She handed him the leather apron hanging from a peg on the wall, and he put it on by habit, without a thought. She hardly beard his words; all that he was telling her, she already knew from looking in his heartfire. Instead she was looking at him, thinking, Now he's a Maker, in part because of what I taught him. Maybe I'm finished now, maybe my life will be my own - but maybe not, maybe now I've just begun, maybe now I can treat him as a man, not as a pupil or a ward. He seemed to glow with an inner fire; and every step he took, the golden plow echoed, not by following him or tangling itself in his feet, but by slipping along on a line that could have been an orbit around him, well out of the way but close enough to be of use; as if it were a part of him, though unattached.
"I know," Peggy told him. "I understand. You are a Maker now."
"It's more than that!" he cried. "It's the Crystal City. I know how to build it now, Miss Larner. See, the city ain't the crystal towers that I saw, the city's the people inside it, and if I'm going to build the place I got to find the kind of folks who ought to be there, folks as true and loyal as this plow, folks who share the dream enough to want to build it, and keep on building it even if I'm not there. You see, Miss Larner? The Crystal City isn't a thing that a single Maker can make. It's a city of Makers; I got to find all kinds of folks and somehow make Makers out of them."
She knew as he said it that this was indeed the task that he was born for - and the labor that would break his heart. "Yes," she said. "That's true, I know it is." And in spite of herself, she couldn't sound like Miss Larner, calm and cool and distant. She sounded like herself, like her true feelings. She was burning up inside with the fire that Alvin lit there.
"Come with me, Miss Larner," said Alvin. "You know so much, and you're such a good teacher - I need your help."
No, Alvin, not those-words. I'll come with you for those words, yes, but say the other words, the ones I need so much to hear. "How can I teach what only you know how to do?" she asked him, trying to sound quiet, cahn.
"But it ain't just for the teaching, either - I can't do this alone. What I done tonight, it's so hard - I need to have you with me." He took a step toward her. The golden plow slipped across the floor toward her, behind her, if it marked the outer border of Alvin's largest self, then she was now well within that generous circle.
"What do you need me for?" asked Peggy. She refused to look within his hearfire, refused to see whether or not there was any chance that he might actually - no, she refused even to name to herself what it was she wanted now, for fear that somehow she'd discover that it couldn't possibly be so, that it could never happen, that somehow tonight all such paths had been irrevocably closed. Indeed, she realized, that was part of why she had been so caught up in exploring Arthur Stuart's new futures; he would be so close to Alvin that she could see much of Alvin's great and terrible future through Arthur's eyes, without ever having to know what she would know if she looked into Alvin's own hearfire: Alvin's heartfire would show her whether, in his many futures, there were any in which he loved her, and married her, and put that dear and perfect body into her arms to give her and get from her that gift that only lovers share.
"Come with me," he said. "I can't even think of going on out there without you, Miss Larner. I - " He laughed at himself. "I don't even know your first name, Miss Larner."
"Margaret," she said.
"Can I call you that? Margaret - will you come with me? I know you ain't what you seem to be, but I don't care what you look like under all that hexery. I feel like you're the only living soul who knows me like I really am, and