“No!” whispered Peggy. “Don't sleep!”
“Ah,” said Mistress Modesty. “You speak to him. Can he hear you?”
“Never,” said Peggy. “Never a word.”
“Then what can you do?”
“Nothing. Nothing I can think of.”
“You told me you used his caul–”
“It's a part of his power, that's what I use. But even his knack can't send away what came at his own call. I never had the knowledge to fend off the Unmaker itself, anyway, even if I had a yard of his caulflesh, and not just a scrap of it.”
Peggy watched in desperate silence as Alvin's eyes closed. “He sleeps.”
“If the Unmaker wins, will he die?”
“I don't know. Perhaps. Perhaps he'll disappear, eaten away to nothing. Or perhaps the Unmaker will own him–”
“Can't you see the future, torch girl?”
“All paths lead into darkness, and I see no path emerging.”
“Then it's over,” whispered Mistress Modesty.
Peggy could feel something cold on her cheeks. Ah, of course: her own tears drying in the cool breeze.
"But if Alvin were awake, he could fend off this invisible enemy?" Mistress Modesty asked. "Sorry to bother you with questions, but if I know how it works, perhaps I can help you think of something.:
“No, no, it's beyond us, we can only watch–” Yet even as Peggy rejected Mistress Modesty's suggestion, her mind leapt ahead to ways of using it. I must waken him. I don't have to fight the Unmaker, but if I waken him, then he can do his fighting for himself. Weak and weary though he is, he might still find a way to victory. At once Peggy turned and rushed back into her room, scrabbled through her top drawer until she found the carven box that held the caul.
“Should I leave?” Mistress Modesty had followed her.
“Stay with me,” said Peggy. “Please, for company. For comfort, if I fail.”
“You won't fail,” said Mistress Modesty. “He won't fail, if he's the man you say he is.”
Peggy barely heard her. She sat on the edge of her bed, searching in Alvin's heartfire for some way to waken him. Normally she could use his senses even when he slept, hearing what he heard, seeing his memory of the place around him. But now, with the Unmaker seeping in, his senses were fading. She could not trust them. Desperately she cast about for some other plan. A loud noise? Using what little was left of Alvin's sense of the life around him, she found a tree, then rubbed a tiny bit of the caul and tried– as she had seen Alvin do it– to picture in her mind how the wood in the branch would come apart. It was painfully slow– Alvin did it so quickly!– but at last she made it fall. Too late. He barely heard it. The Unmaker had undone so much of the air around him that the trembling of sound could not pass through it. Perhaps Alvin noticed; perhaps he came a bit closer to wakefulness. Perhaps not.
How can I waken him, when he is so insensible that nothing can disturb him? Once I held this caul as a ridgebeam tumbled toward him; I burned a childsize gap in it, so that the hair of his head wasn't even touched. Once a millstone fell toward his leg; I split it in half. Once his own father stood in a loft, pitchfork in hand, driven by the Unmaker's madness until he had decided to murder his own most beloved son,; I brought Taleswapper down the hill to him, distracting the father from his dark purpose and driving off the Unmaker.
How? How did Taleswapper's coming drive off the Destroyer? Because he would have seen the hateful beast and given the cry against it, that's why the Unmaker left when Taleswapper arrived. Taleswapper isn't anywhere near Alvin now, but surely there's someone I can waken and draw down the hill; someone filled with love and goodness, so that the Unmaker must flee before him.
With agonizing fear she withdrew from Alvin's heartfire even as the blackness of the Unmaker threatened to drown it, and searched in the night for another heartfire, someone she could waken and send to him in time. Yet even as she searched, she could sense in Alvin's heartfire a certain lightening, a hint of shadows within shadows, not the utter emptiness she had seen before where his future ought to be. If Alvin had any chance, it was from her searching. Even if she found someone, she had no notion how to waken them. But she would find a way, or the Crystal City would be swallowed up in the flood that came because of Alvin's foolish, childish rage.
