Tor Books by Orson Scott Card

  Note: Within series, books are best read in listed order.

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  ENDER UNIVERSE

  Ender Series

  Ender Wiggin: The finest general the world could hope to find or breed.

  Ender’s Game

  Ender in Exile

  Speaker for the Dead

  Xenocide

  Children of the Mind

  Ender’s Shadow Series

  Parallel storylines to Ender’s Game from Bean: Ender’s right hand, his strategist, and his friend.

  Ender’s Shadow

  Shadow of the Hegemon

  Shadow Puppets

  Shadow of the Giant

  Shadows in Flight

  The First Formic War Series

  One hundred years before Ender’s Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death.

  These are the stories of the First Formic War.

  Earth Unaware

  Earth Afire

  Ender novellas

  A War of Gifts

  First Meetings

  The Authorized Ender Companion by Jake Black

  A complete and in-depth encyclopedia of all the persons, places, things, and events in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Universe.

  THE MITHER MAGES SERIES

  Danny North is different from his magical family. And when he discovers his gift, it is greater than he ever imagined—which could earn him a death sentence.

  The Lost Gate

  The Gate Thief

  THE TALES OF ALVIN MAKER SERIES

  Visit the magical America that might have been, marvel as the tale of Alvin Maker unfolds.

  Seventh Son

  Red Prophet

  Prentice Alvin

  Alvin Journeyman

  Heartfire

  The Crystal City

  HOMECOMING SERIES

  Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. But it is still vital.

  The Memory of Earth

  The Call of Earth

  The Ships of Earth

  Earthfall

  Earthborn

  WOMEN OF GENESIS SERIES

  Fiction exploring the human side of Biblical women.

  Sarah

  Rebekah

  Rachel & Leah

  THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD

  Experience Card’s full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.

  Keeper of Dreams

  The Changed Man

  Cruel Miracles

  Flux

  Monkey Sonatas

  STAND-ALONE FICTION

  Hart’s Hope: dark and powerful fantasy.

  Lovelock (with Kathryn Kidd): a startling look at the ethics of bioengineering.

  Pastwatch: In this novel of time travel, can the past be changed?

  Saints: a novel of the early days of the Mormon Church.

  Songmaster: an SF classic and a haunting story of power and love.

  The Worthing Saga: the tale of a seed ship sent out to save the human race.

  Wyrms: the story of a young woman’s journey to confront her destiny, and her world’s.

  The Folk of the Fringe: when America is destroyed, it’s up to those on the fringes to rebuild.

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  www.tor-forge.com

  Prentice Alvin

  ORSON SCOTT CARD

  The Tales of Alvin Maker III

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  For all my good teachers, especially:

  Fran Schroeder,

  fourth grade, Millikin Elementary, Santa Clara, California,

  for whom I wrote my first poems.

  Ida Huber,

  tenth-grade English, Mesa High School, Arizona,

  who believed in my future more than I did.

  Charles Whitman,

  playwriting, Brigham Young University,

  who made my scripts look better than they deserved.

  Norman Council,

  literature, University of Utah,

  for Spenser and Milton, alive.

  Edward Vasta,

  literature, University of Notre Dame,

  for Chaucer and for friendship.

  And always François.

  Acknowledgements

  IN THE PREPARATION of this volume of the Tales of Alvin Maker I have, as always, depended on others for help. For immeasurable help on the opening chapters of this book, my thanks go to the gentlefolk of the second Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop, to wit: Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, Gregg Keizer, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Nancy Kress, Shariann Lewitt, Jack Massa, Rebecca Brown Ore, Susan Palwick, Bruce Sterling, Mark L. Van Name, Connie Willis, and Allen Wold.

  Thanks also to the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts for awarding a prize to my narrative poem “Prentice Alvin and the No-Good Plow.” That encouragement led to my developing the story in prose and at greater length; this is the first volume to include part of the story recounted in that poem.

  For details of frontier life and crafts, I have used John Seymour’s wonderful book The Forgotten Crafts (New York City: Knopf, 1984) and Douglass L. Brownstone’s A Field Guide to America’s History (New York City: Facts On File, Inc., 1984).

  I’m grateful that Gardner Dozois has kindly allowed pieces of the Tales of Alvin Maker to appear in the pages of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, allowing it to find an audience before the books appeared.

  Beth Meacham at Tor is one of that vanishing breed of editors with a golden touch; her advice is never intrusive, always wise; and (rarest editorial trait of all) she returns my telephone calls. For that alone she may be sainted.

  Thanks to my writing class in Greensboro in the winter and spring of 1988 for suggestions that led to important improvements in the book; and to my sister, friend, and editorial assistant, Janice, for her work on keeping story details fresh in mind.

