little knowing it, when they spoke of the evil "Boy Renegado," the white boy who went with Ta-Kumsaw in all his travels in the last year before his defeat at Fort Detroit. It was in that guise that Alvin came here, and walked down this hall, yes, turning right here, yes, tracking the folded cloth into the oldest part of the house, the original cabin, into the slanting light that seems to have no source, as if it merely seeped in through the chinks between the logs. And here, if I open this door, I will find the woman with the loom. This is the place of weaving.
Aunt Becca. Of course she knew the name. Becca, the weaver who held the threads of all the lives in the White man's lands in North America.
The woman at the loom looked up. "I didn't want you here," she said softly.
"Nor did I plan to come," said Peggy. "The truth is, I had forgotten you. You slipped my mind."
"I'm supposed to slip your mind. I slip all minds."
"Except one or two?"
~"My husband remembers me."
"Ta-Kumsaw? He isn't dead, then?"
Becca snorted. "My husband's name is Isaac."
That was Ta-Kumsaw's White name. "Don't quibble with me," said Peggy. "Something called me here. If it wasn't you, who was it?"
"My untalented sister. The one who breaks threads whenever she touches the loom."
Aunt Becca, the children had called the weaver. "Is your sister the mother of the children I met?"
"The murderous little boy who kills squirrels for sport? His brutal sisters? I think of them as the four horses of the apocalypse. The boy is war. The sisters are still sorting themselves out among the other forces of destruction."
"You speak metaphorically, I hope," said Peggy.
"I hope not," said Becca. "Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space." .
"Why would your sister have brought me here? She didn't seem to know me at the door."
"You're the judge," said Becca. "I found a purple thread of justice in the loom, and it was you. I didn't want you here, but I knew that you'd come, because I knew my sister would have you here."
"Why? I'm no judge. I'm guilty myself."
"You see? Your judgment includes everyone. Even those who are invisible to you."
"Invisible?" But she knew before asking what it was that Becca meant.
"Your vision, your torching, as you quaintly call it - you see where people are in the many paths of their lives. But I am not on the path of time. Nor is my sister. We don't belong anywhere in your prophecies or in the memories of those who know us. Only in the present moment are we here."
"Yet I remember your first word long enough to make sense of the whole sentence," said Peggy.
"Ah," said Becca. "The judge insists on correctness of speech. Boundaries are not so clear, Margaret Larner. You remember perfectly now; but what will you remember in a week from now? What you forget of me, you'll forget so completely that you won't remember that you once knew it. Then my statement will be true, but you'll forget that I said it."
"I think not."
Becca smiled.
"Show me the thread," said Peggy.
"We don't do that."
"What harm can it do? I've already seen all the possible paths of my life."
"But you haven't seen which one you'll choose," said Becca.
"And you have?"
"At this moment, no," said Becca. "But in the moment that contains all moments, yes. I've seen the course of your life. That isn't why you came, though. Not to find out something as stupid as whether you'll marry the boy you've nurtured all these years. You will or you won't. What is that to me?"
"I don't know," said Peggy. "I wonder why you exist at all. You change nothing. You merely see. You weave, but the threads are out of your control. You are meaningless."
"So you say," said Becca.
"And yet you have a life, or had one. You loved Ta-Kumsaw - or Isaac, whatever name you use. So loving some boy, marrying him, that didn't always seem stupid to you."
"So you say," said Becca.
"Or do you include yourself in that? Do you call yourself stupid in having loved and married? You can't pretend to be inhuman when you loved and lost a man."
"Lost?" she asked. "I see him every day."
"He comes here? To Appalachee?"
Becca hooted. "I think not!"
"How many threads broke under your hand with that pass of the shuttlecock?" asked Peggy.
"Too many," said Becca. "And not enough."
"Did you break