“Miracles don’t make people faithful or obedient,” said Alvin. “They make them jealous or frightened.”

  “You’re so cynical,” said Margaret.

  “You taught me that word, Miz Larner,” said Alvin. “You know that I’m not cynical.”

  “Don’t you ‘Miz Larner’ me, Alvin Miller,” said Margaret.

  Alvin smiled and then kissed her. “I’m glad to be home.” Then he went and took Vigor’s hand, and swung him up to perch on Alvin’s right shoulder.

  “Oh, Mister Smith,” said Margaret in a swoony voice. “Your arms are so strong.”

  Alvin laughed and carried Vigor on out of the school.

  But being home didn’t even begin to suggest Alvin’s being in their house for more than a few minutes at a time. While she was teaching, he brought Vigor along with him on all his errands and to all his meetings. When Alvin let somebody challenge him to a stick-pull in the market square, Vigor didn’t just stand and watch, he managed to get into a wrestling match with a six-year-old with six inches of reach on him. An onlooker might be forgiven for thinking Alvin was an inattentive father, letting his son get into a fight, but Alvin was plenty attentive. After pulling the other fellow right over the stick and throwing him onto the ground behind him, Alvin went over to pick up the stick and shake hands with the young man he just beat—but on the way he paused and held Vigor and his opponent apart while he said, “Hey little feller, you might think because you’re bigger, you’re probably going to lick Vigor here.”

  “He’s not,” said Vigor.

  “What you don’t know about little guys is they just pile right into you, so close that your long arms can’t land a blow. So if this boy”—indicating Vigor—“cares enough, he’ll whup you right down to the ground.”

  “Will not,” said the boy.

  “Don’t complain that nobody warned you,” said Alvin. Within a couple of minutes Alvin had another opponent across the stick from him, and Vigor had the six-year-old on his back calling out, “Uncle! Uncle, dang you!”

  By the time Margaret got home from school, she had already heard of Alvin’s and Vigor’s shenanigans, including Vigor beating up a boy two years older than him. “You know I don’t like him fighting,” she said to Alvin softly after Vigor had proudly told her about his victory. Vigor went right to the kitchen for a pitcher of lemonade from the icebox, and didn’t show any interest in what Mommy was saying to Papa. But he was listening. Sharp ears, that boy.

  “If Papa doesn’t let me fight,” said Vigor, “then someday when I’m big and married and have little children of my own, I won’t know how to protect them.”

  “From whom will you protect your family?” asked Margaret.

  “Bad men,” said Vigor. And then, practicing a new word, he added, “Hooligans.”

  “That’s not a bad ambition,” said Margaret. “But the boy you defeated today, was he a hooligan?”

  “He was bigger than me, just like most of the hooligans are.”

  “Aren’t you afraid a bigger boy will hurt you?” asked Margaret.

  “Well he did hurt me,” said Vigor, pulling up his shirt to show off some bruises. “But that don’t make me afraid. Why should I be afraid if this is the worst he can do?”

  Margaret had to laugh along with Alvin, and when Vigor ran back outside to look for friends to play with, she said, “Alvin, I don’t know what kind of father you’re trying to be. Isn’t it our job to civilize our children?”

  “I reckon that’s what you’re best at. You civilized me, didn’t you?”

  “Obviously not, or at least not enough,” said Margaret.

  Alvin took her by the hands and looked into her eyes. “My love, is our son a good boy?”

  “Yes he is,” she answered forthrightly. “But your teaching doesn’t contribute to that as far as I can see.”

  “Then see farther,” said Alvin. “I’m doing what looks like good fathering to me. I’m helping him get ready to live in the world he’s going to have to live in, not the world we wish would come to be.”

  Supper was a maelstrom of visitors and conversations, with some guests sitting at the table with Alvin and Vigor, and Margaret and the kitchen girls going from room to room, handing platters of food to whoever was sitting in whatever place. When Margaret passed Alvin a new plate at the table, she said, “Every one of these people said you invited them to come celebrate your homecoming.”

