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 musketballs 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.
“I don’t know days coming up,” said the mixup boy. His voice was like music and the words were clearer than any Alvin ever heard that three-year-old say before. “I only know days gone.”
It took a second for Alvin to hitch himself to what was going on here. What Arthur said was the answer to Alvin’s question. Will I ever be a Maker like the torch girl said? That was what Alvin would’ve asked, and Arthur’s words were the answer.
But not Arthur Stuart’s own answer, that was plain. The little boy no more understood what he was saying than he did when he was mimicking Makepeace’s and Gertie’s quarrel last night. He was giving Redbird’s answer. Translating from birdsong into speech that Alvin’s ears were fit to understand.
Alvin knew now that he’d asked the wrong question. He didn’t need Redbird to tell him he was supposed to be a M
aker—he knowed that firm and sure years ago, and knew it still in spite of all doubts. The real question wasn’t whether, it was how to be a Maker.
Tell me how.
Redbird changed his song to a soft and simple tune, more like normal birdsong, quite different from the thousand-year-old Red man’s tale that he’d been singing up to now. Alvin didn’t understand the sense of it, but he knew all the same what it was about. It was the song of Making. Over and over, the same tune repeating, only a few moments of it—but they were blinding in their brightness, a song so true that Alvin saw it with his eyes, felt it from his lips to his groin, tasted it and smelled it. The song of Making, and it was his own song, he knew it from how sweet it tasted on his tongue.
And when the song was at its peak, Arthur Stuart spoke again in a voice that was hardly human it piped so sharp, it sang so clear.
“The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes,” said the mixup boy.
Alvin wrote the words in his heart, even though he didn’t understand them. Because he knew that someday he would understand them, and when he did, he would have the power of the ancient Makers who built the Crystal City. He would understand, and use his power, and find the Crystal City and build it once again.
The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.
Redbird fell silent. Stood still, head cocked; and then became, not Redbird, but any old bird with scarlet feathers. Off it flew.
Arthur Stuart watched the bird out of sight. Then he called out after it in his own true childish voice, “Bird! Fly bird!” Alvin knelt beside the boy, weak from the night’s work, the grey dawn’s fear, this bright day’s birdsong.
“I flied,” said Arthur Stuart. For the first time, it seemed, he took notice Alvin was there, and turned to him.
“Did you now?” whispered Alvin, reluctant to destroy the child’s dream by telling him that folks don’t fly.
“Big blackbird tote me,” said Arthur. “Fly and fly.” Then Arthur reached up his hands and pressed in on Alvin’s cheeks. “Maker,” he said. Then he laughed and laughed with joy.
So Arthur wasn’t just a mimic. He really understood Redbird’s song, some of it, at least. Enough to know the name of Alvin’s destiny.
“Don’t you tell Nobody.” Alvin said. “I won’t tell nobody you can talk to birds, and you don’t tell nobody I’m a Maker. Promise?”
Arthur’s face grew serious. “Don’t talk birds.” he said. “Birds talk me.” And then: “I flied.”
“I believe you.,” Alvin said.
“I beeve you,” said Arthur. Then he laughed again.
Alvin stood up and so did Arthur. Al took him by the hand. “Let’s go on home.” he said.
He took Arthur to the roadhouse, where Old Peg Guester was full of scold at the mixup boy for running off and bothering folks all morning. But it was a loving scold, and Arthur grinned like an idiot at the voice of the woman he called Mama. As the door closed with Arthur Stuart on the other side, Alvin told himself, I’m going to tell that boy what he done for me. Someday I’ll tell him what this meant.
Alvin came home by way of the springhouse path and headed on down toward the smithy, where Makepeace was no doubt angry at him for not being ready for work, even though he dug a well all night.
The well. Alvin found himself standing by the hole that he had dug as a monument to Hank Dowser, with the white stone bright in the sunlight, bright and cruel as scornful laughter.
In that moment Alvin knew why the Unmaker came to him that night. Not because of the true well that he dug. Not because he had used his knack to Hold the water back, not because he had softened the stone and bent it to his need. It was because he had dug that first hole down to the stone for one reason only—to make Hank Dowser look the fool.
To punish him? Yes sir. to make him a laughingstock to any man who saw the stone-bottomed well on the spot that Hank had marked. It would destroy him. take away his name as a dowser—and unfairly so, because he was a good dowser who got hisself fooled by the lay of the land. Hank made an honest mistake, and Al had got all set to punish him as if he was a fool, which surely he was not.
Tired as he was. weak from labor and the witch the Unmaker, Alvin didn’t waste a minute. He fetched the spade from where it lay by the working well, then stripped off his shirt and set to work. When he dug this false well, it was a work of evil, to unmake an honest man for no reason better than spite. Filling it in, though, was a Maker’s work. Since it was daylight, Alvin couldn’t even use his knack to help—he did full labor on it till he thought he was so tired he might just die.
