Only when all their familiar jobs was done did Horace present himself like militia on the town square, shoulders squared and eyes right on Alvin. “Well, now, Al, I reckon it’s up to you to lead the way.”
“Ain’t we got to track them?” asked Po.
“Alvin knows where they are,” said Horace.
“Well ain’t that nice,” said Po. “And does he know whether they got their guns aimed at our heads?”
“Yes,” said Alvin. He said it in such a way as to make it plain that he didn’t want no more questions.
It wasn’t plain enough for Po. “You telling me this boy’s a torch, or what? Most I heard was he got him a knack for shoeing horses.”
Here was the bad part about having somebody else along. Alvin didn’t have no wish to tell Po Doggly what all he could do, but he couldn’t very well tell the man that he didn’t trust him.
It was Horace came to the rescue. “Po, I got to tell you, Alvin ain’t part of the story of this night.”
“Looks to me like he’s the biggest part.”
“I tell you, Po, when this story gets told, it was you and me came along and happened to find the Finders asleep, you understand?”
Po wrinkled his brow, then nodded. “Just tell me this, boy. Whatever knack you got, you a Christian? I don’t even ask that you be a Methodist.”
“Yes sir,” said Alvin. “I’m a Christian, I reckon. I hold to the Bible.”
“Good then,” said Po. “I just don’t want to get myself all mixed up in devil stuff.”
“Not with me,” said Alvin.
“All right then. Best if I don’t know what you do, Al. Just take a care not to get me killed because I don’t know it.”
Alvin stuck out his hand. Po shook it and grinned. “You blacksmiths got to be strong as a bear.”
“Me?” said Alvin. “A bear gets in my way, I beat on his head till he’s a wolverine.”
“I like your brag, boy.”
A moment’s pause, and then Alvin led them off, following the thread that connected him to Arthur Stuart.
It wasn’t all that far, but it took them an hour cutting through the woods in the dark—with all the leaves out, there wasn’t much moonlight got to the ground. Without Alvin’s sense of the forest around them, it would’ve taken three times as long and ten times the noise.
They found the Finders asleep in a clearing with a campfire dying down between them. The white-haired Finder was curled up on his bedroll. The black-haired Finder must’ve been left on watch; he
was snoring away leaning against a tree. Their horses were asleep not far off. Alvin stopped them before they got close enough to disturb the animals.
Arthur Stuart was wide awake, sitting there staring into the fire.
Alvin sat there a minute, trying to figure how to do this. He wasn’t sure how smart the Finders might be. Could they find scraps of dried skin, fallen-off hairs, something like that, and use it for a new cachet? Just in case, it wouldn’t do no good to change Arthur right where he was; nor would it be too smart to head on out into the clearing where they might leave bits of their own selves, as proof of who stole Arthur away.
So from a distance, Alvin got inside the iron of the manacles and made cracks in all four parts, so they fell away to the ground at once, with a clank. The noise bothered the horses, who nickered a bit, but the Finders were still sleeping like the dead. Arthur, though, it didn’t take him a second to figure out what was happening. He jumped to his feet all at once and started looking around for Alvin at the clearing’s edge.
Alvin whistled, trying to match the song of a redbird. It was a pretty bad imitation, as birdcalls go, but Arthur heard it and knew that it was Alvin calling him. Without a moment’s waiting or worrying, Arthur plunged right into the woods and not five minutes later, with a few more bad birdcalls to guide him, he was face to face with Alvin.
Of course Arthur Stuart made as if to give Alvin a big old hug, but Alvin held up a hand. “Don’t touch anybody or anything,” he whispered. “I’ve got to make a change in you, Arthur Stuart, so the Finders can’t catch you again.”
“I don’t mind,” said Arthur.
“I don’t dare have a single scrap of the old way you used to be. You got hairs and skin and such all over in your clothes. So strip them off.”
Arthur Stuart didn’t hesitate. In a few moments his clothes were in a pile at his feet.
