“If I choose to be seen,” said Calvin. “But I keep my word. Twenty feet from the shore. If you get as far as fifty feet away, the Red Prophet’s curse will either shove you back or sink you straight down.”

  “Is that twenty feet from the shore to the righthand edge of the boat?” asked a querulous old man—who Calvin soon realized was not as old as he looked. “Or to the middle of the boat? Or to the lefthand side, which we can’t do, because the boat is wider than twenty feet.”

  “I’ll go with you across the confluence of the Hio and Mizzippy, and then I’ll go ashore,” said Calvin.

  “That’s pretty time-consuming, putting out the boat and rowing to the shore and back.”

  “A Maker like me doesn’t need your boat,” said Calvin.

  True to his word, Calvin made sure they stayed within the channel he had cleared, until they got within the twenty feet of the Mizzippy shore—measuring from the righthand side of the riverboat.

  “So far so good,” said Captain Hubbard. “But if you’ve sent us into a trap, good sir, I’ll—”

  “You’ll do nothing to me,” said Calvin. “You can’t hurt a Maker who isn’t willing to be hurt.” He knew that this was true of Alvin, but not of Calvin himself. His self-healing took concentration that he didn’t think he could muster up if he had a musket ball somewhere in his body. But it’s better to let them think he could not be harmed than to suspect that he could.

  “But you’ve set no trap? Come with us, Calvin Miller, so we know your channel will continue true.”

  “If you stay where you’re supposed to be,” said Calvin, “your upriver voyage will be smooth. On horseback, I’ll be in Crystal City before you get there, ready to greet you at the end of your completely smooth, uneventful voyage upriver.”

  “You think a horse can go faster than my boat?” said Captain Hubbard.

  “Not downstream,” said Calvin. “But there’s a limit to how fast your engine can drive this boat against the currents of the mighty Mizzippy. I said smooth, not easy. And you actors better use the time to make sure you know all the speeches of all the plays you’re going to put on for the good folk of my Crystal City.”

  “Your city?” asked a middle-aged woman. “I thought it was Alvin Smith who made those crystal stones.”

  “He’s not the only one who put crystal blocks into the city walls,” said Calvin. “He just features in all the notices about it.”

  “Don’t leave us!” cried out a child’s voice—which Calvin saw came from the mouth of a youngish woman.

  “If you need me, I’ll help. I’ll watch your progress every step of the way.” If he did that, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on little things like steering his horse on the wild roads between Cairo and Crystal City.

  Calvin walked out of the theater and onto the deck two stories up from the water. They all followed, and not quietly. He ignored the questions being hurled at him, and went to a gap in the gunwale where a stairway led down to the deck below. But he swung his leg over the railing of that stairway, and then the other, so he was standing with only his heels on the deck and his hands gripping the gunwale, and then he stepped out into the air.

  Well, properly speaking, he sort of jumped. But it’s hard to jump from your heels, and he only had to leap far enough not to hit any part of the boat below him. He succeeded in that task, but when he reached the water he just knifed right in. Not a hint that he had been trying as hard as possible to solidify the water enough that he could walk to shore. That would get stories about Calvin Miller—no, Calvin Maker—spread all up and down the Hio.

  Instead, his feet touched the bottom of the river, and then he walked to shore, holding his breath. Twenty feet is a long way to hold your breath underwater. But he did it, and when he walked up the shore and his head cleared the surface of the water, he made sure not to gasp in a visible way. Let them at least share the rumor that he could breathe underwater. And as he dried his clothing—an easy thing to do—let them also think he could walk through water and not get wet.

  Then Calvin walked into the thick undergrowth near the shore and disappeared from their view. Then he jogged, in his now-dry clothes, to the place where he had already placed a pair of horses.

  Come on, boys, he whispered to them in his mind. You are the wind tonight. Show me how fast you can go.

  25

  ALVIN HAD CHOSEN a route through the woods that he knew would offer Greensong all the way to Vigor Church. But soon after crossing the Hio, Measure veered off from Alvin’s path.

