Running from some monster– those words stung right to Alvin's soul. She was such a torch that it might well be she saw Alvin coming. Up and ran away the morning he arrived. If she wasn't no torch then maybe it was just chance that took her off the same day he come. But she was a torch. She saw him coming. She knew he came all this way a-hoping to meet her and beg her to help him find his way into becoming whatever it was that he was born to be. She saw all that, and ran away.
“I'm right sorry that she's gone,” said Alvin.
"I thank you for your pity, friend, it's good of you. I just hope it won't be for long. I just hope she'll do whatever she left to do and come on back in a few days or maybe a couple of weeks. " He laughed again, or maybe sobbed, it was about the same sound. "I can't even go ask the Hatrack torch to tell a fortune about her, cause the Hatrack River torch is gone."
Horace cried outright again, for just a minute. Then he took Alvin by the shoulders and looked him in the eye, not even hiding the tears on his cheeks. “Alvin, you just remember how you seen me crying all un-manlike, and you remember that's how fathers feel about their children when they're gone. That's how your own pa feels right now, having you so far away.”
“I know he does,” said Alvin.
“Now if you don't mind,” said Horace Guester, “I need to be alone here.”
Alvin touched his arm just a moment and then he went away. Not down to the house to have his noon meal like Old Peg Guester offered. He was too upset to sit and eat with them. How could he explain that he was nigh on to being as heartbroke as them, to have that torch girl gone? No, he'd have to keep silence. The answers he was looking for in Hatrack, they were gone off with a sixteen-year-old girl who didn't want to meet him when he came.
Maybe she seen my future and she hates me. Maybe I'm as bad a boogly monster as anybody ever dreamed of on an evil night.
He followed the sound of the blacksmith's hammer. It led him along a faint path to a springhouse straddling a brook that came straight out of a hillside. And down the stream, along a clear meadow slope, he walked until he came to the smithy. Hot smoke rose from the forge. Around front he walked, and saw the blacksmith inside the big sliding door, hammering a hot iron bar into a curving shape across the throat of his anvil.
Alvin stood and watched him work. He could feel the heat from the forge clear outside; inside must be like the fires of hell. His muscles were like fifty different ropes holding his arm on under the skin. They shifted and rolled across each other as the hammer rose into the air, then bunched all at once as the hammer came down. Close as he was now, Alvin could hardly bear the bell-like crash of iron on iron, with the anvil like a sounding fork to make the sound ring on and on. Sweat dripped off the blacksmith's body, and he was naked to the waist, his white skin ruddy from the heat, streaked with soot from the forge and sweat from his pores. I've been sent here to be prentice to the devil, thought Alvin.
But he knew that was a silly idea even as he thought it. This was a hard-working man, that's all, earning his living with a skill that every town needed if it hoped to thrive. Judging from the size of the corrals for horses waiting to be shod, and the heaps of iron bars waiting to be made into plows and sickles, axes and cleavers, he did a good business, too. If I learn this trade, I'll never be hungry, thought Alvin, and folks will always be glad to have me.
And something more. Something about the hot fire and the ruddy iron. What happened in this place was akin somehow to making. Alvin knew from the way he'd worked with stone in the granite quarry, when he carved the millstone for his father's mill, he knew that with his knack he could probably reach inside the iron and make it go the way he wanted it to go. But he had something to learn from the forge and the hammer, the bellows and the fire and the water in the cooling tubs, something that would help him become what he was born to become.
So now he looked at the blacksmith, not as a powerful stranger, but as Alvin's future self. He saw how the muscles grew on the smith's shoulders and back. Alvin's body was strong from chopping wood and splitting rails and all the hoisting and lifting that he did earning pennies and nickels on neighbors' farms. But in that kind of work, your whole body went into every movement. You rared back with the axe and when it swung it was like your whole body was part of the ax handle, so that legs and hips and back all moved into the chop. But the smith, he held the hot iron in the tongs, held it so smooth and exact against the anvil that while his right arm swung the hammer, the rest of his body couldn't move a twitch, that left arm stayed as smooth and steady as a rock. It shaped the smith's body differently, forced the arms to be much stronger by themselves, muscles rooted to the neck and breastbone standing out in a way they never did on a farmboy's body.
