“If I asked you to give me a baby, would you?” she asked, pushing even harder.

  “With you not married to me?” asked Arthur. “I would not.”

  “Nobody is born married,” she said. “Marriages can happen even between strangers—that’s how kings do it.”

  “Are you proposing marriage to me?” asked Arthur.

  “Keep your voice down, Arthur, please,” said Eliza. “I’m only talking about supposes.”

  “Hypothetically,” said Arthur, “if a woman as pretty as you told me she wanted me for a husband, I would have to think, why? Does she hope that as my wife she’d have better access to Alvin Maker, because he and I are such friends?”

  She said nothing. She was ashamed of herself, that Arthur had seen through her so easily.

  “Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” said Arthur. “You’re far from the first woman to have that plan in mind, though none of them even hinted about marriage.”

  “More fools they,” said Eliza. “It’s obvious that you’re very smart, very honorable. You’ll make a fine husband.”

  “But not for a woman who only has eyes for my friend Alvin,” said Arthur.

  And that had been the end of the conversation, as Arthur turned his attention back to his plate.

  The rest of the way into the city—which they reached the next day around noon—Arthur never happened to be near enough to Eliza for them to talk. She was sure that this was by his design, that he was shunting her over near Alvin, as if saying to her, if he’s the one you want, then he’s the one you should talk to.

  Or maybe he was saying, I will never marry a woman, I will never have carnal knowledge of a woman, without the approval of my friend. So if you really do have designs on me, persuade him first.

  Or maybe he was just trying to avoid her. That would be the simplest explanation.

  When they reached the city, there was no wall, just well-planted fields coming up green, orchards coming back into leaf and blossom. They passed between two masts and a sign suspended between them:

  CRYSTAL CITY

  A HAVEN FOR THE TALENTED

  A haven. Talented. To come here was to declare that either you have a knack, or you liked the company of people with knacks, and that you wanted to be protected from a hostile world.

  Is that me? thought Eliza. I have never needed protection—I get away clean, every time. What do they offer me here that I really need?

  No, I’m here for something else. Or somebody else.

  Eliza was surprised that they had gotten here, walking, in only … four days? Or was it three? She should be exhausted. But it felt as if she had floated here like a leaf in a stream, with Alvin Maker as the current. Yes, her legs had taken every step, but her feet were not sore, her calves were not painfully tight, her hips had not worn down to have bone scrape on bone. How did they travel so fast, yet not be in pain?

  Alvin Maker, of course, thought Eliza. That or fairies, and she didn’t believe in fairies. Or magic. Whatever knacks were, Eliza didn’t believe that anything magical was involved. It was all science that nobody had figured out yet. Her knack for escaping never involved anything supernatural. She just knew, looking around her, where she could go to get herself out of sight, hide, and then continue her escape as soon as a way opened up. It was all keen observation, stealthy movement, and maybe some knack for averting the attention of anyone seeking her.

  Maybe that was magical.

  No, it wasn’t. There was no magic. Everything she could do, anyone could learn. The others just hadn’t bothered to learn it. Maybe, as children, they didn’t have such a motive for staying out of sight as she had.

  After her father had killed her little brother, still a baby in the bassinet, by throwing him drunkenly at his mother, who could not catch him, Eliza had decided that theirs was now a murder house, and instead of helping them conceal the crime—or accident, as Mother called it, when she wasn’t saying, “I’m so clumsy, dear God, why am I so clumsy?”—Eliza made her escape from the house, unnoticed by her sisters or her father, who wasn’t up to noticing anything, though Mother seemed to glance toward her and nod. Wishful thinking?

  She went straight to the sheriff’s office, found a deputy asleep at the table, woke him, and told him of the crime that had just happened. “My father was drunk and he threw the baby at my mother, but she didn’t realize what was happening, it was so unbelievable, that she couldn’t catch the boy, and his head banged against a chair and I think it snapped his neck, too. If you hurry there, you can catch them before they figure out how to hide the body.”

  The deputy just sat there, looking dumfounded.

  Fourteen-year-old Eliza leaned on the table, putting her face right in front of the deputy’s face, and said, crisply, “A baby was murdered at the Nutbutter house. Mr. Nutbutter did it. He’s drunk and probably dangerous, but if you don’t arrest him right now, they’ll find a way to hide the baby’s body.”

  “Yes,” said the deputy. “Yes, terrible.”

  “Tonight you are the law,” said Eliza. “Tonight you are the hand of justice. Stand up from your chair, take your gun, take some armed men with you in case Mr. Nutbutter decides to fight you, and arrest him. Or kill him, if he resists arrest.”

  The deputy nodded.

  “Stand up now,” Eliza said, “or I’ll have to tell the sheriff you were too drunk to do your job tonight.”

  The deputy looked deeply offended. “I never touched a drop.”

  “How could you, when you just poured it straight down your throat?” said Eliza.

  The deputy stood up. “Got to get me a posse right now. With guns.”

  Now that he was finally moving, Eliza’s job was done. She headed on out the main street of town, as the deputy was knocking on doors to get the men to help him arrest that miserable drunken baby-killer, Mr. Nutbutter, her father.

