And I don’t want to see no eleven-year-old Alvin come here. He’ll be looking for me, right enough. He knows I saw his future on the rainy dark day when he was born, and so he’ll come, and he’ll say to me, “Peggy, I know you’re a torch, and I know you wrote in Taleswapper’s book that I’m to be a Maker. So tell me what I’m supposed to be.” Peggy knew just what he’d say, and every way he might choose to say it—hadn’t she seen it a hundred times, a thousand times? And she’d teach him and he’d become a great man, a true Maker, and—

  And then one day, when he’s a handsome figure of twenty-one and I’m a sharp-tongued spinster of twenty-six he’ll feel so grateful to me, so obligated, that he’ll propose himself for marriage to me as his bounden duty. And I, being lovesick all these years, full of dreams of what he’ll do and what we’ll be together, I’ll say yes, and saddle him with a wife he wished he didn’t have to marry, and his eyes will hunger for other women all the days of our lives together—

  Peggy wished, oh she wished so deep, wished that she didn’t know for certain things would be that way. But Peggy was a torch right enough, the strongest torch she’d ever heard of, stronger even than the folk hereabouts in Hatrack River ever guessed.

  She sat up in bed and did not throw the box or hide it or break it or bury it. She opened it. Inside lay the last scrap of Alvin’s birth caul, as dry and white as paper ash in a cold hearth. Eleven years ago when Peggy’s mama served as midwife to pull baby Alvin out of the well of life, and Alvin first sucked for breath in the damp air of Papa’s Hatrack River Roadhouse, Peggy peeled that thin and bloody caul from the baby’s face so he could breathe. Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, and the thirteenth child—Peggy saw at once what the paths of his life would be. Death, that was where he was headed, death from a hundred different accidents in a world that seemed bent on killing him even before he was hardly alive.

  She was Little Peggy then, a girl of five, but she’d been torching for two years already, and in that time she never did a seeing on a birthing child who had so many paths to death. Peggy searched up all the paths of his life, and found in all of them but one single way that boy could live to be a man.

  That was if she kept that birth caul, and watched him from afar off, and whenever she saw death reaching out to take him, she’d use that caul. Take just a pinch of it and grind it between her fingers and whisper what had to happen, see it in her mind. And it would happen just the way she said. Hadn’t she held him up from drowning? Saved him from a wallowing buffalo? Caught him from sliding off a roof? She even split a roof beam once, when it was like to fall from fifty feet up and squash him on the floor of a half-built church; she split that beam neat as you please, so it fell on one side of him and the other, with just a space for him to stand there in between. And a hundred other times when she acted so early that nobody ever even guessed his life had been saved, even those times she saved him, using the caul.

  How did it work? She hardly knew. Except that it was his own power she was using, the gift born right in him. Over the years he’d learned somewhat about his knack for making things and shaping them and holding them together and splitting them apart. Finally this last year, all caught up in the wars between Red men and White, he’d taken charge of saving his own life, so she hardly had to do a thing to save him anymore. Good thing, too. There wasn’t much of that caul left.

  She closed the lid of the box. I don’t want to see him, thought Peggy. I don’t want to know any more about him.

  But her fingers opened that lid right back up, cause of course she had to know. She’d lived half her life, it seemed like, touching that caul and searching for his heartfire away far off in the northwest Wobbish country, in the town of Vigor Church, seeing how he was doing, looking up the paths of his future to see what danger lay in ambush. And when she was sure he was safe, she’d look farther ahead, and see him coming back one day to Hatrack River, where he was born, coming back and looking into her face and saying, It was you who saved me all those times, you who saw I was a Maker back afore a living soul thought such a thing was possible. And then she’d watch him learn the great depths of his power, the work he had to do, the crystal city he had to build; she saw him sire babies on her, and saw him touch the nursing infants she held in her arms; she saw the ones they buried and the ones that lived; and last of all she saw him—

  Tears came down her face. I don’t want to know, she said. I don’t want to know all the roads of the future. Other girls can dream of love, the joys of marriage, of being mothers to strong healthy babies; but all my dreams have dying in them, too, and pain, and fear, because my dreams are true dreams, I know more than a body can know and still have any hope inside her soul.