“Excuse me for not knowing a bit about this,” said Po, “but if you leave those clothes a-lying there, them Finders’ll know he come
this way, and that points north to them sure as if we painted a big white arrow on the ground.”
“Reckon you’re right,” said Alvin.
“So have Arthur Stuart bring them along and float them down the river,” said Horace.
“Just make sure you don’t touch Arthur or nothing,” said Alvin. “Arthur, you just pick up your clothes and follow along slow and careful. If you get lost, give me a redbird whistle and I’ll whistle back till you find us.”
“I knew you was coming, Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart. “You too, Pa.”
“So did them Finders,” said Horace, “and much as I wish we could arrange it, they ain’t going to sleep forever.”
“Wait a minute anyway,” said Alvin. He sent his bug back into the manacles and drew them back together, fit them tight, joined the iron again as if it had been cast that way. Now they lay on the ground unbroken, fastened tight, giving no sign of how the boy got free.
“I don’t suppose you’re maybe breaking their legs or something, Alvin,” said Horace.
“Can he
do
that from here?” asked Po.
“I’m doing no such thing,” said Alvin. “What we want is for the Finders to give up searching for a boy who as far as they can tell doesn’t exist no more.”
“Well that makes sense, but I still like thinking of them Finders with their legs broke,” said Horace.
Alvin grinned and plunged off into the forest, deliberately making enough noise and moving slow enough that the others could follow him in the near-darkness; if he wanted to, he could’ve moved like a Red man through the woods, making not a sound, leaving no whiff of a trail that anyone could follow.
They got to the river and stopped. Alvin didn’t want Arthur getting into the boat in his present skin, leaving traces of himself all over. So if he was going to change him, he had to do it here.
“Toss them clothes, boy,” said Horace. “Far as you can.”
Arthur took a step or two into the water. It made Alvin scared,
for with his inward eye he saw it as if Arthur, made of light and earth and air, suddenly got part of himself disappeared into the blackness of the water. Still, the water hadn’t harmed them none on the trip here, and Alvin saw as how it might even be useful.
Arthur Stuart pitched his wad of clothes out into the river. The current wasn’t all that strong; they watched the clothes turn lazily and float downstream, gradually drifting apart. Arthur stood there, up to his butt in water, watching the clothes. No, not watching them—he didn’t turn a speck when they drifted far to the left. He was just looking at the north shore, the free side of the river.
“I been here afore,” he said. “I seen this boat.”
“Might be,” said Horace. “Though you was a mite young to remember it. Po and I, we helped your mama into this very boat. My daughter Peggy held you when we got to shore.”
“My sister Peggy,” said Arthur. He turned around and looked at Horace, like as if it was really a question.
“I reckon so,” said Horace, and that was the answer.
“Just stand there, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin. “When I change you, I got to change you all over, inside and out. Better to do that in the water, where all the dead skin with your old self marked in it can wash away.”
“You going to make me White?” asked Arthur Stuart.
“Can you
do
that?” asked Po Doggly.
“I don’t know what all is going to change,” said Alvin. “I hope I don’t make you White, though. That’d be like stealing away from you the part of you your mama gave you.”
“They don’t make White boys be slaves,” said Arthur Stuart.
“They ain’t going to make this partickler mixup boy a slave anyhow,” said Alvin. “Not if I can help it. Now just stand there, stand right still, and let me figure this out.”
They all stood there, the men and the boy, while Alvin studied inside Arthur Stuart, finding that tiny signature that marked every living bit of him.
Alvin knew he couldn’t just go changing it willy-nilly, since he didn’t rightly understand what all that signature was
for.
He just knew that it was somehow part of what made Arthur himself, and
you don’t just change that. Maybe changing the wrong thing might strike him blind, or make his blood turn to rainwater or something. How could Alvin know?