Alvin felt inside himself, the way his own muscles grew, and knew already where the changes would have to come. It was part of his knack, to find his way within living flesh most as easily as he could chart the inner shapes of living stone. So even now he was hunkering down inside, teaching his body to change itself to make way for the new work.
“Boy,” said the smith.
“Sir,” said Alvin.
“Have you got business for me? I don't know you, do I?”
Alvin stepped forward, held out the note his father writ.
“Read it to me, boy, my eyes are none too good.”
Alvin unfolded the paper. “From Alvin Miller of Vigor Church. To Makepeace Blacksmith of Hatrack River. Here is my boy Alvin what you said could be your prentice till he be seventeen. He'll work hard and do what all you say, and you teach him what all a man needs to be a good smith, like in the articles I signed. He is a good boy–”
The smith reached for the paper, held it close to his eyes. His lips moved as he repeated a few phrases. Then he slapped the paper down on the anvil. “This is a fine turn,” said the smith. “Don't you know you're about a year late, boy? You was supposed to come last spring. I turned away three offers for prentice cause I had your pa's word you was coming, and here I've been without help this whole year cause he didn't keep his word. Now I'm supposed to take you in with a year less on your contract, and not even a by-your-leave or beg-your-pardon.”
“I'm sorry, sir,” said Alvin. “But we had the war last year. I was on my way here but I got captured by Choc-Taw.”
“Captured by– oh, come now, boy, don't tell me tales like that. If the Choc-Taw caught you, you wouldn't have such a dandy head of hair now, would you! And like as not you'd be missing a few fingers.”
“Ta-Kumsaw rescued me,” said Alvin.
“Oh, and no doubt you met the Prophet hisself and walked on water with him.”
As a matter of fact, Alvin done just that. But from the smith's tone of voice, he reckoned that it wouldn't be wise to say so. So Alvin said nothing.
“Where's your horse?” asked the smith.
“Don't have one,” said Alvin.
“Your father wrote the date on this letter boy, two days ago! You must've rode a horse.”
“I ran.” As soon as Alvin said it, he knew it was a mistake.
“Ran?” said the smith. “With bare feet? It must be nigh four hundred mile or more to the Wobbish from here! Your feet ought to be ripped to rags clear up to your knees! Don't tell me tales, boy! I won't have no liars around me!”
Alvin had a choice, and he knew it. He could explain about how he could run like a Red man. Makepeace Smith wouldn't believe him, and so Alvin would have to show him some of what he could do. It would be easy enough. Bend a bar of iron just by stroking it. Make two stones mash together to form one. But Alvin already made up his mind he didn't want to show his knacks here. How could he be a proper prentice, if folks kept coming around for him to cut them hearthstones or fix a broken wheel or all the other fixing things he had a knack for? Besides, he never done such a thing, showing off just for the sake of proving what he could do. Back home he only used his knack when there was need.
So he stuck with his decision to keep his knack to himself, pretty much.
Not tell what he could do. Just learn like any normal boy, working the iron the way the smith himself did, letting the muscles grow slowly on his arms and shoulders, chest and back.
“I was joking,” Alvin said. “A man gave me a ride on his spare mount.”
“I don't like that kind of joke,” said the smith. “I don't like it that you lied to me so easy like that.”
What could Alvin say? He couldn't even claim that he hadn't lied– he had, when he told about a man letting him ride. So he was as much a liar as the smith thought. The only confusion was about which statement was a lie.
“I'm sorry,” said Alvin.
“I'm not taking you, boy. I don't have to take you anyway, a year late. And here you come lying to me the first thing. I won't have it.”
