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It's 1825, in a version of America's past that doesn't look like the history
books. The folk magic of the American people really works, though whites,
blacks, and reds go about their acts of power in different ways.
The land we call America isn't just one nation. New England is still a colony
of an England ruled over by the Lord Protector. The slave states of the south
are the Crown Colonies, ruled over by the King in exile. In the middle is the
United States, struggling to exist half slave and half free. This story,
however, takes place in Nueva Barcelona -- once called New Orleans, when the
French founded it.
To this city comes Alvin Smith, the seventh son of a seventh son, who makes
his living as a journeyman blacksmith; and beside him is Arthur Stuart, a free
young man, half white and half black, pretending to be Alvin's servant while
they're in slave country. They're on a mission here, and they're determined to
accomplish it ... if they can figure out what it is.
"Walking on Water" is the first third of The Crystal City, the
penultimate novel in the Tales of Alvin Maker. It will be serialized on the
Hatrack River site in 14 parts, a new one appearing every five days or so. (The
first two parts of this serialization appeared previously in The Rhinoceros
Times.)
Arthur Stuart saw at once that the name "Frenchman's Dock" was meant as a
cruel irony. Compared to the miles-long dock along the Mizzippy, this shabby
jetty on Lake Pontchartrain was pathetic. Several dozen shrimpboats were tied up
to it, and more were coming in, the shrimpers shouting and answering to help
each other find their way in the fog. All of them spoke in French, a language in
which Arthur was becoming quite fluent, though he suspected the French he was
learning here in Nouveau Orleans was not quite the same French that Calvin would
have heard in Paris.
There was no room on that busy wharf for fifty children, so Moose and
Squirrel kept their family loitering back around the fish houses, trying to stay
out of the way. Many of the shrimpers had already heard what was happening
tonight. Either they'd come along or not, but there was no debating or
discussing it. Everyone stepped around the children and made no comment about
their presence there. Even if they wouldn't follow Dead Mary out of the city,
they wouldn't dare stand in her way, either.
Blacks began arriving, too, staying even farther out of the way. Like the
children, they carried bags and sacks, but it was a sad thing to see how little
they had, considering that most of them were carrying all they owned in the
world. The blacks who did get in some shrimper's path were met with a growl or a
bark to get out of the way; it was clear that even among the oppressed French,
blacks had a lower status still.
Flies hovered and swarmed everywhere, there being plenty to feast on for them
amid the shrimp offal discarded all along the shore. Skeeters, too, and Arthur
Stuart could imagine that with all the people gathering here those little
bloodsuckers would probably drink their fill till they bloated up and exploded.
He could imagine the sound of it, like distant gunfire, the pop pop pop of
busted skeeters.
Only he didn't want them sucking blood out of these children.
He tried to get his doodlebug inside a skeeter, but it wouldn't hold still.
And besides, he wasn't looking to perform surgery on it, he wanted to talk to it
the way Alvin would, telling it to go away. But he couldn't find the heartfire.
It was just too small and faint. Even the heartfires of the big fat lazy flies
were almost invisible to him. All the same, he tried talking to the skeeters
inside his own mind. "Go away," he said silently. "Nothing to eat here." But if
they heard him, they didn't pay him no mind.
A couple of boats ran into each other in the fog, and there was much shouting
and cursing. It was silly, Arthur Stuart thought, to put up with fog here, where
it wasn't needed. And fog was more like metal or water, he could get inside it
and work with it. Arthur Stuart stirred up a little air, drawing a little breeze
in from the lake, blowing the fog back toward the city where it was needed.
Arthur was pleased that it didn't take long for the air to clear. The sunset
now blazed red in the west, while the fog hung thickly only a street or two back
from the water. The shrimpers quickly got their boats tied up and their catch
loaded off and dragged into the fish houses. Then they disappeared into the
streets, some of them with shrimp carts to sell the catch, the others probably
heading for their families, to bring them to Frenchman's Dock for the escape.
There being no more need for clear vision now, Arthur Stuart let the breeze
die down, and the fog drifted back out over the water a little. Stillness came
with it, a heavy silence in which footfalls were muffled and voices became
whispers.
As it became fully dark, Arthur began to worry about folk losing their way,
or somebody stumbling into the water, so he woke up the breeze again to clear
the air near the shore. In the distance, he could hear shouting, and after a
while, he realized that it was probably the noise of a mob moving through the
streets of Barcy. He worried about folk who was trying to make their way through
the streets, but the fog was the best help they could get, and there wasn't
nothing Arthur Stuart could think of to add to it.
As the fog cleared and the faint light of the stars and a sliver of moon
illuminated the shore, Arthur Stuart realized that the man sitting crosslegged
in the shallow water was Alvin.
At once Arthur strode forward, but said nothing, because Alvin seemed to be
concentrating. Arthur came up beside him and saw that Alvin held a knife in his
hand, with the tip of the blade under the water. He was slicing into the soft
skin on the side of his left heel, under the place where the leg bone joined on.
Blood began to flow out in a slow trickle into the water.
