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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.)
It began with a few stones thrown against the house late the next night, and
a muffled shout that no one inside understood.
Next morning, a group of men marched back and forth in front of the house
carrying a coffin, calling out, "Why ain't nobody sick in there!"
Since Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel were still nursing three children who had
been seized by the fever despite Alvin's preventive healing, it was tempting to
invite the men inside to see that their claim was a lie. But everyone knew that
showing three sick children wouldn't be much of an answer, when in this
neighborhood more children were dying than anywhere else in Barcy, while not one
child in the house of Moose and Squirrel had been carried out in a box.
It wasn't because Alvin had confined his ministrations to the children of the
orphanage. He had searched out other heartfires in other houses, and had saved
many. But it took time, working one by one, and while he saved many, far more
died beyond his reach, ones he had not even looked at. There were limits to what
he could do.
No longer did he pretend to run errands or do chores. The baguettes Arthur
Stuart had shared with Dead Mary and her mother were the last he bought; and
when he slept it was because he could stay awake no longer. He dozed fitfully,
waking from nightmares in which children died under his hands. And the worst
nightmare of all, a vision of Dead Mary's mother filled with invisible disease,
walking about giving people the yellow fever just by bumping into them or
speaking to them or whispering in their ear. Tousling the head of a child, she'd
move on and the child would drop dead behind her. And each dead person would
turn to Alvin and say, "Why did you save her and let her walk around to kill us
all?"
Then he'd wake up and search out more heartfires dimmed by disease and try to
repair their ravaged bodies.
It never occurred to him not to reach first for those nearest to where he was
at the moment. But the result was that deaths from the fever increased in direct
relationship to one's distance from the orphanage. It was as if God had put a
blessing on the place that spilled over to neighboring houses.
Or, as the marchers outside the house were broadly hinting, it was as if the
devil was protecting his own.
That night there were more stones, and marchers with torches, and drunks who
threw bottles that crashed. Children woke up and cried, and Papa Moose and Mama
Squirrel led them into the back rooms of the house.
Still Alvin lay on his bed, reaching out with his doodlebug to heal and heal,
concentrating now on children, saving all that he could.
Arthur Stuart dared not interrupt his work -- or wake him, if by chance he
was asleep. He knew that somehow Alvin blamed himself for the plague -- he
understood the grim relentlessness of Alvin's labors. This was personal; Alvin
was trying to undo some terrible mistake. That much he had hinted at before he
went completely silent. And now Alvin was silent, and Arthur Stuart was on his
own.
Arthur had no power to heal anyone. But he had learned some makering, and
thought now to use it to protect the house. It was something Squirrel said that
triggered his action: "What I'm a-feared of are the torches. What if they try to
burn us out?"
So he reached out to the torch-bearing men and tried to get a sense of the
fire. He had worked in metal before, but little else. Wood and cloth were
organic and hard to get into, hard for him to feel and know. But soon he found
that what was burning was the oil the torches had been soaked in, and that was a
fluid that made more sense to his half-blind groping doodlebug.
He didn't know how fire worked, so he couldn't stop the burning. But he could
dissipate the fluid, turn it into gas the way he had turned metal into liquid.
And when he had vaporized it, the torch would soon go out.
One by one, the torches nearest the house began to go dark.
It wasn't until Papa Moose said, "What's happening? God help us, why are the
torches going out?" that Arthur Stuart realized that he might be doing something
wrong.
There was fear in Papa Moose's voice. "The nearest torches are going out,"
Arthur Stuart opened his eyes and looked. He had blacked out about a dozen of
the torches. But now he saw that the remaining torchbearers had backed away from
the house, and the street was now littered with the discarded sticks, scattered
about like the bones of some long-dead creature.
"If they ever wanted proof that this house was a cursy place, this was it,"
said Mama Squirrel. "Whoever came near, his torch went out."
Arthur Stuart was sick at heart. He was about to confess what he had done
when the crowd began to move away.
"Safe for tonight," said Papa Moose. "But they'll be back, and more of them,
what with one more miracle to report."
"Arthur Stuart," said Mama Squirrel. "You don't think Alvin would be so
foolish as to douse their torches like that, do you?"
"No ma'am," said Arthur Stuart.
"Let's get the children back to bed, Mama Squirrelel," said Papa Moose.
"They'll be glad to know the mob is gone."
Only after they left the room did Arthur Stuart see through the window the
dark shape of one man lingering in the street, not particularly watching the
house, but not leaving it, either. From the way the man moved, shambling like a
bear, with pent-up energy, he thought he recognized him. Someone he had met
recently. Someone on the riverboat. Abe Lincoln? Coz?
Tentatively he reached out to the heartfire. Not being deft, like Alvin, he
didn't know how to merely graze the man, glance at him. One moment he was seeing
him as a distant spark, and the next moment he was filled with the man's
self-awareness, his body-sense, what he saw and felt and heard, what he hungered
for. Filled with hate he was, and rage, and shame. But no words, no names --
that wasn't a thing that was easy to find. Peggy could see such things, but not
Arthur Stuart, and not, or so he believed, Alvin.