It was seeing the string still connecting them, heart to heart, that gave Alvin the idea—that and remembering what the Redbird said, using Arthur Stuart’s own lips to say it. “The Maker is the one who is part of what he Makes.” Alvin stripped off his own shirt and then stepped out into the water and knelt down in it, so he was near eye-to-eye with Arthur Stuart, cool water swirling gently around his waist. Then he put out his hands and pulled Arthur Stuart to him and held him there, breast to breast, hands on shoulders.
“I thought we wasn’t supposed to touch the boy,” said Po.
“Hush up you blame fool,” said Horace Guester. “Alvin knows what he’s doing.”
I wish that was true. thought Alvin. But at least he had an idea what to do, and that was better than nothing. Now that their living skin was pressed together, Alvin could look and compare Arthur’s secret signature with his own. Most of it was the same, exactly the same, and the way Alvin figured, that’s the part that makes us both human instead of cows or frogs or pigs or chickens. That’s the part I don’t dare change, not a bit of it.
The rest—I can change that. But not any old how. What good to save him if I turn him bright yellow or make him stupid or something?
So Alvin did the only thing as made sense to him. He changed bits of Arthur’s signature to be just like Alvin’s own. Not
all
that was different—not all that much, in fact. Just a little. But even a little meant that Arthur Stuart had stopped being completely himself and started being partly Alvin. It seemed to Alvin that what he was doing was terrible and wonderful at the same time.
How much? How much did he have to change till the Finders wouldn’t know the boy? Surely not all. Surely just
this
much, just
these
changes. There was no way to know. All that Alvin could do was guess, and so he took his guess and that was it.
That was only the beginning, of course. Now he started in changing
all the other signatures to match the new one, each living bit of Arthur, one by one, as fast as he could. Dozens of them, hundreds of them; he found each new signature and changed it to fit the new pattern.
Hundreds of them, and hundreds more, and still he had changed no more than a tiny patch of skin on Arthur’s chest. How could he hope to change the boy’s whole body, going so slow?
“It hurts,” whispered Arthur.
Alvin drew away from him. “I ain’t doing nothing to hurt you, Arthur Stuart.”
Arthur looked down at his chest. “Right here,” he said, touching the spot where Alvin had been working.
Alvin looked in the moonlight and saw that indeed that spot seemed to be swollen, changed, darkened. He looked again, only not with his eyes, and saw that the rest of Arthur’s body was attacking the part that Alvin changed, killing it bit by bit, fast as it could.
Of course. What did he expect? The signature was the way the body recognized itseif—that’s why every living bit of a body had to have that signature in it. If it wasn’t there, the body knew it had to be a disease or something and killed it. Wasn’t it bad enough that changing Arthur was taking so long? Now Alvin knew that it wouldn’t do no good to change him at all—the more he changed him, the sicker he’d get and the more Arthur Stuart’s own body would try to kill itself until the boy either died or shed the new changed part.
It was just like Taleswapper’s old story, about trying to build a wall so big that by the time you got halfway through building it, the oldest parts of it had already crumbled to dust. How could you build such a wall if it was getting broke down faster than you could build it up?
“I can’t,” said Alvin. “I’m trying to do what can’t be done.”
“Well if you can’t do it,” said Po Doggly, “I hope you can fly, cause that’s the only way you can get that boy to Canada before the Finders catch up with you.”
“I can’t,” said Alvin.
“You’re just tired,” said Horace. “We’ll all just hush up so you can think.”
“Won’t do any good,” said Alvin.
“My mama could flay,” said Arthur Stuart.
Alvin sighed in impatience at this same old story coming back again.
“It’s true, you know,” said Horace. “Little Peggy told me. That little black slave girl, she diddled with some ash and blackbird feathers and such, and flew straight up here. That’s what killed her. I couldn’t believe it the first time I realized the boy remembers, and we always kept our mouths shut about it hoping he’d forget. But I got to tell you, Alvin. it’d be a pure shame if that girl died just so you could give up on us at this same spot in the river seven years later.”