It was noon, and him without supper or breakfast either one, but the well was filled right up, the turves set back on so they’d grow back, and if you didn’t look close you’d never know there’d been a hole at all. Alvin did use his knack a little, since no one was about, to weave the grassroots back together, knit them into the ground, so there’d be no dead patches to mark the spot.
All the time, though, what burned worse than the sun on his back or the hunger in his belly was his own shame. He was so busy last night being angry and thinking how to make a fool of Hank Dowser that it never once occurred to him to do the right thing and use his knack to break right through the shelf of stone in the very spot Hank picked. No one ever would’ve known save Alvin hisself that there’d been aught wrong with the place. That would’ve been the Christian thing, the charitable thing to do. When a man slaps your face, you answer by shaking his hand, that’s what Jesus said to do, and Alvin just plain wasn’t listening, Alvin was too cussed proud.
That’s what called the Unmaker to me, thought Alvin. I could’ve used my knack to build up, and I used it to tear down. Well, never again, never again, never again. He made that promise three times, and even though it was a silent promise and no one’d ever know, he’d keep it better than any oath he might take before a judge or even a minister.
Well, too late now. If he’d thought of this before Gertie ever saw the false well or drew water from the true, he might’ve filled up the other well and made this one good after all. But now she’d seen the stone, and if he dug through it then all his secrets would be out. And once you’ve drunk water from a good new well, you can’t never fill it up till it runs dry on its own. To fill up a living well is to beg for drouth and cholera to dog you all the days of your life.
He’d undone all he could. You can be sorry, and you can be forgiven, but you can’t call back the futures that your bad decisions lost. He didn’t need no philosopher to tell him that.
Makepeace wasn’t a-hammering in the forge, and there wasn’t no smoke from the smithy chimney, either. Must be Makepeace was up at the house, doing some chores there, Alvin figured. So he put the spade away back in the smithy and then headed on toward the house.
Halfway there, he come to the good well, and there was Makepeace Smith setting on the low wall of footing stones Al had laid down to be foundation for the wellhouse.
“Morning, Alvin,” said the master.
“Morning, sir,” said Alvin.
“Dropped me the tin and copper bucket right down to the bottom here. You must’ve dug like the devil hisself, boy, to get it so deep.”
“Didn’t want it to run dry.”
“And lined it with stone already,” said the smith. “It’s a wonderment, I say.”
“I worked hard and fast.”
“You also dug in the right place, I see.”
Alvin took a deep breath. “The way I figure, sir, I dug right where the dowser said to dig.”
“I saw another hole just yonder,” said Makepeace Smith. “Stone as thick and hard as the devil’s hoof all along the bottom. You telling me you don’t aim for folks to guess why you dug there?”
“I filled that old hole up,” said Alvin. “I wish I’d never dug such a well. I don’t want nobody telling stories on Hank Dowser. There was water there, right enough, and no dowser in the world could’ve guessed about the stone.”
“Except you,”
said Makepeace.
“I ain’t no dowser, sir,” said Alvin. And he told the lie again: “I just saw that his wand dipped over here, too.”
Makepeace Smith shook his head, a grin just creeping out across his face. “My wife told me that tale already, and I like to died a-laughing at it. I cuffed your head for saying he was wrong. You telling me now you want him to get the credit?”
“He’s a true dowser,” said Alvin. “And I ain’t no dowser, sir, so I reckon since he is one, he ought to get the name for it.”
Makepeace Smith drew up the copper bucket, put it to his lips, and drank a few swallows. Then he tipped back his head and poured the rest of the water straight onto his face and laughed out loud. “That’s the sweetest water I ever drunk in my life, I swear.”
It wasn’t the same as promising to go along with his story and let Hank Dowser think it was his well, but Al knew it was the best he’d get from his master. “If it’s all right, sir,” said Al, “I’m a mite hungry.”
“Yes, go eat, you’ve earned it.”
Alvin walked by him. The smell of new water rose up from the well as he passed.
Makepeace Smith spoke again behind him. “Gertie tells me you took first swallow from the well.”
Al turned around, fearing trouble now. “I did, sir, but not till she give it to me.”
Makepeace studied on that notion awhile, as if he was deciding whether to make it reason for punishing Al or not. “Well,” he finally said, “well, that’s just like her, but I don’t mind. There’s still enough of that first dip in the wooden bucket for me to save a few swallows for Hank Dowser. I promised him a drink from the first bucket, and I’ll keep my word when he comes back around.”
“When he comes, sir,” said Alvin, “and I hope you won’t mind, but I think I’d like it best and so would he if I just didn’t happen to be at home, if you see what I mean. I don’t think he cottoned to me much.”
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 14
