![]() |
Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card |
Print | Back |
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 dogged Alvin's heels.
"Go back inside, Arthur Stuart."
"No sir," said Arthur. "If you're going to walk into a trap, I'm going to see
it, so I can tell the story to folks later, about how even the most powerful man
on earth can be dumb as a brick sometimes."
"She needs me," said Alvin.
"Like the devil needs the souls of sinners," said Arthur Stuart.
"She's not commanding me," said Alvin. "She's begging."
"Don't you see, that's how a compulsion would feel to a good man? When people
need you, you come, so when someone wants you to come, they make you think
you're needed."
Alvin stopped and turned to face Arthur Stuart. "I left a child orphaned last
night because I couldn't stay awake," he said. "If I'm so weak I can't resist my
own body, what makes you think you can talk me into being strong enough to
resist this spell?"
"So you know it isn't safe."
"I know that I'm going," said Alvin. "And you're not strong enough to stop
me."
He strode on, out into the deserted early-morning street, as Arthur Stuart
trotted at his side.
"I was the one put them torches out," said Arthur Stuart.
"No doubt," said Alvin. "It was a blame fool thing to do."
"I was a-feared they meant to burn down the house."
"They mean to, no doubt of it, but it'll take them a while to work up the
courage," said Alvin. "Or to work up the fear. Either one, if it gets strong
enough, will make them put the house to the torch. You probably did no more than
tip them to the side of fear. Put it out of your mind."
"You have to sleep," said Arthur Stuart, "so put your own troubles out of
your mind, too."
"Don't talk to me like you understand my sins."
"Don't talk to me like you know what I do and do not understand."
Alvin chuckled grimly. "Oh, that mouth you've got."
"You can't answer what I said, so you're going to talk about my saying it."
"I ain't talking about nothing. I told you not to come with me."
"It was Jim Bowie last night," said Arthur Stuart. "Last man who stayed
behind when the mob run off."
"He invited me to join their expedition. Told me if I wasn't their friend, I
was their foe."
"So he's maybe goading on the mob, to try to force you into joining?"
"A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty."
"Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works."
"Don't win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room."
They were moving out of the city of painted buildings and into a different
New Orleans, the faded houses and shacks of the persecuted French, and then
beyond them into the huts of the free blacks and masterless slaves -- a world of
cheap and desperate whores, of men who could be hired to kill for a piece of
eight, and of practitioners of dark African magics that put bits of living
bodies into flames in order to command nature to break her own laws.
The black folks' way was as different from the knacks of white folks as was
the greensong of the reds. Alvin could feel it around him in the heartfires, a
kind of desperate courage that if worst came to worst, a person could sacrifice
something to the fire and save what was most dear to him.
"Do you feel it?" he asked Arthur Stuart. "The power around you?"
"I smell the stink," said the boy. "Like folks here just spill their privy
pots onto the ground."
"The soil wagons don't come here," said Alvin. "What choice they got?"
"Don't feel no power, me," said Arthur Stuart.
"And yet you're talking like the French of this place. 'Don't feel no power
... me?'"
"That don't mean nothing, you know I pick up what I hear."
"You're hearing them, then. All around you."
"This be blacktown, massa," said Arthur Stuart, affecting the voice of a
slave. "This be no Veel Francezz."
"French slaves run away as sure as Spanish ones, or slaves of Cavaliers."
Now black children were coming out of the houses, their mothers after them,
tired women with sad eyes. And men who looked dangerous, they began to follow
like a parade. Until they came to a woman sitting by a cookfire. Not a fat
woman, but not a thin one, either. Voluptuous as the earth, that's what she was,
but when she looked up from the fire she smiled at Alvin like the sun. How old
was she? Could have been twenty from the smooth bronze skin. Could have been a
hundred from the wise and twinkling eyes.
"You come to see La Tia," she said.
A smaller woman, French by the look of her, came forward from behind the
fire. "This be the Queen," she said. "You bow now."
Alvin did not bow. Nothing in La Tia's face suggested that she wanted him to.
