Prentice Alvin

“Who is she?” Measure asked.

“Who?” asked Alvin, confused.

“The one you love till it takes your breath away just remembering.”

For a moment Alvin hesitated, by long habit. But then the gateway opened, and all his story spilled out. He started with Miss Larner, and how she was really Margaret, who was the same girl who once was the torch in Taleswapper's stories, the one that looked out for Alvin from afar. But telling the story of his love for her led to the story of all she taught him, and by the time the tale was done, it was near dawn. Delphi was asleep on Measure's shoulder– she'd come back in sometime during the tale, but didn't last long awake, which was just as well, with her three children and Arthur Stuart sure to want breakfast on time no matter how late she stayed up in the night. But Measure was still awake, his eyes sparkling with the knowledge of what the Redbird said, of the living golden plow, of Alvin in the forgefire, of Arthur Stuart in the Hio. And also a deep sadness behind that light in Measure's eyes, for the murder Alvin had done with his own hands, however much it might have been deserved; and for the death of Old Peg Guester, and even for the death of a certain runaway Black slave girl Arthur Stuart's whole lifetime ago.

“Somehow I got to go out and find people I can teach to be Makers,” said Alvin. “But I don't even know if somebody without a knack like mine can learn it, or how much they ought to know, or if they'd even want to know it.”

“I think,” said Measure, “that they ought to love the dream of your Crystal City before they ever know that they might learn to help in the making of it. If word gets out that there's a Maker who can teach Making, you'll get the sort of folks as wants to rule people with such power. But the Crystal City– ah, Alvin, think of it! Like living inside that twister that caught you and the Prophet all those years ago.”

“Will you learn it, Measure?” asked Alvin.

“I'll do all I can to learn it,” said Measure. “But first I make you a solemn promise, that I'll only use what you teach me to build up the Crystal City. And if it turns out I just can't learn enough to be a Maker, I'll help you any other way I can. Whatever you ask me to do, Alvin, that I'll do– I'll take my family to the ends of the Earth, I'll give up everything I own, I'll die if need be– anything to make the vision Tenskwa-Tawa showed you come true.”

Alvin held him by both hands, held him for the longest time. Then Measure leaned forward and kissed him, brother to brother, friend to friend. The movement woke Delphi. She hadn't heard most of it, but she knew that something solemn was happening, and she smiled sleepily before she got up and let Measure take her off to bed for the last few hours till dawn.

That was the begi

And now, when he lay awake at night, he did not yearn so often for the past, but rather tried to imagine the future. Somewhere out there was the place where he should build– the Crystal City; and out there, too, were the folks he had to find and teach them to love that dream and show them how to make it real. Somewhere there was the perfect soil that his living plow was meant to delve. Somewhere there was a woman he could love and live with till he died.

Back in Hatrack River, that fall there was an election, and it happened that because of certain stories floating around about who was a hero and who was a snake, Pauley Wiseman lost his job and Po Doggly got him a new one. Along about that time, too, Makepeace Smith come in to file a complaint about how back last spring his prentice run off with a certain item that belonged to his master.

“That's a long time waiting to file such a charge,” said Sheriff Doggly.

"He threatened me," said Makepeace Smith. "I feared for my family.

“Well, now, you just tell me what it was he stole.”

“It was a plow,” said Makepeace Smith.

“A common plow? I'm supposed to find a common plow? And why in tarnation would he steal such a thing?”

Makepeace lowered his voice and said it all secret-like. “The plow was made of gold.”

Oh, Po Doggly just laughed his head off, hearing that.

“Well, it's true, I tell you,” said Makepeace.

“Is it, now? Why, I think that I believe you, my friend. But if there was a gold plow in your smithy, I'll lay ten to one that it was Al's, not yours.”

“What a prentice makes belongs to the master!”

Well, that's about when Po started getting a little stern. “You start telling tales like that around Hatrack River, Makepeace Smith, and I reckon other folks'll tell how you kept that boy when he long since was a better smith than you. I reckon word'll get around about how you wasn't a fair master, and if you start to charging Alvin Smith with stealing what only he in all this world could possibly make, I think you'd find yourself laughed to scorn.”

Maybe he would and maybe he wouldn't. It was sure that Makepeace didn't try no legal tricks to try to get that plow back from Alvin– wherever he was. But he told his tale, making it bigger every time he told it– how Alvin was always stealing from him, and how that golden plow was Makepeace Smith's inheritance, made plowshape and painted black, and how Alvin uncovered it by devil powers and carried it off. As long as Gertie Smith was alive she scoffed at all such tales, but she died not too long after Alvin left, from a blood vein popping when she was a-screammg at her husband for being such a fool. From then on, Makepeace had the story his own way, even allowing as how Alvin killed Gertie herself with a curse that made her veins pop open and bleed to death inside her head. It was a terrible lie, but there's always folks as like to hear such tales, and the story spread from one end of the state of Hio to the other, and then beyond. Pauley Wiseman heard it. Reverend Thrower heard it. Cavil Planter heard it. So did a lot of other folks.

Which is why, when Alvin finally ventured forth from Vigor Church, there was plenty of folks with an eye for strangers carrying bundles about the size of a plowshare, looking for a glint of gold under burlap, measuring strangers to see if they might be a certain run-off prentice smith who stole his master's inheritance. Some of those folks even meant to take it back to Makepeace Smith in Hatrack River, if it happened they ever laid their hands upon the golden plow. On the other hand, with some of those folks such a thought never crossed their minds.