“People?” said Eleanor. “Matty, dear, you exaggerate.”

  There was laughter then, because everybody knew that they all adored the grandchildren.

  Alvin, though, was feeling painfully left out. “I thought I’d get a chance to know them.”

  “Stay a week and you’ll be able to tell most of them apart,” said Wastenot.

  “Except us,” said Wantnot.

  “I can’t stay longer,” said Alvin. “I have urgent business.”

  Measure added, “We really didn’t have time to come here, but Alvin insisted.”

  Alvin thought of the baby girl who died. He thought of young Vigor. What would it be like for his boy Vigor, if he lived here, where his cousins were available all the time?

  No. Margaret was where she belonged, and Vigor belonged with her. But in his heart, Alvin belonged here. He had lost so many years with his family, during his apprenticeship in Hatrack River, becoming a smith. The three niblings he had met had delighted him but also saddened him. He could have liked them, but there was no time.

  “You forget, Alvin,” said Matilda. “While you’ve been city-building and Irish-saving, our children have been growing up. My oldest now has a child, so I’m a—”

  Mother interrupted. “Who cares what you are, Matilda? I’m a great grandmother, and that tops you all.”

  “A title you only hold because I’m a grandmother,” said Matilda.

  Mother looked at Alvin conspiratorially. “Please don’t hurt her feelings by pointing out that being a grandmother is small beans compared to being a great grandmother.”

  They all laughed, perhaps more than the jest deserved, but Alvin felt his heart swell with memories of all these people at earlier ages. Quarrels, teasing, silliness, rivalry between brothers and sisters. Joy. This is what life is for, not traveling and bullying weaker men, no matter how malicious and small-minded they are. Instead of collapsing the bishop’s floor, why didn’t I find another hundred knackles to save?

  He thought of “knackles” because he had just heard Wastenot say it. “Knackles?”

  “We need to call them—us—something besides ‘people with knacks.’”

  “None of us liked ‘knackers’ because that’s a person who does unpleasant things to dead animals,” said Beatrice, aiming the comment at Wantnot.

  “The animals don’t mind,” said Wantnot. “So it’s only unpleasant to squeamish girls.”

  “I have a child older than you,” said Mary.

  “You do not,” said Wantnot.

  “If you’d get wiser as well as older, my children wouldn’t ask me, ‘What’s wrong with Uncle Wantnot?’”

  “None of your children thinks there’s anything wrong with me, except that there’s an extra one of me.”

  Wastenot chimed right in. “An extra one of me. You’re the spare.”

  “Spare!” said Wantnot in exaggerated outrage.

  Alvin interrupted in a calm, low voice. “Are you really working as a knacker?” he asked Wantnot.

  “People around here are too squeamish to do the whole job of butchering,” said Wantnot. “So they pay me, not the extra, to get the odd bits ready to be boiled down for glue or feed. It’s not my main work.”

  “To my everlasting shame,” said Wastenot, “he’s mostly a lawyer.”

  “I’d rather be called a knacker!” declared Wantnot. “I only help people draw up wills so they can disinherit the children they don’t like and punish them even after death.”

  “So, still a knacker,” said Wastenot. “Cutting off the odd bits of families.”

  “He farms,” said Anne. “Like everybody else.”

  “He ducks out on farmwork,” said Beatrice, “to pursue his other jobs. All of them just hobbyhorses, rocking and rocking and getting nowhere.”

  “Let me guess,” said Alvin. “You’ve had this discussion before.”

  “We don’t have discussions,” said Wantnot, “because the others can’t deal with my legal arguments.”

  “None of which is ever to the point,” said Elizabeth. “Such as, how many people in Vigor Church have anything to bequeath to their families in the first place?”

  “Let me ask all of you,” interjected Alvin. “Why do you still live here? Why don’t you come to Crystal City?”

  Silence at the table.

  Mother and Father looked at each other. Then resumed eating.

  Alvin slapped the table and stood up and stepped away.