“Sir, I'm sorry,” said Alvin. “It won't happen again. I'm not known for a liar back home, and you'll see I'll be known for square dealing here, if you give me a chance. Catch me lying or not giving fair work all the time, and you can chuck me, no questions asked. Just give me a chance to prove it, sir.”
“You don't look like you're eleven, neither, boy.”
“But I am, sir. You know I am. You yourself with your own arms pulled my brother Vigor's body from the river on the night that I was born, or so my pa told me.”
The smith's face went distant, as if he was remembering. “Yes, he told you true, I was the one who pulled him out. Clinging to the roots of that tree even in death, so I thought I'd have to cut him free. Come here, boy.”
Alvin walked closer. The smith poked and pushed the muscles of his arms.
“Well, I can see you're not a lazy boy. Lazy boys get soft, but you're strong like a hardworking farmer. Can't lie about that, I reckon. Still, you haven't seen what real work is.”
“I'm ready to learn.”
“Oh, I'm sure of that. Many a boy would be glad to learn from me. Other work might come and go, but there's always a need for a blacksmith. That'll never change. Well, you're strong enough in body, I reckon. Let's see about your brain. Look at this anvil. This here's the bick, on the point, you see. Say that.”
“Bick.”
“And then the throat here. And this is the table– it ain't faced with blister steel, so when you ram a cold chisel into it the chisel don't blunt. Then up a notch onto the steel face, where you work the hot metal. And this is the hardie hole, where I rest the butt of the fuller and the flatter and the swage. And this here's the pricking hole, for when I punch holes in strap iron– the hot punch shoots right through into this space. You got all that?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Then name me the parts of the anvil.”
Alvin named them as best he could. Couldn't remember the job each one did, not all of them, anyways, but what he did was good enough, cause the blacksmith nodded and grinned. “Reckon you ain't a half-wit, anyhow, you'll learn quick enough. And big for your age is good. I won't have to keep you on a broom and the bellows for the first four years, the way I do with smaller boys. But your age, that's a sticking point. A term of prentice work is seven year, but my written-up articles with your pa, they only say till you're seventeen.”
“I'm almost twelve now, sir.”
“So what I'm saying is, I want to be able to hold you the full seven years, if need be. I don't want you whining off just when I finally get you trained enough to be useful.”
“Seven years, sir. The spring when I'm nigh on nineteen, then my time is up.”
“Seven years is a long time, boy, and I mean to hold you to it. Most boys start when they're nine or ten, or even seven years old, so they can make a living, start looking for a wife at sixteen or seventeen years old. I won't have none of that. I expect you to live like a Christian, and no fooling with any of the girls in town, you understand me?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right then. My prentices sleep in the loft over the kitchen, and you eat at table with my wife and children and me, though I'll thank you not to speak until spoken to inside the house– I won't have my prentices thinking they have the same rights as my own children, cause you don't.”
“Yes sir.”
“And as for now, I need to het up this strap again. So you start to work the bellows there.”
Alvin walked to the bellows handle. It was T-shaped, for two-handed working. But Alvin twisted the end piece so it was at the same angle as the hammer handle when the smith lifted it into the air. Then he started to work the bellows with one arm.
“What are you doing, boy!” shouted Alvin's new master. “You won't last ten minutes working the bellows with one arm.”
“Then in ten minutes I'll switch to my left arm,” said Alvin. “But I won't get myself ready for the hammer if I bend over every time I work the bellows.”
The smith looked at him angrily. Then he laughed. “You got a fresh mouth, boy, but you also got sense. Do it your way as long as you can, but see to it you don't slack on wind– I need a hot fire, and that's more important than you working up strength in your arms right now.”
Alvin set to pumping. Soon he could feel the pain of this unaccustomed movement gnawing at his neck and chest and back. But he kept going, never breaking the rhythm of the bellows, forcing his body to endure. He could have made the muscles grow right now, teaching them the pattern with his hidden power. But that wasn't what Alvin was here for, he was pretty sure of that. So he let the pain come as it would, and his body change as it would, each new muscle earned by his own effort.