  It brought Alvin to a stop. He knew Measure could be part of the Greensong, but he hadn’t known that his brother could find his own way through the music of the forest and meadow.

  Alvin followed Measure then, instead of the other way around. It didn’t take long to see where Measure was leading him. Alvin had intended to visit only Vigor Church, since that’s where both he and Measure had grown up. The town of Hatrack River? Alvin had been born there, and their big brother Vigor had died near there. It was where Alvin served his apprenticeship, where he made the iron plow that he turned into gold.

  The place meant little to Measure—it was just a place where a few things happened long ago. He didn’t know anybody there. But Alvin—this was his second home, he knew this place and most everybody in it. He had lost more loved ones here than Measure had. In Hatrack River, Alvin had killed a man who needed killing.

  When they both slowed down and walked along the main road through town, Alvin could finally say, “I thought we were going to see our family in Vigor Church.”

  “We are,” said Measure. “I just thought we should go the right way.”

  “How is this the right way?”

  “It’s the road we followed, on our way to settling in at Vigor Church. It passed through here, and then Father made us build covered bridges over every rushing stream or trickling brook. Some bridges a bare eight feet long, some spans of near thirty feet. You were a baby. You didn’t know what was going on.”

  “It must have delayed you considerable,” said Alvin.

  “None of those rivers was going to tear another family apart just cause it happened to be in flood,” said Measure.

  “So you think we should go along the road, go through all the bridges you built.”

  “It’s been a few decades, and some of the bridges might need repairs.”

  “They might,” said Alvin.

  “And you know Hatrack River as your hometown, your prentice town, your journeyman town.”

  They walked through Hatrack River without talking much, and Alvin didn’t even turn aside to visit the roadhouse where his wife had been born and lived for most of her childhood, looking out for Alvin even when he was off in Vigor Church. It was to Hatrack River that a runaway—a flyaway—slave had brought her newborn half-White baby, so he wouldn’t grow up in slavery. The effort of it, the magic of it, had worn her out. She died the night she got there, but she knew her baby would be safe. They named him Arthur Stuart, after the King in the Crown Colonies, and he grew up with Alvin as … what, his brother? Yes, for a while, but also something more like a father.

  He also chose not to enter the roadhouse because here was where Old Peg Guester had been the midwife who delivered Alvin into the world, and then had been like a mother to Alvin during his apprenticeship. When slave catchers came to bring Arthur Stuart back into slavery, they murdered Old Peg Guester because she resisted them. And Alvin, in a rage, killed the man who did it. It was purest justice, but Alvin knew he shouldn’t have taken revenge that way, he knew that the law would have been a better course. But when he walked past that roadhouse, his memories all came together in a jumble, and tears streamed down his face.

  And then they were out of the town, and they used the Greensong to carry them quickly from bridge to bridge. All of them were still functioning, still secure, though the roofs of some needed repair, and Alvin took the time to seal them the way he had sealed all the boats before leaving Ireland. These bridges would last until workmen had to remove them to replace them with wider bridges for wider roads, and then they wouldn’t be his family’s memorial to Vigor anymore.

  Only the town that they had named for Vigor would remain as a memorial, and Alvin was pretty sure that nobody outside of Vigor Church had any idea that the place had been named for a man, not for the virtue.

  Because the Greensong made them so quick on the road, and because the bridges needed so little repair, they reached the outskirts of Vigor Church about noon the next day. Alvin was glad to see how Measure’s eyes grew more vibrant as he drank in the sights familiar from childhood. Of course Alvin remembered his own childhood, but for him that had been a perilous time, with the Unmaker causing every form of water to try to kill him.

  And it was while Alvin lived here that the great massacre at Tippy-Canoe Creek took place, and Measure had been near kilt by the officers of the White army who had come to slaughter the men, women, and children of Prophetstown. Alvin had managed to save Measure’s life and restore him to strength and health, but it took more skill than Alvin actually had. He had been required to force himself to learn things that he had not known how to do.