It was hard to pull himself back out of the fiery heart of the man, but he
knew now who it was, for in the midst of all the turmoil, one thing stood out --
a constant awareness of the knife at his hip, as if it were the man's best and
truest hand, the tool that he relied on before all others. Jim Bowie, without
doubt.
With all that malice in him, there was no doubt Jim Bowie was there for
mischief. Arthur Stuart couldn't help but wonder if he still harbored his old
grudge from the river. But then, why didn't he remember his fear, as well?
Maybe he needed a reminder. Arthur Stuart couldn't make the knife disappear
as Alvin had, but he could do something. In moments he had the thing het up
enough that Bowie was bound to feel it. Yes, there it was -- Bowie whirled
around and ran full-tilt away from the orphanage.
What Arthur Stuart couldn't figure out was why, as he ran, Bowie kept a tight
hold on the front of his pants, as if he was afraid they'd fall down.
Alvin was asleep, not knowing where dreams left off and the living nightmare
of his failure to save more lives began. But in the midst of his restless
slumber he heard a voice calling to him.
"Healer man!"
It was a commanding voice, and a strange one. Whoever called him in his
sleep, it was not a voice that he had heard before. But it seemed to know him,
to speak out of the center of his own heartfire.
"Wake up, sleeping man!"
Alvin's eyes opened as if against his will. There was the faintest light of
dawn outside the attic, visible only through the window at the end of the long
room.
"Wake up, man who keeps a golden plow in the chimney!"
In a moment he was out of bed, across the long room, standing with his hand
pressed against the brick. The golden plow was still there. But someone knew
about it.
Or no. That must have been a dream. He had fallen asleep after healing a
child four streets over. The mother had also been dying, and he meant to heal
her afterward. Had he done it, before sleep took him?
He cast about wildly, then with more focus, searching. There was the child, a
boy of perhaps five years. But where the mother should have been, nothing. His
body had failed him. The child was alive, but an orphan now. Sick guilt stabbed
at him.
"Take your gold out of the chimney, healer man, and come down to talk to me!"
This time it could not be a dream. So strong was the voice that he obeyed
almost as if it had been his own idea. In a moment, though, he knew that it was
not.
Yet there was no reason not to obey. Someone knew about the golden plow, and
so it was not hidden anymore. Time to get it out of the chimney and carry it
with him again in his poke.
It took time and most of his concentration, tired as he was, grieved and
guilty as he felt, to get the bricks apart and soften the golden plow to let it
fall into his hand. It quivered there, vibrant as always, alert, yet seeming to
want nothing. It made his hand tremble as he pulled it through the gap in the
bricks and brought it close to him. His heart warmed when the plow came near.
Whether it was the plow that caused it, or the emotion of greeting a friend and
traveling companion, he didn't know.
"Come down to me, healer man."
Who are you? he asked silently. But there was no answer. Whoever called him
out of his own heartfire either could not hear his thoughts or did not wish to
answer him.
"Come down and break bread with me."
Bread. Something about bread. It meant more than mere eating. She wanted more
from him than to share a meal.
She. Whoever called him was a woman. How did he know?
With his plow in its poke, along with his few other belongings, Alvin went
down the stairs. Papa Moose saw him as he passed the third floor, Mama Squirrel
as he passed the second, and when he got to the bottom floor they were right
behind him.
"Alvin," said Squirrel. "What are you doing?"
"Where are you going?" asked Papa Moose.
"Someone's calling me," he said. "Look after Arthur Stuart till I come back."
"Whoever's calling you," said Squirrel, "are you sure it's not a trap? Last
night they came with torches. Some strange power put the torches out as they
came near the house, and now you can be sure the house is watched. They'd love
to lure us out."
"She's calling me as a healer," said Alvin. "To break bread with her."
Arthur Stuart appeared in the kitchen door. "It's the woman you healed in the
swamp," he said. "She came two nights ago, with Dead Mary. I gave them bread,
and they asked if you had bought it."
"There it is," said Squirrel. "Terrible power, what Dead Mary has."
"Knowing something may be a terrible burden to bear, but it holds no danger
to them as aren't afraid of truth. And it's not Dead Mary calling me."
"What about her mother?" asked Arthur Stuart.
"I don't think so," said Alvin.
"Do you think it couldn't be no come-hither, then?" asked Squirrel. "Do you
think that you're so powerful such things have no hold on you?"
"A come-hither," said Alvin. "Yes, I think that's likely."
"So you mustn't go," said Arthur Stuart. "Good people don't use such spells
to draw a man. Or to make the awful sacrifices such a spell must take."
"I suspect that all it took was the burning of some bread," said Alvin. "And
I go or not, as I choose."
"Isn't that how everyone feels, when they've had a come-hither set on them?"
asked Papa Moose. "Don't they all think up good reasons for obeying the
summons?"
"Maybe so," said Alvin, "but I'm going."
He was out the door.
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.