Chapter 9 – Redbird
Alvin woke up hours later, the moon low in the west, the first scant light appearing in the east. He hadn't meant to sleep. But he was tired, after all, and his work was done, so of course he couldn't close his eyes and hope to stay awake. There was still time to take a bucketful of water and carry it inside.
Were his eyes open even now? The sky he could see, light grey to the left, light grey to the right. But where were the trees? Shouldn't they have been moving gently in the morning breeze, just at the hinges of his vision? For that matter, there was no breeze; and beyond the sight of his eyes, and touch on his skin, there were other things he could not feel. The green music of the living forest. It was gone; no murmur of life from the sleeping insects in the grass, no rhythm of the heartbeats of the dawn-browsing deer. No birds roosting in the trees, waiting for the sun's heat to bring out the insects.
Dead. Unmade. The forest was gone.
Alvin opened his eyes.
Hadn't they already been open?
Alvin opened his eyes again, and still he couldn't see; without closing them, he opened them still again, and each time the sky seemed darker. No, not darker, simply farther away, rushing up and away from him, like as if he was falling into a pit so deep that the sky itself got lost.
Alvin cried out in fear, and opened his already-open eyes, and saw:
The quivering air of the Unmaker, pressing down on him, poking itself into his nostrils, between his fingers, into his ears.
He couldn't feel it, no sir, except that he knew what wasn't there now; the outermost layers of his skin, wherever the Unmaker touched, his own body was breaking apart, the, tiniest bits of him dying, drying, flaking away.
“No!” he shouted. The shout didn't make a sound. Instead, the Unmaker whipped inside his mouth, down into his lungs, and he couldn't close his teeth hard enough, his lips tight enough to keep that slimy uncreator from slithering on inside him, eating him away from the inside out.
He tried to heal himself the way he done with his leg that time the millstone broke it clean in half. But it was like the old story Taleswapper told him. He couldn't build things up half so fast as the Unmaker could tear them down. For every place he healed, there was a thousand places wrecked and lost. He was a-going to die, he was half-gone already, and it wouldn't be just death, just losing his flesh and living on in the spirit, the Unmaker meant to eat him body and spirit both alike, his mind and his flesh together.
A splash. He heard a splashing sound. It was the most welcome thing he ever heard in his life, to hear a sound at all. It meant that there was something beyond the Unmaker that surrounded and filled him.
Alvin heard the sound echo and ring inside his own memory, and with that to cling to, with that touch of the real world there to hang on to, Alvin opened his eyes.
This time for real, he knew, cause he saw the sky again with its proper fringe of tives. And there was Gertie Smith, Makepeace's missus, standing over him with a bucket in her hands.
“I reckon this is the first water from this well,” she said.
Alvin opened his mouth, and felt cool moist air come inside. “Reckon so,” he whispered.
“I never would've thought you could dig it all out and line it proper with stones, all in one night,” she said. “That mixup boy, Arthur Stuart, he come to the kitchen where I was making breakfast biscuits, and he told me your well was done. I had to come and see.”
“He gets up powerful early,” said Alvin.
“And you stay up powerful late,” said Gertie. “If I was a man your size I'd give my husband a proper licking, Al, prentice or no.”
“I just did what he asked.”
“I'm certain you did, just like I'm certain he wanted you to excavate that there circle of stone off by the smithy, am I right?” She cackled with delight. “That'll show the old coot. Sets such a store by that dowser, but his own prentice has a better dowsing knack than that old fraud–”
For the first time Alvin realized that the hole he dug in anger was like a signboard telling folks he had more than a hoof-knack in him. “Please, ma'am,” he said.
“Please what?”
“My knack ain't dowsing, ma'am, and if you start saying so, I'll never get no peace.”
She eyed him cool and steady. “If you ain't got the dowser's knack, boy, tell me how come there's clear water in this well you dug.”
Alvin calculated his lie. “The dowser's stick dipped here, too, I saw it, and so when the first well struck stone, I tried here.”
Gertie had a suspicious nature. “Do you reckon you'd say the same if Jesus was standing here judging your eternal soul depending on the truth of what you say?”
