Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Read online

  No one else seemed to understand this, however. The other women eyed each other with jealous eyes, measuring the probable expense of gowns, guessing at the cost of whatever amulet of beauty the other woman wore; keeping track of who danced with whom, how many men arranged to be presented.

  Few of them turned a jealous eye toward Peggy—at least not when she first entered the room in mid-afternoon. Peggy knew the impression she was making. Instead of an elegant coiffure, her hair was brushed and shining, pulled up in a style that looked well-tended, but prone to straying locks here and there. Her gown was simple, almost plain—but this was by calculation. “You have a sweet young body, so your gown must not distract from the natural litheness of youth.” Moreover, the gown was unusually modest, showing less bare flesh than any other woman’s dress; yet, more than most, it revealed the free movement of the body underneath it.

  She could almost hear Mistress Modesty’s voice, saying, “So many girls misunderstand. The corset is not an end in itself. It is meant to allow old and sagging bodies to imitate the body that a healthy young woman naturally has. A corset on you must be lightly laced, the stays only for comfort, not containment. Then your body can move freely, and you can breathe. Other girls will marvel that you have the courage to appear in public with a natural waistline. But men don’t measure the cut of a woman’s clothes. Instead they pleasure in the naturalness of a lady who is comfortable, sure of herself, enjoying life on this day, in this place, in his company.”

  Most important, though, was the fact that she wore no jewelry. The other ladies all depended on beseemings whenever they went out in public. Unless a girl had a knack for beseemings herself, she had to buy—or her parents or husband had to buy—a hex engraven on a ring or amulet. Amulets were preferred, since they were worn nearer the face, and so one could get by with a much weaker—and therefore cheaper—hex. Such beseemings had no effect from far off, but the closer you came to a woman with a beseeming of beauty, the more you began to feel that her face was particularly beautiful. None of her features was transformed; you still saw what was actually there. It was your judgment that changed. Mistress Modesty laughed at such hexes. “What good does it do to fool someone, when he knows that he’s being fooled?” So Peggy wore no such hex.

  All the other women at the ball were in disguise. Though no one’s face was hidden, this ball was a masquerade. Only Peggy and Mistress Modesty, of all the women here, were not in costume, were not pretending to some unnatural ideal.

  She could guess at the other girls’ thoughts as they watched her enter the room: Poor thing. How plain. No competition there. And their estimation was true enough—at least at first. No one took particular notice of Peggy.

  But Mistress Modesty carefully selected a few of the men who approached her. “I’d like you to meet my young friend Margaret,” she would say, and then Peggy would smile the fresh and open smile that was not artificial at all—her natural smile, the one that spoke of her honest gladness at meeting a friend of Mistress Modesty’s. They would touch her hand and bow, and her gentle echoing courtesy was graceful and unmeasured, an honest gesture; her hand squeezed his as a friendly reflex, the way one greets a hoped-for friend. “The art of beauty is the art of truth,” said Mistress Modesty. “Other women pretend to be someone else; you will be your loveliest self, with the same natural exuberant grace as a bounding deer or a circling hawk.” The man would lead her onto the floor, and she would dance with him, not worrying about correct steps or keeping time or showing off her dress, but rather enjoying the dance, their symmetrical movement, the way the music flowed through their bodies together.

  The man who met her, who danced with her, remembered. Afterward the other girls seemed stilted, awkward, unfree, artificial. Many men, themselves as artificial as most of the ladies, did not know themselves well enough to know they enjoyed Peggy’s company more than any other young lady’s. But then, Mistress Modesty did not introduce Peggy to such men. Rather she only allowed Peggy to dance with the kind of man who could respond to her; and Mistress Modesty knew which men they were because they were genuinely fond of Mistress Modesty.