  Yet Peggy did hope. Yes sir, you can be sure of it—she still clung to a kind of desperate hope, because even knowing what’s likely to come down the pathways of a body’s life, she still caught her some glimpses, some clear plain visions of certain days, certain hours, certain passing moments of joy so great it was worth the grief just to get there.

  Trouble was those glimpses were so rare and small in the spreading futures of Alvin’s life that she couldn’t find a road that led there. All the pathways she could find easily, the plain ones, the ones most likely to become real, those all led to Alvin wedding her without love, out of gratitude and duty, a miserable marriage. Like the story of Leah in the Bible, whose beautiful husband Jacob hated her even though she loved him dear and bore him more babies than his other wives and would’ve died for him if he’d as much as asked her.

  It’s an evil thing God did to women, thought Peggy, to make us hanker after husband and children till it leads us to a life of sacrifice and misery and grief. Was Eve’s sin so terrible, that God should curse all women with that mighty curse? You will groan and bear children, said Almighty Merciful God. You will be eager for your husband, and he will rule over you.

  That was what was burning in her—eagerness for her husband. Even though he was only an eleven-year-old boy who was looking, not for a wife, but for a teacher. He may be just a boy, thought Peggy, but I’m a woman, and I’ve seen the man he’ll be, and I yearn for him. She pressed one hand against her breast; it felt so large and soft, still somewhat out of place on her body, which used to be all sticks and corners like a shanty cabin, and now was softening, like a calf being fattened up for the return of the prodigal.

  She shuddered, thinking what happened to the fatted calf, and once again touched the caul, and looked:

  In the distant town of Vigor Church, young Alvin was breakfasting his last morning at his mother’s table. The pack he was to carry on his journey to Hatrack River lay on the floor beside the table. His mother’s tears flowed undisguised across her cheeks. The boy loved his mother, but never for a moment did he feel sorry to be leaving. His home was a dark place now, stained with too much innocent blood for him to hanker to stay. He was eager to be off, to start his life as a prentice boy to the blacksmith of Hatrack River, and to find the Torch girl who saved his life when he was born. He couldn’t eat another bite. He pushed back from the table, stood up, kissed his mama—

  Peggy let go the caul and closed the lid of the box as tight and quick as if she was trying to catch a fly inside.

  Coming to find me. Coming to start a life of misery together. Go ahead and cry, Faith Miller, but not because your little boy Alvin’s on his way east. You cry for me, the woman whose life your boy will wreck. You shed your tears for one more woman’s lonely pain.

  Peggy shuddered, shook off the bleak mood of the grey dawn, and dressed herself quickly, ducking her head to avoid the low sloping crossbeams of the attic roof. Over the years she’d learned ways to push thoughts of Alvin Miller Junior clean out of her mind, long enough to do her duty as daughter in her parents’ household and as torch for the people of the country hereabouts. She could go hours without thinking about that boy, when she set her mind to it. And though it was harder now, knowing he was about to set his foot on the road toward her that very morning, she still put thoughts of him aside.

  Peggy opened the curtain of the south-facing window and sat before it, leaning on the sill. She looked out over the forest that still stretched from the roadhouse, down the Hatrack River and on to the Hio, with only a few pig farms here and there to block the way. Of course she couldn’t see the Hio, not that many miles from here, not even in the clear cool air of springtime. But what her natural eyes couldn’t see, the burning torch in her could find easy enough. To see the Hio, she had only to search for a far-off heartfire, then slip herself inside that fellow’s flame, and see out of his eyes as easy as she could see out of her own. And once there, once she had ahold of someone’s heartfire, she could see other things, too, not just what he saw, but what he thought and felt and wished for. And even more: Flickering away in the brightest parts of the flame, often hidden by all the noise of the fellow’s present thoughts and wishes, she could see the paths ahead of him, the choices coming to him, the life he’d make for himself if he chose this or that or another way in the hours and days to come.

