The Crystal City Page 0,84
carefully set the plow down in the damp grass. Must have been a heavy dew. Or it rained in the night. Anyway, the moment he set it down, they rushed forward, reaching for the plow, causing it to rise into the air.
"Gold she fly!" the guide admonished him.
"It's a plow," said Alvin. "It's meant to set on the dirt." In fact, it was meant to bite into the earth and churn it up, breaking up clods and baring the soil to the heat of the sun. And in that moment Alvin understood the nature of the plow. All this time he'd been thinking of what it was made of, the living gold, but it was a plow first, before it turned to gold, and it was long overdue to be put to its proper use. Just because a thing was made of metal which, if you melted it down, would be worth a lot of money, didn't mean it wasn't still the kind of thing it was made to be.
Dressed, holding the poke in his hand, Alvin simply drew the mouth of it over the plow there in the air, then slung the poke over his shoulder. It went docilely into place, just like always.
The men sighed to see it.
And then another black man approached, carefully holding something on a mat of leaves. It shimmered in the bright sun like crystal, and Alvin recognized it at once. If he had had any doubt that these were the same men he and Arthur Stuart had freed from the Yazoo Queen, it was gone now, because the crystal cube he held was made with a drop of his own blood in water on the Yazoo Queen. He had given them two such cubes, to use as tokens to show to the reds on the other side of the river. They would know that such things could only be made by Tenskwa-Tawa himself or one that he had taught, and it would win them safe passage. Apparently it had worked.
"Now," said Alvin. "Where am I, and where's Tenskwa-Tawa?"
"Profeta Roja," said one of the men. "Ten-si-ki-wa Ta-wa." The way he pronounced it sounded more like the way reds said the Prophet's name. Well, speaking other languages wasn't Alvin's knack, that was already settled and he wasn't going to be embarrassed about calling his friend by the wrong name all these years.
"Ten-sa-ka-wa Ta-wa," he muttered.
One of the men tried to correct him, but Alvin gave up right away. Tenskwa-Tawa had been answering to that name for years and if he minded, he'd've mentioned it by now.
"We stay," said the guide. "Wait-for."
So Tenskwa-Tawa was coming. Well, Alvin could wait as well as the next man-especially now he was dressed and had the plow back. It also reassured him to find out that the plow could take care of itself, somewhat. A plow that flies from your hand when you reach to take it would be hard to put over a fire and melt down. Though that wasn't to say some powerful hexery might not do the trick. Still, it wasn't a thing a thief could easily do. Alvin might fret a little less about the plow, knowing.
Alvin spent what was left of the morning trying to learn the names of some of these men, but it turned into a game of laughing at his bad pronunciation. For all he knew they weren't telling him names at all, but making him say ugly cuss words in their language.
There was food at noon, but this, too, was strange and unfamiliar. A thin flat bread like a flapjack, only thinner, smeared with a spicy paste that might have contained mashed beans but then might not. It was good, though. Burned a little, and drinking water didn't help, but they had some pawpaw fruit sliced up in a basket and a bite of that took away the sting. And after a while he got used to the burning and kind of liked it.
After the meal, Alvin went walking to try to orient himself. He found that the whole troop followed him along like children in a small town, following a stranger. He wasn't sure whether they were protecting him or keeping watch to make sure he didn't run away or were simply curious what he'd do next.
He found that they were on a wide, flat island near the right bank of the Mizzippy. The fog, which was on their side of the river, ended at the shoreline, sharp as butter