to get some foolish notion about him.”
“I don’t know,” said Measure. “I’m pretty cute.”
“You have my bags packed yet, Taleswapper?” asked Alvin.
“Ain’t as if you need much luggage,” said Taleswapper. “You’re going to be traveling small and fast. I reckon there’s only one burden that will weigh you down much. A certain farm implement.”
“I couldn’t leave it here?” asked Alvin.
“Not safe,” said Taleswapper. “Not safe for your family, to have the rumor get about that the Maker is gone but he left the golden plow behind.”
“Not safe for him to have the rumor say he took it with him,” said Mother.
“Nobody on this planet is safer than Alvin, if he wants to be,” said Measure.
“So I just pick up the plow, put it in a gunnysack, and head on out?” asked Alvin.
“That’s about the best plan,” said Armor-of-God. “Though I bet your ma will insist on you taking some salt pork with you, and a change of clothes.”
“And me.”
They all turned to the source of the small piping voice.
“He’s taking me with him,” said Arthur Stuart.
“You’d only slow him down, boy,” said Father. “You got a good heart, but short legs.”
“He ain’t in no hurry,” said Arthur, “specially figuring as he don’t know where he’s going.”
“The point is you’d be in the way,” said Armor-of-God. “He’d always have to be thinking of you, trying to keep you out of harm’s way. There’s plenty of places in this land where a free half-Black boy is going to get folks’ dander up, and that won’t be much help to Alvin either.”
“You’re talking like you think you got a choice,” said Arthur. “But if Alvin goes, I go, and that’s it. You can lock me in a closet, but someday I’ll get out and then I’ll follow him and find him or die trying.”
They all looked at him in consternation. Arthur Stuart had been near silent since coming to Vigor after his adopted mother was murdered back in Hatrack River. Silent but hardworking, cooperative, obedient. This was a complete surprise, this attitude from him.
“And besides,” said Arthur Stuart, “while Alvin’s busy looking after the whole world, I’ll be there to look after him.”
“I think the boy should go,” said Measure. “The Unmaker plainly ain’t done with Alvin yet. He needs somebody to watch his back. I think Arthur’s got it in him.”
And that was pretty much it. Nobody could size up a fellow like Measure could.
Alvin walked to the hearth and pried up four stones. Nobody would have guessed that anything was hid under them, because until he raised the stones there wasn’t so much as a crack in the mortar. He didn’t dig in the earth under the stones; the plow was buried eight feet deep, and shoveling would have taken all day, not to mention the dismantling of the entire hearth. No, he just held out his hands and called to the plow, and willed the earth to float it up to him. A moment later, the plow bobbed to the surface of the soil like a cork on a still pond. Alvin could hear a couple of sharp breaths behind him—it still got to folks, even his own family, when he showed his knack so openly. Also, the gold had such a luster to it. As if, even in the pitch black of the darkest moonless stormy night, that plow would still be visible, the gold burning its way even through your closed eyelids to imprint its shining life straight onto your eyes, straight into your brain. The plow trembled under Alvin’s hand.
“We got us a journey to take,” Alvin murmured to the warm gold. “And maybe along the way we’ll figure out what I made you for.”
An hour later, Alvin stood at the back door of the house. Not that it took him an hour to pack—he’d spent most of the time down at the mill, fixing the pumps. Nor had he spent any of the time on farewells. They hadn’t even sent word to any of the family that he was going, because word would get out and the last thing Alvin needed was for folks to be lying in wait for him when he headed into the forest. Mother and Father and Measure and Armor would have to carry his words of love and Godblessyou to his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.
Alvin hitched the bag with the plow and his change of clothes in it over his shoulder. Arthur Stuart took his other hand. Alvin scanned the hexes he’d laid in place around the house and made sure they were still perfect in their sixness, undisturbed by wind or meddling. All was in order. It was the only thing he could do for his family in his absence, was to keep wardings about to fend off danger.
“Don’t you worry about Amy, either,” said Measure. “Soon as you’re gone, she’ll notice some other strapping boy and pretty soon the dreams and stories will be about him and folks’ll realize that you never done nothing wrong.”
“Hope you’re right,” said Alvin. “Because I don’t intend to stay away for long.”
Those words hung in the silence for a moment, because they all knew it was quite possible that this time Alvin might be gone for good. Might never come home. It was a dangerous world, and the Unmaker had plainly gone to some trouble to get Alvin out of here and onto the road.
He kissed and hugged all around, taking care not to let the heavy plow smack into anybody. And then he was off for the woods behind the house, sauntering so as to give anyone watching him the impression that this was just a casual errand he was on, and not some life-changing escape. Arthur Stuart had ahold of his left hand again. And to Alvin’s surprise, Taleswapper fell into step right beside him.
