Alvin Jorneyman

Calvin nodded grimly.

“Everyone is a hypocrite except Calvin Miller?”

“Calvin Maker,” said Calvin. Even as he said it, he knew it was a mistake; he had never told anyone the name by which he thought of himself, and now he had blurted it out, a boast, a brag, a demand, to this most unsympathetic of listeners. This man who was most likely, of all men, to repeat Calvin's secret dream to others.

“Well, now it seems to be unanimous,” said Taleswapper. “We're all pretending to be something that we're not.”

“I am a Maker!” Calvin insisted, raising his voice, even though he knew he was making himself seem even weaker and more vulnerable. He just couldn't stop himself from talking to this slimy old man. “I've got all the knack for it that Alvin ever had, if anyone would bother to notice!”

“Made any millstones lately, without tools?” asked Taleswapper.

“I can make stones in a fence fit together like as if they growed that way out of the ground!”

“Healed any wounds?”

“I killed a bug crawling on my leg just a moment ago without so much as laying a hand on it.”

“Interesting. I ask of healing and you answer with killing. Doesn't sound like a Maker to me.”

“You said yourself that Alvin killed a man!”

“With his hands, not with his knack. A man who had just murdered an i

“Yes, there you are, Alvin is always righteous and wonderful, while Calvin can't do nothing right! But Alvin hisself told me the story of how he caused a bunch of roaches to get theirselfs kilt when he was a boy and–”

“And you learned nothing from his story, except that you have the power to torment insects.”

“He gets to do what he wants and then talks about how he's learned better now, but if I do the same things then I'm not worthy! I can't be taught any of his secrets because I'm not ready for them only I am ready for them, I'm just not ready to let Alvin decide how I'll use the knack I was born with. Who tells him what to do?”

“The i

“Well what about my i

“I imagine that your parents ask themselves this very question, and often.”

“Why can't I be allowed to figure things out on my own like Alvin did?”

“But of course you are being allowed to do exactly that,” said Taleswapper.

“No I'm not! He sits there trying to explain to those boneheaded no-knack followers of his how to get inside other things and learn what they are and how they're shaped inside and then ask them to take on new forms, as if that's a thing that folks can learn–”

“But they do learn it, don't they?”

“If you call an inch a year moving, then I guess you can call that learning,” said Calvin. “But me, the one who actually understands everything he says, the one who could actually put it all to use, he won't even let me in the room. If I stay there he just tells stories and makes jokes and won't teach a thing until I leave, and why? I'm his best pupil, ain't I? I learn it all, I soak it in fast and I can use it on the instant, but he won't teach me! He calls them others 'apprentice Makers' but me he won't even take on for a single lesson, all because I don't bow down and worship whenever he starts talking about how a Maker can never use his power to destroy, but only to build, or he loses it, which is nonsense, since a man's knack is his knack and–”

“It seems to me,” said Taleswapper, his voice sharp enough to cut through Calvin's raging, “that you are a singularly unteachable young man. You ask Alvin to teach you, and he tries to do it, but then you refuse to listen because you know what's nonsense and what matters, you know that a man doesn't have to make in order to be a Maker, you already know so much I'm surprised you still wait around here, wishing for Alvin to teach you things that you plainly have no desire to know.”

“I want him to teach me how to get into the small of things!” cried Calvin. “I want him to teach me how to change people the way he changed Arthur Stuart so the Finders couldn't Find him anymore! I want him to teach me how to get inside bones and blood vessels, how to turn iron to gold! I want me a golden plow like his and he won't teach me how!”

“And it has never occurred to you,” said Taleswapper, “that when he speaks of using the power of Making only to build things up, never to tear them down, he mighf be teaching you precisely the thing you are asking? Oh, Calvin, I'm so sorry to see that your mama did have one stupid child after all.”

Calvin felt the rage explode inside himself, and before he knew what he was doing he knocked the old man down and straddled his hips, pounding on his frail old ribs and belly. It took many blows before he realized that the old man wasn't fighting back. Have I killed him? Calvin wondered. What will I do if he's dead? They'll have me for murder, then. They won't understand how he provoked me, begging for a beating. It's not like I pla

Calvin put his fingers to Taleswapper's throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, feeble, but it probably was always feeble, given how old the fellow was.

“Didn't quite kill me, eh?” whispered Taleswapper.

“Didn't feel like it,” said Calvin.

“How many men will you have to beat up before everyone agrees that you're a Maker?”

Calvin wanted to hit him again. Didn't this old man learn anything?

“You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they'll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don't change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.”

Calvin, hot with shame, got up and stood over him. He restrained himself from kicking the old man until his head was jelly. “You've got a knack for words,” he said.

“True words in particular,” said Taleswapper.

“Lies, from all I can see,” said Calvin.

“A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren't there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can't stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”

“You did say one true thing,” said Calvin. “About its making no sense me waiting around here for Alvin to teach me what he plainly means to keep secret. I should've realized that Alvin wasn't never going to teach me anything, because he's afraid if people see me doing all the things he can do, he won't be king of the hill anymore. I have to find it out on my own, just like he did.”

“You have to find it out by learning the same things he did,” said Taleswapper. “Alone or as his pupil, though, I don't think you're capable of learning those things.”

“You're wrong,” said Calvin. “I'll prove it to you.”

“By learning to master your own will and use your power only to build things, only to help others?”

“By going out into the world and learning everything and coming back and showing Alvin who's got the real Maker's knack and who's just pretending.”

Taleswapper propped himself up on one elbow. “But Calvin, your actions here today have made the answer to that question as plain as day.”

Calvin wanted to kick him in his face. Silence that mouth. Break that shiny pate and watch the brains spill out into the meadow grass.

Instead he turned away and took a few steps toward the woods. He had a destination this time. East Civilization. The cities, the lands where people lived together cheek by jowl. Among them there would be those who could teach him. Or, failing that, those he could experiment with until he learned all that Alvin knew, and more. Calvin was wrong to have stayed here so long. Foolish to have kept hoping that he'd ever get any love or help from Alvin. I worshipped him, that was my mistake, thought Calvin. It took this boneheaded old fool to show me the kind of contempt that people have for me. Always comparing me to Alvin, perfect Alvin, Alvin the Maker, Alvin the virtuous son.