Peggy was appalled. “I never realized it was so dangerous.”
“Breathing's dangerous too,” said the boy, “if'n you breathe in something to make you sick.” He grinned. “I saw you two get all twined up together here. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” said Alvin.
“So what do they call you now, judge woman?” the boy asked Peggy. “Goody Smith?”
“Most still call me Peggy Larner. Only they say Miz Larner now, and not Miss.”
“I call her Margaret,” said Alvin.
“I reckon you'll really be married when she starts to think of herself by the name you call her, instead of the name her parents called her by.” He winked at Peggy. “Thanks for getting me my job. My sisters are glad, too, they had nightmares, I'll tell you. There ain't no love of the loom in them.” He turned back to Alvin. “So are you going or what?”
At that moment the door flew open and a tied-up bundle flew through it.
“Uh-oh,” said the boy. “Best turn your back. Becca's coming through, and she travels stark nekkid, seeing as how women's clothing can't fit through that door without touching.”
Alvin turned his back, and so did Peggy, though unlike Alvin she cheated and allowed herself to watch anyway. It was not Becca who caine through the door first, however. It was Ta-Kumsaw, a man Peggy had never met, though she had seen him often enough in Alvin's heartfire. He was not naked, but rather clothed in buckskins that clung tightly to his body. He saw them standing there and grunted. “Boy Renegado comes back to see the most dangerous Red man who ever lived.”
“Howdy, Ta-Kumsaw,” said Alvin.
“Hi, Isaac,” said the boy. “I warned him about the door like you said.”
“Good boy,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned his back on them then, just in time for Becca to leap through the door wearing only thin and clinging underwear. He gathered her at once into his arms. Then together they untied the bundle and unfolded it into a dress, which she drew down over her head. “All right,” said Ta-Kurnsaw. “She's dressed enough for a White woman now.”
Alvin turned around and greeted her. There were handshakes, and even a hug between women. They talked about what had happened in Hatrack River over the past few months, and then Alvin explained his errand.
Ta-Kumsaw showed no emotion. “I don't know what my brother will say. He keeps his own counsel.”
“Does he rule there in the west?” asked Alvin.
“Rule? That's not how we do things. There are many tribes, and in each tribe many wise men. My brother is one of the greatest of them, everyone agrees to that. But he doesn't make law just by deciding what it should be. We don't do anything as foolish as you do, electing one president and concentrating too much power in his hands. It was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.”
“Which is going to happen on New Year's day when Harrison–”
Ta-Kumsaw glowered. “Never say that name, that unbearable name.”
“Not saying it won't make him go away,”
“It will keep his evil out of this house,” said Ta-Kurnsaw. “Away from the people I love.”
In the meantime, Becca had finished dressing. She came to the boy and bumped him with her hip. “Move over, stubbyfingers. That's my loom you're tangling.”
“Tightest weave ever,” the boy retorted. “People will always know which spots I wove.”
Becca settled onto the chair and then began to make the shuttlecock dance. The whole music of the loom changed, the rhythm of it, the song. “You came for a purpose, Maker? The door's still open for you. Do what you came to do.”
For the first time Peggy really looked at the door, trying to see what lay beyond it; and what lay beyond was nothing. Not blackness, but not daylight either. Just… nothing. Her eyes couldn't look at it; her gaze kept shifting away.
“Alvin,” she said. “Are you sure you want to–”
He kissed her. “I love it when you worry about me.”
She smiled and kissed him back. As he took off his cap and his boots, and his long coat that might flap against the doodamb, he couldn't see how she reached into the small box she kept in a pocket of her skirt; how she held the last scrap of his birth caul between her fingers and then watched his heartfire, ready to spring into action the moment he needed her, to use his power to heal him even if he, in some dire extremity, could not or dared not or would not use it himself.
He ran for the door, leapt toward it left-foot-first, his right foot leaving the ground before any part of him broke the plane of the door. He sailed through with his head ducked down; he missed the top of the door by an inch.
“I don't like it when people leap through all spread out like that,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Better to spring from both feet at once, and curl up into a ball as you go.”
“You athletic men can do that,” said Becca. “But I can't see myself hitting the floor like that and rolling. Besides, you leap half the time yourself.”
“I'm not as tall as Alvin,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned to Peggy. “He grew to be very tall.”
But Peggy didn't answer him.
“She's watching his heartfire,” said Becca: “Best leave her alone till he comes back.”
Alvin tumbled and fell when he hit the floor on the other side he sprawled into a pile of cloth and heard the sound of laughter. He got up and looked around. Another cabin, but a newish one and the girl at the loom was scarcely older than he was. She was a mixup like Arthur, only half-Red instead of half-Black, and the combination of Ta-Kumsaw and Becca was becoming in her.
“Howdy, Alvin,” she said. He had expected her voice to sound like Ta-Kumsaw's and Tenskwa-Tawa's, accented when she spoke in English, but she spoke like Becca, a bit old-fashioned sounding but like a native speaker of the tongue.
“Howdy,” he said.
“You sure came through like a ton of bricks,” she said.
“Made a mess of the piles of cloth here.”
“Don't fret,” she said. “That's why they're there. Papa always smacks into them when he comes through like a cannonball.”
With that he ran out of conversation, and so did she, so he stood there watching as she ran her loom.
“Go find Tenskwa-Tawa. He's waiting for you.”
Alvin had heard so much about the fog on the Mizzipy that he had halfway got it into his head that the whole of the western lands was covered with fog. When he opened the cabin and stepped outside, though, he found that far from being foggy, the sky was so clear it felt like he could see clear into heaven in broad daylight. There were high mountains looming to the east, and he could see them so crisp and clear that he felt as though he could trace the crevices in the bare granite near the top, or count the leaves on the oak trees halfway up their craggy flanks. The cabin stood at the brow of a hill separating two valleys, both of which contained lakes. The one to the north was huge, the far reaches of it invisible because of the curve of the Earth, not because of any haze or thickness of the air; the lake to the south was smaller, but it was even more beautiful, shining like a blue jewel in the cold sunlight of late autumn.
“The snow is late,” said a voice behind him.
Alvin turned. “Shining Man,” he said, the name slipping from his lips before he could think.
“And you are the man who learned how to be a man when he was a boy,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.
They embraced. The wind whistled around them. When they parted, Alvin glanced around again. “This is a pretty exposed place to build a cabin,” he said.
“Had to be here,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “The valley to the south is Timpa-Nogos. Holy ground, where there can be no houses and no wars. The valley to the north is grazing land, where the deer can be hunted by families that run out of food in the winter. No houses either. Don't worry. Inside a weaver's house is always warm.” He smiled. “I'm glad to see you.”