“Where did all the people of that mound go?” asked Alvin.

  “Into the ground,” said the Prophet. “The Spaniards who first visited Cahokia Mound brought diseases. I don’t think they knew they had these diseases in them. We don’t blame them for what happened after they came through. But half the people of Cahokia were sick, and most died, and the others fled, until the villages were empty, except for the dead and dying, and the handful of brave souls who carried water to the sick so that if they died, it would not be of thirst.”

  “Do you know what disease it was?”

  “Do you want to know the name because you and the sickness are already friends?”

  “Mortal enemies,” said Alvin. “But every disease is different.”

  “Swollen itching marks all over the body,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “Smallpox.”

  “And another one, thumb-size swollen dark sores—”

  “Bubonic plague,” said Alvin.

  “Are these diseases you know because you have a cure for them?”

  Alvin shook his head. “I can cure them, one person at a time, by getting inside the sufferer’s body and making changes until the disease is extinguished. But I can’t make a cure—a potion, a poultice, that other people could use. I don’t understand the diseases that well.”

  “I wish you had been there then. More than half the people of Cahokia died, and many of those who ran away also died, because they had already been infected. We thought Cahokia had been destroyed by the Whites—not a-purpose, we knew that—but dead of the White diseases, that could not be denied by anyone. From then on, any White hunter or explorer would be carefully guided away from Cahokia, by scouts who were quarantined before they could come home.

  Most of those who ran away never came back, and those who returned could not rebuild because there weren’t enough people in the surrounding country to trade with, and living on the old Cahokia Mound was impossible, without enough people to hunt and grow the maize and care for the babies that had survived. So even those who returned had to go, joining the surrounding tribes. All the tribes have Cahokia blood in them by now.”

  “This is not the remnant of Cahokia, then,” said Alvin. “This is a new settlement built to the same plan.”

  “Built since the river divided White from Red. Those who fled from Tippy-Canoe and other places where Whites were trying to oust them, when they came west they didn’t know how to hunt buffalo, the ground was so dry and rain so scarce that the ways of growing maize in the East no longer worked. Some experimented with irrigation, and that is working now, in more places every year. And the expert hunters took more buffalo than usual, so they could feed the newcomers. And most of the newcomers earned their food by carrying baskets and bags of earth from the floodlands near the Mizzippy and they built this mound.”

  “With you in charge.”

  “With my understanding of the old Cahokia Mound to guide us, yes. I told them how large from east to west, and how large from north to south, and I gave them the shape of the corners because this was not going to be a mathematically squared-off place, as White surveyors would have made it.”

  “Is it the same size and shape as the original?”

  “I don’t care if it is,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “The idea was not to build it exactly as it had been built in different terrain, but to fit it to the land here, creating channels for streams to flow through it or around it.”

  “And the city, or villages—with the mound about the same size as it had been before, how many people does it sustain?”

  “We are near twenty thousand people now, including those who roam and scout and hunt, but always come back here to report, or to guide new settlers here.”

  “Is this your capital?” asked Alvin.

  Tenskwa-Tawa looked puzzled. “Why should it be a capital? Why would we need a capital? This is the largest poblacion on the prairie—that’s what the Spanish call a group of villages. Each village governs itself, and when there’s a matter that involves all the villages of Cahokia, then the Council is called, each village having a vote, and we decide together what to do. But no one has to do it because there’s no government to force them to comply.”

  “But what about other towns that aren’t up on Cahokia Mound?” asked Alvin.

  “What are they to us, unless they trade their crops or skins to us for our pottery and wattles? Cahokia does not rule over any other villages or anybody else who doesn’t dwell on the mound. Throughout the whole West, no rulers force their will on others, or steal their possessions as taxes. What do you think we are, White?”

  Alvin laughed, and so did Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “But you are obeyed all over the Red lands, aren’t you?”

  “My words are listened to by some, and repeated to others, who sometimes listen. And people bring me disputes to settle, so that sometimes I’m a judge. But not a king or governor or mayor. I get no taxes from anybody, nor even any fees for my service as mediator. Why should I gain from damaging disputes, as if my income should depend on people being mean to each other? Who wants to earn money from something like that?”

  “More than you’d think,” said Alvin, thinking of his friend Verily Cooper, who had a law office back in Crystal City. And other lawyers, many of them without a knack of any kind, who depended for their income on outsiders who brought complaints against the Talented people who came to Crystal City for refuge. But even they had their uses, Alvin knew. He’d had enough ridiculous legal trouble in his life to know that a good lawyer is as necessary as a good bowel movement—as he said to Verily more than once, until Margaret told Alvin she’d prefer never hearing that vile joke again.

  Still, Alvin couldn’t help but think of the lack of lawyers in Cahokia as a benefit, not because lawyers themselves caused the problems and disputes, but because their complete absence suggested that people knew how to settle their disputes in a dispassionate way without needing lawyers.

  As if he knew what Alvin was thinking, Tenskwa-Tawa said, “In Cahokia, lawyers would starve, except that we don’t let anybody go hungry here.”

  “How do you get people to act that way?” asked Alvin.