  “I was feeling festive,” said Alvin.

  Margaret rolled her eyes and moved on. Fortunately, Alvin didn’t set up a free-for-all supper very often, and just as fortunately, Margaret had already set up a posse of helpful women in the neighborhood who would bring over food as soon as word spread that there was a mass meal at Alvin’s house. With Alvin away for a couple of weeks, suppers at Miz Larner’s house were modest, respectable affairs, with only the guests that Margaret had invited, plus whatever kids Vigor was playing with who came with him when she called him to supper. And even when Alvin was at home, these big chaotic celebratory feasts were pretty rare—every few weeks or so. She thought it was one of the best things about her husband, as well as one of the worst, that his generosity knew no bounds.

  And it’s not as if they couldn’t afford to reimburse their friends for the food they brought over. Alvin’s smithing and repair business was always booming when he was in town. He’d up and follow anybody to where they needed something fixed, and when he left everything worked perfectly. He never told anybody a price for his work, or asked for payment in advance—this was Alvin Maker, after all. But most of the people would bring things to the house in payment, or in gratitude, or just to share their best. Foodstuff, mostly, and handmade items—furniture large and small, a free tuning of their piano, two doghouses though they had only the one dog, bookshelves though they didn’t have near enough books to fill them, and little carved soldiers and nutcrackers and wooden spoons and pottery bowls and jars. Whoever had a craft wanted their work to be displayed and used in the Maker’s home.

  Every time Vigor saw the two doghouses, on opposite sides of the house, he would demand to know who the second dog was and when he would get there. Margaret always assured Vigor that there would never be another dog, because Canna was already more work than she was worth, especially considering the litter of puppies she dropped at least once a year—or once a week, Margaret would claim when she was annoyed enough to exaggerate the situation.

  All through the chaotic supper, people would try to get close enough to Margaret to tell her of some remarkably kind or remarkably powerful thing Alvin had done for them just that very afternoon. Margaret silently wondered whether Alvin even had time to void himself—did his knacks include the ability to make urine vanish from his bladder? But he seemed to have time for everybody, and a way to help anyone in need. There were diseases whose causes he didn’t understand, and therefore he couldn’t cure them. But there were many broken bones he could knit right up as good as new, and some illnesses that he called “easy,” which he could heal in just a few minutes of quiet conversation.

  Margaret couldn’t help but be reminded of the scripture, “Whoever would be the greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.” That was Alvin, never telling other people what to do, just asking what they needed. Was he mayor of the city? He didn’t need a title. A handyman of all trades? Not all, but pretty near. She knew the spectacular things he had done at times in his life, the power in his hands and in his mind that was almost terrifying if you didn’t know how adamantly Alvin refused to do harm.

  How easily Alvin could have chosen to be aloof, to make people come to him to beg for favors, how easily he could withhold his help, his gifts, until people did his bidding. He could command and people would obey. But the only time he did that was on the days when more crystal blocks were needed for the walls and towers of Crystal City. Then, at the water’s edge, he would first purify the water, then drip a tiny bit of his blood into the water as he formed a block with his hands. When it was done, when it was solid, then he would tell one of his helpers to take it away. “Where should I take it?” they would ask, and his answer was always the same: “Go where they’re building and see where you think it fits.”

  Margaret had been to the building site—sometimes on the third story of a tower. Sometimes near the ground, forming the foundation. The workers there, all of them approved by or hired by or solicited by Alvin, would place the blocks one way and then study what the crystals showed, then change it up, a complete rearrangement or one block swapped for another. Only when they thought that the messages in the crystals were coherent and useful instead of chaotic and confusing, they would say, “Let’s show this to Alvin.”

  And when Alvin saw what they had built, he would sit staring into it, sometimes for hours. The longer he gazed, the prouder the builders were. Alvin was finding truth and beauty in the crystals. The city had grown by just this much, and they had helped each other build it out of the crystals Alvin made.