  They approached the town from the high hills, and there wasn’t a man working in the fields that Measure did not know, every one of them glad to see Measure, and eager to invite him to supper or tea or to stay the night. “Off to see my folks,” said Measure, and that was answer enough. They knew they couldn’t give him hospitality when his family was waiting.

  All the same, it was a somewhat triumphant return, as it should be. Everyone knew that Measure had taken no part in the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, but when the Prophet Tenskwa-Tawa laid a curse on the town, that they had to tell an honest account of the massacre to every traveler who came to Vigor Church, Measure lived the curse with them, though he had done nothing to deserve it and the curse probably had no force with him. He was part of the town; he bore their punishment and shame with them, until the Prophet lifted the curse a few years before.

  Measure was part of this place, and the people knew him and loved him and were genuinely glad to see him.

  Alvin knew perfectly well why almost nobody spoke to him, or included him in their invitations. He was in some ways the opposite of Measure. He was the one who had used his knackery to help the Prophet, and Alvin was seen as part of the implementation of that curse, though in truth the Prophet needed no augmentation from Alvin. All the same, Alvin had gone to war alongside Ta-Kumsaw, Alvin and the Prophet were good, close friends, and the tales they heard and the tales they flat-out made up about Alvin’s knacks during his childhood there made him a figure of awe to the children of the town, and their parents as well.

  Alvin and Measure thought of stopping by the homes of several of their brothers and sisters, but no. They had to see their parents before anybody else, that was only right and proper. So they walked by their father’s mill and straight to the side door—the family door—of the house. They shouted no greeting, just came through the door and stood in the family parlor, waiting for someone to notice them.

  Even though the parents were the only permanent residents of this big old house, it was not a quiet place. There were sounds of children running, shouting, arguing, crying, laughing—all from different parts of the house, or just outside. And of course it was one of the grandchildren—Alvin’s and Measure’s nieces and nephews—who noticed them.

  “Who are you?” demanded the boy—who couldn’t have been more than eight.

  Measure pointed at the door the boy had just come through. “We came through the family door, same as you.”

  “Well you got no right,” said the boy—not angry, just stating a fact.

  “I got a right if I’m family,” said Measure.

  “He’s got a right if he’s your Uncle Measure,” said Alvin.

  “He don’t live around here,” said the boy.

  “I’m here, and I’m alive, so for at least these few moments I most certainly do live around here,” said Measure.

  “You talk like a doctor,” said the boy. “The doctor ain’t from around here.”

  “You talk like a hog-caller,” said Alvin. “Smell like one, too.”

  The boy’s eyes went wide with outrage. “You’re the pig!” he shouted.

  “If I’m the pig,” said Measure, “then you’re the pig’s nephew!”

  That stopped the boy. He looked back and forth between Alvin and Measure.

  “Now do you believe we’re family?” asked Alvin.

  “I don’t believe nothing coming out of your pig mouth,” said the boy.

  “Well, I do believe that he’s family,” said Measure.

  “I’m glad to see that stupid arguments are in our blood,” said Alvin.

  “Who you calling stupid!” But the boy must have realized he was out of his depth, so he ran back outside.

  A minute later, two girls running down the stairs happened to notice them standing around and they stopped cold. One of them, maybe fourteen years old, said, “You’re too good-looking to be related to us. Who are you?”

  “Now how can we resist a challenge like that?” asked Measure.

  “I’ll have you know that Measure here is accounted the ugliest one in the family,” said Alvin.

  “He looks too much like my father to be ugly,” said the girl.

  “Would your father be Wastenot or Wantnot?” asked Alvin, because he knew that the twins looked like Measure and vice versa.

  “Wantnot!” said one of the girls, and “Wastenot!” cried the other.

  “How can you even tell?” asked Measure. “I don’t think either of them could possibly be the father of such pretty girls.”