Almost by habit now, Arthur Stuart tracked the blood in the water, feeling
its dissipation. But then it stopped dissolving, and instead began to form a
rigid structure, gathering water around a delicate latticework, thickening and
hardening the water into something not at all like ice, and very much like thin,
delicate glass.
The area of hardened water extended to about six feet on either side of
Alvin, then narrowed gradually as it extended out over the lake. When it
narrowed to about as wide as Alvin's arms could reach on both sides, it stopped
narrowing and went on and on, straight north. Arthur could sense it moving
forward. But he could also see that it was all connected to Alvin's living
blood, still flowing out into the water and thrusting the lacy inner structure
of this crystal road farther and farther out. The bridge was growing from the
base, not the tip.
"Can you see it, Arthur Stuart?" whispered Alvin.
"Yes."
"And on the other end, do you think you can anchor it there and hold it
firm?"
"I can try."
"It's taking more blood than I hoped," said Alvin, "but less than I feared.
I'm not sure I'll know when it's long enough. I have to concentrate on what I'm
doing here. So I need you to lead the way across, because you can see it. And
when you get to the end, anchor it and stop it from growing. I'll feel it at
this end. I'll know that you're doing it, and I'll know when it's done."
"Now?" said Arthur Stuart.
"If we're going to get all these people to walk across in one night, I think
now's a good time to start."
Arthur Stuart turned around and beckoned to Moose and Squirrel. They didn't
see him. So he called out, but not loudly. "Papa Moose! Mama Squirrel! Can you
bring the children?"
With Papa Moose leaning on Mama Squirrel and one of the older boys, they came
down to the water's edge. When they arrived, Arthur Stuart stepped out onto the
crystal.
To the others it seemed that he stood on water. They gasped, and one of the
children began to cry.
"Come closer," said Arthur Stuart. "See? It's smooth where it's safe to walk.
It's not water any more. It's crystal, and you can walk on it. But stay to the
middle. Hold hands, stay together. If someone falls in, pull him back up. It's
strong enough to hold you, see?"
Arthur looked straight down into the crystal as he stomped his foot a couple
of times.
What he saw there made him freeze.
It was his mother, flying, a newborn baby strapped in front of her. Flying
over the trees, heading north, to freedom.
And suddenly she could fly no farther. Exhausted, she tumbled to the earth
and lay there weeping. She would kill the baby now, Arthur Stuart realized.
Rather than let it be taken back into slavery, she'd kill the baby and herself.
"No," he murmured.
"Arthur Stuart," said Alvin sharply. "Don't look down into the crystal."
Arthur tore himself away and was surprised to find Moose and Squirrel and
their family all watching him, wide-eyed.
"Nobody look down into the bridge," said Arthur Stuart. "You'll think you're
seeing things, but they're not really there. It's not a thing to look at, it's a
thing to walk on."
"I can't see the edges," said Mama Squirrel. "The children can't swim."
"They won't have to," said Arthur Stuart. "Let's get the little ones in
between the older ones. Everybody hold hands."
"The youngest can't walk so far," said Papa Moose.
Someone pushed her way through the family to the water's edge. La Tia. "Don't
you fret about that. Got plenty of strong arms here to carry them as can't
walk." She called out several names, and strong young men and women stepped
forward, most of them black, but some French or of other European nations. "It's
all right, babies," La Tia said to the children. "You let these big folk carry
you, you be all right. You tell them be happy," she said to Mama Squirrel.
"It's all right," said Squirrel. "These are our friends now, they're going to
take us out across this bridge Alvin's done made for us."
Some of the children whimpered and a few cried outright, but they hung on all
the same, doing their best to obey despite their fear. Arthur Stuart walked
farther out onto the bridge, taking care to stay right in the middle. The worst
thing he could do would be to stumble off the edge. They'd all be terrified
then. "Come to me," he said. "We have to move quick, once we get started."
"I stay right here," said La Tia, "I keep it all moving, I make everybody
help each other. You go, you. We follow."
Arthur turned around and walked a good twenty paces out onto the bridge. Then
he stopped and turned around. Several of the older children were following him
tentatively. He strode back to them and took the leading child by the hand. "All
hold hands," he said. "Stay right in line. It's a long walk, but you can do it."
"Listen to the music," said Alvin. "Listen to the music of the water and the
sky, all the life around you. The greensong will carry you forward."
Arthur Stuart knew the greensong well, though he could never find it on his
own. As soon as Alvin spoke of it, though, he became aware of it, as if it had
always been there, and he'd just not bothered to notice it before. He stepped on
out, holding the hand of the child behind him, and set a pace that he thought
everyone would be able to keep to.
In the darkness, he couldn't see the bridge stretching out before him -- his
eyes told him only that he was walking out into the middle of a trackless lake.
But his doodlebug felt the bridge as clear as day, reaching on and on, out and
out, and he walked with confidence.
