Alvin Jorneyman

“Look,” said Becca. “See how he was at the begi

“Why? I don't know anything about Calvin, except his name and Alvin's hopes for him.”

“Because the way the threads are going now, when his rejoins Alvin's, Alvin's comes to an end.”

“He kills him?”

“How should I know? We learn what we can learn, but the threads say little except by their movement through the cloth. You will know. That's why she called you. Not just for your own happiness, but because… as she said, because I owe it to the Maker. I used him once to save my love. Didn't I owe you the same chance? That's what she said. But we knew that if I showed you this at first, before you chose, you would help him out of duty. For the grand cause, not for love of him.”

“But I hadn't decided to watch him again.”

“So you say,” said Becca.

“You're very smug,” said Peggy, “for a woman who has made such a botch of things herself.”

“I inherited a botch,” said Becca. “One day my mother, who crossed the ocean and brought us here, one day she took her hands from the loom and walked away. My sister and I came in with her supper and found her gone. We were both married, but I had borne a child for my husband, and in those days my sister had none. So I took the loom, and she went to her husband. And all the time, I was furious at my mother for going away like that. Fleeing her duty.” Becca stroked the threads, gently, even gingerly. “Now I think I understand. The price of holding all these lives in our hands is that we scarcely have a life ourselves. My mother wasn't good at this, because her heart wasn't in it. Mine is, and if I made a mistake to save my husband's life, perhaps you can judge me more kindly knowing that I had already given up my life with my husband in order to fill my mother's place.”

“I didn't mean to condemn you,” said Peggy, abashed.

“Nor did I mean to justify myself to you,” said Becca. “And yet you did condemn me, and I did justify myself. I hold my mother's thread here. I know where she is. But I'll never know, really, why she did what she did. Or what might have happened if she stayed.” Becca looked up at Peggy. “I don't know much, but what I know, I know. Alvin must go out into the world. He must leave his family– let them learn Making on their own now, as he did. He must rejoin Calvin before the boy has been completely turned by the Unmaker. Otherwise, Calvin may be not only his death, but also the undoing of all the Maker's works.”

“I have an easy answer,” said Peggy. “I'll find Calvin and make sure he never comes home.”

“You think you have the power to control a Maker's life?”

“Calvin is no Maker. How could he be? Think what Alvin had to do, to come into his own.”

“Nevertheless, you never had the power to stand against Alvin, even when he was a child. And he was kind at heart. I think Calvin isn't governed by the same sense of decency.”

“So I can't stand against him,” said Peggy. “Nor can I send Alvin out on errands. He's not mine to command.”

“Isn't he?” asked Becca.

Peggy buried her face in her hands. “I don't want him to love me. I don't want to love him. I want to continue my struggle against slavery here in Appalachee.”

“Oh, yes. Using your knack to meddle with the cloth, aren't you?” said Becca. “Do you know where it leads?”

“To liberty for the slaves, I hope.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But the sure thing is this: It leads to war.”

Peggy looked up grimly. “I see warsigns down all the paths. Before I started doing this, I saw those signs.” Grieving mothers. The terror of battle in young men's lives.

“It begins as a civil war in Appalachee, but it ends as a war between the King on the one side and the United States on the other. Brutal, bloody, cruel…”

“Are you saying I should stop? That I should let these monsters continue to rule over the Blacks they kidnapped and all their children forever?”

“Not at all,” said Becca. “The war comes because of a million different choices. Your actions push things that way, but you aren't the only cause. Do you understand? If war is the only way to free the slaves, then isn't the war worth all the suffering? Are lives wasted, when they end for such a cause?”

“I can't judge this sort of thing,” said Peggy.

“But that's not true,” said Becca. “Only you are fit to judge, because only you see the outcomes that might result. By the time I see things they've become inevitable.”

“If they're inevitable, then why are you bothering to tell me to try to change them?”

“Almost inevitable. Again, I spoke imprecisely. I can't meddle with the threads on a grand scale. I can't foresee the consequences of change. But a single thread– sometimes I can move it without undoing the whole fabric. I didn't know a way to move Calvin that would make a difference. But I could move you. I could bring the judge here, the one who sees with the blindfold over her eyes. So I've done that.”

“I thought you said your sister did it.”

“Well, she's the one who decided it must be done. But only I could touch the thread.”

“I think you spend a lot of your time lying and concealing things.”

“Quite possibly.”

“Like the fact that the western door leads into Ta-Kumsaw's land west of the Mizzipy.”

“I never lied about that, or concealed it either.”

“And the eastern door, where does that lead?”

“It opens in my auntle's house in Winchester, back in England. See? I conceal nothing.”

“You have but one daughter,” said Peggy, “and she's already got a loom of her own. Who will take your place here?”

“None of your business,” said Becca.

“Nothing is none of my business now,” said Peggy. “Not after you picked up my thread and moved it here.”

“I don't know who will take my place. Maybe I'll be here forever. I'm not my mother. I won't quit and force this on an unwilling soul.”

“When it comes time to choose, look at the boy,” said Peggy. “He's wiser than you think.”

“A boy's hands on the loom?” Becca's face bore an expression that suggested she had just tasted something awful.

“Before any talent for weaving,” said Peggy, “doesn't the weaver have to care about the threads coming into the cloth? He may have killed a squirrel, but I don't think he loves death.”

Becca regarded her steadily. “You take too much upon yourself.”

“As you said. I'm a Judge.”

“You'll do it, then?”

“What, watch Alvin? Yes. Though I know I'll have a broken heart six times over before I bury him, yes, I'll turn my eyes back to that boy.”

“That man.”

“That Maker,” said Peggy.

“And the other?”

“I'll meddle if I can find a way.”

Becca nodded. “Good.” She nodded again. “We're done, now. The doors will lead you out of the house.”

That was all the good-bye that Peggy got. But what Becca said was true. Where once Peggy couldn't see a way out, now every corridor led to a door standing open, with the daylight outside. She didn't want to go through the doors back into her own world, though. She wanted to pass through the doors in the old cabin. The east door, into England. The west door, into Red country. Or the south door– where did it lead?

Nevertheless, it was this time and place where she belonged. There was a carriage waiting for her, and work to do, stirring up war by encouraging compassion for the slaves. She could live with that, yes, as Becca had said. Didn't Jesus himself say that he came to bring, not peace, but war? Turning brother against brother? If that's what it takes to remove the stain of slavery from this land, then so be it. I speak only of peaceful change– if others choose to kill or die rather than let the slaves go free, that is their choice, and I didn't cause it.