  Peggy could see so much in other people’s heartfires that she hardly was acquainted with her own.

  She thought of herself sometimes like that lone lookout boy at the tiptop of a ship’s mast. Not that she ever saw her a ship in her whole life, except the rafts on the Hio and one time a canal boat on the Irrakwa Canal. But she read some books, as many as ever she could get Doctor Whitley Physicker to bring back to her from his visits to Dekane. So she knew about the lookout on the mast. Clinging to the rigging, arms half-wrapped in the lines so he didn’t fall if there was a sudden roll or pitch of the boat, or a gust of wind unlooked-for; froze blue in winter, burnt red in summer; and nothing to do all day, all the long long hours of his watch, but look out onto the empty blue ocean. If it was a pirate ship, the lookout watched for victims’ sails. If it was a whaler, he looked for blows and breaches. Most ships, he just looked for land, for shoals, for hidden sand bars; looked for pirates or some sworn enemy of his nation’s flag.

  Most days he never saw a thing, not a thing, just waves and dipping sea birds and fluffy clouds.

  I am on a lookout perch, thought Peggy. Sent up aloft some sixteen years ago the day I was born, and kept here ever since, never once let down below, never once allowed to rest within the narrow bunkspace of the lowest deck, never once allowed to so much as close a hatch over my head or a door behind my back. Always, always I’m on watch, looking far and near. And because it isn’t my natural eyes I look through, I can’t shut them, not even in sleep.

  No escape from it at all. Sitting here in the attic, she could see without trying:

  Mother, known to others as Old Peg Guester, known to herself as Margaret, cooking in the kitchen for the slew of guests due in for one of her suppers. Not like she has any particular knack for cooking, either, so kitchen work is hard, she isn’t like Gertie Smith who can make salt pork taste a hundred different ways on a hundred different days. Peg Guester’s knack is in womenstuff, midwifery and house hexes, but to make a good inn takes good food and now Oldpappy’s gone she has to cook, so she thinks only of the kitchen and couldn’t hardly stand interruption, least of all from her daughter who mopes around the house and hardly speaks at all and by and large that girl is the most unpleasant, ill-favored child even though she started out so sweet and promising, everything in life turns sour somehow . . .

  Oh, that was such a joy, to know how little your own mama cared for you. Never mind that Peggy also knew the fierce devotion that her mama had. Knowing that a portion of love abides in your mama’s heart doesn’t take away but half the sting of knowing her dislike for you as well.

  And Papa, known to others as Horace Guester, keeper of the Hatrack River Roadhouse. A jolly fellow, Papa was, even now out in the dooryard telling tales to a guest who was having trouble getting away from the inn. He and Papa always seemed to have something more to talk about, and oh, that guest, a circuit lawyer from up Cleveland way, he fancied Horace Guester was just about the finest most upstanding citizen he ever met, if all folks was as good-hearted as old Horace there’d be no more crime and no more lawyering in the upriver Hio country. Everybody felt that way. Everybody loved old Horace Guester.

  But his daughter, Peggy the torch, she saw into his heartfire and knew how he felt about it. He saw those folks a-smiling at him and he said to himself, If they knew what I really was they’d spit in the road at my feet and walk away and forget they ever saw my face or knew my name.

  Peggy sat there in her attic room and all the heartfires glowed, all of them in town. Her parents’ most, cause she knew them best; the lodgers who stayed in the roadhouse; and then the people of the town.

  Nat Smith and his wife Gertie and their three snot-nose children planning devilment when they weren’t puking or piddling—Peggy saw Nat’s pleasure in the shaping of iron, his loathing for his own children, his disappointment as his wife changed from a fascinating unattainable vision of beauty into a stringy-haired hag who screamed at the children first and then came to use the same voice to scream at Nat.