  Thanks most of all to Kristine A. Card, who listens to me ramble through the many versions of each as-yet-unwritten book, reads the dot-matrix printouts of the early drafts, and is my second self through every page of everything I write.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgements

  1 - The Overseer

  2 - Runaway

  3 - Lies

  4 - Modesty

  5 - Dowser

  6 - Masquerade

  7 - Wells

  8 - Unmaker

  9 - Redbird

  10 - Goodwife

  11 - Wand

  12 - School Board

  13 - Springhouse

  14 - River Rat

  15 - Teacher

  16 - Property

  17 - Spelling Bee

  18 - Manacles

  19 - The Plow

  20 - Cavil’s Deed

  21 - Alvin Journeyman

  Tor Books by Orson Scott Card

  Copyright Page

  1

  The Overseer

  LET ME START my history of Alvin’s prenticeship where things first began to go wrong. It was a long way south, a man that Alvin had never met nor never would meet in all his life. Yet he it was who started things moving down the path that would lead to Alvin doing what the law called murder—on the very day that his prenticeship ended and he rightly became a man.

  It was a place in Appalachee, in 1811, before Appalachee signed the Fugitive Slave Treaty and joined the United States. It was near the borders where Appalachee and the Crown Colonies meet, so there wasn’t a White man but aspired to own a passel of Black slaves to do his work for him.

  Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man’s sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman’s throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer’s table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.

  Listen tight, and I’ll tell you how the world looked from inside Cavil Planter’s heart. But make sure the children are asleep, for this is a part of my tale that children ought not to hear, for it deals with hungers they don’t understand too well, and I don’t aim for this story to teach them.

  Cavil Planter was a godly man, a church-going man, a tithepayer. All his slaves were baptized and given Christian names as soon as they understood enough English to be taught the gospel. He forbade them to practice their dark arts—he never allowed them to slaughter so much as a chicken themselves, lest they convert such an innocent act into a sacrifice to some hideous god. In all ways Cavil Planter served the Lord as best he could.

  So, how was the poor man rewarded for his righteousness? His wife, Dolores, she was beset with terrible aches and pains, her wrists and fingers twisting like an old woman’s. By the time she was twenty-five she went to sleep most nights crying, so that Cavil could
not bear to share the room with her.

  He tried to help her. Packs of cold water, soaks of hot water, powders and potions, spending more than he could afford on those charlatan doctors with their degrees from the University of Camelot, and bringing in an endless parade of preachers with their eternal prayers and priests with their hocum pocus incantations. All of it accomplished nigh onto nothing. Every night he had to lie there listening to her cry until she whimpered, whimper until her breath became a steady in and out, whining just a little on the out-breath, a faint little wisp of pain.

  It like to drove Cavil mad with pity and rage and despair. For months on end it seemed to him that he never slept at all. Work all day, then at night lie there praying for relief. If not for her, then for him.

  It was Dolores herself who gave him peace at night. “You have work to do each day, Cavil, and can’t do it unless you sleep. I can’t keep silent, and you can’t bear to hear me. Please—sleep in another room.”

  Cavil offered to stay anyway. “I’m your husband, I belong here”—he said it, but she knew better.

  “Go,” she said. She even raised her voice. “Go!”

  So he went, feeling ashamed of how relieved he felt. He slept that night without interruption, a whole five hours until dawn, slept well for the first time in months, perhaps years—and arose in the morning consumed with guilt for not keeping his proper place beside his wife.

  In due time, though, Cavil Planter became accustomed to sleeping alone. He visited his wife often, morning and night. They took meals together. Cavil sitting on a chair in her room, his food on a small side table, Dolores lying in bed as a Black woman carefully spooned food into her mouth while her hands sprawled on the bedsheets like dead crabs.

  Even sleeping in another room, Cavil wasn’t free of torment. There would be no babies. There would be no sons to raise up to inherit Cavil’s fine plantation. There would be no daughters to give away in magnificent weddings. The ballroom downstairs—when he brought Dolores into the fine new house he had built for her, he had said, “Our daughters will meet their beaux in this ballroom, and first touch their hands, the way our hands first touched in your father’s house.” Now Dolores never saw the ballroom. She came downstairs only on Sundays to go to church and on those rare days when new slaves were purchased, so she could see to their baptism.

  Everyone saw her on such occasions, and admired them both for their courage and faith in adversity. But the admiration of his neighbors was scant comfort when Cavil surveyed the ruins of his dreams. All that he prayed for—it’s as if the Lord wrote down the list and then in the margin noted “no, no, no” on every line.