  “Alvin,” said Measure.

  “Temper,” said Mother.

  “I’m not angry,” said Alvin.

  “Even as a child you always said that,” said Eleanor. “Especially when you were obviously furious. Which you proved by picking a fight with whichever brother would whip you most easily.”

  “Some of you have at least visited in Crystal City,” said Alvin.

  “I live there,” said Measure.

  “You live nowhere,” said Father, “just like your little brother. Gallivanting.”

  “I don’t have a little brother named Galli—”

  “Vanting,” said Father.

  “Crystal City,” said Mother, “is a place for visions and wisdom and understanding.”

  “And you’re opposed to that?” asked Alvin.

  “Sometimes you’re compelled to understand more than you want to.”

  “How can you not want to understand everything?” said Alvin.

  Dead silence.

  Mother weeping.

  “Mother, I’m sorry, I—”

  “In the walls of Crystal City I saw nothing but your death, Alvin,” she said. “How long could I bear to stay there, seeing that?”

  “You never told me—”

  “I won’t tell you now, either,” said Mother. “It’s nothing you would lift a finger to prevent, anyway.”

  “You think I want to die?” asked Alvin.

  “It doesn’t matter if you want to or not,” said Father. “Sooner or later, you’re going to do it. I just hope that I’m already dead before you do.”

  Alvin rounded on his father. “Has she told you what she saw about my death?”

  “She doesn’t trust me to keep any secret,” said Father. “And I don’t want to know.”

  “So you’re hiding from knowledge,” said Alvin.

  “No,” said Father. “She’s hiding from ceaseless reminders.”

  “What would Vigor Church do for a miller if Pap left?” asked Beatrice.

  “Stomp the grain right off the chaff by holding a dance on the threshing floor,” said Anne.

  “Why not be an angel,” said Wantnot, “and dance on the head of a pin?”

  “Is this what you came for?” asked Father.

  “I came to see my family,” said Alvin.

  “Your family already lives in Crystal City,” said Mother, “and I reckon your Little Peggy doesn’t like it that you didn’t come straight home.”

  “She understands.”

  “But she doesn’t like,” said Measure. “You already know that.”

  “She’s the one you owe your happiness to now,” said Mother. “Why are you here?”

  Again, silence, because the question was too serious to deflect with wisecracks.

  “He’s here,” said Father, “to say goodbye.”

  Mother burst into tears. The sisters looked at each other and all saw tears running down the others’ faces.

  The boys just looked baffled. Including Alvin.

  His mother was crying. And his sisters. Mother had seen his death and fled from it.

  Alvin walked to his mother, knelt by her chair, pulled her down to press her face into his shoulder.

  She pulled back. “Alvin, do you have any idea how bad your shirt smells?”

  Alvin was sure Mother was trying to lighten the mood, but she didn’t have the tone of sass that everybody else in the family had by second nature. So there were only a few titters, and none of the crying stopped.

  “I didn’t come here to attend my own funeral,” said Alvin.

  “Nobody’s going to cry at your funeral,” said Wastenot.

  Wantnot began, “What he means—”

  “It has been thirty years since I needed you to translate for me,” said Wastenot.

  “He means,” said Wantnot, “that before we let anybody kill you, we’ll be dead first.”

  “No,” said Alvin quietly. “I don’t know what manner of death the walls of the city proposed, but even if somebody kills me, even if you know who, my life is not one whit more important than any of yours. Nobody dies for me, do you understand?”

  “Not your decision,” said Measure.

  “Nobody. Dies. For. Me.”

  “I do,” said Measure softly. “I will.”

  And now it was Alvin’s turn to weep. Was this what he had come home for? To find out that his family still loved him, even though most had refused to live in Crystal City?

  Alvin and Measure set out the next morning, hoisting their knapsacks over their shoulders, protesting to Mother that she didn’t need to send them food for a week. Apparently, however, she did.

