“Yes, you’re right,” said Verily. He led Purity back to the carriage. “John, please give Margaret my love and condolences.” He helped Purity climb back in, then joined her on the seat from which he would drive the horses. “Tell her we’re about her business.”

  “It’s only fair to tell you,” said John Binder, “that Margaret plans to bury them with a simple ceremony as early this morning as possible, so that the people can still get across the river before dark.”

  Verily nodded. “I can trust Margaret to see to it that Alvin and Measure are decently laid to rest. Seeing them here like this—that’s all I needed. I know they’re gone. But Purity and I will shed our tears on the road to Philadelphia.”

  “You do know there’s a train that goes right there,” said John Binder.

  “Not everybody loves going that fast,” said Purity, shuddering.

  “Goodbye, John Binder,” said Verily. “Hold this city together even after they move out of their fields and farms and shops and schools and leave them all behind.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said John Binder. He had no idea if Verily heard him, because he started the horses moving before John could speak.

  Margaret’s workmen came around the house just then. They were husky men, and they each carried a body, as if they weighed nothing. Well, with the soul gone out of them, maybe they were lighter.

  “You can go now,” said one of the men to John. “We’ll look after the horse for you.”

  John thanked him and walked along the road into town. Where would Calvin be? His own house? Eliza’s place?

  He found Calvin at the dock, with a couple of men who had made a strip of ice about three yards wide leading out into the river.

  “Does it reach all the way?” asked John Binder.

  The others turned to him, looking startled. Two men, yes, one Black, a fellow called Grampus, and the other an Irishman that John Binder hadn’t had many dealings with. McEddy, thought John. He almost never forgot a name.

  Calvin did not look surprised. As Alvin would have, he must have sensed the approach of John’s heartfire.

  “You took them to Margaret’s house,” Calvin said.

  “I did,” said John. “And Marty Laws, bad wounded but still alive.”

  “And not a scratch on you,” said Calvin.

  “Not a scratch on my skin,” said John Binder. “Savage wounds in my soul.”

  “I have no doubt,” said Calvin. “As mine. They were my brothers.”

  “I know,” said John Binder.

  “I mean, everybody thinks I was nothing but trouble, and Measure was his real brother. But I grew up with Alvin, and Measure looked after me, too. It’s my childhood you brought home in that wagon.”

  Eliza spoke during a lull, apparently unwilling to interrupt. “Are you talking about the bodies—”

  Calvin held up his hand before John Binder had a chance to stop her. “Eliza,” said Calvin, “there are some things that will require privacy and maybe even secrecy.”

  Grampus chimed in, rather boldly. “There be folks wants to harm those fellows.”

  John Binder appreciated that Grampus was no longer speaking of bodies. Because there were folks who had stood admiring the ice who were now coming nearer. To John’s surprise, they addressed him as if he held the authority there. “Do you think that ice track is wide enough for a wagon?” asked one man.

  John Binder shrugged. “Looks wide enough to me, but I can’t see how wide it is farther on.”

  “We went for three yards wide. Enough for a train track and more,” said McEddy. “But we can always widen it, if needs be.”

  “I’ve done me some wagon driving, including a couple of Conestogas a few years ago. Perched up on that driver’s bench, you can’t see your own wheels. Makes it hard to steer around obstacles.”

  Grampus nodded. “Needs to be wide enough for the drivers to see safe road on both sides of the wagon.”

  “If the horses are centered on the road, the wagons will be all right,” said Calvin.

  “But it’s a long way across, if you’re fearful of slipping off the road,” said Grampus.

  “He’s right,” said John. “There’ll be children beside the wagons, and they need walking room. Women, too. We don’t want to add to the weight, putting them up inside.”

  Calvin nodded. “I see your wisdom. But let’s not try to widen this path until we’re ready to start driving wagons onto it.”

  “I wonder,” said McEddy, “if we don’t need to start the road over here, where the bank is low and eases into the water. There’s no way to get the wagons over the dock without a three-foot drop.”

