The Crystal City Page 0,41
something else and she got pregnant with you and so she threw herself from the ship and rode the back of a shark to shore and gave birth to you at the very mouth of the river."
"She never told me, her," said Dead Mary. "Might be so, might not."
Alvin rose to his feet, still standing in the water, and turned to hold the sphere out to her. "It's heavy," he said.
"I can bear any burden," she said, "if I take it freely." And it was true. Though she staggered a little from the weight, she held the ball to her and didn't let it fall.
"Don't look in it," said Alvin.
"It's in front of my face," she said. "How can I not look?" And yet she didn't look. She closed her eyes tightly. "Bad enough to know what I already know about people," she said. "I don't want to know all this else."
Alvin peeled off his shirt and draped it over the sphere. "I'll take it now," he said.
"No," said Dead Mary. "You need all the strength you have for tonight's work."
All the children were sitting on the floor in every room on the main floor. The older ones all had a poke to carry, stuffed with every scrap of food in the house. Arthur Stuart admired how they all obeyed Mama Squirrel, without all that much fussing from her or from them.
What he didn't know was what they were going to do about Papa Moose. He lay on the kitchen floor, wide awake now, but with his eyes tight shut, saying nothing, making no groan, showing no wince, but still a streak of tears ran from both eyes down into his hair and ears. Arthur Stuart longed to help him, knew that all the little bones were shaped wrong and didn't fit, pinching here and there, the ligaments and tendons sometimes too short, sometimes too long for the place they were supposed to be. What he didn't know was how to get them to change into something closer to what was right.
The kitchen door opened and Alvin stepped in. Alvin wore no shirt, and Arthur Stuart noticed how much slacker he looked than he did in the days when he actually did a blacksmith's work every day. But slack as he was, compared to Arthur's own self, Alvin was still massive, breasting the air like a great ship with full-bellied sails.
Before Arthur Stuart could wonder what he'd done with his shirt, Dead Mary came in behind him carrying something with Alvin's shirt draped over it.
Calvin hadn't bothered them a bit after causing Papa Moose all this pain. But now that Alvin was here, he appeared on the instant, striding through the front rooms of the house, calling out to his brother. "Alvin, you come in good time! You should see the mess your stepbrother-in-law done caused here, meddling in this good man's foot."
Arthur Stuart didn't bother to answer, knowing that Alvin knew Calvin too well to believe his account.
Alvin walked up and stood over Papa Moose. He closed his eyes; Arthur Stuart thought for a moment he could feel Alvin's doodlebug warm his own inside the remade foot. Looking at no one, Alvin spoke softly. "On this night of all nights I need all my strength, and now you make me spend it on something that could have waited another week or another year."
"Then wait," said Mama Squirrel hotly. "You think he ain't man enough to bear it? Oh, he can. I'll carry him if I have to, me and some of the bigger boys. My Moose, he don't want to cost us what we can't afford to pay. He'd die for these children, Alvin, you know he would."
They all knew he would.
"But I need him walking," said Alvin. "I need his strength. I'll spend some of mine on him, and later he can spend some of his on me."
Arthur Stuart tried so hard to keep up with what Alvin was doing. But it was too quick. Alvin was too skilled at this. Bones that weren't shaped right suddenly were. Tendons that wrapped themselves all wrong slid like snakes into place. In no more than a minute it was done, and Papa Moose cried out.
No, it wasn't a cry. It was a great sigh of relief, so sharp and sudden that it sounded like a shout.
"God bless you sir," said Mama Squirrel.
Papa Moose stood up and promptly fell back down the moment he tried to take a step.
"I don't know