don't mind not having one, my dear - "
"You have the knack of seeing potential beauty as if it were already there, and by seeing, you let it come to be."
"What a lovely idea," said Mistress Modesty.
"Do you doubt me?"
"I don't doubt that yqu believe what you say."
There was no point in arguing. Mistress Modesty believed her, but was afraid to believe. It didn't matter, though. What mattered was Alvin, finishing his second well: He had saved himself once; he thought the danger was over. Now he sat at the edge of the well, just to rest a moment; now he lay down. Didn't he see the Unmaker moving close to him? Didn't he realize that his very sleepiness opened himself wide for the Unmaker to enter him?
"No!" whispered Peggy. "Don't sleep!"
"Ah," said Mistress Modesty. "You speak to him. Can he hear you?"
"Never," said Peggy. "Never a word."
"Then what can you do?"
"Nothing. Nothing I can think of."
"You told me you used his caul - "
"It's a part of his power, that's what I use. But even his knack can't send away what came at his own call. I never had the knowledge to fend off the Unmaker itself, anyway, even if I had a yard of his caulflesh, and not just a scrap of it."
Peggy watched in desperate silence as Alvin's eyes closed. "He sleeps."
"If the Unmaker wins, will he die?"
"I don't know. Perhaps. Perhaps he'll disappear, eaten away to nothing. Or perhaps the Unmaker will own him - "
"Can't you see the future, torch girl?"
"All paths lead into darkness, and I see no path emerging."
"Then it's over," whispered Mistress Modesty.
Peggy could feel something cold on her cheeks. Ah, of course: her own tears drying in the cool breeze.
"But if Alvin were awake, he could fend off this invisible enemy?" Mistress Modesty asked. "Sorry to bother you with questions, but if I know how it works, perhaps I can help you think of something.:
"No, no, it's beyond us, we can only watch - " Yet even as Peggy rejected Mistress Modesty's suggestion, her mind leapt ahead to ways of using it. I must waken him. I don't have to fight the Unmaker, but if I waken him, then he can do his fighting for himself. Weak and weary though he is, he might still find a way to victory. At once Peggy turned and rushed back into her room, scrabbled through her top drawer until she found the carven box that held the caul.
"Should I leave?" Mistress Modesty had followed her.
"Stay with me," said Peggy. "Please, for company. For comfort, if I fail."
"You won't fail," said Mistress Modesty. "He won't fail, if he's the man you say he is."
Peggy barely heard her. She sat on the edge of her bed, searching in Alvin's heartfire for some way to waken him. Normally she could use his senses even when he slept, hearing what he heard, seeing his memory of the place around him. But now, with the Unmaker seeping in, his senses were fading. She could not trust them. Desperately she cast about for some other plan. A loud noise? Using what little was left of Alvin's sense of the life around him, she found a tree, then rubbed a tiny bit of the caul and tried - as she had seen Alvin do it - to picture in her mind how the wood in the branch would come apart. It was painfully slow - Alvin did it so quickly! - but at last she made it fall. Too late. He barely heard it. The Unmaker had undone so much of the air around him that the trembling of sound could not pass through it. Perhaps Alvin noticed; perhaps he came a bit closer to wakefulness. Perhaps not.
How can I waken him, when he is so insensible that nothing can disturb him? Once I held this caul as a ridgebeam tumbled toward him; I burned a childsize gap in it, so that the hair of his head wasn't even touched. Once a millstone fell toward his leg; I split it in half. Once his own father stood in a loft, pitchfork in hand, driven by the Unmaker's madness until he had decided to murder his own most beloved son,; I brought Taleswapper down the hill to him, distracting the father from his dark purpose and driving off the Unmaker.
How? How did Taleswapper's coming drive off the Destroyer? Because he would have seen the hateful beast and given