At first he couldn't stop his mind from fretting about all that could go
wrong. Somebody falling off. Losing the way somehow. Getting to the end of the
bridge and finding that it didn't quite reach the other shore. Or having the
bridge get softer and wetter the farther it got from Alvin. Or the bridge
bending in on itself, making a spiral that led nowhere. All kinds of imaginable
disasters.
But the rhythm of the step, step, step and the sound of the lapping water and
the calls of birds began to still that relentless fretting. It was the familiar
rhythm of the greensong. He let it come over him like a trance. His legs began
to move, it seemed, of themselves, so he no longer thought about walking or even
moving, he simply flowed forward as if he were a part of the bridge, as if he
himself were a breeze on the night air. The bridge was alive under him. The
bridge was part of Alvin, he understood now. It was as if Alvin's hands bore him
up, as if the water and wind drew him along.
He only sometimes noticed that he himself was singing. Not just humming, but
singing aloud, a strange song that he had always known but had never noticed
before. The child behind him picked up the melody and murmured it along with
him, and the child behind her, until Arthur Stuart could hear that many voices
carried the song. No one was crying or whimpering now. He could hear adult
voices farther back. But all of them were faint, only threads amid the fabric of
the great wide song that Arthur heard from the wind and the waves and the fish
under the water and the birds in the sky and from animals waiting for them on
the other side and from all the people on the bridge, a half mile of them, a
mile of them.
Faster and faster Arthur Stuart walked without realizing he was speeding up,
but the children did not complain. Their legs carried them as fast as they
needed to go. And the adults carrying children found that the little ones did
not grow heavy. The babies fell asleep clinging to their bearers, their breath
whispering in rhythm with the song. On and on they strode, the far shore coming
no nearer, it seemed.
And as they were all caught up in the greensong, it seemed that the bridge
turned into light. They could all see the edges of it now, and could feel how
the greensong throbbed within it. Each footfall on the crystal bridge caused the
song to surge a little stronger for a moment and made the bridge glow a little
more clearly in the night. And Arthur Stuart realized that they were becoming
part of the bridge, their steps strengthening it, thickening it, making it
stronger for those coming after. And since the bridge was part of Alvin himself,
they also strengthened him, or at least made it so the creation of the bridge
drained him less than it might have.
Arthur could feel Alvin's heartbeat in the crystal bridge. And he realized
that the light they all saw rising from the crystal was a pale reflection of
Alvin's own heartfire.
It seemed to be forever, that crossing. And then, suddenly, there was land
ahead of him, and it felt as if it had taken no time at all.
He reached forward with his doodlebug and saw that the bridge did not reach
the land yet. So, without slowing down his stride, Arthur Stuart sent his
doodlebug leaping beyond the end of the bridge to find where the rim of the
water lapped the mud and he said to the bridge -- to Alvin: Here it is. Here's
the edge. Come to this spot and no farther.
The bridge leapt forward. It was what Alvin had been waiting for, for
Arthur's doodlebug to show the way, and in moments the bridge was anchored into
the land.
Arthur Stuart did not speed up, though he wanted to run the last few hundred
yards. There were people behind him, hands linked. So he kept the same pace,
right to the end, and then drew the child behind him up onto the shore.
He continued to lead her into the trees, talking to her as he went. "We'll go
up into the trees," he said to her. "The others will follow. Keep moving, move
in and off to the right, so there's room for everyone else. Keep holding hands,
all of you!"
Then he let go of her.
As he did, the greensong let go of him.
He staggered, almost fell.
He stood there gasping for a moment in the unwelcome silence.
The line of people on the bridge stretched out for miles, he could see, and
all of them moving swiftly, faster than he would have thought possible. Even
Papa Moose now strode easily, boldly, no one helping him.
He saw how Moose and Squirrel, too, stumbled when they let go of the line.
But they immediately took charge of the children, not forgetting their
responsibility.
Nor will I forget mine, thought Arthur Stuart. He scanned the nearby area for
the heartfires of small creatures. Unlike the skeeters, he easily found the
snakes and, not so easily, awoke them and sent them slithering away. Danger
here, he told them silently. Go away, be safe. Sluggishly they obeyed him. It
exhilarated him. He suspected that some part of Alvin's power still rested on
him, enabling him to do more than he had ever found possible before. Or perhaps
traveling on Alvin's bridge, surrounded by the greensong, had woken senses
inside Arthur Stuart that had always slept.
Will we all be makers, having crossed this bridge?
Here and there he caused water to drain away from a bog, so that the land
where the people would have to stand was all firm. And from time to time he
reached back out across the water, following the bridge with his doodlebug,
trying to see how Alvin was doing. The bridge remained strong, and that meant
Alvin's heartfire blazed brightly. But his body was too far away for Arthur
Stuart to find him, so he could not tell whether he was becoming weak. Nor could
he find the far shore to count the people there, so he could not even guess how
many more would come.
It was his job to make sure there was room for them all, enough firm, safe
ground that they could gather.
Many of them sat down, then lay down, and with the echoes of the greensong
still singing in their hearts, they dozed in the faint moonlight, their dreams
infused with the music of life.
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.