  Paulie Wiseman, the sheriff, loving to make folks a-scared of him; Whitley Physicker, angry at himself because his medicine didn’t work more than half the time, and every week he saw death he couldn’t do a thing about. New folks, old folks, farmers, and professionals, she saw through their eyes and into their hearts. She saw the marriage beds that were cold at night and the adulteries kept secret in guilty hearts. She saw the thievery of trusted clerks and friends and servants, and the honorable hearts inside many who were despised and looked down on.

  She saw it all, and said nothing. Kept her mouth shut. Talked to no one. Cause she wasn’t going to lie. She promised years before that she’d never lie, and kept her word by keeping still.

  Other folks didn’t have her problem. They could talk and tell the truth. But Peggy couldn’t tell the truth. She knew these folks too well. She knew what they all were scared of, what they all wanted, what they all had done that they’d kill her or theirself if they once got a notion that she knew. Even the ones who never done a bad thing, they’d be so ashamed to think she knew their secret dreams or private craziness. So she never could speak frankly to these folks, or something would slip out, not even a word maybe, it might be just the way she turned her head, the way she sidestepped some line of talk, and they’d know that she knew, or just fear that she knew, or just fear. Just fear alone, without even naming what it was, and it could undo them, some of them, the weakest of them.

  She was a lookout all the time, alone atop the mast, hanging to the lines, seeing more than she ever wanted to, and never getting even a minute to herself.

  When it wasn’t some baby being born, so she had to go and do a seeing, then it was some folks in trouble somewhere that had to be helped. It didn’t do her no good to sleep, neither. She never slept all the way. Always a part of her was looking, and saw the fire burning, saw it flash.

  Like now. Now this very moment, as she looked out over the forest, there it was. A heartfire burning ever so far off.

  She swung herself close in—not her body, of course, her flesh stayed right there in the attic—but being a torch she knew how to look close at far-off heartfires.

  It was a young woman. No, a girl, even younger than herself. And strange inside, so she knew right off this girl first spoke a language that wasn’t English, even though she spoke and thought in English now. It made her thoughts all twisty and queer. But some things run deeper than the tracks that words leave in your brain; Little Peggy didn’t need no help understanding that baby the girl held in her arms, and the way she stood at the river bank knowing she would die, and what a horror waited for her back at the plantation, and what she’d done last night to get away.

  See the sun there, three fingers over the trees. This runaway Black slave girl and her little bastard half-white boy-baby, see them standing on the shore of the Hio, half hid up in trees and bushes, watching as the White men pole them rafts on down. She a-scared, she know them dogs can’t find her but very soon they get them the runaway finder, very worse thing, and how she ever cross that river with this boy-baby?

  She cotch her a terrible thought: I leave this boy-baby, I hide him in this rotten log, I swim and steal the boat and I come back to here. That do the job, yes sir.

  But then this Black girl who nobody never teach how to be a mama, she know a good mama don’t leave this baby who still gots to suck two-hand times a day. She whisper, Good mama don’t leave a little boy-baby where old fox or weasel or badger come and nibble off little parts and kill him dead. No ma’am, not me.

  So she just set down here a-hold of this baby, and watch the river flow on, might as well be the seashore cause she never get across.

  Maybe some White folks help her? Here on the Appalachee shore the White folk hang them as help a slavegirl run away. But this runaway Black slavegirl hear stories on the plantation, about Whites who say nobody better be own by nobody else. Who say this Black girl better have that same right like the White lady, she say no to any man be not her true husband. Who say this Black girl better can keep her baby, not let them White boss promise he sell it on weaning day, they send this boy-baby to grow up into a house slave in Drydenshire, kiss a white man’s feet if he say boo.

  “Oh, your baby is so lucky,” they say to this slavegirl. “He’ll grow up in a fine lord’s mansion in the Crown Colonies, where they still have a king—he might even see the King someday.”

  She don’t say nothing but she laugh inside. She don’t set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?