“I can take back my knife and elephant now,” he said, reaching for them.

  While he was holding me, thought Eliza, I was holding a big hunting knife. I didn’t even think to threaten him with it. Well, better late than never. “I would have stabbed you with it, sir, except it would be impossible to get the bloodstains out of my blouse and skirt, and using it for stabbing would dull the edge so that carving with it would be out of the question.”

  She relinquished both his wood and blade into his hands.

  “None the worse for wear,” he said, spinning the knife like a baton.

  “Be careful with that.”

  He continued twirling it. As he did, she took a good look at him. A manly face, slightly bearded, as if he had only decided to grow it out three days ago.

  “You don’t need a beard. Your face is comely enough without it.”

  “I’m not seeking comeliness,” said Calvin. “I’m seeking to reduce my resemblance to my older brother.”

  Now she looked at him with new eyes. “Good heavens, is Alvin Maker your very brother?”

  “You see my problem?” asked Calvin. “The resemblance.”

  “But you don’t resemble him at all in character,” said Eliza.

  “Let me guess. On your entire trek here to Crystal City, he never once showed the slightest interest in your charming self?”

  She said nothing.

  “And not because you didn’t try to interest him,” said Calvin, letting a smile creep onto his lips.

  “What do you mean by that?” she said.

  “I mean that I think you found ways to offer yourself, and he did not even notice.”

  “Offer myself? As his maid?”

  “He could have almost any woman in the city, and yet he withholds himself from you,” said Calvin. “Of course you resent him.”

  “Then why are you trying to not resemble him?” asked Eliza. “If he’s so irresistible to women, and you look so much like him, how is that not a good thing for you, since I take it you wouldn’t be averse to making use of almost any woman in the city?”

  “It isn’t his fine looks that attract these women,” said Calvin. “It’s his power. His knack. His prestige.”

  “Have you no knack, then?” asked Eliza.

  “I am very knackered,” he said.

  “A pointless pun,” she said.

  “Being pointless is the whole point of puns,” said Calvin. “I have every knack he has. I am also a seventh son of a seventh son.”

  And at that moment, Eliza realized that she had very much enjoyed having her breasts press against Calvin’s body, and that Alvin’s chastity was not going to be much of a problem to her, if she could attract the attention of a less chaste copy of himself.

  4

  ALVIN WALKED THE corridors within the Crystal City. Of course, the whole town was called “Crystal City,” but everyone knew that the real Crystal City was this mansion of ice-that-was-not-ice—the blocks of crystal water that were neither hot nor cold, but were as solid as steel. Alvin had made all these blocks himself, and they contained the Red power that he had acquired from Tenskwa-Tawa, the one the Reds called “the Prophet.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa had taken Alvin up into a tornado, not one that dropped down from the sky, but a tornado Tenskwa-Tawa had brought up out of the water. And the water was touched with the Prophet’s blood, and the tornado turned into a wall of glass, or so it seemed. And in the glass, in the solid water that was not ice, he saw things—Alvin saw them, and the Prophet saw the same. Things near and far, things past and present, and perhaps future things. Sometimes future things.

  That was when Alvin was a boy. In the years since then, Alvin had turned iron into gold, cut stone out of the mountain without hands and rolled it down a hill. Alvin had liberated some slaves and saved some lives and, to his sorrow, taken some others. He had learned much of what the world had to teach, and had learned much that no one else in the world had ever known.

  But here amid the crystal walls of the mansion house he could come to learn things that could be discovered no other way. His wife Margaret could not see it all in the heartfires, nor could Alvin discover it by sending his doodlebug out into the world. He could find it here. Not everything, but the most important things.

  Which block of not-ice should he look in? Sometimes it didn’t matter—whatever he needed to see would follow along beside him until he stopped and looked at the wall. Other times, the wall’s visions would be frozen, and all very small, a separate image in each crystal block, and he had to look at them one by one until he understood something.

