The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI Read online

  “No,” he murmured.

  “Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin sharply. “Don’t look down into the crystal.”

  Arthur tore himself away and was surprised to find Moose and Squirrel and their family all watching him, wide-eyed.

  “Nobody look down into the bridge,” said Arthur Stuart. “You’ll think you’re seeing things, but they’re not really there. It’s not a thing to look at, it’s a thing to walk on.”

  “I can’t see the edges,” said Mama Squirrel. “The children can’t swim.”

  “They won’t have to,” said Arthur Stuart. “Let’s get the little ones in between the older ones. Everybody hold hands.”

  “The youngest can’t walk so far,” said Papa Moose.

  Someone pushed her way through the family to the water’s edge. La Tia. “Don’t you fret about that. Got plenty of strong arms here to carry them as can’t walk.” She called out several names, and strong young men and women stepped forward, most of them black, but some French or of other European nations. “It’s all right, babies,” La Tia said to the children. “You let these big folk carry you, you be all right. You tell them be happy,” she said to Mama Squirrel.

  “It’s all right,” said Squirrel. “These are our friends now, they’re going to take us out across this bridge Alvin’s done made for us.”

  Some of the children whimpered and a few cried outright, but they hung on all the same, doing their best to obey despite their fear. Arthur Stuart walked farther out onto the bridge, taking care to stay right in the middle. The worst thing he could do would be to stumble off the edge. They’d all be terrified then. “Come to me,” he said. “We have to move quick, once we get started.”

  “I stay right here,” said La Tia, “I keep it all moving, I make everybody help each other. You go, you. We follow.”

  Arthur turned around and walked a good twenty paces out onto the bridge. Then he stopped and turned around. Several of the older children were following him tentatively. He strode back to them and took the leading child by the hand. “All hold hands,” he said. “Stay right in line. It’s a long walk, but you can do it.”

  “Listen to the music,” said Alvin. “Listen to the music of the water and the sky, all the life around you. The greensong will carry you forward.”

  Arthur Stuart knew the greensong well, though he could never find it on his own. As soon as Alvin spoke of it, though, he became aware of it, as if it had always been there, and he’d just not bothered to notice it before. He stepped on out, holding the hand of the child behind him, and set a pace that he thought everyone would be able to keep to.

  In the darkness, he couldn’t see the bridge stretching out before him—his eyes told him only that he was walking out into the middle of a trackless lake. But his doodlebug felt the bridge as clear as day, reaching on and on, out and out, and he walked with confidence.

  At first he couldn’t stop his mind from fretting about all that could go wrong. Somebody falling off. Losing the way somehow. Getting to the end of the bridge and finding that it didn’t quite reach the other shore. Or having the bridge get softer and wetter the farther it got from Alvin. Or the bridge bending in on itself, making a spiral that led nowhere. All kinds of imaginable disasters.

  But the rhythm of the step, step, step and the sound of the lapping water and the calls of birds began to still that relentless fretting. It was the familiar rhythm of the greensong. He let it come over him like a trance. His legs began to move, it seemed, of themselves, so he no longer thought about walking or even moving, he simply flowed forward as if he were a part of the bridge, as if he himself were a breeze on the night air. The bridge was alive under him. The bridge was part of Alvin, he understood now. It was as if Alvin’s hands bore him up, as if the water and wind drew him along.

  He only sometimes noticed that he himself was singing. Not just humming, but singing aloud, a strange song that he had always known but had never noticed before. The child behind him picked up the melody and murmured it along with him, and the child behind her, until Arthur Stuart could hear that many voices carried the song. No one was crying or whimpering now. He could hear adult voices farther back. But all of them were faint, only threads amid the fabric of the great wide song that Arthur heard from the wind and the waves and the fish under the water and the birds in the sky and from animals waiting for them on the other side and from all the people on the bridge, a half mile of them, a mile of them.