"On your knees, white man, you want to live," said the French woman sharply.
"Hush now, Michele," said La Tia. "I don't want no kneeling from this man. I
want him to do us a miracle, he don't have to kneel to me. He come when I call
him."
"Everybody have to come, you call them," said Michele.
"Not this one," said La Tia. "He come, but I don't make him. All I do is make
him hear me. This one choose to
come."
"What do you want?" asked Alvin.
"They gonna be burning here in Barcy," said the woman.
"You know that for sure?" asked Alvin.
"I hear that. Slaves listen,
slaves talk. You know. Like in Camelot."
Alvin remembered the capital city of the Crown Colonies, and how rumors
traveled through the slave community faster than a boy could run. But how could
she know that he had been there?
"I had your skin on that bread," she said. "Most gals like me, they don't see
it, so small that skin. But I see it. I got you then. While the fire burn, I got
whatever you have in there. I see your treasure."
She could see more in his heartfire than Alvin could see in hers. All he
could see was the health of her body, and some strong fears, but also an intense
sense of purpose. But what the purpose was, he couldn't know. Once again, his
knack was not as much as he needed it to be, and it stung.
"Don't you fret, mi hijo," she said. "I ain't gonna tell. And no, I don't
mean that thing you got in your poke. That ain't your treasure. That belongs to
its own self. Your treasure is in a woman's womb, far away and safe."
To hear it in words like that, from a stranger, stabbed him in the heart. It
brought tears to his eyes, and a weakness, almost a giddiness to his head.
Without thinking, he sank to his knees. That was his treasure. All the lives he
had failed to save in Barcy, they were that one life, the child who had died
those years ago. And his redemption, his only hope, his -- yes, his treasure --
it was the new child that was so far away, and beyond his reach, in someone
else's charge.
"Get up," whispered Arthur Stuart. "Don't kneel to her."
"He don't kneel to me," said La Tia. "He kneel to his love, to the saint of
love. Not Lord Valentine, no, not him. The saint of a father's love, St. Joseph,
the husband of the Holy Mother. To him he kneeling. That be so, no?"
Alvin shook his head. "I'm kneeling because I'm broke inside," he whispered.
"And you want this broke man to do something for you, and there's nothing I can
do. The world is sicker every day and I got no power to heal the world."
"You got the power I need,"
said La Tia. "Maria de los Muertos, she tell me. You make her mother whole,
she."
"You're not sick," said
Alvin.
"The whole of Barcy, she be
sick," said La Tia. "You live in a house about to die from that sick. This
blacktown, she about to die. The French people of Barcy, they be about to die.
The sick of angry people, the sick of stupid people all afraid. Gotta have
somebody to blame. That be you and that crazy Moose and Squirrel. That be me and
all us who keep Africa alive, we. That be all them French folk like Maria de los
Muertos and her Mama. What they gonna do when the mob decides to blame the fever
on somebody and burn it out? Where they gonna go?"
"What do you think I can do?
I got no control over the mob."
"You know what I want, you."
"I don't."
"You maybe don't know you
know, but you got them words burnt in your heart by your mama all them years
ago, when you little, you. 'Let my people go.'"
"I'm not Pharaoh and this ain't Egypt."
"Is too Egypt and I reckon
you ain't Pharaoh, you Moses."
"What do you want, a plague of cockroaches? Barcy already got that, and
nobody cares."
"I want you to part the sea and let us across on dry land in the dark of
night."
Alvin shook his head. "Moses did that by the power of God, which I ain't got.
And he had someplace to go, a wilderness to be lost in. Where can you go? All these people. Too many."
"Where you send them slaves you set free from the riverboat?"
That flat out stunned Alvin. There was no way that story could be known here
in the south. Was there?
Alvin turned and looked at Arthur Stuart.
"I didn't tell nobody," said Arthur. "You think I'm crazy?"
"You think I need somebody tell me?" said La Tia. "I saw it inside you, all
on fire, you. Take us across the river."
