The Worthing Saga

by Orson Scott Card

  The boy fumbled with the key on the rack and handed it to the tinker, who said, “Get my things from the cupboard,” and walked away toward the stairs to the south tower. Amos got off his stool slowly and made his way to the cupboard where the tinker's bags were kept. They were covered with dust after a summer's storage, but they were not heavy, and Amos carried them easily to the tinker's room.

  It was up a high flight of stairs, past two floors of tenants' rooms, all full, and a floor of rooms that were not full this year, and at last up a winding stair and then a short ladder through a trap in the ceiling; and he was in the tinker's room.

  The south tower was the tallest place in the town, with shuttered windows that had no glass on them so that when they were opened the wind rushed through from all around and you could look and see forest in every direction. Amos had never been up here before with the windows opened— he had only snuck up a few times to play here, had been caught once and thrashed. He looked out west and saw Mount Waters rising high and clear and snowcapped from the deepest part of the Forest of Waters. He could see the West River flashing and shining away north and west, and he could see, way to the north, the purple horizon of the Heaven Mountains. From this tower you could see all the world that Amos had ever heard of, except for Heaven city itself, where the Heaven King lived, and that was not part of the world anyway.

  “You can see the whole land from here.” Startled, Amos turned away from the window to see the tinker sitting on a stool in a far comer. The tinker went on. “From here you can pretend the town is nowhere around.” Then the tinker smiled, but Amos was still afraid. He was alone in a high tower with the tinker, with John Tinker the magic man. Too frightened to leave, yet unwilling to stay, he stood silently by the window and watched the tinker work.

  John Tinker seemed to have forgotten the boy was even there as he heated his melting pot over the fire in the hearth. In a few minutes the tin was soft, and with wooden tongs he laid it over a hole in a flat pan. Working quickly before the metal was cool, he hammered and pounded with his wooden mallet until the patch was perfectly joined to the pan. Then he heated another patch and put it on the other side, and when it was done, he held it up for the boy to see. There was no sign that there had ever been a hole in the pan, except that the patch was shinier than the rest. But Amos still said nothing. And John Tinker said the same, continuing to rub and smooth the pan until the whole thing shone like new.

  Then the tinker stood suddenly and took a step toward the boy. Amos shied away, and stood with his back to a farther window. But John Tinker only picked up the bags that Amos had carried up and took clothing from them to hang on the hooks on the window posts. Then he took a few bottles and tools and a brush and set them on the night table. All of this Amos watched in silence.

  At last the tinker was through and sat on the edge of his bed, yawned, and lay back against the bolster. In a few moments he'll be asleep, Amos thought, and I can go. But the tinker didn't shut his eyes, and his young prisoner began to wonder if the magic man never slept. Of course he wouldn't sleep, and now as if he'd never get away.

  Just then a bird flew in the window. It was bright red, and it flew in a streak of color three times around the room and landed A on the tinker's chest.

  “Do you know this bird?” the tinker asked quietly. Amos was silent. “Red Bird. Sweetest singer.” And as if to prove it the bird fluttered to the sill and began to whistle and chirp, with such comic tiltings of its head that in spite of himself Amos smiled. Then John Tinker began to whistle with the bird, first the man and then the bird on quick little passages that went faster and faster until when they stopped Amos was laughing out loud.

  The boy was won. John Tinker smiled and said, “You can go down now.” Amos sobered immediately and bolted toward the trapdoor. “Oh, Amos,” John Tinker called after him. The boy's head reappeared through the door. “Would you like to hold a jay in your hand?” The boy looked at him. Next time, the tinker said, and the boy was gone.

  • • •

  “I don't like it! And by damn I don't have to have it.”

  “Hold still,” Sammy Barber said softly, “or I'll cut your throat.”

  “You'll cut my throat whether I move or not,” Martin Keeper bellowed. “Not a man in town would put up with it, but I have to.” Sammy stropped the razor loudly. “Sammy Barber, do you have to strop so loud!”