  From then on Eliza lived on the move. She dressed above her age, and she learned to imitate the way ladies walked and talked—doctors’ wives, lawyers’ wives, preachers’ wives, merchants’ wives, even schoolteachers—who by law could not be anybody’s wife, but who had been reared with the same gentility as the wives.

  In each new town, she would throw herself on the charity of one of the local churches—never the finest church in town, but maybe a humbler church, a Methodist or Baptist congregation, where someone always gave her housemaid employment or, sometimes, gardening work. The humbler congregations seemed always to have more food to spare, more room to offer shelter, more money to offer wages than the richer congregations.

  Before she was sixteen, she was regularly accepted as a young lady of eighteen, and was even invited to apply to be a teacher at a high school in Appalachee, though some of the students were older than she was. She declined the offer and left the town fairly quickly, because she feared that if anyone found out how little education she actually had, some men might take her imitation of a mature woman far too seriously. Appalachee could be rough country.

  Crystal City wasn’t London or Paris, she was sure of that, but neither was it rough country. Everybody was polite, and instead of going to a church to find charity and perhaps employment, she simply walked down the main street of town. Without meaning to, she had slipped away from Alvin, Arthur, and her thieving companions, so she was a lady walking unescorted out in public. Yet there were no catcalls, and no men to solicitously offer her their protection while she walked. She knew from experience that the ones who offered protection were exactly the men she needed protection from.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody on the street in Crystal City who posed any threat to her. She was tempted to let a couple of buttons fall open, but no, this was no place to get a reputation like that. It was almost never hard to get men to be attentive to her, but in this town she wanted the friendship of the women, which could not be had if they thought their husbands would find this girl attractive and available.

  It turned out, though, that her first friend was not a woman.

  He was a tall man, obviously, judging by how far his legs reached out beyond the rocking chair he was sitting in on the raised wooden sidewalk in front of a tailor’s shop. He looked as if he bought his clothing there, handmade to fit him perfectly, though he looked a little rumpled now. His legs were so long that when Eliza reached him, she could not continue without either stepping over his legs, which would require an indecorous amount of skirt-raising, or walk out into the street, which was nearly paved with old horse dung and other effluvia. If they had a street-cleaning crew in Crystal City, it hadn’t gotten to this part of town recently.

  She stood, waiting for the man to notice. To move his legs.

  He was concentrating on the block of wood he was whittling with a knife that looked big enough to scare a bear. His hat brim was low, so that it was possible he hadn’t seen her arrive.

  “Isn’t that an awfully big knife to use on a sculpture so delicate?” she asked.

  He startled and immediately drew his legs back and sat straighter. “Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be an obstacle.”

  “You’re carving the image of an elephant,” she said.

  He feigned mild surprise. “I had no idea,” he said. “Is that what elephants look like?”

  “Very amusing, sir,” said Eliza. “Thank you for moving your … lower limbs.”

  The man hooted with laughter. “Are the prudes finally coming to town?”

  Eliza had to smile. “I spoke ironically, sir. I’m perfectly capable of saying ‘legs’ in polite company.”

  “And I was ironic when I pretended not to know I was carving an elephant. I doubt there are three other people in town who have ever seen one.”

  “Where did you see an elephant?”

  “Not at Bailey’s menagerie,” said the man. “I saw two elephants at the zoological gardens near Paris.”

  “You’ve been to Paris?” asked Eliza, unable to contain her admiration.

  “Several times, for several months at a time,” he said. “But the voyage there and back is such that you really don’t want to waste so much time in your limited mortal life, on the ocean looking at the ocean with nothing else to draw the eye.”

  “Except that on the return trip, you could remember seeing elephants.”

  “Just another animal, saggier than most, bigger than anything else on land. When they walk, the ground shakes a little. But they’re not beautiful enough to daydream about on the voyage home, especially when the sea is as gray as the elephant’s hide.”

  “Are the elephants in cages at the Paris zoo?” she asked. “I hate to think of large animals cooped up in a small space.”

  “Not cages, but not a huge area, either,” said the man. “Enough room for them to walk around, trumpet loudly to make sure nobody accidently falls asleep, and do the robust baby-making dance.”

  Eliza knew instantly what he meant, and there were two schools of thought, she knew, about how she should respond. The best way was to look at him quizzically and say, “I do not understand you.” The second way was to put on an offended, snooty face and without a word walk away.

  But he was far too interesting for her to leave him now, and she was quite sure he would see through the ruse if she pretended not to understand.

  “Do I take it, then, sir, that the elephants were of two different sexes?”

  “The one in front was female, it seemed to me, but the one trying to climb over her was in such a position that I could not be sure.”

  “You speak rather rudely in front of a lady,” said Eliza.

  “Is that what you are?” he asked. “It’s good of you to tell me.”

  “What grounds have I given you to speak to me this way?” asked Eliza.

  “It’s a simple enough test. I’ve said enough rude or crude or lewd things that a lady would have walked away long since.”