"But you ain't talking about no two score slaves here, you talking about
blacktown and the orphanage and -- French town? You know how many that is?"
"And all the slaves as want to go," said La Tia. "In the fog of night. You
make the fog come into Barcy from off the river. You let us all gather in the
fog, you take us across the river. You got red friends, you take us safe to the
other side."
"I can't do it. You think I can hold back the whole Mizzippy? What do you
think I am?"
"I think you a man, he want to know why he alive," said La Tia. "He want to
know what his power be for. Now La Tia tell you, and you don't want to know
after all!"
"I'm not Moses," said Alvin. "And you ain't the Lord."
"You want to see a burning bush?" asked La Tia.
"No!" said Alvin. She might be able to conjure up some kind of fireworks, but
he didn't want to see it.
"And it wouldn't work to cross the river anyway," said Alvin. "How would we
feed the people on the far bank? It's swamp there, mud and snakes and gators and
skeeters, just like here. Ain't no manna in the wilderness there. My friends
among the reds are far to the north. It can't be done. Least of all by me."
"Most of all by you," said La Tia.
They stood there in silence for a moment.
Arthur Stuart spoke up. "Usted es tia de quien?"
"I don't speak no Spanish, boy," said La Tia. "They call me La Tia cause them
Spanish people can't say my Ibo name."
"We don't say her name neither," said the smaller woman. "She be our Queen,
and she say, Let my people go, so you do it, you."
"Hush, child," said La Tia. "You don't tell a man like this what to do. He
already want to do it. So we help him find his courage. We tell him, go to the
dock and there he find him hope this morning. There he find a brother like Moses
did, make him brave, give him trouble."
"Oh good," said Alvin. "More trouble." But he knew that he would do her
bidding -- go to the dock, at least, and see what her prophecy might mean.
"Tonight at first dark, there be fog," said La Tia. "You make fog, everybody
know to come."
"Come where?" said Alvin. "Don't do it. We can't cross the river."
"We leave this place one way," said La Tia, "or we leave it another, we."
As they hurried away, with blacks watching them on either hand, Arthur Stuart
asked, "She mean what I thought she meant?"
"They're going to leave or they're going to die trying," said Alvin. "And I
can't say they're wrong. Something ugly's building up in this city. They were
itching for war before this yellow fever. Steve Austin's been gathering men who
like to fight. And there's no shortage of others who'll fight when they're
afraid. They all mean to have some killing, and La Tia's right. There's no
staying here, not for any of the people they might turn on. If I find a way to
get Papa Moose and his family out of Barcy, they'll turn on the free blacks or
the French."
"How about a hurricane? You done a flood to stop the slave revolt in Camelot,
but I think this time you could do it with wind and rain," said Arthur Stuart.
"You don't know what you're asking," said Alvin. "A bad blow in this place,
and we'd kill the very folks we ought to save."
Arthur Stuart looked around him. "Oh," he said. "I guess they're all pretty
much on low ground."
"Reckon so."
White faces watched them from the windows of poor shacks in Frenchtown, too.
La Tia's words had gone out already. They were all looking to Alvin to save
them, and he didn't know how.
Story of my life, thought Alvin. Expectations built up all around me, but I
got neither the power nor the wisdom to fulfil any of them. I can make a man's
knife disappear and I can melt the chains off a bunch of slaves but it's a drop
of blood in a bucket of water, you can't even find it, let alone draw it out
again.
Drop of blood in a bucket of water.
He remembered how Tenskwa-Tawa made a whirlwind on a lake, put his blood into
the waterspout, and saw the future in the walls of it as he and Alvin rose up in
the air inside.
He remembered that it was in the visions inside that column of swirling water
that he saw the Crystal City for the first time. Was it something in the distant
past, or something in the future? What mattered was not that dream of what might
have been. It was the process by which Tenskwa-Tawa shaped the water to the form
he wanted, and held it there, seeming to whirl at great speed, but really
holding absolutely still.
Blood in the water, and a whirlwind, and walls as clear and smooth as glass.
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.