  That was how it was today. Random-seeming images. People traveling. Perhaps coming to Crystal City to gain the protection of this place where knacks were not crimes or sins, but gifts, perhaps from God, which could be used to build and create and protect. Come one, come all, there is room enough and to spare. We need every head, every pair of hands, every idea, every knack, so that Crystal City’s safety can reach farther and farther from this town by the Mizzippy until the peace and freedom here fills the whole land, from the mighty river to the ocean in the East. Not to rule, because coercion could not forge a community or a nation. They all had to desire it, work toward it together, like the people in the wall who might be coming here, or why else would the crystals show them?

  Alvin walked very slowly, looking at each crystal block, seeing its image, wondering why it was being shown to him. (And wondering, as he sometimes allowed himself to do, who controlled this wall, these blocks, and who or what decided which images Alvin would see.)

  He worried that he could not see the images he needed if there was someone with him who should not see them. So he came alone. After dark, deep into the morning hours after midnight. And now he saw something that surprised him. Up near the top of the wall, there was a block with no image in it at all.

  A shadowy misty swirling, so it was not empty and it was not still. But it showed no thing and it showed nobody and Alvin knew at once that this crystal block was not of his making.

  The block on either side was alive with images. Only this one defective block at the top of the wall where it could have been set in without having to reconstruct anything. Just remove one of Alvin’s blocks and replace it with this counterfeit, this defective crystal.

  Defective, but also a genuine block of water made solid with blood. Could someone have poisoned one of Alvin’s own crystals and killed the images inside? No. Alvin had not made this crystal block. It had none of his blood in it. It was not a part of him.

  Some other Maker who could shape water into solid crystal blocks just by adding a drop of blood.

  Not Alvin’s blood, but like it. Near it. Blood like his own blood, but not his own.

  Calvin, thought Alvin. My envious little brother, who wants so badly to be a Maker because he is a seventh son of a seventh son, just like me.

  Only he’s actually the eighth son. Alvin was seventh, born before his oldest brother Vigor died on the Hatrack River’s flood, saving their mother so she would live to give birth to Alvin. Vigor, whom I never met but who saved my life and made me what I am.

  With Vigor dead, Calvin was the seventh living son in the family, when he came along not that many years after Alvin. But the eighth son overall. No one knew the rules of these things. Calvin certainly had many of the knacks that Alvin had accumulated. And he could demonstrate some powers that would impress people with the idea that Calvin was a younger Alvin, also powerful, also a Maker.

  He could fashion blocks of crystal out of the water of the Mizzippy, clarify it, make it show something moving inside. Not an actual image. Nothing true. But he must have proved to someone that he could make a crystal and set it into Alvin’s wall and nothing bad happened. I’m a Maker, too, Alvin could imagine him saying. I’m also the seventh son of a seventh son. There’s healing in my hands, too, and wood bends in my hands without breaking, if I want it to.

  Calvin, don’t you know that your foolish ambition will destroy you? I wanted to teach you, I tried to teach you, you wanted what I had but you didn’t want me to give it to you. You wanted to take it yourself, untaught, with none of the experiences that shaped me.

  Alvin thought of taking the block out of the wall. Then he decided to leave Calvin’s shoddy work in its place. No one would ever see anything useful in it. But I see the future in it, thought Alvin. I see the destruction of this city.

  Calvin has done nothing treasonous yet, nothing outright destructive. He’s not a tempest that can knock over walls, he’s a spider weaving little webs here and there and coming back to check on them. He’ll be back to look at this block. He’s proud of it, because it is crystal and he did make it with a drop of his blood.

  Alvin looked down from the defective block, down three ranks and over two columns and there was an image worth looking at. It was a man in a canoe, paddling through the fog. Crossing a river without being able to see either shore, and not knowing if there were shoals or eddies that could capsize him.

  But then the fog cleared, and fifty yards away, standing on the far shore, was Tenskwa-Tawa, the Prophet.

  The Prophet did not shout, though he raised a hand in greeting. When the paddler got close enough, Tenskwa-Tawa spoke. He did not shout, but his voice was as clear as if the water had carried it out to the canoe. “Alvin,” said the Red Prophet. “You came when I called. Thank you for such respect.”