  “Another good bit of counsel,” said Calvin. “Tomorrow we’ll freeze the route you just described, so the wagons can move smoothly onto the ice.”

  “Ice is slippery,” said John Binder.

  Calvin nodded. “Wheels aren’t good on ice, but every company has at least one knackle who can keep the wheels from skidding to the side.”

  “So many with the same knack?” asked John Binder.

  “Different knacks can help keep the wheels from slipping,” said Calvin. “What I thought of, I tried to solve in advance.”

  “Good work,” said John Binder. He saw Calvin recoil slightly, and realized: He doesn’t want my praise or encouragement. What he wants is Alvin to praise him. “I think Alvin would be more than satisfied.”

  “You have no idea,” said Calvin, “what all I’ve done. I appreciate your desire to encourage me, but I’m not discouraged. I’m just … ready. Readier than you might think.”

  “I know what you can do,” said John Binder.

  “I don’t even know what I can do,” said Calvin.

  “Apparently you’re finding out, and in so doing I believe you are fulfilling Alvin’s trust in you.”

  Calvin nodded and looked out into the fog. John Binder was pretty sure that his words had done Calvin no good whatsoever. Alvin’s death might well devastate him more than anybody.

  But John Binder also suspected, though the thought made him ashamed, that Calvin might also be secretly rejoicing that now, finally, people needed his knacks.

  “Calvin,” said John Binder, “Miz Margaret asked me to invite you to come help with Marty Laws.”

  “What does he need?”

  “The bullets out of him and the wounds healed,” said John Binder. “I think he has a sucking wound in his chest. Alvin was able to help him some before he died, but not much. Kept him from bleeding out, I think that’s all Alvin had time and thought to do. What he really wanted, I think, was to save Measure, but Measure was beyond saving. Shot in the head.”

  Calvin nodded.

  “Can you come?”

  Calvin looked startled, as if he hadn’t registered that Margaret wanted him to come now. He got to his feet. “Will you walk with me?” Calvin asked John Binder.

  “Indeed I will, though my legs are still stiff from sitting on the wagon seat from Carthage to here.”

  “That was fast passage,” said Calvin.

  “I believe that the remnants of Arthur Stuart’s path were still active. I think that, walking, the horse covered more ground than any horse could do galloping. As if every step were five.”

  The two of them walked up the slope, where the Crystal tower should have loomed ahead. But there was nothing there. Even the water had already flowed down into the bog south of town. And the grass was growing where the crystal blocks had been, as if sunlight had been reaching the grass the whole time the tower was there.

  “John Binder,” said Calvin, “I’d be grateful if, while we walked, you could find breath to tell me all that happened.”

  “I can tell you all I saw and heard,” said John Binder, “but I wasn’t a witness to anything that was done outside the jail.”

  “Tell what you know and tell what you guess,” said Calvin. “You saw, and I didn’t.”

  So John Binder found the breath to tell the tale, though from time to time he had to pause on the road to catch his breath. He said once, “Just a few days in a jail and it robs you of half your limberness.”

  Calvin nodded. He seemed to be concentrating on something, so John did not resume his story. Then Calvin stopped still, and asked John to do the same. Now John Binder realized that Calvin was trying to do something inside John’s body, to limber him up, to ease the pain and stiffness.

  “It’s kind of you to help me,” said John Binder, “but I’m really not injured enough to need—”

  Calvin made a shushing sound and John waited silently until Calvin opened his eyes. “Not as good with my doodlebug as Alvin was with his, so it takes me longer and I don’t know if I helped.”

  “You helped,” said John Binder. “I’m ready to continue walking and telling, if that’s good for you.”

  Calvin took a few steps and John Binder caught up immediately, with no pain in his legs or hips. Calvin always talked as if he couldn’t do any healing, but now John Binder understood that Calvin had always been afraid to try to heal, because he knew he couldn’t do as well as Alvin, so whatever he did would leave him humiliated. Now, with no Alvin for people to turn to, whatever Calvin could do would have to be enough. Nobody else was known to have healing knacks like his, beyond helping heal the skin under a child’s scab, until it could cast off the covering.

