Alvin wasn't sure if he could remember Tenskwa-Tawa ever smiling before. “You're happy here?”
“Happy?” Tenskwa-Tawa's face went placid again. “I feel as though I stand with one foot on this earth and the other foot in the place where my people wait for me.”
“Not all died that day at Tippy-Canoe,” said Alvin. “You still have people here.”
“They also stand with one foot in one place, one foot in the other.” He glanced toward a canyon that led up into a gap between the impossibly high mountains. “They live in a high mountain valley. The snow is late this year, and they're glad of that, unless it means poor water for next year, and a poor crop. That's our life now, Alvin Maker. We used to live in a place where water leapt out of the ground wherever you struck it with a stick.”
“But the air is clear. You can see forever.”
Tenskwa-Tawa put his fingers to Alvin's lips. “No man sees forever. But some men see farther. Last winter I rode a tower of water into the sky over the holy lake Timpa-Nogos. I saw many things. I saw you come here. I heard the news you told me and the question you asked me.”
“And did you hear your answer?”
“First you must make my vision come true,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.
So Alvin told him about Harrison being elected president by bragging about his bloody hands, and how they wondered if Tenskwa-Tawa might release the people of Vigor Church from their curse, so they could leave their homes, those as wanted to, and become part of the Crystal City when Alvin started to build it. “Was that what you heard me ask you?”
“Yes,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.
“And what was your answer?”
“I didn't see my answer,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “So I have had all these months to think of what it was. In all these months, my people who died on that grassy slope have walked before my eyes in my sleep. I have seen their blood again and again flow down the grass and turn the Tippy-Canoe Creek red. I have seen the faces of the children and babies. I knew them all by name, and I still remember all the names and all the faces. Each one I see in the dream, I ask them, Do you forgive these White murderers? Do you understand their rage and will you let me take your blood from their hands?”
Tenskwa-Tawa paused. Alvin. waited, too. One did not rush a shaman as he told of his dreams.
“Every night I have had this dream until finally last night the last of them came before me and I asked my question.”
Again, a silence. Again, Alvin waited patiently. Not patiently the way a White man waits, showing his patience by looking around or moving his fingers or doing something else to mark the passage of time. Alvin waited with a Red man's patience, as if this moment were to be savored in itself, as if the suspense of waiting was in itself an experience to be marked and remembered.
“If even one of them had said, I do not forgive them, do not lift the curse, then I would not lift the curse,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “if even one baby had said, I do not forgive them for taking away my days of running like a deer through the meadows, I would not lift the curse. If even one mother had said, I do not forgive them for the baby that was in my womb when I died, who never saw the light of day with its beautiful eyes, I would not lift the curse. If even one father had said, The anger still runs hot in my heart, and if you lift the curse I will still have some hatred left unavenged, then I would not lift the curse.”
Tears flowed down Alvin's face, for he knew the answer now, and he could not imagine himself ever being so good that even in death he could forgive those who had done such a terrible thing to him and his family.
“I also asked the living,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Those who lost father and mother, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, child and friend, teacher and helper, hunting companion, and wife, and husband. If even one of these living ones had said, I cannot forgive them yet, Tenskwa-Tawa, I would not lift the curse.”
Then he fell silent one last time. This time the silence lasted and lasted. The sun had been at noon when Alvin arrived; it was touching the tops of the mountains to the west when at last Tenskwa-Tawa moved again, nodding his head. Like Alvin, he, too, had wept, and then had waited long enough for the tears to dry, and then had wept again, all without changing the expression on his face, all without moving a muscle of his body as the two of them sat facing each other in the tall dry autumn grass, in the cold dry autumn wind. Now he opened his mouth and spoke again. “I have lifted the curse,” he said.
Alvin embraced his old teacher. It was not what a Red man would have done, but Alvin had acted Red all afternoon, and so Tenskwa-Tawa accepted the gesture and even returned it. Touched by the Red Prophet's hands, his cheek against the old man's hair, the old man's face against his shoulder, Alvin remembered that once he had thought of asking Tenskwa-Tawa to strengthen the curse on Harrison, to stop him from misusing his bloody hands. It made him ashamed. If the dead could forgive, should not the living? Harrison would find his own way through life, and his own path to death. Judgment would have to come, if it came at all, from someone wiser than Alvin.
When they arose from the grass, Tenskwa-Tawa looked north toward the larger lake. “Look, a man is coming.”
Alvin saw where he was looking. Not far off, a man was jogging lightly along a path through the head-high grass. Not running in the Red man's way, but like a White man, and not a young one. His hatless bald head glinted momentarily in the sunset.
"That ain't Taleswapper, is itT' asked Alvin.
“The Sho-sho-nay invited him to come and trade stories with them,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.
Instead of asking more questions, Alvin waited with Tenskwa-Tawa until Taleswapper came up the long steep path. He was out of breath when he arrived, as might have been expected. But as Alvin sent, his doodlebug through Taleswapper's body, he was surprised at the old man's excellent health. They greeted each other warmly, and Alvin told him the news. Taleswapper smiled at Tenskwa-Tawa. “Your people are better than you thought they were,” he said.
“Or more forgetful,” said Tenskwa-Tawa ruefully.
“I'm glad I happened to be here, to hear this news,” said Taleswapper. “If you're going back through the weaver's house, I'd like to go with you.”
When Alvin and Taleswapper returned to Becca's cabin within the heart of the weaver's house, it had been dark for two hours. Ta-Kumsaw had gone outside and invited Peggy's and Alvin's friends to come in and eat with his family. Becca's sister and her daughters and her son joined them; they ate a stew of bison meat, Red man's food cooked the White man's way, a compromise like so much else in this house. Ta-Kumsaw had introduced himself by the name of Isaac Weaver, and Peggy was careful to call him by no other name.
Alvin and Taleswapper found them all lying on their bedrolls on the floor of the parlor, except for Peggy, who was sitting on a chair, listening as Verily Cooper told them tales of his life in England, and all the subterfuges he had gone through in order to conceal his knack from everyone. She turned to face the door before her husband and their old friend came through it; the others also turned, so all eyes were on them. They knew at once from the joy on Alvin's face what Tenskwa-Tawa's answer had been.
“I want to ride out tonight and tell them,” said Armor-of-God. “I want them to know the good news right now.”
“Too dark,” said Ta-Kumsaw, who came in from the kitchen where he had been helping his sister-in-law wash the dishes from supper.
“There's no more rules, now, the curse is lifted free and clear,” said Alvin. “But he asks that we do something all the same. That everyone who used to be under the curse gather their family together once a year, on the anniversary of the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, and on that day eat no food, but instead tell the story as it used to be told to all strangers who came through Vigor Church. Once a year, our children and our children's children, forever. He asks that we do that, but there'll be no punishment if we don't. No punishment except that our children will forget, and when they forget, there's always the chance that it might happen again.”