  So as the hours passed by at the ball, hazy afternoon giving way to bright evening, more and more men were circling Peggy, filling up her dance card, eagerly conversing with her during the lulls, bringing her refreshment—which she ate if she was hungry or thirsty, and kindly refused if she was not—until the other girls began to take note of her. There were plenty of men who took no notice of Peggy, of course; no other girl lacked because of Peggy’s plenty. But they didn’t see it that way. What they saw was that Peggy was always surrounded, and Peggy could guess at their whispered conversations.

  “What kind of spell does she have?”

  “She wears an amulet under her bodice—I’m sure I saw its shape pressing against that cheap fabric.”

  “Why don’t they see how thick-waisted she is?”

  “Look how her hair is awry, as if she had just come in from the barnyard.”

  “She must flatter them dreadfully.”

  “Only a certain kind of man is attracted to her, I hope you notice.”

  Poor things, poor things. Peggy had no power that was not already born within any of these girls. She used no artifice that they would have to buy.

  Most important to her was the fact that she did not even use her own knack here. All of Mistress Modesty’s other teachings had come easily to her over the years, for they were nothing more than the extension of her natural honesty. The one difficult barrier was Peggy’s knack. By habit, the moment she met someone she had always looked into his heartfire to see who he was; and, knowing more about him than she knew about herself, she then had to conceal her knowledge of his darkest secrets. It was this that had made her so reserved, even haughty-seeming.

  Mistress Modesty and Peggy both agreed—she could not tell others how much she knew about them. Yet Mistress Modesty assured her that as long as she was concealing something so important, she could not become her most beautiful self—could not become the woman that Alvin would love for herself, and not out of pity.

  The answer was simple enough. Since Peggy could not tell what she knew, and could not hide what she knew, the only solution was not to know it in the first place. That was the real struggle of these past three years—to train herself not to look into the heartfires around her. Yet by hard work, after many tears of frustration and a thousand different tricks to try to fool herself, she had achieved it. She could enter a crowded ballroom and remain oblivious to the heartfires around her. Oh, she saw the heartfires—she could not blind herself—but she paid no attention to them. She did not find herself drawing close to see deeply. And now she was getting skilled enough that she didn’t even have to try not to see into the heartfire. She could stand this close to someone, conversing, paying attention to their words, and yet see no more of his inner thoughts than any other person would.

  Of course, years of torchery had taught her more about human nature—the kinds of thoughts that go behind certain words or tones of voice or expressions or gestures—that she was very good at guessing others’ present thoughts. But good people never minded when she seemed to know what was on their mind right at the moment. She did not have to hide that knowledge. It was only their deepest secrets that she could not know—and those secrets were now invisible to her unless she chose to see.

  She did not choose to see. For in her new detachment she found a kind of freedom she had never known before in all her life. She could take other people at face value now. She could rejoice in their company, not knowing and therefore not feeling responsible for their hidden hungers or, most terribly, their dangerous futures. It gave a kind of exhilarating madness to her dancing, her laughter, her conversation; no one else at the ball felt so free as Modesty’s young friend Margaret, because no one else had ever known such desperate confinement as she had known all her life till now.

  So it was that Peggy’s evening at the Governor’s Ball was glor
ious. Not a triumph, actually, since she vanquished no one—whatever man won her friendship was not conquered, but liberated, even victorious. What she felt was pure joy, and so those who were with her also rejoiced in her company. Such good feelings could not be contained. Even those who gossiped nastily about her behind their fans nevertheless caught the joy of the evening; many told the governor’s wife that this was the best ball ever held in Dekane, or for that matter in the whole state of Suskwahenny.

  Some even realized who it was who brought such gladness to the evening. Among them were the governor’s wife and Mistress Modesty. Peggy saw them talking once, as she turned gracefully on the floor, returning to her partner with a smile that made him laugh with joy to be dancing with her. The governor’s wife was smiling and nodding, and she pointed with her fan toward the dance floor, and for a moment Peggy’s eyes met hers. Peggy smiled in warm greeting: the governor’s wife smiled and nodded back. The gesture did not go unremarked. Peggy would be welcome at any party she wanted to attend in Dekane—two or three a night, if she desired, every night of the year.

