“Not yet,” said Taleswapper.
“When!”
“When you've whipped that old Unmaker, lad. That's when I'll let you write in this book.”
“What if I don't ever whip him?”
“Then this book won't amount to much, anyway.”
Tears sprang to Alvin's eyes. “What if I die?”
Taleswapper felt a thrill of fear. “How's the leg?”
The boy shrugged. He blinked back the tears. They were gone.
“That's no answer, lad.”
“It won't stop hurting.”
“It'll be that way till the bone knits.”
Alvin Junior smiled wanly. “Bone's all knit.”
“Then why don't you walk?”
“It pains me, Taleswapper. It never goes away. It's got a bad place on the bone, and I ain't figured out yet how to make it right.”
“You'll find a way.”
“I ain't found it yet.”
“An old trapper once said to me, 'It don't matter if you start at the bung or the breastbone, any old way you get the skin off a panther is a good way.'”
“Is that a proverb?”
“It's close. You'll find a way, even if it isn't what you expect.”
“Nothing's what I expect,” said Alvin. “Nothing turns out like anything I figured.”
“You're ten years old, lad. Weary of the world already?”
Alvin kept rubbing folds of the blanket between his thumb and fingers. “Taleswapper, I'm dying.”
Taleswapper studied his face, trying to see death there. It wasn't. “I don't think so.”
“The bad place on my leg. It's growing. Slow, maybe, but it's growing. It's invisible, and it's eating away at the hard places of the bone, and after a while it'll go faster and faster and–”
“And Unmake you.”
Alvin started to cry for real this time, and his hands were shaking. “I'm scared to die, Taleswapper, but it got inside me and I can't get it out.”
Taleswapper laid a hand on his, to still the trembling. “You'll find a way. You've got too much work to do in this world, to die now.”
Alvin rolled his eyes. “That's about as dumb a thing as I've heard this year. Just because somebody's got things to do don't mean he won't die.”
“But it does mean he won't die willingly.”
“I ain't willing.”
“That's why you'll find a way to live.”
Alvin was silent for a few seconds. “I've been thinking. About if I do live, what I'll do. Like what I done to make my leg get mostly better. I can do that for other folks, I bet. I can lay hands on them and feel the way it is inside, and fix it up. Wouldn't that be good?”
“They'd love you for it, all the folks you healed.”
“I reckon the first time was the hardest, and I wasn't partickler strong when I done it. I bet I can do it faster on other people.”
“Maybe so. But even if you heal a hundred sick people every day, and move on to the next place and heal a hundred more, there'll be ten thousand people die behind you, and ten thousand more ahead of you, and by the time you die, even the ones you healed will almost all be dead.”
Alvin turned his face away. “If I know how to fix them, then I got to fix them, Taleswapper.”
“Those you can, you must,” said Taleswapper. “But not as your life's work. Bricks in the wall, Alvin, that's all they'll ever be. You can never catch up by repairing the crumbling bricks. Heal those who chance to fall under your hand, but your life's work is deeper than that.”
“I know how to heal people. But I don't know how to beat down the Un– the Unmaker. I don't even know what it is.”
“As long as you're the only one that can see him, though, you're also the only one who has a hope of beating him.”
“Maybe.”
Another long silence. Taleswapper knew it was time to go.
“Wait.”
“I've got to leave now.”
Alvin caught at his sleeve. “Not yet.”
“Pretty soon.”
“At least– at least let me read what the others wrote.”
Taleswapper reached into his bag and pulled out the book pouch. “I can't promise I'll explain what they mean,” he said, sliding the book out of its waterproof cover.
Alvin quickly found the last, newest writings.
In his mother's hand: “Vigor he push a log and he don die til the boy is bornd.”
In David's hand: “A mil ston splits in two then it suks bak not a crak.”
In Cally's hand: “A sevent sunn.”
Alvin looked up. “He ain't talking about me, you know.”
“I know,” said Taleswapper.
Alvin looked back at the book. In his father's hand: “He dont kil a boy cus a stranjer com in time.”
“What's Pa talking about?” asked Alvin.
Taleswapper took the book from his hands and closed it. “Find a way to heal your leg,” he said. “There's a lot more souls than you who need it to be strong. It's not for yourself, remember?”
He bent over and kissed the boy on the forehead. Alvin reached up and held him with both arms, hanging on him so that he couldn't stand up without lifting the boy clear out of bed. After a while, Taleswapper had to reach up and pull the boy's arms away. His cheek was wet with Alvin's tears. He didn't wipe them away. He let the breeze dry them as he trudged along the cold dry path, with fields of half-melted snow stretching left and right.
He paused a moment on the second covered bridge. Just long enough to wonder if he'd ever come back here, or see them again. Or get Alvin Junior's sentence for his book. If he were a prophet, he'd know. But he hadn't the faintest idea.
He walked on, setting his feet toward morning.
Chapter Thirteen – Surgery
The visitor sat comfortably upon the altar, leaning casually on his left arm, so that his body had a jaunty tilt. Reverend Thrower had seen just such an informal pose taken by a dandy from Camelot, a rakehell who clearly despised everything that the Puritan churches of England and Scotland stood for. It made Thrower more than a little uncomfortable to see the Visitor in such an irreverent pose.
“Why?” asked the Visitor. “Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in your lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”
Thrower was embarrassed. “It isn't fair to chastise me for my thoughts.”
“It is, when your thoughts chastise me for my actions. Beware of hubris, my friend. Do not fancy yourself so righteous that you can judge the acts of angels.”
It was the first time the Visitor had ever called himself an angel.
“I did not call myself anything,” said the Visitor. “You must learn to control your thoughts, Thrower. You leap to conclusions far too easily.”
“Why have you come to me?”
“It's a matter of the maker of this altar,” said the Visitor. He patted one of the crosses Alvin Junior had burnt into the wood.
“I've done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”
“An obnoxious child.”
“The worst I have ever seen,” said Thrower.
The Visitor's eyes flashed. Thrower felt a stab in his heart.
“I've tried,” said Thrower. “I've tried to turn him to serve the Lord. But the influence of his father–”
“It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others,” said the Visitor.
“I haven't failed yet!” said Thrower. “You told me I had until the boy was fourteen–”
“No. I told you I had until the boy was fourteen. You only have him as long as he lives here.”
“I've heard nothing about the Millers moving. They just got their millstone in place, they're going to start grinding in the spring, they wouldn't leave without–”