  The disappointments might have embittered a man of weaker faith. But Cavil Planter was a godly, upright man, and whenever he had the faintest thought that God might have treated him badly, he stopped whatever he was doing and pulled the small psaltery from his pocket and whispered aloud the words of the wise man.

  In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust;

  Bow down thine ear to me;

  Be thou my strong rock.

  He concentrated his mind firmly, and the doubts and resentments quickly fled. The Lord was with Cavil Planter, even in his tribulations.

  Until the morning he was reading in Genesis and he came upon the first two verses of chapter 16.

  Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from hearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid: it may be that I may obtain children by her.

  At that moment the thought came into his mind, Abraham was a righteous man, and so am I. Abraham’s wife bore him no children, and mine likewise has no hope. There was an African slavewoman in their household, as there are such women in mine. Why shouldn’t I do as Abraham did, and father children by one of these?

  The moment the thought came into his head, he shuddered in horror. He’d heard gossip of White Spaniards and French and Portuguese in the jungle islands to the south who lived openly with Black women—truly they were the lowest kind of creature, like men who do with beasts. Besides, how could a child of a Black woman ever be an heir to him? A mix-up boy could no more take possession of an Appalachee plantation than fly. Cavil just put the thought right out of his mind.

  But as he sat at breakfast with his wife, the thought came back. He found himself watching the Black woman who fed his wife. Like Hagar, this woman is Egyptian, isn’t she? He noticed how her body twisted lithely at the waist as she bore the spoon from tray to mouth. Noticed how as she leaned forward to hold the cup to the frail woman’s lips, the servant’s breasts swung down to press against her blouse. Noticed how her gentle fingers brushed crumbs and drops from Dolores’s lips. He thought of those fingers touching him, and trembled slightly. Yet it felt like an earthquake inside him.

  He rushed from the room with hardly a word. Outside the house, he clutched his psaltery.

  Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,

  And cleanse me from my sin.

  For I acknowledge my transgressions:

  And my sin is ever before me.

  Yet even as he whispered these words, he looked up and saw the field women washing themselves at the trough. There was the young girl he had bought only a few days before, six hundred dollars even though she was small, since she was probably breeding stock. So fresh from the boat she was that she hadn’t learned a speck of Christian modesty. She stood there naked as a snake, leaning over the trough, pouring cups of water over her head and down her back.

  Cavil stood transfixed, watching her. What had only been a brief thought of evil in his wife’s bedroom now became a trance of lust. He had never seen anything so graceful as her blue-black thighs sliding against each other, so inviting as her shiver when the water ran down her body.

  Was this the answer to his fervent psalm? Was the Lord telling him that it was indeed with him as it had been with Abraham?

  Just as likely it was witchery. Who knew what knacks these fresh-from-Africa Blacks might have? She knows I’m here a-watching, and she’s tempting me. These Blacks are truly the devil’s own children, to excite such evil thoughts in me.

  He tore his gaze from the new girl and turned away, hiding his burning eyes in the words of the book. Only somehow the page had turned—when did he turn it?—and he found himself reading in the Song of Solomon.

  Thy two breasts are like two young roes

  That are twins, which feed among the lilies.

  “God help me,” he whispered. “Take this spell from me.”

  Day after day he whispered the same prayer, yet day after day he found himself watching his slavewomen with desire, particularly that newbought girl. Why was it God seemed to be paying him no mind? Hadn’t he always been a righteous man? Wasn’t he good to his wife? Wasn’t he honest in business? Didn’t he pay tithes and offerings? Didn’t he treat his slaves and horses well? Why didn’t the Lord God of Heaven protect him and take this Black spell from him?

  Yet even when he prayed, his very confessions became evil imaginings. O Lord, forgive me for thinking of my newbought girl standing in the door of my bedroom, weeping at the caning she got from the overseer. Forgive me for imagining myself laying her on my own bed and lifting her skirts to anoint them with a balm so powerful the welts on her thighs and buttocks disappear before my eyes and she begins to giggle softly and writhe slowly on the sheets and look over her shoulder at me, smiling, and then she turns over and reaches out to me and—O Lord, forgive me, save me!

  Whenever this happened, though, he couldn’t help but wonder—why do such thoughts come to me even when I pray? Maybe I’m as righteous as Abraham; maybe it’s the Lord who sent these desires to me. Didn’t I first think of this while I was reading scripture? The Lord can work miracles—what if I went in unto the newbought girl and she conceived, and the Lord worked a miracle and the baby was born White? All things are possible to God.

  This thought was both wonderful and terrible. If only it were true! Yet Abraham heard the voice of God, so he never had to wonder about what God might want of him. God never said a word to Cavil Planter.