  “Strong boys like you?” said Mother. “Big boys? You need a lot of food, and carrying those bags is no harder than carrying the wind at your back.”

  “We’re walking toward the southwest,” said Measure. “Wind’s going to be mostly in our faces.”

  “Good,” said Mother. “You need challenges in your lives.”

  There was no answer to that, except a conversation that would keep them from setting out till the next morning. So they laughed and thanked her and thanked everybody for everything ever.

  Wastenot piped up at once. “You even thank us for the time we put you in a sack and—”

  Wantnot elbowed him.

  “I already got two elbows of my own, Wastenot, but if you want me to break yours, I know how.”

  Measure pulled Wastenot back from his twin, and Alvin placed a hand on Wantnot’s chest to restrain him. Not by force—the twins were not small men—but by requesting, reminding.

  Last goodbyes were said, and then laster ones, and then the lastest ones, and Measure and Alvin set off down the road.

  “Want to go past Prophetstown?” asked Measure.

  “Prophetstown isn’t there anymore. Just a killing field where a lot of good, harmless people were slaughtered.”

  “I was there, too,” said Measure.

  “They broke every bone in your body to keep you from being there.”

  “And you did a second-rate job patching me back together. I still get twinges whenever the weather changes.”

  “You can go see that bloody ground if you want,” said Alvin. “I don’t mind waiting in that copse of trees up yonder.” He pointed to where an old man was picking things out of the grass.

  Measure chuckled. “You knew he would be there.”

  “Not the slightest idea. But long as he’s there, I got things to say and things to hear.”

  Measure strode off in a more northwesterly direction, while Alvin hiked on up and sat himself down next to a grizzled old man wearing homespun and deerskin.

  “Don’t have much to add to your book,” said Alvin.

  “I hear you crossed the ocean in a leaky bathtub,” said Taleswapper.

  “If I’m in a bathtub, it don’t leak,” said Alvin.

  “Folks get along with water pretty good these days,” said Taleswapper.

  Alvin laughed. “You talk like you think you was born around here.”

  “People was ignorant and talked strange all over England. I just picked up the accent of my people here in America.”

  “You picked up the hill country accent around Hatrack River,” said Alvin.

  “My people, like I said.”

  “Am I your people, Taleswapper?” asked Alvin.

  Taleswapper put a hand on Alvin’s knee. “Alvin, I’ve known you pretty much your whole life.”

  “Ain’t over yet.”

  “Your whole life so far. But I’m not writing any more about you in my book.”

  Alvin tried to guess at what that might mean. He was going to die right away? He didn’t matter anymore in Taleswapper’s book?

  “Because I got no book anymore,” said Taleswapper.

  That took Alvin aback.

  “I’m not fixing to live forever,” said Taleswapper.

  “You’re in good health,” said Alvin. “I checked as I was walking up.”

  “Clean bill of health,” said Taleswapper. “Good to hear. Though I’ve eventually got to die of something.”

  “Heart stoppage,” said Alvin. “And then your brain runs out of blood and it stops, too. That’s what everybody dies of, no matter what brings it all to a head.”

  “I gave my book to someone else,” said Taleswapper. “A certain young man of your acquaintance.”

  Alvin’s thought immediately raced to the single worst person to receive Taleswapper’s precious book. “Not Calvin, tell me it’s not—”

  “Not Calvin,” said Taleswapper, chuckling. “I don’t want to read the kinds of stories he’d probably put down. Not that he ain’t a good boy.”

  “He isn’t a good boy,” said Alvin.

  “So far, he’s made some questionable choices now and then. But let’s not criticize. You’re the one who put Calvin’s paramour in charge of bringing the Irish knackles to Crystal City.”

  “On the train. Couldn’t trust her to drag her own fingers across the Atlantic.”

  “Can’t trust her now, either, can you?”

  “Let’s just say people got to have a chance to show you who they are,” said Alvin.

  “Or who they want you to think they are.”