  Faster and faster Arthur Stuart walked without realizing he was speeding up, but the children did not complain. Their legs carried them as fast as they needed to go. And the adults carrying children found that the little ones did not grow heavy. The babies fell asleep clinging to their bearers, their breath whispering in rhythm with the song. On and on they strode, the far shore coming no nearer, it seemed.

  And as they were all caught up in the greensong, it seemed that the bridge turned into light. They could all see the edges of it now, and could feel how the greensong throbbed within it. Each footfall on the crystal bridge caused the song to surge a little stronger for a moment and made the bridge glow a little more clearly in the night. And Arthur Stuart realized that they were becoming part of the bridge, their steps strengthening it, thickening it, making it stronger for those coming after. And since the bridge was part of Alvin himself, they also strengthened him, or at least made it so the creation of the bridge drained him less than it might have.

  Arthur could feel Alvin’s heartbeat in the crystal bridge. And he realized that the light they all saw rising from the crystal was a pale reflection of Alvin’s own heartfire.

  It seemed to be forever, that crossing. And then, suddenly, there was land ahead of him, and it felt as if it had taken no time at all.

  He reached forward with his doodlebug and saw that the bridge did not reach the land yet. So, without slowing down his stride, Arthur Stuart sent his doodlebug leaping beyond the end of the bridge to find where the rim of the water lapped the mud and he said to the bridge—to Alvin: Here it is. Here’s the edge. Come to this spot and no farther.

  The bridge leapt forward. It was what Alvin had been waiting for, for Arthur’s doodlebug to show the way, and in moments the bridge was anchored into the land.

  Arthur Stuart did not speed up, though he wanted to run the last few hundred yards. There were people behind him, hands linked. So he kept the same pace, right to the end, and then drew the child behind him up onto the shore.

  He continued to lead her into the trees, talking to her as he went. “We’ll go up into the trees,” he said to her. “The others will follow. Keep moving, move in and off to the right, so there’s room for everyone else. Keep holding hands, all of you!”

  Then he let go of her.

  As he did, the greensong let go of him.

  He staggered, almost fell.

  He stood there gasping for a moment in the unwelcome silence.

  The line of people on the bridge stretched out for miles, he could see, and all of them moving swiftly, faster than he would have thought possible. Even Papa Moose now strode easily, boldly, no one helping him.

  He saw how Moose and Squirrel, too, stumbled when they let go of the line. But they immediately took charge of the children, not forgetting their responsibility.

  Nor will I forget mine, thought Arthur Stuart. He scanned the nearby area for the heartfires of small creatures. Unlike the skeeters, he easily found the snakes and, not so easily, awoke them and sent them slithering away. Danger here, he told them silently. Go away, be safe. Sluggishly they obeyed him. It exhilarated him. He suspected that some part of Alvin’s power still rested on him, enabling him to do more than he had ever found possible before. Or perhaps traveling on Alvin’s bridge, surrounded by the greensong, had woken senses inside Arthur Stuart that had always slept.

  Will we all be makers, having crossed this bridge?

  Here and there he caused water to drain away from a bog, so that the land where the people would have to stand was all f
irm. And from time to time he reached back out across the water, following the bridge with his doodlebug, trying to see how Alvin was doing. The bridge remained strong, and that meant Alvin’s heartfire blazed brightly. But his body was too far away for Arthur Stuart to find him, so he could not tell whether he was becoming weak. Nor could he find the far shore to count the people there, so he could not even guess how many more would come.

  It was his job to make sure there was room for them all, enough firm, safe ground that they could gather.

  Many of them sat down, then lay down, and with the echoes of the greensong still singing in their hearts, they dozed in the faint moonlight, their dreams infused with the music of life.

  Calvin couldn’t help being curious. And it’s not as if he had to stay on the levee to keep the fog in place.

  In fact, the fog could pretty much look after itself, at this point. And with all the angry, frightened heartfires flowing through the streets of Barcy, Calvin couldn’t see any particular reason to stay by himself. Who knew what mischief these mobs might be up to? And since he was a maker, wasn’t it his job to keep such mischief from happening?

