Red Prophet Page 0,132

it. In fact, he must have been looking the wrong direction or got himself twisted up, because pretty soon he found himself on the same familiar path he had followed, the path that first led him to the loom. He reversed direction, and after a short time he found himself again on the path to the loom. He could no more search backward to find the oldest end of the cloth than he could search forward to find where the newest threads were coming from.

He turned again to Ta-Kumsaw and Becca. Whatever whispered conversation they had carried on was over. Ta-Kumsaw sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, his head bowed. She was stroking his hair with gentle hands.

"This cloth is older than the oldest part of this house," said Alvin.

Becca didn't answer.

"This cloth's been going on forever."

"As long as men and women have known how to weave, this cloth has passed through the loom."

"But not this loom. This loom's new," said Alvin.

"We change looms from time to time. We build the new one around the old. It's what the men of our kind do."

"This cloth is older than the oldest White settlements in America," said Alvin.

"It was once a part of a larger cloth. But one day, back in our old country, we saw a large portion of the threads moving off the edge of the cloth. My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather built a new loom. We had the threads we needed. They pulled away from the old cloth; we continued it from there. It's still connected up - that's what you're seeing."

"But now it's here."

"It's here and there. Don't try to understand it, Alvin. I gave up long ago. But isn't it good to know that all of the threads of life are being woven into one great cloth?"

"Who's weaving the cloth for the Red folk that went west with Tenskwa-Tawa?" asked Alvin. "Those threads went off the cloth."

"That's not your business," said Becca. "We'll just say that another loom was built, and carried west."

"But Ta-Kumsaw said no White folk would ever cross the river to the west. The Prophet said it, too."

Ta-Kurnsaw turned slowly on the floor, without getting up. "Alvin," he said, "you're only a boy - "

"And I was only a girl," Becca reminded him, "when I first loved you." She turned to Alvin. "It's my daughter who carried the loom into the west. She could go because she's only half White." She again stroked Ta-Kumsaw's hair. "Isaac is my husband. My daughter Wieza is his daughter."

"Mana-Tawa," said Ta-Kumsaw.

"I thought for a time that Isaac would choose to stay here, to live with us. But then I watched as his thread moved away from us, even though his body still was with us. I knew he would go to be with his people. I knew why he had come to us, alone from the forest. There is a hunger deeper than the Red man's hunger for the song of the living forest, deeper than a blacksmith's yearning for the hot wet iron, deeper even than a doodlebug's longing for the hollow heart of the earth. That hunger brought Ta-Kumsaw to our house. My mother was still the weaver at the loom then. I taught Ta-Kumsaw to read and write; he rushed through my father's library, and read every other book in the valley, and we sent for more books from Philadelphia and he read those. He chose his own name, then, for the man who wrote the Principia. When we came of age, he married me. I had a baby. He left. When Wieza was three, he came back, built a loom, and took her west over the mountain to live with his people."

"And you let your own daughter go?"

"Just like one of my ancestors sat at her old loom and let her daughter go, across the ocean to this land, her with a new loom and her watchful father beside her, yes, I let her go." Becca smiled sadly at Alvin. "We all have our work, but there's no good work that doesn't have its cost. By the time Isaac took her, I was already in this room. Everything that happened has been good."

"You didn't even ask how your daughter was doing when he got here! You still haven't asked."

"I didn't have to ask," said Becca. "No harm comes to the keepers of the loom."

"Well, if your daughter's gone, who's going to take your place?"

"Perhaps another husband will come here, by and by. One