“You coming with me, then?” asked Alvin.
“Not far,” said Taleswapper. “Just to talk a minute.”
“Glad to have you,” said Alvin.<
br />
“I just wondered if you’ve given any thought to finding Peggy Larner,” said Taleswapper.
“Not even for a second,” said Alvin.
“What, are you mad at her? Hell, boy, if you’d just listened to her...”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t been thinking of that this whole time?”
“I’m just saying that you two was on the verge of marrying back there in Hatrack River, and you could do with a good wife, and she’s the best you’ll ever find.”
“Since when do you meddle?” asked Alvin. “I thought you just collected stories. I didn’t think you made them happen.”
“I was afraid you’d be angry at her like this.”
“I’m not angry at her. I’m angry at myself.”
“Alvin, you think I don’t know a lie when I hear it?”
“All right, I am angry. She knew, right? Well, why didn’t she just tell me? Amy Sump is going to tell lies about you and force you to leave, so get out now before her childish imaginings ruin everything.”
“Because if she said that, you wouldn’t have left, would you, Alvin? You would have stayed, figuring you could make everything work out fine with Amy. Why, you would have taken her aside and told her not to love you, right? And then when she started talking about you, there’d be witnesses who remembered how she stayed after class one day and was alone with you, and then you would be in trouble because even more people would believe her story and—“
“Taleswapper, I wish you sometime would learn the knack of shutting up!”
“Sorry,” said Taleswapper. “I just don’t have any gift for that. I just blather on, annoying people. The fact is that Peggy told you as much as she could without making things worse.”
“That’s right. In her judgment, she decided how much I was entitled to know, and that’s all she told me. And then you have the gall to tell me I should go marry her?”
“I’m not following your logic here, Al,” said Taleswapper.
“What kind of marriage is it, when my wife knows everything but she never tells me enough to make up my own mind! Instead she always makes up my mind for me. Or tells me exactly what she needs to tell me in order to get me to do what she thinks I ought to do.”
“But you didn’t do what she said you ought to do. You stuck around.”
“So that’s the life you want for me? Either to obey my wife in everything, or wish I had!”
Taleswapper shrugged. “I’m still not getting your objection.”
“It’s this simple: A grownup man doesn’t want to be married to his mother. He wants to make his own decisions.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Taleswapper. “And who’s this grownup man you’re talking about?”
Alvin refused to be baited. “I hope someday it’s me. But it’ll never be me if I tie myself to a torch. I owe much to Miss Larner. And I owe even more to the girl she was before she became a teacher, the girl who watched over me and saved my life again and again. No wonder I loved her. But marrying her would have been the worst mistake of my life. It would have made me weak. Dependent. My knack might have remained in my hands, but it would be entirely at her service, and that’s no way for a man to live.”
“A grownup man, you mean.”
“Mock me all you want, Taleswapper. I notice you got no wife.”
“I must be a grownup, then,” said Taleswapper. But now there was an edge to his voice, and after gazing at Alvin for just another moment, he turned and walked back the way they’d come together.
“I never seen Taleswapper mad like that before,” said Arthur Stuart.
“He doesn’t like it when folks throw his own advice back in his face,” said Alvin.
Arthur Stuart said nothing. Just waited.
“All right, let’s go.”
At once Arthur turned and started walking.
“Well, wait for me,” said Alvin.
“Why?” said Arthur Stuart. “You don’t know where we’re going, either.”
“Reckon not, but I’m bigger, so I get to choose which nowhere we head for.”
Arthur laughed a little. “I bet there’s not a single direction you can choose where there isn’t somebody standing in your road, somewhere. Even if it’s halfway around the world.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Alvin. “But I know for sure that no matter which way we go, eventually we’ll run into the ocean. Can you swim?”
“Not an ocean’s worth I can’t.”
“So what good are you, then?” said Alvin. “I was counting on you to tow me across.”
Hand in hand they plunged deeper into the woods. And even though Alvin didn’t know where he was going, he did know this: The greensong might be weak and jumbled these days, but it was still there, and he couldn’t help but fall into it and start moving in perfect harmony with the greenwood. The twigs leaned out of his way; the leaves were soft under his feet, and soon he was soundless, leaving no trail behind him and making no disturbance as he went.
That night they camped on the shore of Lake Mizogan. If you could call it camping, since they made no fire and built no shelter. They broke out of the woods late in the afternoon and stood there on the shore. Alvin remembered being at this lake—not quite this spot, but not far off either—when Tenskwa-Tawa had called a whirlwind and cut his feet and walked out on the bloody water, taking Alvin with him, drawing him up into the whirlwind and showing him visions. It was then that Alvin first saw the Crystal City and knew that he would build it someday, or rather rebuild it, since it had existed once before, or maybe more than once. But the storm was gone, a distant memory; Tenskwa-Tawa and his people were gone, too, most of them dead and the rest of them in the west. Now it was just a lake.