  One mob was moving through Frenchtown, getting more and more furious as they found house after house empty. Another mob, consisting mostly of dockside drunks, was looking for slaves to throw into the water. Finding none, they started throwing in whatever passersby spoke English with a foreign accent or not at all. Which wasn’t too logical, seeing how this wasn’t even an American city.

  All Calvin could see of this was the anger in the heartfires and, of course, the panic in those being tossed into the river.

  The angriest mob, and the one moving with the most sense of purpose, was moving directly toward the orphanage where Alvin had been unable to resist showing off by one-upping Calvin’s fixing of the man’s foot. What was the big deal, Calvin wanted to know. When was he supposed to have learned anatomy? Of course, Alvin knew everything—everything except how the world actually worked.

  So let him sit there by that briny lake and flow his heartfire out as a bridge for the scum of the earth to walk on. Wasn’t that just like Alvin? Making a show of being humble and the servant of all. But since Jesus said that the person who wanted most to be ruler was the one who was servant of all, didn’t that tell something about Alvin, after all? Who was the ambitious one? Calvin was perfectly willing to stay in the background—which was the attitude a maker ought to have, as Alvin always said. But with Alvin it was do as I say, not as I do.

  Calvin jogged easily along the foggy streets—sober, decent folk were all indoors, fearful of the sudden fog and the sound of distant shouting. There were soldiers marching, too. The Spanish were ostensibly looking for a riot to quell, but the officers carefully found the quietest streets, since there was neither honor nor safety in confronting a mob. If you shoot, it’s a massacre; if you don’t shoot, you’re likely to get a brick in the head.

  So it wasn’t hard to avoid the soldiers, and soon Calvin found himself on the fringes of the mob just when it reached the house of Moose and Squirrel. He wasn’t that interested in most of the people—a mob was a mob, and all the faces were as ugly and stupid as always when people turn their decision-making over to someone else. Brutal puppets, that’s all they were. What Calvin wanted was the hot, dark heartfire that was leading them and goading them on.

  Glass was shattering as bricks and stones went through the windows of the house. Several men with torches were trying to set the house on fire, but the air was so moist and heavy that it wasn’t working.

  The leader, who carried a big heavy knife at his hip, was taunting the would-be firestarters. “Y’all never set a fire before? Babies burn theirselves up all the time, but you can’t even get a dry wooden house to burn!”

  Calvin sidled up. “Reckon sometimes you gotta do a thing yourself.”

  The man turned to him and sneered. “And have the Spanish find some informant to testify against me? No thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” said Calvin. He reached out and pointed toward the roof. While he was pointing, he hotted up the wood just under the peak of the gable, so sudden and hot that it burst into flames.

  A cheer went up from the crowd, everyone being too drunk, apparently, to notice that the fire had started about as far as possible from where the torchwielders were doing such a pathetic job. But the mob’s leader wasn’t drunk, and that’s the only person Calvin was looking to impress.

  “You know something?” said the man with the big knife. “I think you look a powerful lot like a certain thief and fraud name of Alvin Smith as was living in that boardinghouse only this morning.”

  “You’re speaking of my beloved brother, sir,” said Calvin. “Nobody gets to call him names but me.”

  “Beg your pardon, sir,” said the man. “I’m Jim Bowie, at your service. And if I’m not wrong, you just proved to me that Alvin ain’t the only dangerous man in his family.”

  “Don’t get no ideas about siccing this mob on me,” said Calvin. “My brother plain hates to kill folks, but I got no such compunction. You turn the mob on me, and they’ll all blow to bits as if they’d swallowed a keg of gunpowder. You first.”

  “What’s to stop me from killing you right here?” said the man. And then, suddenly, he got a panicked look on his face. “No, I was just joking, don’t do nothing to my knife.”

  Calvin laughed in his face. “Want to see the house go up real spectacular?”