  And then the image froze: A man on a canoe, a man on the shore, one White, the other Red. Then the fog flowed back into the scene, and now there was only a man on a canoe, lost in the fog. Alvin was there in that canoe. “Thank you,” said Alvin quietly.

  * * *

  Alvin wakened Margaret, not by climbing into bed, but by kneeling beside the bed and taking her hand.

  She opened her eyes and smiled a small but beautiful smile. “He called you.”

  “That’s how I interpret what I saw in the wall.”

  “And you’re worried about Calvin,” said Margaret.

  “I love you, you know. We were young together. If only he had not always been so envious. I could have taught him everything I know.”

  “No you couldn’t,” said Margaret.

  Alvin thought a moment. “I could have tried.”

  “You did try.”

  Alvin shrugged. “You think better of me than I deserve.”

  “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the right thing cannot be done.”

  “Not going to stop trying, Miz Larner.”

  “That’s why you’re such a good pupil, Mr. Miller,” said Margaret.

  He knelt up and leaned over and kissed her. That was one of the nice things about being so tall. Alvin could reach things kneeling that other men would have to stand to do. But for Margaret he would stand, jump, run, leap, fall, if she needed him to do it. Here he could kiss her without standing up. She was the one who could look into his heartfire and know what he worried about, what pain he felt. Knew that Calvin was foremost in his thoughts, but he had no idea how to help the boy. Knew that the summons from Tenskwa-Tawa was important, and Alvin would go. In the crystal Alvin had seen himself rowing alone in a canoe, so that is how he would go. He would trust Tenskwa-Tawa to provide a way for Alvin to cross the Mizzippy, to break through the Red Prophet’s wall that protected all the free Red nations that had crossed the river after the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, the people Tenskwa-Tawa now protected by covering the Mizzippy with perpetual fog and laying currents and eddies and shoals to spin and capsize the boats or send them to the bottom with broken hulls.

  Or let them go back to the White man’s side of the Mizzippy, arriving in boats that sank as soon as they got to shore. No one bothered to keep boats now on the White shore, because they were useless. Couldn’t go anywhere. Damned lucky if you got back alive. Not a good place to take out a fishing boat.

  Alvin stood on that shore, walked along the low rise just back from the river. He was looking for the canoe the crystal showed him. He needed a canoe, and nobody kept boats on this shore.

  Except there it was, bobbing up and down in the lapping wavelets at the shoreline. Not tethered, not anchored. Just waiting, floating, going neither upriver nor down.

  “You know something about this?” asked a man.

  Alvin found the source of the voice. A middle-aged man with a knack for … for … oh yes, for only falling asleep when he wanted to, and sleeping only as long as he wanted to. Alvin didn’t envy many gifts that he didn’t have, but he could sure use this one. “Dinny,” said Alvin. “Why you down here by the river?”

  “Your brother Measure set me to watch here,” said Dinny.

  “Watch for what?”

  “I asked him the same,” said Dinny. “Didn’t even answer me, just rolled his eyes.”

  “So … in all your watching, what did you see?”

  “You mean, besides yourself just now?” asked Dinny.

  “Measure didn’t set you here to watch for me.”

  “No, I think I was here to see that canoe.”

  “Who brought it here?” asked Alvin.

  “Brother Fog,” said Dinny.

  Alvin let him see his puzzlement.

  “Or Sister Mist,” said Dinny. “That canoe came all by itself, across the river from heaven knows where. No one paddling, just floating in a straight line, not getting caught by any current.”

  Alvin nodded and smiled. “So he sent me transportation.”

  “He?” asked Dinny.

  “The one who called me to a meeting,” said Alvin.

  “My but you know how to keep your mouth shut and your friends confused,” said Dinny.

  “Practiced both for most of my life. Not good yet at keeping my mouth shut every time I should, but at least I can say my friends are all confused.”

  Dinny grinned. “I spose you’re getting in that canoe.”

  “Spose I am,” said Alvin.