Alvin lasted fifteen minutes with his right hand, ten minutes with his left. He felt the muscles aching and liked the way it felt. Makepeace Smith seemed pleased enough with what he did. Alvin knew that he'd be changed here, that his work would make a strong and skillful man of him.
A man, but not a Maker. Not yet fully on the road to what he was born to be. But since there hadn't been a Maker in the world in a thousand years or more, or so folks said, who was he going to prentice himself to in order to learn that trade?
Chapter 4 – Modesty
Whitley physicker helped Peggy down from the carriage in front of a fine-looking house in one of the best neighborhoods of Dekane. “I'd like to see you to the door, Peggy Guester, just to make sure they're home to greet you,” said he, but she knew he didn't expect her to allow him to do that. If anybody knew how little she liked to have folks fussing over her, it was Doctor Whitley Physicker. So she thanked him kindly and bid him farewell.
She heard his carriage rolling off, the horse clopping on the cobblestones, as she rapped the knocker on the door. A maid opened the door, a German girl so fresh off the boat she couldn't even speak enough English to ask Peggy's name. She invited her in with a gesture, seated her on a bench in the hall, and then held out a silver plate.
What was the plate for? Peggy couldn't hardly make sense at all of what she saw inside this foreign girl's mind. She was expecting something– what? A little slip of paper, but Peggy didn't have a notion why. The girl thrust the salver closer to her, insisting. Peggy couldn't do a thing but shrug.
Finally the German girl gave up and went away. Peggy sat on the bench and waited. She searched for heartfires in the house, and found the one she looked for. Only then did she realize what the plate was for-her calling card. Folks in the city, rich folks anyway, they had little cards they put their name on, to announce theirself when they came to visit. Peggy even remembered reading about it in a book, but it was a book from the Crown Colonies and she never thought folks in free lands kept such formality.
Soon the lady of the house came, the German girl shadowing her, peering from behind her fine day gown. Peggy knew from the lady's heartfire that she didn't think herself dressed in any partickler finery today, but to Peggy she was like the Queen herself.
Peggy looked into her heartfire and found what she had hoped for. The lady wasn't annoyed a bit at seeing Peggy there, merely curious. Oh, the lady was judging her, of course– Peggy never met a soul, least of all herself, what didn't make some judgment of
every stranger– but the judgment was kind. When the lady looked at Peggy's plain clothes, she saw a country girl, not a pauper; when the lady looked at Peggy's stern, expressionless face, she saw a child who had known pain, not an ugly girl. And when the lady imagined Peggy's pain, her first thought was to try to heal her. All in all, the lady was good. Peggy made no mistake in coming here.
“I don't believe I've had the pleasure to meet you,” said the lady. Her voice was sweet and soft and beautiful.
“I reckon not, Mistress Modesty,” said Peggy. “My name is Peggy– I think you had some acquaintance with my papa, years ago.”
“Perhaps if you told me his name?”
“Horace,” said Peggy. “Horace Guester, of Hatrack, Hio.”
Peggy saw the turmoil in her heartfire at the very sound of his name– glad memory, and yet a glimmer of fear of what this strange girl might intend. Yet the fear quickly subsided– her husband had died several years ago, and so was beyond hurt. And none of these emotions showed in the lady's face, which held its sweet and himidly expression with perfect grace. Modesty turned to the maid and spoke a few words of fluent German. The maid curtsied and was gone.
“Did your father send you?” asked the lady. Her unspoken question was: Did your father tell you what I meant to him, and he to me?
“No,” said Peggy. “I come here on my own. He'd die if he found out I knew your name. You see I'm a torch, Mistress Modesty. He has no secrets, not from me. Nobody does.”
It didn't surprise Peggy one bit how Modesty took that news. Most folks would've thought right off about all the secrets they hoped she wouldn't guess. Instead, the lady thought at once how awful it must be for Peggy, to know things that didn't bear knowing. “How long has it been that way?” she said softly. “Surely not when you were just a little girl. The Lord is too merciful to let such knowledge fill a child's mind.”
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