“Ma'am, I reckon if Jesus was here, I'd be asking forgiveness for my sins, and I wouldn't care two hoots about any old well.”
She laughed again, cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “I like your dowsing story. You just happened to be watching old Hank Dowser. Oh, that's a good one. I'll tell that tale to everybody, see if I don't.”
“Thank you, ma'am.”
“Here. Drink. You deserve first swallow from the first bucket of clear water from this well.”
Alvin knew that the custom was for the owner to get first drinks. But she was offering, and he was so dry he couldn't have spit two bits' worth even if you pod him five bucks an ounce. So he set the bucket to his lips and drank, letting it splash out onto his shirt.
“I'd wager you're hungry, too,” she said.
“More tired than hungry, I think,” said Alvin.
“Then come inside to sleep.”
He knew he should, but be could see the Unmaker not far off, and he was a-feared to sleep again, that was the truth. "Thank you kindly, Ma'am, but anyhow, I'd like to be off by myself a few minutes.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and went on inside.
The morning breeze chilled him as it dried off the water he spilled on his shirt. Was his ravishment by the Unmaker only a dream? He didn't think so. He was awake right enough, and it was real, and if Gertie Smith hadn't come along and dunked that bucket in the well, he would've been unmade. The Unmaker wasn't hiding out no more. He wasn't sneaking in backways nor roundabout. No matter where he looked, there it was, shimmering in the greyish morning light.
For some reason the Unmaker picked this morning for a face-to-face. Only Alvin didn't know how he was supposed to fight. if digging a well and building it up so fine wasn't making enough to drive off his enemy, he didn't know what else to do. The Unmaker wasn't like the men he wrestled with in town. The Unmaker had nothing he could take ahold of.
One thing was sure. Alvin'd never have a night of sleep again if he didn't take this Unmaker down somehow and wrestle him into the dirt.
I'm supposed to be your master, Alvin said to the Unmaker. So tell me, Unmaker, how do I undo you, when all you are is Undoing?
–Who's going to teach me how to win this battle, when you can sneak up on me in my sleep, and I don't have the faintest idea how to get to you?
As he spoke these words inside his head, Alvin walked to the edge of the woods. The Unmaker backed away from him, always out of reach. Al knew without looking that it also closed up behind him, so it had him on all sides.
This is the middle of the uncut wood where I ought to feel most at home, but the greensong, it's gone silent here, and all around me is my enemy from birth, and me here with no plan at all.
The Unmaker, though, he had a plan. He didn't need to waste no time a-dithering about what to do, Alvin found that out real quick.
Cause while Alvin was a-standing there in the cool heavy breeze of a summer morning, the air suddenly went chill, and blamed if snowflakes didn't start to fall. Right down on the green-leaf trees they came, settling on the tall thick grass between them. Thick and cold it piled up, not the wet heavy flakes of a warm snow, but the tiny icy crystals of a deep winter blizzard blow. Alvin shivered.
“You can't do this,” he said.
But his eyes weren't closed now, he knew that. This wasn't no half-asleep dream. This was real snow, and it was so thick and cold that the branches of summer-green trees were snapping, the leaves were tearing off and falling to the ground in a tinkle of broken ice. And Alvin himself was like to freeze himself clear to death if he didn't get out of there somehow.
He started to walk back the way he came, but the snow was coming down so thick he couldn't see more than five or six feet ahead of him, and he couldn't feel his way because the Unmaker had deadened the greensong of the living woods. Pretty soon he wasn't walking, he was running. Only he didn't run surefooted like Ta-Kumsaw taught him; he ran as noisy and stupid as any oaf of a White man, and like most Whites would've, he slipped on a patch of ice-covered stone and sprawled out face down across a reach of snow.
Snow that caught up in his mouth and nose and into his ears, snow that clung between his fingers, just like the slime last night, just like the Unmaker in his dream, and he choked and sputtered and cried out–
“I know it's a lie!”
His voice was swallowed up in the wall of snow.
“It's summer!” he shouted.