Once Alvin would have been afraid of the water, for it was water that the Unmaker had used to try to kill him, over and over, when he was a child. But that was before Alvin grew into his knack and became a true Maker that night in the forge, turning iron into gold. The Unmaker couldn’t touch him through water anymore. No, the Unmaker’s tool would be more subtle now. It would be people. People like Amy Sump, weak-willed or greedy or dreamy or lazy, but all of them easily used. It was people who held danger for him now. Water was safe enough, for them as could swim, and that was Alvin.
“How about a dip in the water?” Alvin asked.
Arthur shrugged. It was when they dipped together in the water of the Hio that the last traces of Arthur’s old self got washed away. But there’d be none of that now. They just stripped down and swam in the lake as the sun set, then lay down in the grass to dry off, the moonlight making the water shine, a breeze making the humid air cool enough for sleeping. In the whole journey they hadn’t said a word till they got to the shore of the lake, just moved in perfect harmony through the wood; even now as they swam, they still said nothing, and hardly splashed they were so much in harmony with everything, with each other. So it startled Alvin when Arthur spoke to him, lying there in the dark.
“This is what Amy dreamed of, ain’t it?”
Alvin thought of that for a moment. Then he got up and put on his clothes. “I reckon we’re dry now,” he said.
“You think maybe she had a true dream? Only it wasn’t her, it was me?”
“I didn’t do no hugging or unnatural things when we was naked in the water,” said Alvin.
Arthur laughed. “Ain’t nothin’ unnatural about what she dreamed of.”
“It wasn’t no true dream.”
Arthur got up and put his clothes on, too. “I heard the greensong this time, Alvin. Three times I let go of your hand, and I still heard it for the longest time before it started fading and I had to catch your hand or get left behind.”
Alvin nodded as if that was what he expected. But it wasn’t. In all his teaching of the folks of Vigor Church, he hadn’t even tried to teach Arthur Stuart much, sending him instead to the schoolhouse to learn reading and ciphering. But it was Arthur who might well be his best student a
fter all.
“You going to become a Maker?” asked Alvin.
Arthur shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Just going to be your friend.”
Alvin didn’t say aloud the thought of his heart: To be my friend, you might just have to be a Maker. He didn’t have to say it. Arthur already understood.
The wind rose a little in the night, and far away, out over the lake, lightning brightened the underside of distant clouds. Arthur breathed softly in his sleep; Alvin could hear him in the stillness, louder than the Whisper of distant thunder. It should have made him feel lonely, but it didn’t. The breaths in the darkness beside him could have been Ta-Kumsaw on their long journey so many years ago, when Alvin had been called the Boy Renegado and the fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance. Or it might have been his brother Calvin when as boys they shared a room; Alvin remembered him as a baby in a cradle, then in a crib, the child’s eyes looking up to him as if he were God, as if he knew something no other human knew. Well, I did know it, but I lost Calvin anyway. And I saved Ta-Kumsaw’s life, but couldn’t do a thing to save his cause, and he is lost to me also, across the river in the fog of the Red west.
And the breathing could have been a wife, instead of just a dream of a wife. Alvin tried to imagine Amy Sump there in the darkness, and even though Measure was right that it would have been a miserable marriage, the fact was that her face was pretty, and in this moment of solitary wakefulness Alvin could imagine that her young body was sweet and warm to the touch, her kiss eager and full of life and hope.
Quickly he shrugged off that image. Amy was not for him, and even to imagine her like that felt akin to some kind of awful crime. He could never marry someone who worshipped him. Because his wife would not be married to the Maker named Alvin; his wife would be married to the man.
It was Peggy Larner he thought of then. He imagined leaning up on one elbow and looking at her when the low distant lightning cast a brush of light across her face. Her hair loose and tousled in the grass. Her ladylike hands no longer controlled and graceful with studied gestures, but now casually flung out in sleep. To his surprise tears came to his eyes. In a moment he realized why: She was as impossible for him as Amy, not because she would worship him, but because she was more committed to his cause than he was. She loved, not the Maker, and certainly not the man, but rather the Making and the thing made. To marry her would be a kind of surrender to fate, for she was the one who saw futures that might arise out of all possible present choices, and if he married her he would be no man at all, not because she would mean to unman him, but because he himself would hot be so stupid as not to follow her advice. Freely he would follow her, and thus freely lose his freedom.
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