Red Prophet Page 0,76

to cast his mind into the Prophet's body, to heal the wounds.

"No!" cried the Prophet. "This is the power of the Red man - the blood of his body - the fire of the land!"

Then he turned and started walking out into Lake Mizogan.

No, not into the lake. Onto it. Alvin couldn't hardly believe it, but under the Prophet's bloody feet the water became smooth and flat as glass, and the Prophet was standing on it. His blood pooled on the surface, deep red. A few yards away, the water became loose and choppy, wind-whipped waves rushing toward the smooth place and then just flattening, calming, becoming smooth.

The Prophet kept walking, farther out onto the water, his bloody footprints marking the smooth path through the storm.

Al looked back at the tornadoes. They were close now, almost overhead. Al could feel them twisting inside him, as if he were part of the clouds, and these were the great raging emotions of his own soul.

Out on the water, the Prophet raised his hands and pointed at one of the twisters. Almost immediately, the other three twisters rose up, sucked back up into the clouds and disappeared. But the other came nearer, until it was directly over the Prophet, maybe a hundred feet up. It was near enough that around the edges of the Prophet's glassy smooth path, the water was leaping up, as if it wanted to dive upward into the clouds; the water started to circle, too, twisting around and around with the wind under the twister.

"Come!" shouted the Prophet.

Alvin couldn't hear him, but he saw his eyes - even from that far away - saw his lips move, and knew what the Prophet wanted. Alvin didn't hesitate. He stepped out onto the water.

By now, of course, Measure was caught up with him, and when Al started walking onto the warm, smooth glass of the Prophet's path, Measure shouted at him, grabbed at him. Before he could touch the boy, though, the Reds had him, pulled him back; he screamed at Alvin to come back, don't go, don't go onto the water - Alvin heard him, and Alvin was as scared as he could be. But the Shining Man was waiting for him under the mouth of the tornado, standing on the water. Inside himself Al felt such a longing, like Moses when he saw the burning bush - I have to stop and see this thing, said Moses, and that's what Alvin was saying, I have to go and see what this is. Because this wasn't the kind of thing that happened in the natural universe, and that was the truth. There wasn't no beseeching or hex or witchery he ever heard of that could call a tornado and turn a stormy lake into glass. Whatever this Red man was doing, it was the most important thing Al ever saw or ever was likely to see in his life.

And the Prophet loved him. That was one thing Al didn't have no doubt of. The Shining Man had stood once at the foot of his bed and taught him. Al remembered that the Shining Man cut himself then, too. Whatever the Prophet was doing, he used his own blood and pain to do it with. There was a real majesty to that. Under the circumstances, Al can't be much blamed for feeling kind of worshipful as he walked out onto the water.

Behind him, the path loosened up, dissolved, disappeared. He felt the waves licking at his heels. It scared him, but as long as he walked forward there wasn't no harm done to him. And finally he stood with the Prophet, who reached out and took Alvin's hands in his. "Stand with me," shouted the Prophet. "Stand here in the eye of the land, and see!"

Then the tornado sank quickly downward; the water leaped up, rising like a wall around them. They were in the very center of the tornado, getting sucked upward -

Until the Prophet reached out one bloody hand and touched the waterspout, and it, too, went smooth and hard as glass. No, not glass. It was as clear and clean as a drop of dew on a spiderweb. There wasn't no storm now. Just Al and the Shining Man, in the middle of a tower of crystal, bright and transparent.

Only instead of being like a window that showed what was happening outside, Al couldn't see the lake or the storm or