His jaw ached from the cold and he knew it'd hurt too much to speak again, but still he screamed through numb lips, "I'll make you stop!
And then he realized that he could never make anything out of the Unmaker, could never make the Unmaker do or be anything because it was only Undoing and Unbeing. It wasn't the Unmaker he needed to call to, it was all the living things around him, the trees, the grass, the earth, the air itself. It was the greensong that he needed to restore.
He grabbed ahold of that idea and used it, spoke again, his voice scarce more than a whisper now, but he called to them, and not in anger.
“Summer,” he whispered.
“Warm air!” he said.
“Leaves green!” he shouted. “Hot wind out of the southwest. Thunderheads in the afternoon, mist in the morning, sunlight hotting it up, burning off the fog!”
Did it change, just a little? Did the snowfall slacken? Did the drifts on the ground melt lower, the heaps on the treelimbs tumble off, baring more of the branch?
“It's a hot morning, dry!” he cried. “Rain may drift in later like the gift of the Wise Men, coming from a long way off, but for now sunlight beating on the leaves, waking you up, you're growing, putting out leaves, that's right! That's right!”
There was gladness in his voice because the snowfall was just a spatter of rain now, the snow on the ground was melted back to patches here and there, the broke-off leaves were sprouting on the branch again as quick as militia in a doubletime march.
And in the silence after his last shout, he heard birdsong.
Song like he'd never heard before. He didn't know this bird, this sweet melody that changed with every whistle and never played the same tune again. It was a weaving song, but one whose pattern you couldn't find, so you couldn't ever sing it again, but you also couldn't ravel it, spin it out and break it down. It was all of one piece, all of one single Making, and Alvin knew that if he could just find the bird with that song in his throat he'd be safe. His victory would be complete.
He ran, and now the greensong of the forest was with him, and his feet found the right places to step without him looking. He followed that song until he came to the clearing where the singing was.
Perched on an old log with a patch of snow still in the northwest shadow– a redbird. And sitting in front of that log, almost nose to nose as he listened to it sing– Arthur Stuart.
Alvin walked around the two of them real slow, walking a clean circle before he come much closer. Arthur Stuart like to never noticed he was there, he never took his eyes off that
bird. The sunlight dazzled on the two of them, but neither bird nor boy so much as blinked. Alvin didn't say nothing, either. Just like Arthur Stuart, he was all caught up in the redbird song.
It wasn't no different from all the other redbirds, the thousand scarlet songbirds Alvin had seen since he was little. Except that from its throat came music that no other bird had ever sung before. This wasn't a redbird. Nor was it the redbird. There was no single bird had some gift the other redbirds lacked. It was just Redbird, the one picked for this moment to speak in the voice of all the birds, to sing the song of all the singers, so that this boy could hear.
Alvin knelt down on the new-grown grass not three feet from Redbird, and listened to its song. He knew from what Lolla-Wossiky once told him that Redbird's song was all the stories of the Red man, everything they ever done that was worth doing. Alvin halfway hoped to understand that ancient tale, or at least to hear how Redbird told of things that he took part in. The Prophet Lolla-Wossiky walking on water, Tippy-Canoe River all scarlet with Red folks' blood; Ta-Kumsaw standing with a dozen muskethalls in him, still crying out for his men to stand, to fight, to drive the White thieves back.
But the sense of the song eluded him no matter how he listened. He might run the forest with a Red man's legs and hear the greensong with a Red man's ears, but Redbird's song wasn't meant for him. The saying told the truth: No one girl gets all the suitors, and no boy gets all the knacks. There was much that Alvin could do already, and much ahead of him to learn, but there'd be far more that was always out of his ken, and Redbird's song was part of that.
Yet Alvin was sure as shucks that Redbird wasn't here by accident. Come like this at the end of his first face-to-face with the Unmaker, Redbird had to have some purpose. He had to get some answers out of Redbird's song.
Alvin was just about to speak, just about to ask the question burning in him ever since he first learned what his destiny might be. But it wasn't his voice that broke into Redbird's song. It was Arthur Stuart's.
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