lad. That's when I'll let you write in this book."
"What if I don't ever whip him?"
"Then this book won't amount to much, anyway."
Tears sprang to Alvin's eyes. "What if I die?"
Taleswapper felt a thrill of fear. "How's the leg?"
The boy shrugged. He blinked back the tears. They were gone.
"That's no answer, lad."
"It won't stop hurting."
"It'll be that way till the bone knits."
Alvin Junior smiled wanly. "Bone's all knit."
"Then why don't you walk?"
"It pains me, Taleswapper. It never goes away. It's got a bad place on the bone, and I ain't figured out yet how to make it right."
"You'll find a way."
"I ain't found it yet."
"An old trapper once said to me, 'It don't matter if you start at the bung or the breastbone, any old way you get the skin off a panther is a good way.'"
"Is that a proverb?"
"It's close. You'll find a way, even if it isn't what you expect."
"Nothing's what I expect," said Alvin. "Nothing turns out like anything I figured."
"You're ten years old, lad. Weary of the world already?"
Alvin kept rubbing folds of the blanket between his thumb and fingers. "Taleswapper, I'm dying."
Taleswapper studied his face, trying to see death there. It wasn't. "I don't think so."
"The bad place on my leg. It's growing. Slow, maybe, but it's growing. It's invisible, and it's eating away at the hard places of the bone, and after a while it'll go faster and faster and - "
"And Unmake you."
Alvin started to cry for real this time, and his hands were shaking. "I'm scared to die, Taleswapper, but it got inside me and I can't get it out."
Taleswapper laid a hand on his, to still the trembling. "You'll find a way. You've got too much work to do in this world, to die now."
Alvin rolled his eyes. "That's about as dumb a thing as I've heard this year. Just because somebody's got things to do don't mean he won't die."
"But it does mean he won't die willingly."
"I ain't willing."
"That's why you'll find a way to live."
Alvin was silent for a few seconds. "I've been thinking. About if I do live, what I'll do. Like what I done to make my leg get mostly better. I can do that for other folks, I bet. I can lay hands on them and feel the way it is inside, and fix it up. Wouldn't that be good?"
"They'd love you for it, all the folks you healed."
"I reckon the first time was the hardest, and I wasn't partickler strong when I done it. I bet I can do it faster on other people."
"Maybe so. But even if you heal a hundred sick people every day, and move on to the next place and heal a hundred more, there'll be ten thousand people die behind you, and ten thousand more ahead of you, and by the time you die, even the ones you healed will almost all be dead."
Alvin turned his face away. "If I know how to fix them, then I got to fix them, Taleswapper."
"Those you can, you must," said Taleswapper. "But not as your life's work. Bricks in the wall, Alvin, that's all they'll ever be. You can never catch up by repairing the crumbling bricks. Heal those who chance to fall under your hand, but your life's work is deeper than that."
"I know how to heal people. But I don't know how to beat down the Un - the Unmaker. I don't even know what it is."
"As long as you're the only one that can see him, though, you're also the only one who has a hope of beating him."
"Maybe."
Another long silence. Taleswapper knew it was time to go.
"Wait."
"I've got to leave now."
Alvin caught at his sleeve. "Not yet."
"Pretty soon."
"At least - at least let me read what the others wrote."
Taleswapper reached into his bag and pulled out the book pouch. "I can't promise I'll explain what they mean," he said, sliding the book out of its waterproof cover.
Alvin quickly found the last, newest writings.
In his mother's hand: "Vigor he push a log and he don die til the boy is bornd."
In David's hand: "A mil ston splits in two then it suks bak not a crak."
In Cally's hand: "A sevent sunn."
Alvin looked up. "He ain't talking about me, you know."
"I know," said Taleswapper.
Alvin looked back at the book. In his father's hand: "He dont kil a boy cus a stranjer com in time."
"What's Pa talking about?" asked Alvin.
Taleswapper took the book from his hands and closed it. "Find