  “Taleswapper, I’ve already learned all your lessons.”

  “All but one,” said Taleswapper.

  “Then lay the last burden of your wisdom upon me, Taleswapper.”

  “You were born wise, wise enough to recognize your own foolishness when you noticed it,” said Taleswapper. “I knew right away you was a Maker, I lived to see it, I rejoiced. But what kind of boy would have such power, how would you use it?”

  “You’ve seen.”

  “Well done, Alvin Maker. So far, well done.”

  “Thank you,” said Alvin quietly. “But you said one more lesson.”

  “You’ve done mighty works,” said Taleswapper. “You’ve saved many lives, you’ve taught mighty teachings and you’ve learned lessons God teaches only to his noble and great ones.”

  “I didn’t know you were speaking for God now,” said Alvin.

  “Only to you, cause you don’t listen to hardly anybody else,” said Taleswapper. “It don’t matter how much time you got left. Forty days or forty years.”

  “Those my choices?” asked Alvin.

  “No matter how long of life you have left, boy, hear me quick and hear me deep: Spend what time you have, as much as possible, with those who have cause to expect you to love them.”

  Alvin’s voice caught in his throat. “I couldn’t save my baby.”

  “It ain’t about saving,” said Taleswapper. “In the end, it’s about how much love you gave and how much love you were given.”

  “I had work to do, Margaret knew it, knows it, wanted me to do it.”

  “Last lesson. Here it is.”

  Alvin waited.

  And waited.

  “I’m not sure I’m understanding what-all you’re saying,” said Alvin.

  “Haven’t said it yet cause I was looking for the words.”

  “I can wait.”

  “If you could wait, you wouldn’t have interrupted my thinking. Now hush, boy.”

  Alvin hushed.

  Time passed. Alvin wondered if he was going to have to sleep here.

  “Here’s my lesson. You don’t know how long your life is going to be, but I can tell you one thing: How long your work is going to be.”

  “My work is my life.”

  “Not anymore,” said Taleswapper.

  “Is my end that near?”

  “Don’t have your day marked on my calendar. Don’t want to, either. Let the new keeper of the book make a record of it.”

  “If it isn’t Calvin—”

  “It’s someone closer than any of your brothers except maybe Measure. It’s your constant companion. It’s the boy who knows how to speak in your voice.”

  “Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin.

  “When I gave it to him, he said, ‘Now I got to learn me how to read.’ I said, ‘Reading’s no good to those as don’t know how to think. And feel.’”

  “Arthur Stuart’s a good choice,” said Alvin. “And he reads better than anybody.”

  “I know it,” said Taleswapper. “Your work is done and my work is done. Don’t mean we’re dead. But it means your work and my work have to be continued by other hands.”

  Alvin nodded. “Don’t know who can protect my people as well as me—”

  “Protect?” asked Taleswapper. “Not your job, not your concern.”

  “Will they be safe?” asked Alvin.

  “Not for a second, my boy,” said Taleswapper. “But nobody’s ever safe, in case you didn’t notice. They’re ready to make their own safety, and shelter in someone else’s. If you thought all the armies of three nations were gathering to destroy Crystal City, what would you do? Stand and fight? Take your enemies apart? Move mountains from there to here, from yon to hither?”

  “Don’t know if I could,” said Alvin. “Don’t know if I’d want to.”

  “So what’s your better plan, if it was still your responsibility?”

  Alvin thought a while. Figure out a way to confuse the ground around Crystal City? Make it impossible to find?

  Kind of defeats the purpose. It can’t be a refuge for knackles if they can’t find it to take refuge there.

  Lead them to find a new place? Where? Between Quebec, New England, Crown Colonies, Mexico, there wasn’t an inch that one nation or another didn’t think they owned.

  And then he thought of the most obvious safe place he could hope for.

  “You think he’d let us?” asked Alvin.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Should I go ask him?”

  “Not your job anymore.”

  “What do I do then?” asked Alvin.