Seventh Son Read online

  "SEVENTH SON begins what may be a significant recasting in fantasy terms of the tall tale of America."

  — Washington Post Book World

  Young Alvin is the seventh son of a seventh son: such a birth is a powerful magic; such a boy is destined to become something special; and even in the loving safety of his home, dark forces reach out to destroy him.

  For something will do anything to keep Alvin from growing up.

  "In SEVENTH SON Card achieves the near-miracle of bringing something new to fantasy."

  — Locus

  "Card has uncovered a rich vein of folklore and magic ... his best so far."

  — Kirkus

  "SEVENTH SON is a moving novel, highly recommended for readers equally interested in story and character, history and allegory, and fantasy and its connections with the real world."

  — Fantasy Review "

  Another major effort by a world-class talent."

  — Booklist

  "A tribute to the art of storytelling. Highly recommended."

  — Library Journal

  "Card has exceeded his own high standards in SEVENTH SON. The man's versatility of style, subject and approach makes him unique in the SF field!"

  — Anne McCaffrey

  Tor Books by Orson Scott Card

  ENDER'S GAME

  RED PROPHET (hardcover)

  SONGMASTER

  SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  SEVENTH SON

  Copyright © 1987 by Orson Scott Card

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  First Edition: July 1987

  First Mass Market Edition: April 1988

  A TOR Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 49 West 24th Street New York, NY 10010

  Cover art by Dennis Nolan Cover design by Carol Russo Maps by Alan McKnight

  ISBN: 0-812-53353-4 Can. No.: 0-812-53354-2

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-51490 Printed in the United States of America

  09876543

  To Emily Jan,

  who knows all the magic

  that she'll ever need

  Acknowledgments

  I OWE THANKS to Carol Breakstone, for her help in researching folk magic of the American frontier. The material she found became a rich mine of story ideas and details of life in the frontier period of the Northwest Territories. 1 also made extensive use of information contained in Douglass L. Brownstone's A Field Guide to America's History (Facts on File, Inc.) and John Seymour's The Forgotten Crafts (Knopf).

  Scott Russell Sanders contributed by putting in my hands a copy of his exquisite story cycle Wilderness Plots: Tales About the Settlement of the American Land (Quill). His work showed me what could be achieved through realistic handling of frontier life and helped keep me on the right track with my ongoing Alvin Maker project. And, though he is long dead, I owe a considerable debt to William Blake (1757-1827), for writing poems and proverbs that came so perfectly to Taleswapper's lips.

  Above all, I am grateful to Kristine A. Card, for the incalculable value of her criticism, encouragement, editing, and proofreading, and for single-handedly turning our children into wise, kind, well-mannered human beings, who readily forgive their father when he is not a fit example of those virtues.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Bloody Mary

  Chapter Two: Wagon People

  Chapter Three: Spring House

  Chapter Four: Hatrack River

  Chapter Five: Caul

  Chapter Six: Ridgebeam

  Chapter Seven: Altar

  Chapter Eight: Visitor

  Chapter Nine: Taleswapper

  Chapter Ten: Visions

  Chapter Eleven: Millstone

  Chapter Twelve: Book

  Chapter Thirteen: Surgery

  Chapter Fourteen: Chastisement

  Chapter Fifteen: Promises

  Bloody Mary

  LITTLE PEGGY WAS VERY CAREFUL with the eggs. She rooted her hand through the straw till her fingers bumped something hard and heavy. She gave no never mind to the chicken drips. After all, when folk with babies stayed at the roadhouse, Mama never even crinkled her face at their most spetackler diapers. Even when the chicken drips were wet and stringy and made her fingers stick together, little Peggy gave no never mind. She just pushed the straw apart, wrapped her hand around the egg, and lifted it out of the brood box. All this while standing tiptoe on a wobbly stool, reaching high above her head. Mama said she was too young for egging, but little Peggy showed her. Every day she felt in every brood box and brought in every egg, every single one, that’s what she did.

  Every one, she said in her mind, over and over. I got to reach into every one.

  Then little Peggy looked back into the northeast corner, the darkest place in the whole coop, and there sat Bloody Mary in her brood box, looking like the devil’s own bad dream, hatefulness shining out of her nasty eyes, saying come here little girl and give me nips. I want nips of finger and nips of thumb and if you come real close and try to take my egg I’ll get a nip of eye from you.

  Most animals didn’t have much heartfire, but Bloody Mary’s was strong and made a poison smoke. Nobody else could see it, but little Peggy could. Bloody Mary dreamed of death for all folks, but most specially for a certain little girl five years old, and little Peggy had the marks on her fingers to prove it. At least one mark, anyway, and even if Papa said he couldn’t see it, little Peggy remembered how she got it and nobody could blame her none if she sometimes forgot to reach under Bloody Mary who sat there like a bushwhacker waiting to kill the first folks that just tried to come by. Nobody’d get mad if she just sometimes forgot to look there.

  I forgot. I looked in every brood box, every one, and if one got missed then I forgot forgot forgot.

  Everybody knew Bloody Mary was a lowdown chicken and too mean to give any eggs that wasn’t rotten anyway.

  I forgot.