  “You’re the artist,” said the man.

  Calvin found his way into the structure of the house, the thick heavy beams and posts that formed its skeleton. He hotted them up all at once—and so hot did he make them that they didn’t so much burn as melt. The outer layer of each piece of wood burnt so fast that as the ashes peeled away it looked as if somebody had just flumped a busted pillow on the ground and released a hundred thousand feathers all at once.

  The house collapsed, sending up such a cloud of smoke and ash and hot, searing air that it burned the hair and eyebrows and eyelashes right off the men in the front row. Their skin was also burned, and some were blinded, but Calvin didn’t feel any particular pity. They deserved it, didn’t they? They were a murderous, house-burning mob, weren’t they? The ones who was blind now, they’d never join a mob again, so Calvin had flat cured them of their violence.

  “You look to be a useful man to have as a friend,” said the man with the knife.

  “How would you know?” said Calvin. “You haven’t seen me with any of my friends.”

  The man stuck out his hand. “Jim Bowie, sir, and I’d like to be your friend.”

  “Sir, I don’t reckon you have many friends in this world, and neither do I. So let’s not pretend to love each other. You have something you want to use me for, and I’m perfectly willing to consider being used if you can let me see what’s to gain from it, and why it’s a good and noble undertaking.”

  “They ain’t no good and noble undertakings. Everybody I know of gets undertaken has to be dead first and doesn’t seem to enjoy it.”

  Bowie was grinning.

  “What do you want from me, Mr. Bowie?”

  “Your company,” said Bowie. “On an expedition. A job your brother turned down on account of I think he was scared.”

  “Al ain’t afraid of anything,” said Calvin.

  “Anybody isn’t scared of the Mexica might as well shoot out his own brains, cause they ain’t worth keeping.”

  “The Mexica?”

  “Some of us think it’s time civilization came back to Mexico.”

  Civilization…like this? Calvin watched the remaining mobbers cavorting and gamboling in front of the hot glowing embers and laughed.

  “A mob’s a mob,” said Bowie. “But the Mexica are evil and need destroying.”

  “No doubt they do,” said Calvin. “But why is it your job?”

  “I got tired of waiting on God.”

  Calvin grinned at him. “Maybe we got something to talk about. I never be
en to Mexico.”

  Alvin felt someone nudge him, shake his shoulder.

  “Sun coming,” said a woman’s voice.

  La Tia, that’s who it was.

  “Everybody already pass over,” said another woman. Dead Mary’s mother.

  “What’s your name?” Alvin murmured. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Rien,” she said.

  Dead Mary reached out and took his bleeding hands in hers. “Get up, you wizard you. Get up and cross over the bridge of your blood.”

  He tried to rise, with her helping, but at once he felt faint and his legs gave way under him. He fell face forward onto his hands and even his elbows buckled, and his face struck the surface of the crystal bridge. The heavy weight of the plow made the poke slide off his shoulder. It made the whole bridge shimmer with life, and Alvin felt himself suffused with warmth. With peace. It was all done. He could sleep now.

  At once the bridge began to give way under him.

  “No!” cried La Tia. “Hold up that bridge! You can’t sleep now!” She reached down and lifted the poke from the surface of the bridge. At once the shimmering stopped, and Alvin could concentrate again. No, it wasn’t time to rest, was it?

  “The army coming, boy!” La Tia said. “They know they slaves gone now, morning coming and nobody doing they chores. This ain’t no drunken mob today, no. This be soldiers, and we got to cross over!”

  It wasn’t just her words filling him with strength, though. He could feel the power of charms she bore. He always saw the small magics of spells and hexes and could stop them if he wanted, so he had gotten used to the idea that they had no effect on him.

  But now he was grateful for the strength that flowed into him as she draped a charm around his neck.

  “I have to stay here,” he said softly, “or the bridge won’t hold.”

  “You had to stay here to make the bridge,” said La Tia. “But don’t you feel your brother put in his blood from the other side?”