  Yet Peggy did not glory in this achievement, for she recognized how small it really was. She had won her way into the finest events in Dekane—but Dekane was merely the capita! of a state on the edge of the American frontier. If she longed for social victories, she would have to make her way to Camelot, to win the accolades of royalty—and from there to Europe, to be received in Vienna, Paris, Warsaw, or Madrid. Even then, though, even if she had danced with every crowned head, it would mean nothing. She would die, they would die, and how would the world be any better because she had danced?

  She had seen true greatness in the heartfire of a newborn baby fourteen years ago. She had protected the child because she loved his future; she had also come to love the boy because of who he was, the kind of soul he had. Most of all, though, more important than her feelings for Prentice Alvin, most of all she loved the work that lay ahead of him. Kings and queens built kingdoms, or lost them; merchants made fortunes, or squandered them; artists made works that time faded or forgot. Only Prentice Alvin had in him the seeds of Making that would stand against time, against the endless wasting of the Unmaker. So as she danced tonight, she danced for him, knowing that if she could win the love of these strangers, she might also win Alvin’s love, and earn a place beside him on his pathway to the Crystal City, that place in which all the citizens can see like torches, build like makers, and love with the purity of Christ.

  With the thought of Alvin, she cast her attention to his distant heartfire. Though she had schooled herself not to see into nearby heartfires, she never gave up looking into his. Perhaps this made it harder for her to control her knack, but what purpose was it to learn anything, if by learning she lost her connection to that boy? So she did not have to search for him; she knew always, in the back of her mind, where his heartfire burned. In these years she had learned not to see him constantly before her, but still she could see him in an instant. She did so now.

  He was digging in the ground behind his smithy. But she hardly noticed the work, for neither did he. What burned strongest in his heartfire was anger. Someone had treated him unfairly—but that could hardly be new, could it? Makepeace, once the most fair-minded of masters, had become steadily more envious of Alvin’s skill at ironwork, and in his jealousy he had become unjust, denying Alvin’s ability more fervently the further his prentice boy surpassed him. Alvin lived with injustice every day, yet never had Peggy seen such rage in him.

  “Is something wrong, Mistress Margaret?” The man who danced with her spoke in concern. Peggy had stopped, there in the middle of the floor. The music still played, and couples still moved through the dance, but near her the dancers had stopped, were watching her.

  “I can’t—continue.” she said. It surprised her to find that she was out of breath with fear. What was she afraid of?

  “Would you like to leave the ballroom?” he asked. What was his name? There was only one name in her mind: Alvin.

  “Please,” she said. She leaned on him as they walked toward the open doors leading onto the porch. The crowd parted; she didn’t see them.

  It was as if all the anger Alvin had stored up in his years of working under Makepeace Smith now was coming out, and every dig of his shovel was a deep cut of revenge. A dowser, an itinerant water-seeker, that’s who had angered him, that’s the one he meant to harm. But the dowser was none of Peggy’s concern; nor was his provocation, however mean or terrible. It was Alvin. Couldn’t he see that when he dug so deep in hatred it was an act of destruction? And didn’t he know that when you work to destroy, you invite the Destroyer? When your labor is unmaking, the Unmaker can claim you.

  The air outside was cooler in the gathering dusk, the last shred of the sun throwing a ruddy light across the lawns of the Governor’s mansion. “Mistress Margaret, I hope I did nothing to cause you to faint.”

  “No, I’m not even fainting. Will you forgive me? I had a thought, that’s all. One that I must think about.”

  He looked at her strangely. Any time a woman needed to part with a man, she always claimed to be near fainting. But not Mistress Margaret—Peggy knew that he was puzzled, uncertain. The etiquette of fainting was clear. But what was a gentleman’s proper manner toward a woman who “had a thought”?

  She laid her hand on his arm. “I assure you, my friend—I’m quite well, and I delighted in dancing with you. I hope we’ll dance again. But for now, for the moment, I need to be alone.”