  Sammy leaned in close to his patron's face. “Have you ever been shaved with a dull razor, Master Martin?” The innkeeper grumbled and held still. Finally Sammy Barber reached for the wet towel and daubed it on Martin's face. Immediately the burly keeper leapt to his feet, tossed two coins at the barber, and said, “I don't like your attitude.”

  “Haven't got an attitude,” the barber replied meekly, but Martin thought he heard a note of mockery.

  “Haven't got an attitude, my father's donkey!” Martin roared, and reached for the barber's smock.

  “Careful,” said the barber.

  “This whole town of lily-livered chicken-hearted dumpling eaters has an attitude and I won't stand for it!”

  “The smock,” said the barber.

  “I don't care if the man's related to me or not! I won't have him at my house with my son another day!”

  There was a sound if of ripping cloth and a piece of the white smock came away in Martin's hands. Sammy Barber looked mildly chagrined. Martin plunged his hand into his coin purse and came out with a penny. “Have it mended.”

  “Oh, thanks,” the barber said.

  Martin glared at him. “Why should I be the only one to keep the man around when the whole town benefits? Everybody wants a healer but nobody wants a magic man under their roof.”

  “He is your cousin.”

  Suddenly the barber found himself gripped by the strongest arms in Worthing, staring into the angriest face in Worthing, being breathed on by a man who didn't brush his teeth any less often than Sammy—but not any more often, either.

  “If I hear,” Martin hissed, “the word cousin—just one more time—I will make you swallow your stinking little strop and then I'll sharpen the razor on it inside your fat little belly.”

  “Are you going crazy?” Sammy asked, politely trying to avoid inhaling near Martin's mouth.

  “No!” replied the keeper, throwing him back. “I'm going home! And the tinker is going to pack up his tin and get out of my inn!” Martin found time to admire his own rhyme and then turned and barreled out of the barber's shop. He pretended not to hear Sammy giggling as he strode across the square to his building, the oldest in Worthing. The sign Worthing Inn badly needed painting.

  “Pack up your tin and get out of my inn,” he muttered as he walked; “Pack up your damnable tin,” he muttered a little more loudly. A dog in the street got out of his way.

  Amos was sitting on the counter when his father stormed in. He immediately jumped off and stood at attention. He tried not to whimper or duck as his father reached for him, picked him up, and stood him on the counter.

  “You are not,” said his father, “going to go.”

  “Here the man paused to swallow.”

  “Up in the south tower to see the tinker again.” Now Amos swallowed “Do you understand me?” Amos swallowed harder. Martin shook the boy so fast his head was a blur. “Do you understand me!”

  “Oh yes sir I do,” replied the boy, his head still shaking.

  “Every day is far too often to be going to see the magic man!” When Amos didn't answer immediately his father got set to shake him again. Amos nodded quickly.

  “definitely, Papa.”

  Then they both turned to look at John Tinker standing in the doorway.

  There was an awkward pause as Martin tried to figure out how much John Tinker had heard. Then he decided he shouldn't take any chances.

  “I hope you didn't misunderstand,” he said in a voice not accustomed to being meek. “It's just that the boy's been neglecting his chores.”

  The tinker nodded, then w
alked to the door and turned to face the innkeeper. “Goodwife Cooper wants to see me. It's her boy. I need a helper.”

  Martin Keeper took a step backward. “Definitely too busy, John, sorry, maybe next time, you see how business is, I just haven't the time to spare right now.”

  “But the boy can come,” John Tinker said quietly and left the inn. Martin looked after him for a few moments and then, without looking at his son, said, “You heard the man. Go help him.” Amos was out of the room before his father could change his mind.

  At Goody Cooper's the house was dark, and four or five children were grouped in a comer of the main room when John Tinker and Amos came to the door. John knocked politely on the door post. The children didn't move. Finally there was a thundering noise as a huge woman in a work-stained apron came down the stairs. She stopped cold when she saw John, and then nodded for him to come in. She motioned toward the stair, and then allowed him plenty of room before she followed him up.

