Taleswapper didn't show up for no reason, even if the old coot had no notion what the reason was himself. Maybe he was there to give Alvin some answers. So one day when the two of them were chopping wood out back, he asked, and Taleswapper answered like he always did, with a story.
"I heard a tale once about how a man who was building a wall as fast as he could, but somebody else was tearing it down faster than he could build it up. And he wondered how he could keep the wall from being torn down completely, let alone ever finish it. And the answer was easy: You can't build it alone."
"I remember that tale," said Alvin. "That tale is why I'm here, trying to teach these folks Making."
"I just wonder," said Taleswapper, "if you might be able to stretch that story, or maybe twist it a little and wring a bit more useful truth out of it."
"Wring away," said Alvin. "We'll find out whether the story is a wet cloth or a chicken's neck when you're done wringing."
"Well maybe what you need isn't a bunch of other stonemasons, cutting the stone and mixing the mortar and plumbing the wall and all those jobs. Maybe what you need is just a lot of cutters, and a lot of mortar mixers, and a lot of surveyors, and so on. Not everybody has to be a Maker. In fact, maybe all you need is just the one Maker."
The truth of what Taleswapper was saying was obvious; it had already occurred to Alvin many times, in other guises. What took him by surprise was how tears suddenly came to his own eyes, and he said softly, "Why does that make me so desperate sad, my friend?"
"Because you're a good man," said Taleswapper. "An evil man would delight to find out that he was the only one who could rule over a great many people working in a common cause."
"More than anything I don't want to be alone anymore," said Alvin. "I've been alone. Almost my whole time as a prentice in Hatrack River, I felt like there was nobody to take my part."
"But you were never alone the whole time," said Taleswapper.
"If you mean Miss Larner looking out for me - "
"Peggy is who I meant. I can't see why you still call her by that false name."
"That's the name of the woman I fell in love with," said Alvin. "But she knows my heart. She knows I killed that man and I didn't have to."
"The man who murdered her mother? I don't think she holds it against you."
"She knows what kind of man I am and she doesn't love me, that's what," said Alvin. "So I am alone, the minute I leave this place. And besides, leaving here is like lining up all these people and slapping their faces and saying, You failed so I'm gone."
At that Taleswapper just laughed. "That is plain foolishness and you know it. Truth is you've already taught them everything, and now it's just a matter of practice. They don't need you here anymore."
"But nobody needs me anywhere else," said Alvin.
Taleswapper laughed again.
"Stop laughing and tell me what's funny."
"A joke you have to explain isn't going to be funny anyway," said Taleswapper, "so there ain't no point in explaining it."
"You're no help," said Alvin, burying the head of his axe in the chopping stump.
"I'm a great help," said Taleswapper. "You just don't want to be helped yet."
"Yes I do! I just don't need riddles, I need answers!"
"You need somebody to tell you what to do? That's a surprise. Still an apprentice then, after all? Want to turn your life over to somebody else? For how long, another seven years?"
"I may not be a prentice anymore," said Alvin, "but that don't mean I'm a master. I'm just a journeyman."
"Then hire on somewhere," said Taleswapper. "You've still got things to learn."
"I know," said Alvin, "But I don't know where to go to learn it. There's that crystal city I saw in the twister with Tenskwa Tawa. I don't know how to build it. I don't know where to build it. I don't even know why to build it, except that it ought to exist and I ought to make it exist."
"There you are," said Taleswapper. "Like I said, you've already taught everybody here everything you know, twice over. All you're doing now is helping them practice - and cheating now and then by helping them,