  She could see how her words eased his concern. Calling him “my friend” was a promise to remember him; her hope to dance with him again was so sincere that he could not help but believe her. He took her words at face value, and bowed with a smile. After that she didn’t even see him leave.

  Her attention was far away, in Hatrack River, where Prentice Alvin was calling to the Unmaker, not guessing what he was doing. Peggy searched and searched in his heartfire, trying to find something she might do to keep him safe. But there was nothing. Now that Alvin was being driven by anger, all paths led to one place, and that place terrified her, for she couldn’t see what was there, couldn’t see what would happen. And there were no paths out.

  What was I doing at this foolish ball, when Alvin needed me? If I had been paying proper attention, I would have seen this coming, would have found some way to help him. Instead I was dancing with these men who mean less than nothing to the future of this world. Yes, they delight in me. But what is that worth, if Alvin falls, if Prentice Alvin is destroyed, if the Crystal City is unmade before its Maker begins to build it?

  7

  Wells

  ALVIN DIDN’T NEED to look up when the dowser left. He could feel where the man was as he moved along, his anger like a black noise in the midst of the sweet green music of the wood. That was the curse of being the only White, man or boy, who could feel the life of the greenwood—it meant that he was also the only White who knew how the land was dying.

  Not that the soil wasn’t rich—years of forest growth had made the earth so fertile that they said the shadow of a seed could take root and grow. There was life in the fields, life in the towns even. But it wasn’t part of the land’s own song. It was just noise, whispering noise, and the green of the wood, the life of the Red man, the animal, the plant, the soil all living together in harmony, that song was quiet now, intermittent, sad. Alvin heard it dying and he mourned.

  Vain little dowser. Why was he so mad? Alvin couldn’t figure. But he didn’t press it, didn’t argue, because almost as soon as the dowser came along, Al could see the Unmaker shadowing the edges of his vision, as if Hank Dowser’d brought him along.

  Alvin first saw the Unmaker in his nightmares as a child, a vast nothingness that rolled invisibly toward him, trying to crush him, to get inside him, to grind him into pieces. It was old Taleswapper who first helped Alvin give his empty enemy a name. The Unmaker, which longs to undo the universe, break it all down until everything is flat and cold and smoot
h and dead.

  As soon as he had a name for it and some notion what it was, he started seeing the Unmaker in daylight, wide awake. Not right out in the open, of course. Look at the Unmaker and most times you can’t see him. He goes all invisible behind all the life and growth and up-building in the world. But at the edges of your sight, as if he was sneaking up behind, that’s where the sly old snake awaited, that’s where Alvin saw him.

  When Alvin was a boy he learned a way to make that Unmaker step back a ways and leave him be. All he had to do was use his hands to build something. It could be as simple as weaving grass into a basket, and he’d have some peace. So when the Unmaker showed up around the blacksmith’s shop not long after Alvin got there, he wasn’t too worried. There was plenty of chance for making things in the smithy. Besides, the smithy was full of fire—fire and iron, the hardest earth. Alvin knew from childhood on that the Unmaker hankered after water. Water was its servant, did most of its work, tearing things down. So it was no wonder that when a water man like Hank Dowser came along, the Unmaker freshened up and got lively.

  Now, though, Hank Dowser was on his way, taking his anger and his unfairness with him, but the Unmaker was still there, hiding out in the meadow and the bushes, lurking in the long shadows of the evening.

  Dig with the shovel, lever up the earth, hoist it to the lip of the well, dump it aside. A steady rhythm, a careful building of the pile, shaping the sides of the hole. Square the first three feet of the hole, to set the shape of the well house. Then round and gently tapered inward for the stonework of the finished well. Even though you know this well will never draw water, do it careful, dig as if you thought that it would last. Build smooth, as near to perfect as you can, and it’ll be enough to hold that sly old spy at bay.

  So why didn’t Alvin feel a speck more brave about it?