  “Yet by staying, I learned that elephants mate rather as horses do,” said Eliza. “I’ve seen enough of that in my native village to be no longer shocked to hear, think of, or even see it.”

  “You speak of animals in your native village,” said the man.

  “The village was far too small to have any population of hack women who would perform coitus on the public street.”

  “I apologize for entertaining such a thought, even momentarily.”

  “You are not forgiven, you are not excused.”

  “Yet you are still not leaving,” said the man.

  “Because I do not know your name,” she said.

  “So you can tell the deputy about my crime?”

  This hit a little too close to home. He could not possibly know that she had denounced her murderous father to a deputy. Could he? Was that his knack? She had thought it was doing delicate carving with a too-big knife—which he had continued to do, the whole time that they talked.

  “My name,” she said, “is Eliza Nutbutter.”

  “Not ‘Missus’ something?” he asked.

  “Neither widow nor fiancée,” she said.

  “Unattached.”

  “Except to myself and my dignity—very much attached to both.”

  “And my name, my lady Nutbutter, is—”

  She interrupted him. “Please call me Eliza. I want you to use that name. The other is the name of a detested drunken murderer of a father, as I think you knew already.”

  He looked hurt and puzzled. “How could I be privy to such information, having never seen you before in my life?”

  “I heard that in Crystal City, people could look into the walls and see stories about other people, far away or in the past. When you spoke of telling a deputy about a crime…”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes, I did see that, and I wondered why at the time. So that was you? The deputy seemed awfully stupid, refusing to get up for so long.”

  Had he really seen that day? “Mr. Nutbutter had a fearsome reputation. The deputy would have stood bravely beside the sheriff, but to take action on his own—that was a lot to ask.”

  “Your father,” said the man.

  “I have no reason to doubt my mother, though I hope to heaven that I bear him no resemblance.”

  The man looked up from his carving, then set the wood and the knife in his lap as he regarded her. “I can assure you that your mother was an honest woman.”

  “That was not in doubt,” said Eliza, finally getting offended and showing it.

  “You were the one who cast her chastity into doubt,” said the man, “by insisting that you bear no resemblance to your father.”

  “A rude man might have construed it that way.”

  “Every man would construe it that way,” said the man, “but only a rude one would mention it to you.”

  “Think what you want, say what you want, I don’t care.”

  “Because you mean to leave this haven for the overknacked too soon for gossip to be a problem for you?”

  “If I want to leave, I will,” she said. “But will I have to leave still ignorant of your name?”

  He hooted in laughter once again. “Calvin,” he said, thrusting out his hand.

  She looked at his hand. “Isn’t it customary for a gentleman to rise when greeting a lady?”

  He did not get up. “Yes, I’m quite sure it is.”

  “Do you imply, sir, that I am not lady enough to deserve such dignity?”

  “Miss Eliza,” said Calvin, “I only meant that I, as you should know by now, am no gentleman.”

  She couldn’t help but smile.

  He began to rock the chair a little. Then he held out both knife and wood to her. Without even deciding to, she took them both.

  “Rising from a rocking chair,” he said, “is more labor than I usually undertake in a day, and I need a few feet of room directly in front of me.”

  Not moving out of his way, she said, “What for?”

  He bounded forward out of the chair and immediately ran into her. He reached around her in a tight embrace, carrying her backward several steps, but not allowing her to fall and not causing them to have to step off the wooden sidewalk.

  “I warned you that I needed space,” said Calvin.

  “And then left me no time to make way,” said Eliza.

  “Perhaps I hoped I could catch you in my arms and never let you go.”

  Eliza didn’t actually mind being in his arms, but she knew her role. “Whatever your intention might be, I do not approve of nor appreciate your embrace.”

  “I think you do appreciate it,” said Calvin, “and I don’t give a fig for anyone’s approval.”

  “Why don’t you let me go, sir?”

  “Because I’m afraid that if I do,” said Calvin, “you will take a step backward and wind up sitting on your bottom in the city street.”

  Eliza glanced down and saw that only the toes of her boots were on the sidewalk. She really was relying on his embrace to remain standing.

  “Please step back and bring me away from the precipice,” said Eliza.

  Holding her even more tightly, he took two steps back. Now she touched her feet to the wooden sidewalk. But he immediately leaned back enough to raise her feet off the sidewalk again.

  “You are holding me so tightly,” she said, “that I cannot even set my feet on the ground.”

  “You’re not barefoot,” he said, “and the ground is a good two feet below the level of the sidewalk.”

  “Why do you insist on holding me like this?” she said, getting a little irked now.

  “Are you embarrassed to be seen like this on a public street? Because I can assure you, no one is looking at us.”

  “So this behavior is not for show?” she asked.

  “This behavior, as you call it,” said Calvin, “is because I very much like the feeling of your breasts pressed against my upper abdomen, and your belly against—”

  “Do you like being offensive? Speaking of my breasts like that?”

  “I wasn’t going to leave my own sacred anatomy out of the discussion,” he said.

  “I wish you would,” she said. “Delightful as our dance has been till now, I no longer hear the music. Let me go.”

  Immediately Calvin let her go—and plunked himself back down into the rocking chair.