  Her boy was lying naked on his side. The tumor had so distended his belly that the rest of his body seemed superfluous, an afterthought. The bed was stained from blood and urine, and the smell was terrible. The boy moaned.

  John Tinker knelt by the bed and placed his hands on the boy's head. The boy shuddered and his eyes closed.

  Without looking up from the boy's face John whispered, “Goody Cooper, go downstairs and fetch water, and give it to Amos to bring up to me. When I want you back up here, I'll send Amos for you.”

  The woman bit her lip and then bundled down the stairs again. She found her children clotted at the foot of the stairs and shooed them away with a slap that vaguely hit somebody. She returned with water and handed it to Amos—and then, because his eyes were as blue as the magic man's eyes, she backed away. But, because he was small and she knew the boy, she asked him,

  “Will Calinn be all right?”

  Amos didn't know. So he turned and went upstairs, leaving the woman to wring her apron and wait.

  Calinn lay somewhere inside himself, vaguely aware that there were sounds around him, that someone touched a head somewhere in the distance, that someone spoke words that far-off ears could hear. He paid no attention, though. He was standing in a corridor with only one door, and beyond that door waited his body, and his body was a monster that tore at him. It had taken weeks to shut that door, for Calinn had found that to shut out the pain he had to shut out everything, sounds, smells, sights, and all the people who came to touch him, touch his terrible belly, and now should he open the door again because somebody new was whispering new words at him and touching his head He lay still, and felt his distant mouth open and heard his far-off voice moan. He shuddered.

  John Tinker closed his eyes and looked at the boy through his hands. Oddly, he could find no pain, almost no sensation at all. He began to whisper softly, “Where is the pain, Calinn, where are you hiding it?” Still he looked and found nothing.

  Amos came in with the bucket of water. John dipped Calinn's hand into it. He looked for the sensation and couldn't find it.

  “Pick up the bucket, Amos, and splash it on his head.”

  Where Calinn lay hiding he felt the rush of water on his head, and with that sensation he felt his monster body lunge at the door, nearly breaking through. Frightened, Calinn gasped, and pushed against the door with all his might.

  John Tinker felt the little thread of feeling, seized it, followed it, careful that it didn't fade away, careful that it led where he wanted to go. At last he found himself inside a little room, and at the other side of the little room there was a door. He moved toward it. Suddenly he felt something clawing at him, pulling at him, pushing at him to keep him from the door. He pushed past the little guard and reached for the door handle.

  (After he set down the bucket Amos watched. Strange shadows passed over the tinker's face as his hands still held the dying boy's head. Suddenly Calinn reached up limp hands and began to clutch at the tinker's face, feebly enough, for he was weak, but still with enough force to tear the skin and draw thin stripes of blood down the tinker's face. Amos was unsure whether he should help. Then the grotesque body contracted violently and the mouth opened, and from it came a long, high, helpless scream. It seemed to last forever, getting louder and louder until it was so loud it couldn't be heard anymore and it was gone, like silence, into the background as Amos watched the distended belly start to shrink.)

  When John opened the door the monster leapt out, and it was terrible. He too heard the boy's scream, but not in the distance as Amos had. It was close and terrible as John grappled with the pain, held it, swallowed it, tore it, suffered it into submission, then followed it, every trace that was left, until he had the boy's whole cancer in his mind's grasp.

  Then he began to kill the sickness. It was long and arduous, but he kept it up until he had killed it all. When he was sure, he began to heal the great gap, and Amos watched the skin gather tightly around Calinn's now slender waist, then smooth until it was tight and firm. He watched as the boys body began to relax. The boy's mouth closed and he rolled onto his back, sleeping calmly for the first time in uncountable centuries. At last John took his hands from Calinn's head and looked up at Amos. There was pain on his face and his voice was a whisper as he told his assistant to gather up the sheets.

  John stood and lifted the boy as Amos gingerly removed the foul bedding and piled it on the floor.