  “They’s a two-spoon paddle laying in there, but no place to sit.”

  “This kind of canoe you paddle on your knees,” said Alvin.

  “How do you know that? Sounds uncomfortable.”

  “Saw a man paddle a canoe exactly like this one, and that’s how he done it.”

  “Talk to a rough man like me for too long, Master Alvin, and you’ll forget all the fine grammar Miz Larner taught you as a lad.”

  “I like to forget it sometimes,” said Alvin. “But then it all comes right back into my head the next time I see her.”

  “Doesn’t work that way for me,” said Dinny. “None of it stuck in my brain. Fell right out, replaced by gravel.”

  Alvin wondered just how well Tenskwa-Tawa had prepared for this crossing. Would Alvin be able to walk on the water and keep his feet dry?

  Nope. Water sloshed up over the tops of his boots and soaked him to the thighs before he was able to roll himself over the gunnel and plop down into the canoe. The little boat rocked side to side as if it wanted to turn over and spill him out, but that didn’t happen.

  Alvin took off his boots, which wasn’t easy, and poured the water over the side, back into the Mizzippy.

  “Better wash those feet next time you come to land,” said Dinny from the shore. “All kinds of sickness and sores come from the river water.”

  “Thanks for the caution, Dinny, my friend.”

  “Should I keep watch here till you come back?” asked Dinny.

  “I wish I knew. Tell you what, go home and get a good night’s rest, come back tomorrow about noon. I promise I won’t be back before then.”

  “You want me to tell Miz Larner where you are?”

  “She knows,” said Alvin.

  “Yep, I reckon she does.”

  “I’d ruther you didn’t tell a soul where I am.”

  Dinny laughed. “It’s an easy secret to keep, since I got no idea this side of Hades where you’re going and what you’re gonna do.”

  “Hoping to stay this side of Hades for a few more days, at least,” said Alvin. Then he picked up the paddle, knelt up in the boat, waggled goodbye with the paddle, and then began pushing it into the water and pulling back, then doing the same on the other side of the boat. In a few minutes he was swallowed up in the fog.

  He wasn’t worried. He wasn’t going to fall into any of Tenskwa-Tawa’s traps. He wasn’t going to be led astray by any wayward currents. He didn’t need to see through the fog because he knew the Prophet was guiding his canoe.

  It was maybe an hour, maybe ten minutes, who knew, who cared, when the fog thinned and opened up, and there was the western shore of the Mizzippy, and standing right where he was supposed to be was Tenskwa-Tawa, who raised a hand in greeting.

  5

  THESE DAYS THE tribes of the prairie rode horses and jabbed with spears to bring down buffalo. Tenskwa-Tawa told Alvin that a few Reds from several different tribes had brought guns to the prairie for the hunt. “They said the muskets would make the hunt safer,” Tenskwa-Tawa explained. “They said it would be more merciful to the buffalo. All of this was told to me by the leaders of the hunt, and I sent word for the musketmen to come to me.”

  A group of six Reds were arriving over the brow of a low hill, riding fine horses, bareback in the Red manner. “They had to ride horses,” said Tenskwa-Tawa softly, “because they have lost the ability to run with the Greensong.”

  Alvin was surprised by this. “On this side of the Mizzippy?” he asked.

  “Just because Whites cannot come here does not mean that we are safe from that influence,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  The men were carrying muskets, pointing them upward, which was a sign that they were probably loaded. They were an intimidating group, and for about half a minute Alvin wondered if the Prophet were in danger. There were other Reds nearby—strong men, some with bows—but nobody had an arrow nocked or a hatchet or a knife in hand.

  Alvin knew, of course, that with him there, no ball of any metal could strike Tenskwa-Tawa or harm him even if it did. Alvin had long since learned how to soften and melt and evaporate metals instantly in a bullet’s flight, and how to knit together torn flesh, even the muscle of a beating heart punctured by a metal ball. And Tenskwa-Tawa knew this. But Alvin also understood that Tenskwa-Tawa would have been just as calm if Alvin had not been there.