  She got the egg basket inside before Mama even had the fire het, and Mama was so pleased she let little Peggy put the eggs one by one into the cold water. Then Mama put the pot on the hook and swung it right on over the fire. Boiling eggs you didn’t have to wait for the fire to slack, you could do it smoke and all.

  “Peg,” said Papa.

  That was Mama’s name, but Papa didn’t say it in his Mama voice. He said it in his little-Peggy-you’re-in-dutch voice, and little Peggy knew she was completely found out, and so she turned right around and yelled what she’d been planning to say all along.

  “I forgot, Papa!”

  Mama turned and looked at little Peggy in surprise. Papa wasn’t surprised though. He just raised an eyebrow. He was holding his hand behind his back. Little Peggy knew there was an egg in that hand. Bloody Mary’s nasty egg.

  “What did you forget, little Peggy?” asked Papa, talking soft.

  Right that minute little Peggy reckoned she was the stupidest girl ever born on the face of the earth. Here she was denying before anybody accused her of anything.

  But she wasn’t going to give up, not right off like that. She couldn’t stand to have them mad at her and she just wanted them to let her go away and live in England. So she put on her innocent face and said, “I don’t know, Papa.” She figgered England was the best place to go live, cause England had a Lord Protector. From the look in Papa’s eye, a Lord Protector was pretty much what she needed just now.

  “What did you forget?” Papa asked again.

  “Just say it and be done, Horace,” said Mama. “If she’s done wrong then she�
��s done wrong.”

  “I forgot one time, Papa,” said little Peggy. “She’s a mean old chicken and she hates me.”

  Papa answered soft and slow. “One time,” he said.

  Then he took his hand from behind him. Only it wasn’t no single egg he held, it was a whole basket. And that basket was filled with a clot of straw—most likely all the straw from Bloody Mary’s box—and that straw was mashed together and glued tight with dried-up raw egg and shell bits, mixed up with about three or four chewed-up baby chicken bodies.

  “Did you have to bring that in the house before breakfast, Horace?” said Mama.

  “I don’t know what makes me madder,” said Horace. “What she done wrong or her studying up to lie about it.”

  “I didn’t study and I didn’t lie!” shouted little Peggy. Or anyways she meant to shout. What came out sounded espiciously like crying even though little Peggy had decided only yesterday that she was done with crying for the rest of her life.

  “See?” said Mama. “She already feels bad.”

  “She feels bad being caught,” said Horace. “You’re too slack on her, Peg. She’s got a lying spirit. I don’t want my daughter growing up wicked. I’d rather see her dead like her baby sisters before I see her grow up wicked.”

  Little Peggy saw Mama’s heartfire flare up with memory, and in front of her eyes she could see a baby laid out pretty in a little box, and then another one only not so pretty cause it was the second baby Missy, the one what died of pox so nobody’d touch her but her own mama, who was still so feeble from the pox herself that she couldn’t do much. Little Peggy saw that scene, and she knew Papa had made a mistake to say what he said cause Mama’s face went cold even though her heartfire was hot.

  “That’s the wickedest thing anybody ever said in my presence,” said Mama. Then she took up the basket of corruption from the table and carried it outside.

  “Bloody Mary bites my hand,” said little Peggy.

  “We’ll see what bites,” said Papa. “For leaving the eggs I give you one whack, because I reckon that lunatic hen looks fearsome to a frog-size girl like you. But for telling lies I give you ten whacks.”

  Little Peggy cried in earnest at that news. Papa gave an honest count and full measure in everything, but most especially in whacks.

  Papa took the hazel rod off the high shelf. He kept it up there ever since little Peggy put the old one in the fire and burnt it right up.

  “I’d rather hear a thousand hard and bitter truths from you, Daughter, than one soft and easy lie,” said he, and then he bent over and laid on with the rod across her thighs. Whick whick whick, she counted every one, they stung her to the heart, each one of them, they were so full of anger. Worst of all she knew it was all unfair because his heartfire raged for a different cause altogether, and it always did. Papa’s hate for wickedness always came from his most secret memory. Little Peggy didn’t understand it all, because it was twisted up and confused and Papa didn’t remember it right well himself. All little Peggy ever saw plain was that it was a lady and it wasn’t Mama. Papa thought of that lady whenever something went wrong. When baby Missy died of nothing at all, and then the next baby also named Missy died of pox, and then the barn burnt down once, and a cow died, everything that went wrong made him think of that lady and he began to talk about how much he hated wickedness and at those times the hazel rod flew hard and sharp.

  I’d rather hear a thousand hard and bitter truths, that’s what he said, but little Peggy knew that there was one truth he didn’t ever want to hear, and so she kept it to herself. She’d never shout it at him, even if it made him break the hazel rod, cause whenever she thought of saying aught about that lady, she kept picturing her father dead, and that was a thing she never hoped to see for real. Besides, the lady that haunted his heartfire, she didn’t have no clothes on, and little Peggy knew that she’d be whipped for sure if she talked about people being naked.