  But today, one of the guests at supper whispered to her, there had been a difference. “Your husband went into the new part of the high tower and he walks around the walls of the highest level, and he stops at this one block. And it was a block that caused us fits, but we thought we finally found the right place. But Alvin looks into that block for only a few seconds and then he reaches out and touches it and it just dissolves into water, it stops being crystal at all. And he won’t tell us why, what we did wrong. He even said, ‘You did the best you could. It was the crystal that was wrong.’ And we still don’t know why he broke that part of the wall.”

  Margaret stayed long enough to ask, “Did the wall collapse? Was anything else damaged?”

  “No, it was just wet. With a gap in the wall.”

  “Did you put another crystal block into the gap?” asked Margaret.

  And the builder looked abashed. “We didn’t try,” he said. “If Alvin makes a gap, who are we to—”

  Margaret didn’t let him finish. “Alvin didn’t make a gap. He undid a block that he felt was somehow wrong—not wrongly placed, just wrong. So he didn’t want a gap there, he just wanted true crystal.”

  Not that Margaret understood the whole business of crystal-making or any part of it. But she knew that Alvin did not make by unmaking. For him to unmake a crystal block was a strange and powerful thing. She would have to ask him about it.

  But not that night. She had to think about it herself for a while. If it was important, he’d tell her without her needing to ask. Otherwise, she’d bide her time and try to understand a few things for herself.

  Vigor was finally bathed and in bed.

  When Margaret had taken care of a few personal chores, she returned to the parlor. Alvin was sitting on the settee, perusing several old maps. Her physical longing for him had been on her mind all afternoon, probably making her lectures disjointed and unhelpful, but now that they were actually alone together, she was exhausted from teaching. She wasn’t sure she could stay awake long enough for conjugal cooperation, but she didn’t want to disappoint Alvin about his homecoming. He seemed fresh as … well, there was nothing daisy-like about Alvin. Fresh as a cucumber?

  Not everything would be difficult for her tonight. There were many personal services she could offer him. “Would you like me to draw you a bath?”

  Alvin said, “You know dirt doesn’t stick to me if I don’t want it to.”

  “What about food? Plenty of bread and cheese, or I could cook you a few eggs.”

  “On my trek, I was moving slower than usual, so there was time for all the fruits and berries of the woods and croplands to offer themselves to me. You don’t say no to such offers, not inside the Greensong, so I’m still plumb full up. So full that I didn’t eat anything at supper tonight.”

  “I noticed that,” said Margaret, “which is why I thought you might be hungry.”

  “If I’d’ve been hungry,” he said with a grin, “don’t you think I would have et?”

  She rolled her eyes at his use of that old word. “What about you just go to bed in the nice new bedstead that Darn Dammer made for us, the best in town?”

  “It’s still early, Margaret,” he said. “For me, I mean. And you know I don’t get tired walking with the Greensong. In fact, I feel as rested as if I’d had a fine night of sleep.”

  “Or is that a night of fine sleep?” she asked.

  “Now I can be happy. I haven’t had anybody twist my words around since I left here a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I suppose you think two weeks apart from me is nothing,” said Margaret.

  “Indeed I do,” said Alvin cheerfully, “and you feel the same about me. What’s a brace of weeks to people who know each other like we do?”

  “Knowing your heartfire doesn’t mean I’m pleased to be apart from it for days on end.”

  “Margaret, are we quarreling?”

  “A little,” she said. “I want to take care of you, I want to welcome you with the pleasures of home. A hot bath, a fresh-cooked meal, a nap on a soft bed. And you don’t want anything that I can offer you.”

  “Is the city peaceful?” asked Alvin.

  “Mostly,” said Margaret. “A few rowdies, but the Whittlin and Whistlin Brigade encouraged them right out of town.”

  “And nobody more dire than that?”

  “I’m not pleased about the people you brought with you into town today,” said Margaret.