  “We Reds have always lived that way. Maybe it’s our knack as a people. My brother would tell you that ‘our way’ was the reason we could never unite to fight off the White onslaught, and yet the same reason that we could not keep the peace, because the young warriors did not have to obey the elders who had agreed to peace.”

  No wonder Reds had always opposed being governed by Whites in the East. No wonder so many of them—even from Irrakwa and Cherriky—made their way to the banks of the Mizzippy and then crossed into Red country. Irrakwa and Cherriky were like Whites in their government. The Red states of the East had elections, and sent electors to choose the President of the United States, now that they had joined that federation. They had deeds to their houses, factories, and lands, and they made contracts with White businesses and industries and suppliers. When you have deeds and contracts you’re going to have lawyers.

  No wonder Tenskwa-Tawa thought of the Cherriky and Irrakwa as not being Red at all. The eastern Reds had taken on White ways and triumphed over many of their White competitors. It was Irrakwa crews that were hired to build railroads all over the States, and Cherriky engineers that built bridges over rivers and streams of every size. They also farmed, and the Cherriky, at least, kept up some remnant of the common ownership of property, though that ideal was breached over and over as individual families obeyed only the decisions about their property that they agreed with.

  They were not going to walk the whole length of Cahokia Mound. And Alvin had had his fill of touring the Red capital, for to him that’s what it had to be. Instead, they returned to the northern brow of the mound and sat down and talked.

  They talked about ideas. They reminisced about their own past, about Tenskwa-Tawa appearing to Alvin in his bedroom as the Shining Man, telling him how to dedicate his life. Rebuking him for his stupid mistakes, helping him discover his own rules on how to use his knacks. In return, Alvin had helped the drunken Lolla-Wossiky get over his alcohol craving so he could become the sober Prophet.

  Their lives were so entangled.

  “In England, where the Puritans rule,” said Alvin, “they kill people who have knacks.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa shrugged. “It’s a faraway land,” he said. “Full of Whites.”

  “Full of my people,” said Alvin, though until that moment he hadn’t really thought of the English as being some kind of kinfolk. Whites weren’t like Reds. They didn’t feel like every other White was their brother or sister. But maybe that was a mistake. Maybe Whites and Reds and Blacks should all think of each other as brothers.

  Impossible. Because the real division now was between people with useful knacks, and people without. That’s why Alvin had built Crystal City, to be a refuge, a gathering place for the Talented. A fortress? He hoped not, hoped that such a thing would never be needed.

  Then an idea struck him with great force. “My friend,” Alvin said. “What if the war against knacks, against people like me, what if we lose it? What if we can see that we will be overwhelmed, slaughtered, imprisoned, my Crystal City overrun and ruled by people who thirst for our blood?”

  “I know something about that,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  Alvin remembered the killing field at Tippy-Canoe Creek, where enraged Whites slaughtered defenseless Red families. Yes, Tenskwa-Tawa knew.

  “My friend, Lolla-Wossiky, Tenskwa-Tawa, Prophet, ruler of the river and the fogs above it—”

  “Let me think about it,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “I didn’t ask you yet,” said Alvin.

  “Let me think about allowing your people with the powerful knacks to cross the river and find refuge in the Red lands.”

  “They know nothing about the kind of society you have here. Living without government, I don’t know if they’d be ready for that.”

  “That’s why I have to think about it,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “You are always welcome, of course, either to visit, like now, or to dwell for the rest of your life. You and Margaret and such children and brothers and sisters as you choose to bring. But the whole of Crystal City? It’s become quite large, I hear.”

  “Not like Cahokia,” said Alvin.

  “Exactly like Cahokia,” said the Prophet. “Dependent on trade to supply the city with food and fuel. Too large for anyone to know everyone.”

  “Could we gather on the western shore, in such a case of dire need, and rebuild the Crystal City there? Or should we go farther inland, even though water for the blocks of crystal might be harder to find?”

  “The farther west you go, the drier it is,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “There’s no reason for you to leave the western shore, if the river lets you cross westward. If the Whites can ever force their way across, then it won’t matter where you are, prairie or mountains, forest or desert, they can find you and destroy you. Unless you have knacks among you that can serve as weapons.”

  “I don’t like them to do that,” said Alvin.

  “I taught you not to kill,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “But did that save us from White Murderer Harrison? So now I say that when there is no other way, what can you do but kill?”

  “I have learned—from you,” said Alvin, “that there is almost always another way.”

  “Don’t bring your people across the river,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “There would inevitably be conflict between Reds and Whites—even persecuted Whites with knacks.”

  “I won’t count on coming,” said Alvin.

  “You and your family are always—”

  “My friend, you know I cannot come here by myself, or even with my family, while the rest of my people are being massacred.”

  “As I said, Alvin, my boy,” said Tenskwa-Tawa, “let me think about it.”

  They sat in silence.

  “I’m thinking that I ought to go back home now,” said Alvin. “But I don’t know why. Have I accomplished anything here?”

  “You have a city that depends on you,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “You learned how Red people live when Whites don’t impose their laws on us. Of course you feel as if you ought to go back home.”