  So she took the whacks and cried till she could taste that her nose was running. Papa left the room right away, and Mama came back to fix up breakfast for the blacksmith and the visitors and the hands, but neither one said boo to her, just as if they didn’t even notice. She cried even harder and louder for a minute, but it didn’t help. Finally she picked up her Bugy from the sewing basket and walked all stiff-legged out to Oldpappy’s cabin and woke him right up.

  He listened to her story like he always did.

  “I know about Bloody Mary,” he said, “and I told your papa fifty times if I told him once, wring that chicken’s neck and be done. She’s a crazy bird. Every week or so she gets crazy and breaks all her own eggs, even the ones ready to hatch. Kills her own chicks. It’s a lunatic what kills its own.”

  “Papa like to killed me,” said little Peggy.

  “I reckon if you can walk somewhat it ain’t so bad altogether.”

  “I can’t walk much.”

  “No, I can see you’re nigh crippled forever,” said Oldpappy. “But I tell you what, the way I see it your mama and your papa’s mostly mad at each other. So why don’t you just disappear for a couple of hours?”

  “I wish I could turn into a bird and fly.”

  “Next best thing, though,” said Pappy, “is to have a secret place where nobody knows to look for you. Do you have a place like that? No, don’t tell me—it wrecks it if you tell even a single other person. You just go to that place for a while. As long as it’s a safe place, not out in the woods where a Red might take your pretty hair, and not a high place where you might fall off, and not a tiny place where you might get stuck.”

  “It’s big and it’s low and it ain’t in the woods,” said little Peggy.

  “Then you go there, Maggie.”

  Little Peggy made the face she always made when Oldpappy called her that. And she held up Bugy and in Bugy’s squeaky high voice she said, “Her name is Peggy.”

  “You go there, Piggy, if you like that better—”

  Little Peggy slapped Bugy right across Oldpappy’s knee.

  “Someday Bugy’ll do that once too often and have a rupture and die,” said Oldpappy.

  But Bugy just danced right in his face and insisted, “Not piggy, Peggy!”

  “That’s right, Puggy, you go to that secret place and if anybody says, ‘We got to go find that girl,’ I’ll say, ‘I know where she is and she’ll come back when she’s good and ready.’ ”

  Little Peggy ran for the cabin door and then stopped and turned. “Oldpappy, you’re the nicest grown-up in the whole world.”

  “Your papa has a different view of me, but that’s all tied up with another hazel rod that I laid hand on much too often. Now run along.”

  She stopped again right before she closed the door. “You’re the only nice grown-up!” She shouted it real loud, halfway hoping that they could hear it clear inside the house. Then she was gone, right across the garden, out past the cow pasture, up the hill into the woods, and along the path to the spring house.

  Wagon People

  THEY HAD ONE good wagon, these folks did, and two good horses pulling it. One might even suppose they was prosperous, considering they had six big boys, from mansize on down to twins that had wrestled each other into being a good deal stronger than their dozen years. Not to mention one big daughter and a whole passel of little girls. A big family. Right prosperous if you didn’t know that not even a year ago they had owned a mill and lived in a big house on a streambank in west New Hampshire. Come down far in the world, they had, and this wagon was all they had left of everything. But they were hopeful, trekking west along the roads that crossed the Hio, heading for open land that was free for the taking. If you were a family with plenty of strong backs and clever hands, it’d be good land, too, as long as the weather was with them and the Reds didn’t raid them and all the lawyers and bankers stayed in New England.

  The father was a big man, a little run to fat, which was no surprise since millers mostly stood around all day. That softness in the belly wouldn’t
last a year on a deepwoods homestead. He didn’t care much about that, anyway—he had no fear of hard work. What worried him today was his wife, Faith. It was her time for that baby, he knew it. Not that she’d ever talk about it direct. Women just don’t speak about things like that with men. But he knew how big she was and how many months it had been. Besides, at the noon stop she murmured to him, “Alvin Miller, if there’s a road house along this way, or even a little broken-down cabin, I reckon I could use a bit of rest.” A man didn’t have to be a philosopher to understand her. And after six sons and six daughters, he’d have to have the brains of a brick not to get the drift of how things stood with her.

  So he sent off the oldest boy, Vigor, to run ahead on the road and see the lay of the land.

  You could tell they were from New England, cause the boy didn’t take no gun. If there’d been a bushwhacker the young man never would’ve made it back, and the fact he came back with all his hair was proof no Red had spotted him—the French up Detroit way were paying for English scalps with liquor and if a Red saw a White man alone in the woods with no musket he’d own that White man’s scalp. So maybe a man could think that luck was with the family at last. But since these Yankees had no notion that the road wasn’t safe, Alvin Miller didn’t think for a minute of his good luck.

  Vigor’s word was of a road house three miles on. That was good news, except that between them and that road house was a river. Kind of a scrawny river, and the ford was shallow, but Alvin Miller had learned never to trust water. No matter how peaceful it looks, it’ll reach and try to take you. He was halfway minded to tell Faith that they’d spend the night this side of the river, but she gave just the tiniest groan and at that moment he knew that there was no chance of that. Faith had borne him a dozen living children, but it was four years since the last one and a lot of women took it bad, having a baby so late. A lot of women died. A good road house meant women to help with the birthing, so they’d have to chance the river.