  “Now, see? This is going to be much more important than my getting to bed.”

  “The two men who left you right away, back in Irrakwa, they were worse than scamps. It was in their heart right from the beginning to use the woman and the other three men to steal the gold and transport it beyond the reach of the posse, but then they were going to kill the others and take the wagon on by themselves.”

  “So I saved the ones who are with us, saved them from murder.”

  “The men I told you about, they’ve killed before. I believe one of them has a knack of getting smart, suspicious people to trust him.”

  “Don’t think there is such a knack,” said Alvin.

  “Which is why you’re going to be taken in by rapscallions your whole life.”

  “What about the three men and the woman I brought here?”

  “Alvin, I know you didn’t choose them as companions—I did, I believe—but the only difference between them and the killers is they haven’t got around to killing anybody yet. They have the pleasant philosophy that when they steal, the only thing they’re taking from people is their possessions. They leave their victims alive and undamaged, if possible.”

  “So … scamps,” said Alvin.

  “Worse than scamps,” said Margaret.

  “All the way to being scoundrels?”

  “Sneakthieves because their knacks make it easy.”

  “Then it’s a good thing nobody in Crystal City has anything worth stealing.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “It’s one of the principles of the city,” said Alvin. “Property owns us more than we own property.”

  “Then why do we give people deeds to their land and houses?” asked Margaret.

  “So that outsiders can’t come in and claim land that we happen to be using,” said Alvin.

  “It’s still property.”

  Getting a little heated, Alvin quickly resorted to the dialect of his childhood. Margaret knew that education was only a thin veneer over his language, so she had to trust that he’d keep from sounding hill-country when he was out in the city.

  “If those fellows what stole the gold and lost it again, if they try such nonsense here—”

  “You’ll just sneak whatever they stole out of their possession,” said Margaret, “and then let them go on their way.”

  Alvin looked even more solemn. “Of course we let them go, if we can. We don’t want to have no prison in Crystal City. The walls we want here should be made of crystal and show visions to people with good hearts.”

  “There are people in the world who shouldn’t be walking around loose,” said Margaret.

  “I’ve had people hold me in jails from time to time,” said Alvin. “I didn’t like it.”

  “You’re not supposed to like it,” said Margaret.

  “Of course not, I was innocent.”

  “And we’d use our jail to lock up miscreants until we can turn them over to authorities in some other county.”

  “Because we don’t need a sheriff.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was mocking the idea. “We have the Whittlin and Whistlin Brigade,” said Margaret. “Why give somebody the kind of authority that makes them feel like they’re in charge?”

  “I agree with you,” said Alvin. “But usually jails and sheriffs go together. Who decides who gets locked up and when they get let out of jail? I’m against it from beginning to end. I don’t want Crystal City to be a place where we forbid some folks to leave.”

  “I know their hearts,” said Margaret.

  “But we never punished anybody for the desires of their heart,” said Alvin. “Only for the actions they chose to take as harmed other folk.”

  “I know, Alvin, I’m the one that taught you that people have to be free to choose right from wrong.”

  “But after they’ve chosen to do wrong, you’ll know which ones we need to lock up?”

  “I suppose I’d be the best choice for that job,” said Margaret. “Given my knack.”

  “Even though you don’t want to do it.”

  “I do not. But the job, if it is done at all, should be done fairly and rightly.”

  “Which you are best equipped to do,” said Alvin.

  “Why do I think you’re saying these things sarcastically?”

  “I’m telling the honest truth,” said Alvin. “The problem is that it’s the nature and disposition of almost all humans that, when you give them a little authority over other people, they begin to grab for more and more, power that they shouldn’t have, that wasn’t given to them.”

  “You think I would become an unjust judge?”

  “I don’t think that would happen to you at all. But when you travel, when you’re doing another task, you’re going to want to assign your magistrate duties to someone else, and whoever that is, he’s going to keep finding new emergencies that he needs to deal with in order to keep the peace.”