  “They’re not,” said the voice of a woman in the doorway from the kitchen. “They’re mine, so it’s my fault that they’re sassy.”

  “Eleanor,” said Alvin, and strode into her embrace, spinning her around as if they were dancing. “Where’s Armor?”

  “On a long errand,” said Eleanor. She looked at Measure. “Measure,” she said, “why are you gallivanting around with a worthless chipmunk like this?”

  Measure said, “I don’t think your girls are sassy, Eleanor. But I worry that they might be just a little flirty.”

  “Oh, that’s right enough,” said Eleanor. “And they flirt their way into having half the boys in town follow them around like a cat as thinks you got a fish in your pocket.”

  “It happens I do,” said Alvin, slapping his pockets and reaching into some of them—the ones he knew were empty. Until he got to the pocket with his one gold coin. “Oh, not a fish after all.”

  “Some folks can’t help turning everything they touch into gold,” said Eleanor, laughing. “Let me tell Mama you’re here.”

  “Where’s Pa?” asked Measure.

  “Where else? In the mill.”

  “I didn’t see the water wheel turning, or even any water in the mill race,” said Measure.

  Eleanor laughed. “Having grandchildren around changed Pa’s ways a little. There’s always children swimming in the catchment pool, so if Pa runs the wheel all the time during harvest season, the pool empties out and the children can’t swim.”

  “So he turns the millstone by hand?” asked Measure.

  “He only opens the millrace to turn the wheel when he’s got something to grind,” said Eleanor. “Go, see Mama, she’ll be so happy.”

  Measure laughed and came to Eleanor and gave her a hug, then headed upstairs where he knew his mother would be doing the mending while there was bright daylight coming into the sewing room window.

  Alvin, though, stayed near Eleanor. “You got no hexes outside the house.”

  “Not my house,” said Eleanor. “You just try getting gunpowder anywhere near my house.”

  “You and Armor-of-God moved back.”

  “We woke up one morning and both of us agreed that it was stupid to be paying rent in Carthage when we had a perfectly good house of our own back home.”

  “So what does Armor do for a living now?” asked Alvin.

  “Helps Pa in the mill,” said Eleanor. “He’s not a young man.”

  “Which, Pa or Armor?” asked Alvin.

  “Still a brat, I see,” said Eleanor.

  “How else would you know it’s really me?”

  That evening, at supper, Alvin sat near the head of the table, where Father and Mother always sat side by side—not that Mother sat for very long at a time, what with checking on things in the oven or on the stove, so it seemed that most of the meal was cooked or baked or boiled during dinner.

  Alvin looked around at his older brothers, and those of his sisters who lived close enough to travel home for this spur-of-the-moment family celebration.

  “Do you mind my asking what the occasion is?” asked Alvin, “My sense of the calendar has always been weak.”

  “Your sense of the clock, too,” said Measure.

  “Everything takes longer,” said Alvin. “I always thought that as I get better at things, they should take less time.”

  “When you get better at things,” said Father, “it’s usually because you’re doing them slower.”

  “And better,” added Measure.

  “Now you have crucial advice for me?” Alvin said to Measure, pretending to be joking.

  “We’re together a lot,” said Measure. “Life is better when we don’t spend all our time together bickering about which of us is better suited to give advice to the other.”

  Alvin once again took the census of his siblings and their spouses. It took a big board to hold all their plates, and a lot of jostling to find a place to sit around the table. Then it dawned on Alvin what he was looking for. “Where are my nieces and nephews?”

  The others looked at each other. “Have you noticed how crowded the table already is?” asked Father.

  “My introduction to one nephew and two nieces was … extraordinary. They were charming.”

  “They all are,” said Eleanor. “Remarkable creatures. Some of my hexes are to keep them out of my house.”

  “There’s no room for them at table, when we’re all together,” said Matilda. “So we feed them before or after—usually before, because they’re not the most patient people.”