  They were almost at Margaret’s house when John Binder got to the part where bodies were loaded into the wagon, and he skipped the whole journey because here he was. And there was his wagon. But the horse had been led away, presumably to be groomed and fed and watered. And the bodies of Measure and Alvin would be waiting inside.

  To John’s surprise, the door was standing open and there were two coffins inside resting on sawbucks, nailed shut and wrapped around with iron straps. John figured he was seeing Verily Cooper’s knack as a barrel cooper, binding the coffins shut with stout bands that couldn’t be cut with a buck knife. Grave robbers, take that, thought John Binder.

  Calvin stood between the coffins, resting his hands on the nailed-down lids. Calvin leaned toward John Binder and said, in the faintest whisper, “Only stones in these boxes, to make them heavy enough.”

  John Binder understood at once. They would make a spectacle out of burying these boxes, probably in the city cemetery. The real coffins would be buried somewhere else. Somewhere safe.

  Can we carry them with us to the Great Salt Lake? John thought not—such a cargo could not be concealed through all the weeks of the journey. Margaret Larner would decide. Maybe she could arrange for them to be carried back to Vigor Church, to be buried in a family plot, if there was one, or even the town cemetery there, with headstones that let the cognoscenti know who was buried there, but no one else.

  Not my job, thought John Binder. No need for me to spin out an imaginary story.

  Margaret Larner came into the front parlor and also rested her hands on the box lids. “Someone with a sticky knack,” she said, “arranged the contents of these boxes so they wouldn’t roll when the boxes are moved.”

  John Binder tried to think who had a knack like that.

  “I could have done that,” said Calvin.

  “You were doing your duty down at the river,” said Margaret. “And now I hope you’ll come help Marty Laws get healed up, and then, maybe, to wake up. Whoever put him to sleep was very skilled with their knack.”

  “Sleep heals,” said Calvin.

  “That’s my hope,” said Margaret. “He’s in the back sitting room.”

  The place where Alvin met with individuals and small groups. The closest thing to an office he ever had.

  “Bleeding?” asked Calvin.

  “Stopped before he got here. Blood is dried.”

  “Heartbeat?” asked Calvin.

  “Perhaps,” said Margaret, “if you come to Marty, you can answer those questions better than anyone else.”

  Calvin looked doubtful. “This was never a skill I mastered.”

  “I’ve seen you set broken bones,” said Margaret. “And stop bleeding. And patch up broken skin.”

  “Superficial,” said Calvin.

  “So this time you’ll take longer, and get your doodlebug smaller, and move more slowly to find out what’s going on. And then, when you understand it, you can repair it. Slowly if need be.”

  John Binder realized that she was describing to him what Alvin would have done. And Calvin was enduring it from her, getting counsel about what the real Maker would do.

  And if Calvin could do it, then perhaps he was a real Maker himself. Perhaps he was the successor that the people of Crystal City needed, a leader with Alvin’s skills.

  In the back sitting room, John Binder saw that Calvin was concentrating on the inert body of Marty Laws. John didn’t want to interfere, but he had to ask. “Pulse? Breathing?”

  “He’s doing both,” said Calvin. “And he’s pissed himself something awful, but that might have happened yesterday, for all I know.”

  “I’ll leave you to your work, then, Calvin. Thank you.”

  What did I thank him for? wondered John. Maybe … I was thanking him for even trying to do what he had never succeeded at before.

  John left the room and quietly closed the door.

  Margaret was waiting for John by the coffins. “Well?” she asked.

  “He’s trying,” said John, “and I think he might succeed. Anyway, he says that Marty has a pulse and he’s breathing.”

  “So he’s still among the living, though not awake.”

  “If Calvin is a Maker,” said John.

  Margaret touched her finger to his lips. “What you’re thinking about is the succession. But that’s out of our hands. The people will choose.”