  “Turn the mattress over,” John whispered, and Amos complied. “Now go get clean sheets, and take the dirty ones with you.”

  Goodwife Cooper was chewing her fingers, which she had put in her mouth when Calinn screamed. She took them out again when she saw Amos come down the stairs with his arms full of sheets. He handed them to her and asked for clean ones. “And fill another bucket. He says you'll need to wash the floor now.”

  “Can I come up?”

  “Soon, I think.” Amos disappeared upstairs, and after a few minutes leaned his head down and nodded vigorously. Goodwife Cooper climbed the stairs, quickened by her hope and slowed by her fear. When she entered the boy's room the shutters were open, the curtain was thrown wide, and the sun was streaming in the window to show her Calinn sitting up on the bed, his stern little face smooth and untwisted by pain, his body normal, his stomach tight. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her arms around him and held him. He put his arms around her and whispered, “Mama, I'm hungry.” Neither of them saw John Tinker and Amos leave.

  But that night three children came to the door of the inn and gave Martin Keeper two line buckets and a tight little cask. “For the magic man,” they said.

  Then the cold rain came, and in a week the Forest of Waters turned yellow, then brown, and then became spidery bare branches punctuated with a few evergreen trees. There was snow on Mount Waters.

  Amos spent his days close around the inn now, cutting up the great logs of firewood into burnable faggots, cleaning rooms, running errands in the town, and then in his free moments rushing up the stairs to the south tower to be with John Tinker.

  On the few days without rain the tower windows would be wide open, and sometimes a dozen birds would be gathered on the sills and in the room. Usually they were the small birds from the— forest, particularly the two finches that seemed to be the tinker's most intimate friends, but occasionally one of the predators would come—owls at night or hawks in the afternoon and once a great eagle from Mount Waters came. Its wings spread from the bed to the wall, with such power in them that Amos was afraid and stayed in the corner. But John Tinker stroked the bird's neck, and when the eagle flew away, its left leg, which had been slightly askew, was straight again.

  And when rain pelted hard against the barred shutters, Amos would sit and talk to John Tinker. Not that John Tinker always listened—often enough Amos would ask him a question and the tinker would stir from a doze and ask him to repeat it. But when he did listen he replied to Amos's ideas respectfully. And one day Amos asked John to teach him to heal people.

  After the
healing of Calinn the Cooper's son, John had only rarely taken Amos with him on his calls, probably because he did not want the onus of being the magic man to attach to the boy. But Amos had watched carefully those few times, and he thought he was catching on.

  “I've seen how you do it, sometimes.”

  John looked at him intently. “Have you?”

  “Yes. You touch them, first. On the head or the neck or the back.”

  “Touching them doesn't heal them.”

  Amos nodded. “I know. And you say words, and people sometimes think they're magic words.”

  “Are they?”

  “No,” Amos answered. “You say things to calm them down Make them relax a little.”

  John smiled, but there was no pleasure in it. “You watch pretty well.”

  Amos smiled back proudly. “And then you just find their hurt and fix it.”

  John Tinker reached out and took the boy by the arm. His grip was tight and Amos thought he was angry when he said, “How do you know that?”

  “I just know. I watch you, and you close your eyes and think. And then every time they really hurt badly, you heal them. The A hurt tells you where it is.”

  John leaned in closely and whispered, “Have you ever felt their pain?”

  Amos shook his head. “I want you to teach me how.”

  John Tinker leaned back in relief and spread his arms along the sills of the windows. “I'm glad,” he said.

  “Then you'll teach me?” Amos asked.

  “No.”

  And then John Tinker sent him downstairs.

  Winter came early, hit hard, and stayed long. For three months not a day was warm enough for the ice to melt, and the wind never let up. Sometimes it came from the north, and sometimes for the northwest, and sometimes from the northeast; but every change of wind brought snow and hail, and every breeze found its way through chinks in the walls. After the first week the village was snowed in, and no one dared go into the forest, even A on snowshoes, until the thaw.