Red Prophet

“They say you have fingers made of steel,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

Measure looked at Al for him to answer, and Al couldn't think of anything to say. He was sure reluctant about telling this Red what it was he done. So it was Measure answered him after all, by raising his hands and wiggling his fingers. “Just regular fingers near as I can tell,” he said.

Ta-Kumsaw reached out and took him by the hand– a strong, hard grip, it must have been, cause Measure tried to pull away and couldn't. “Iron skin,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Can't cut with knife. Can't burn. Boys made of stone.”

He pulled Measure up to a standing position and, with his free hand, slapped him hard on the upper part of the arm. “Stone boy, throw me on the dirt!”

“I can't wrassle you,” said Measure. “I don't want a fight with nobody.”

“Throw me!” commanded Ta-Kumsaw. And he adjusted his grip, put out his foot, and waited until Measure put out his own foot to join him. Facing off, man to man, the way the Reds did in their games. Only this wasn't no game, not to these boys who'd been looking death in the face and didn't have no guarantee that it still wasn't just around the corner.

Al didn't know what he ought to do, but he was in a mood for doing something, coming on the heels of all his changing of things. So it was almost without a thought of the consequences that the very moment Measure and Ta-Kumsaw started to push and pull on each other, Al made the dirt come all loose under Ta-Kumsaw's feet, so his own pushing made him fall ass over elbow in the dirt.

The other Reds had been kind of laughing and joshing about the wrassle, but when they saw the greatest chief of all the tribes, a man whose name was known from Boston to New Orleans, when they saw him smash on the ground like that they kind of left off laughing. Truth to tell there wasn't a sound in that clearing. Ta-Kumsaw picked himself up and looked at the dirt under his feet, scraping on it with his foot. It was solid enough now, of course. But he stepped a few feet away, onto the grass, and held out his hand again.

This time Measure had a little more confidence, and reached out to take his hand– but at the last second, Ta-Kumsaw snatched his own hand away. He stood very still, not looking at Measure or Al or anybody, just looking into space, his face all hard and set. Then he turned to the other Reds and fired off a volley of words, spitting them out with all the Ss and Ks and Xs of Shaw-Nee talk. Al and the other children of Vigor Church used to imitate Red talk by saying things like “boxy talksy skock woxity” and laughing till their sides ached. But it didn't sound too fu

Al and Measure never ran so long or so far in their lives. Hour after hour, mile after mile, never going too terrible fast, but never stopping, neither. Moving like this, a Red could travel faster on foot than a White usually could on horseback, unless he was making his nag run all the way. Which wasn't too good on the horse. And the horse had to stay on cleared roads. While Reds– Reds didn't even need a path.

Al noticed real quick that ru

One thing he could do, Al reckoned, was help his brother's feet to heal up. He tried to start, to find his way into his brother's feet the way he'd found his way into the stone and the steel and the wood. Ru

Al wasn't the kind to give up. No, he just tried a different way. Since it was ru

He had no notion that he was doing what doodlebugs do, when they let their bug go out of their head and travel on its own. And anyway it wasn't the same, on account of there wasn't no doodlebug in the natural world who ever tried to doodle while he was ru

Now, though, he didn't have a speck of trouble getting into Measure's body, finding the sore places, the bleeding cuts on his feet, the ache in his legs, the pain in his side. Healing the feet, toughing them up, callusing them, that was easy enough. For the others, Al felt how Measure's body was craving for him to breathe more, deeper, faster; so Al got into his lungs and cleared them, opened them into the deepest places. Now when Measure sucked in air, his body got more of a use out of it, like it could wring out each rag of air to get the very last drop of good out of it. Al didn't even half understand what he was doing– but he knowed it worked, cause the pain in Measure's body began to ease, he didn't weary so much, he didn't gasp for breath.

As he returned to himself, Al noticed that in the whole time he was helping Measure, he didn't step on no twig that broke orget smacked by some snaggy branch flipping back from the Red in front of him. Now, though, he was getting poked and tripped and snapped as much as ever. He thought right off, it was happening just the same all along, only I didn't hardly notice cause I wasn't rightly paying attention to my own skin. But even as he decided that was true and even mostly believed it, he also realized that the sound of the world had changed. Now it was just breathing and pale-ski

And one more little thing. Until he went out of himself to help Measure, his own body wasn't doing all that well, neither; in fact he was near wore out. But now he was all right, his body was doing fine, he was breathing deep, his legs and arms felt like he could go on forever, sturdy in their motion as trees were in their stillness. Now maybe that was because in healing Measure, he also somehow healed himself– but he didn't rightly believe that, cause he always knew what he did and what he didn't do. No, to Al Junior's thinking, his body was doing better because of something else. And that something else, either it was part of the green music, or it caused the music, or they both were caused by the same thing. As near as Al could figure.