  “If Calvin heals Marty, word will spread that there’s still a Maker in Crystal City.”

  “It takes more than astonishing knacks to make a man a Maker.”

  And she would know. So John did not pursue the matter of the succession.

  Margaret quietly led him down into the cellar, and then pushed on a section of wall, which opened like a door. Inside, with a few candles burning, were two more coffins, smaller but still large enough to hold Measure and Alvin. John Binder was not surprised. If the coffins upstairs were full of stones stuck to the wood, the bodies had to be somewhere. It occurred to John that whoever made these hurried boxes had made them so the smaller coffins nested inside the larger ones. That way, only two coffins had been carried into the house. And only two coffins would be carried out in front of everybody. But there were four coffins.

  “Where will they go?” said John softly.

  “Here,” said Margaret. “In the dirt floor.” She pointed. In the flickering, shadowy candlelight, John had not seen that there were two graves already dug—deep ones—waiting to receive their residents.

  “So they’ll stay here, in your house,” said John Binder.

  “Where I can watch over them,” said Margaret.

  John Binder nodded. And then he thought of a problem and said it. “Until you come west with the rest of us.”

  “I’m not going,” said Margaret.

  It was unthinkable. John could not keep his consternation from showing on his face.

  “The people who are needed there will be with you on the journey,” she said. “But my work with the city is done. You’ll be a shepherd for Alvin’s flock, helping them stay together and at peace.”

  “I’m not sure that my knack is as strong as you hope.”

  “I know it’s stronger than you can even wish for,” said Margaret, “as you’ll learn when it’s tested again and again on the journey.”

  “Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to be in charge.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Your knack works best when nobody knows what it is or what you’re doing with it.”

  John Binder nodded.

  “Then Calvin will want to lead,” he said.

  “Calvin cannot cross the river,” said Margaret.

  “He thinks he can force his way across, I believe,” said John.

  “Then Calvin has no idea of the power of Red magic. When the river doesn’t want you to cross, you will not take one more step. And if you try to swim past the barrier, the river will refuse to let you float, and he’ll have to shed his pride at the bottom of the river, if he wants to rise to the surface and come back to the eastern shore.”

  “You think he understands that?” asked John.

  “Once he’s on the bottom of the river and can’t float back up, he’ll understand perfectly well. Though perhaps he’ll have sense enough not to try.”

  “That would come perilously close to being obedient,” said John Binder.

  “Calvin still has time to learn many things,” said Margaret.

  “What will you do here?” asked John Binder.

  “Take care of Vigor. Make sure he knows every good thing his father ever did. And when this new one comes, I’ll teach her, too.”

  “Does she already have a heartfire?” asked John Binder.

  “Soon,” said Margaret. “When the body is strong enough to live, and her heartfire begins to warm her body and fill her to the toes and fingertips.”

  John Binder knew perfectly well that Margaret was pregnant with twins. But she must have had her own reasons for concealing it. Instead, he had to ask. “Margaret, what is a heartfire? Is it the soul?”

  “I think the heartfire is where the body and the spirit of a person come together. Quarreling with each other, but also rejoicing in each other. As happens inside all of us. I think that the combined spirit and body are the soul, so the heartfire represents the soul. Or is the soul. I have no one to give me instruction on the matter, so all I have are my own guesses.”

  “They sound better than mine,” said John.

  “I hope you’ll be one of the men entrusted with this secret, who can help me lower these coffins into the ground.”

  “I am proud and grateful to be invited. Of course I’ll help.”

  “There won’t be many of you,” said Margaret, “so it will be harder perhaps than you think.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” said John.

  “You look quite strong, so that’s good.”

  “Calvin?”

  “Calvin is never to know where his brothers are buried. If I find it necessary, I will placate him with a lie, so he won’t keep wondering. Because he knows about the stones, so he knows the bodies are somewhere. If he had anything like Alvin’s knack, then he can explore this whole house until he finds them. But I don’t think he has the patience and determination to search that thoroughly.”