  “Something called me here, sent me, dragged me here.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa shrugged slightly. “I have no answer.” Then he stood up. “I know who might have your answer,” he said.

  7

  IT WAS THE most permanent-looking building Alvin had seen in the Red West, very much like a log cabin that Whites might have built. Only there were no stands of trees nearby, as there were everywhere in the East, and individual trees on the prairie were all too precious to cut down to build something as transient as a dwelling-place. So these logs must have come from trees across the river.

  Tenskwa-Tawa explained: “When the river became a barrier, the White settlers here all fled East, though there was no threat of violence against them. The buildings they didn’t burn, they left behind, and Ta-Kumsaw saw no reason to leave the place unoccupied. For a log house, it is roomy, and now Ta-Kumsaw’s daughter, my niece Wieza, keeps house here.”

  Alvin remembered Wieza. “When I was in Becca’s house, I met her daughter Wieza. I think her Red name, her real name, was Mana-Tawa.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa looked at him in bemusement. “You remember both names of a woman?”

  “I don’t know of any women more important in all of North America than the Weavers.”

  “Not always women,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “My brother Methowa-Tasky has a son—”

  “I know there are men among the Weavers,” said Alvin.

  “I forget sometimes how much you learned,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “So this is where the Loom is kept,” said Alvin.

  “This Loom is only the Loom while it is being used,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “It’s a heavy, awkward piece of furniture when it’s just being ‘kept.’”

  “I have always wondered—if the Weavers stop their work, what happens to the lives they’ve been Weaving?”

  Tenskwa-Tawa thought for a moment. “Let’s not find out.”

  “You brought me here so I could consult with the Weavers,” said Alvin.

  “I think you should visit with Mana-Tawa.”

  Alvin waited for more explanation. Then he realized. “You have to be the Prophet when we go inside this house.”

  He looked at Tenskwa-Tawa, who merely looked back at him, expressionless.

  Alvin knew this was his answer: The Prophet is taciturn, and does not say what does not need saying.

  The door opened before they came to it, and a young man stood there. Alvin had seen him before. He started to say the man’s name. “No,” said the man. “My name is Suckling now.”

  It was a ridiculous name for a grown man, and Alvin turned to Tenskwa-Tawa for explanation. But it was Suckling who answered his unspoken query. “When you translate a word into another language, it can be exactly right, yet it can carry meanings that are very wrong. My name is manly and meaningful in Mohawk. Or so my father, Methowa-Tasky, told me.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa spoke up. “Methowa-Tasky is my brother. Suckling is my nephew.”

  Alvin said, “If a male Weaver is named Suckling, then it is a name of dignity.”

  Suckling smiled. “You honor this house, Alvin Maker.”

  “I am the one being honored, when you welcome me like this.”

  Suckling led Alvin into the house. Alvin turned to see Tenskwa-Tawa waiting beyond the threshold. Alvin looked at him expectantly, but did not ask.

  “The Prophet druther not come near the Loom,” said Suckling, “for fear a Weaver might tell him what he don’t want to know.”

  Alvin smiled at Tenskwa-Tawa. “I thought you wanted to know everything.”

  “All in due time,” said Tenskwa-Tawa solemnly.

  Alvin turned to Suckling. “I’m not here to avoid the Loom.”

  “What do you want to know?” asked Suckling.

  “Whatever the Weaver has to tell me.”

  “At this moment I’m not the Weaver. Mana-Tawa is at the Loom.”

  “Don’t we call her Wieza anymore?”

  “Don’t be fretting about names so much, Master Alvin,” said Suckling. “We saw you coming, and Wieza’s eager to talk to you.”

  Alvin waited. Suckling remembered that Alvin had never been there before. “You don’t know where the Loom is, I reckon,” he said.

  Alvin smiled.

  “This way,” said Suckling. He led Alvin to a stairway that went down into the cellar.

  As they descended, Alvin said, “Can she weave in the dark?”

  “She can weave in her sleep, and she does so many a night,” said Suckling. “But this house is on a slope, so one end of the cellar is dark, but the other end has north light all day.”

  “Good choice of house, then,” said Alvin.

  “That’s so,” said Suckling. “But we could weave in a cave or outdoors on an island. Only place we can’t really is underwater, because the threads don’t act right, and the shuttlecock won’t go far enough on one throw.”

  “So you’ve tried it.”

  “The Mizzippy flooded around here last spring, on the snow melt from the mountains. Wieza didn’t want to stop weaving long enough to move the Loom. The rest of us stacked up baskets of dirt to make a kind of levee, and it kept the water two feet lower inside than out, but Wieza was still weaving, even with wetted strings and a sluggish shuttlecock.”

  “She didn’t see it coming?” asked Alvin.

  “We never look at our own threads,” said Suckling, as if that were something everybody knew. “We never try to weave to an outcome we desire. We just weave as the threads need to go.”

  “You knew I was coming from my thread.”

  “We saw you joining with the Prophet, and we knew that he’d bring you here, and here you are.”

  “What else do you know?”