you've been hanging around here far too long. Measure's been learning right good. He's far enough ahead of the others that he can go on teaching in your absence. And him being a married man, no schoolgirl's going to get some foolish notion about him."
"I don't know," said Measure. "I'm pretty cute."
"You have my bags packed yet, Taleswapper?" asked Alvin.
"Ain't as if you need much luggage," said Taleswapper. "You're going to be traveling small and fast. I reckon there's only one burden that will weigh you down much. A certain farm implement."
"I couldn't leave it here?" asked Alvin.
"Not safe," said Taleswapper. "Not safe for your family, to have the rumor get about that the Maker is gone but he left the golden plow behind."
"Not safe for him to have the rumor say he took it with him," said Mother.
"Nobody on this planet is safer than Alvin, if he wants to be," said Measure.
"So I just pick up the plow, put it in a gunnysack, and head on out?" asked Alvin.
"That's about the best plan," said Armor-of-God. "Though I bet your ma will insist on you taking some salt pork with you, and a change of clothes."
"And me."
They all turned to the source of the small piping voice.
"He's taking me with him," said Arthur Stuart.
"You'd only slow him down, boy," said Father. "You got a good heart, but short legs."
"He ain't in no hurry," said Arthur, "specially figuring as he don't know where he's going."
"The point is you'd be in the way," said Armor-of-God. "He'd always have to be thinking of you, trying to keep you out of harm's way. There's plenty of places in this land where a free half-Black boy is going to get folks' dander up, and that won't be much help to Alvin either."
"You're talking like you think you got a choice," said Arthur. "But if Alvin goes, I go, and that's it. You can lock me in a closet, but someday I'll get out and then I'll follow him and find him or die trying."
They all looked at him in consternation. Arthur Stuart had been near silent since coming to Vigor after his adopted mother was murdered back in Hatrack River. Silent but hardworking, cooperative, obedient. This was a complete surprise, this attitude from him.
"And besides," said Arthur Stuart, "while Alvin's busy looking after the whole world, I'll be there to look after him."
"I think the boy should go," said Measure. "The Unmaker plainly ain't done with Alvin yet. He needs somebody to watch his back. I think Arthur's got it in him."
And that was pretty much it. Nobody could size up a fellow like Measure could.
Alvin walked to the hearth and pried up four stones. Nobody would have guessed that anything was hid under them, because until he raised the stones there wasn't so much as a crack in the mortar. He didn't dig in the earth under the stones; the plow was buried eight feet deep, and shoveling would have taken all day, not to mention the dismantling of the entire hearth. No, he just held out his hands and called to the plow, and willed the earth to float it up to him. A moment later, the plow bobbed to the surface of the soil like a cork on a still pond. Alvin could hear a couple of sharp breaths behind him - it still got to folks, even his own family, when he showed his knack so openly. Also, the gold had such a luster to it. As if, even in the pitch black of the darkest moonless stormy night, that plow would still be visible, the gold burning its way even through your closed eyelids to imprint its shining life straight onto your eyes, straight into your brain. The plow trembled under Alvin's hand.
"We got us a journey to take," Alvin murmured to the warm gold. "And maybe along the way we'll figure out what I made you for."
An hour later, Alvin stood at the back door of the house. Not that it took him an hour to pack - he'd spent most of the time down at the mill, fixing the pumps. Nor had he spent any of the time on farewells. They hadn't even sent word to any of the family that he was going, because word would get out and the last thing Alvin needed was for folks to be lying in wait for him when he headed into the forest. Mother and Father and Measure