Merian watched the land, taking satisfaction in what he had done but aware that someday all would be dismantled, and that he should plant on a scale small enough to sustain alone in his old age. He no longer remembered what he made that first year at market, but it was still the season he was proudest of, when he had no company and battled nature without a reserve of food or safety. Having survived that he could not fret for the future. His natural optimism, though, no longer had a place to expand to and express itself.
“He is young still,” Sanne counseled. “You’ll be proud of him yet.”
Merian hoped she was prescient in the way mothers often are — and fathers too seldom — but he spent the fall months after the harvest going on long walks, inspecting both his lands and the new buildings that had gone up in the intervening years. A new road, north and south, now crossed the original westward line ten miles farther on. It moved goods and peoples all in a tumultuous rush, to settle the areas of the even farther-outlying counties, making him wonder how long before everything had been seized and a man either had gotten in with the original parceling or would be left without, until some new land and new parceling of it, fair and first-come, came about. And what about the last one there at the great partitioning? He could not answer but thought he should like to see Chiron again one day and ask him what would happen to him who had no direction, physical or otherwise, to move in away from his original source. Would he be satisfied, never knowing the tear of separation or else pained by the constriction of his movement?
He thought only that the boy better make up his mind on one thing or the other before too long, and that the other lines he had crossed, and been custodian of, must take custody of themselves soon.
He thought again then for the first time in years of Ruth and Ware, called Magnus. In his mind they were locked on the Sorel place, as he knew they always would be, either because she had lost courage to ask what was even in the rights of a bondswoman or because he had been too impatient to wait. He forced this last thing away from himself. He had done what was his responsibility and knew you could no more make someone free than you could keep that same thing away from one determined to have it.
On his walk home from the edge of his lands, he stared out over the rolling hills and valley, which were now under cultivation as far as he could see, and decided then he would continue in any case with the land and no more wait for the boy, Purchase, to show an interest.
He took this new optimism and set out on a project of improvement, so that when he finished it would be the equal of any farm in the colony and his fortune beyond any he might have imagined for himself when first beginning. Jasper Merian set his mind to growing rich.
Sanne, who was well into her middle years now as well, watched her husband in his new ambition for fortune. It reminded her of their early years together and also instilled in her a new hope for the future. She took it that he was decided on being less demanding and more forgiving of the boy, but also that he would rest less of his own ambition upon him. She was more tender in turn with her husband, cooking and teasing as she did all those years ago when he was clearing the second field and she was building her stove.
Purchase that winter often sought his father’s approval for his various pursuits, telling him, “I’m going to build an army camp in the barn” or “I am off in search of pirate’s treasure in the woods just there,” so his father would take it that he was engaged in constructive activity.
Merian then, looking at the boy, thought he might not be such a disappointment, and, when he took him into his latest scheme for the improvement of the place, was much pleased with the boy’s contributions, finding him quite natural with measuring tools and also able to imagine things before they were cast in hard reality, and — while perhaps still lazy — not at all slow.
The project, which was to be the last of the improvements for the year, was something Merian had long dreamed of but thought too presumptuous for the modest scale of Stonehouses, especially given the fact that he had already thought to give it a name. Now that he had decided on improving the place once more, he also decided his new creation was the first thing he needed for the new phase in his life, as it marked a man who took his affairs seriously and would let him better manage them.
He went into town for various small pieces and to check his designs against other examples of its kind, but found he could mostly make it himself, and with Purchase’s offers of help with the measuring and cutting he was certain of its accuracy.
When he finished, a great seal marked the center of the garden where Sanne still planted vegetables and herbs for the house. Now the movement of hours and seasons would be marked there as well, no longer a crude thing measured out in plantings and the metronome of the harvest, or the length of his shadow as the sun rode the back of his labors. For he had installed a sundial at Stonehouses, and it was more than mere decoration; he had brought time and chronology onto his property and into his possession.
What he measured that night, though, was less time than the sum of his dealings in his early days, which he did to appraise how much he had been gaining or losing. What he counted was zero parents, equal siblings, two masters and one mistress (depending on the count), an untold number of voyages, three houses built, two languages learned (though only one remembered), a solid handful of dependable friends, two male children, and two wives.
Of the future he knew not, and tried not to give much care, knowing only that he could not foresee it, but that things would pass in their time and work either for good or ill, depending on other devices.
These were the reckonings of Jasper Merian, after a half score of seasons had passed at Stonehouses, in the ancient days of Columbia, in one of those districts named for Carol Rex, before the nameless Indian battles, in the beginning, second immemorial age, in America.
II. age of fire
one
He is a forger of metal with no interest in the ground except its hidden ores and nothing of the plow except the strength and sharpness of its blade. He stands bare-chested from the waist up and, you can see, he is black as pig iron, or molten just after it is quenched. All except his eyes, which are light as wheatcorn. They belong to no one anybody around here has ever seen except he himself, and it comes down that he was not born with them but that they turned so from the intensity of his gaze into the furnace. He seems blind standing there — mute. Preachers will come one day to lay their hands on him, to release whatever has taken possession of those orbs, and women as well, who hope to know what lies behind them.
He keeps his stare fixed to heaven just now, as a cluster of white comets passes over the sky like angels, before turning fiery bright and speeding toward the lower reaches of the divine universe, right to the illuminated edge of this world, where they become blue-lined and red centered as God’s own heart worked in a blast furnace, before burning out and disappearing somewhere in the forestlands below.
He marks the spot well, etching in his mind the exact position in the mountains where the specks of light were last seen, then saddles his horse and sets off in discovery of the fallen bit of sky.
* * *
He journeyed three days and two hundred miles through the woods, without food or water for either man or horse. The trip, so says the lore of that country, would have taken a mere two days at the clip he rode and the animal flesh he made it upon, but the horse did fall of thirst in the last thirty miles and the man would not abandon it but carried him the rest of the way. This much was not true. The people of that country are well-known liars, though, especially as regards their history — making everything reflect well on themselves and region, but castigating all that might betray any secret weakness or want.