then? She'll always remember that she betrayed a friend: That's a hard one. It'll hurt her. Won't it, Peggy?"
"Oh, you actually want my advice about something?"
"I want the truth. Fve been telling the truth, and so have you, so just say it."
"Yes," said Peggy. "It would hurt Ramona greatly to testify against Amy."
"So we won't do it," said Alvin. "Nor do I want to see Vilate humiliated by having her hexes removed. She sets a store by being taken for beautiful."
"Alvin," said Verily, "I know you're a good man and wiser than me, but surely you can see that you can't let courtesy to a few individuals destroy all that you were put here on this earth to do!"
The others agreed.
Alvin looked as miserable as Verily had ever seen a man look, and Verily had seen men condemned to hang or burn. "Then you don't understand," he said. "It's true that sometimes people have to suffer to make something good come to be. But when I have it in my power to save them from suffering it, and bear it myself, well then that's part of what I do. That's part of Making. If I have it in my power, then I bear it. Don't you see?"
"No," said Peggy. "You don't have it in your power."
"Is that the honest torch talking? Or my friend?"
She hesitated only a moment. "Your friend. This passage in your heartfire is dark to me."
"I figured it was. And I think the reason is because I got to do some Making. I got to do something that's never been done before, to Make something new. If I do it, then I can go on. If I don't, then I go to jail and my path through life takes another course."
"Would you go to jail?" asked Arthur Stuart. "Would you really stay in prison for years and years?"
Alvin shrugged. "There are hexes I can't undo. I think if I was convicted, they'd see to it that I was bound about like that. But even if I could get away, what would it matter? I couldn't do my work here in America. And I don't know that my work could be done anywhere else. If there's any reason to my life at all, then there's a reason I was born here and not in England or Russia or China or something. Here's where my work's to be done."
"So you're saying that I can't use the two best witnesses to defend you?" asked Verily.
"My best witness is the truth. Somebody's going to speak it, that's for sure. But it won't be Miss Larner, and it won't be Ramona."
Peggy leaned down and looked Alvin in the eye, their faces not six inches apart. "Alvin Smith, you wretched boy, I gave my childhood to you, to keep you safe from the Unmaker, and now you tell me I have to stand by and watch you throw all that sacrifice away?"
"I already asked you for the whole rest of your life," said Alvin. "What do I want with your ruin? You lost your childhood for me. You lost your mother for me. Don't lose any more. I would have taken everything, yes, and given you everything too, but I won't take less because I can't give less. You'll take nothing from me, so I'll take nothing from you. If that don't make sense to you then you ain't as smart as you let on, Miss Larner."
"Why don't those two just get married and make babies?" said Arthur Stuart. "Pa said that."
Her face stony, Peggy turned away from them. "It has to be on your terms, doesn't it, Alvin. Everything on your terms."
"My terms?" said Alvin. "It wasn't my terms to say these things to you in front of others, though at least it's my friends and not strangers who have to hear them. I love you, Miss Larner. I love you, Margaret. I don't want you in that courtroom, I want you in my arms, in my life, in all my dreams and works for all time to come."
Peggy clung to the bars of the jail, her face averted from the others.
Arthur Stuart walked around to the outside of the cell and looked guilelessly up into her face. "Why don't you just marry him instead of crying like that? Don't you love him? You're real pretty and he's a good-looking man. You'd have damn cute babies. Pa said that."
"Hush, Arthur Stuart," said Measure.
Peggy slid down until she was kneeling, and then she