Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

So what was wrong with black? It was good enough
For all the hundred thousand smiths before,
And good enough for all the plows they made,
So why not good enough for Prentice Alvin?
Who ever heard of a bird so full of stuff,
So full of songs to make you feel so poor,
So full of promises of gold and jade?
“Ah, Redbird!” Alvin cried, “my heart is riven!
What have you given?”

He shouted at the black and silent plow.
He beat it, ground it at the wheel, and rubbed
Till the blade was a blackish mirror, till the edge
Was sharp as a trapper’s skinnin knife, and still
It was iron, black and stubborn, growin cold.
All broke of hope, he cast it in the fire
And held it with his naked hands in the flame
And wept in agony till it was over.
Here was the taste of pain—he knew the savor:
The plow was silver.

All silver was the plow, and his hands were whole.
He knew what it was the redbird hadn’t said.
He couldn’t put the iron in alone
And expect the plow by itself to come to life.
He took the plow again—it’s gleamin bright—
And this time when he put it into the fire
He clomb right in and sat among the flames
And cried in pain until the fire went cold.
The age of agony—he knew how old:
The plow was gold.

The smith, he come all white-eyed to the forge
“The buffalo are ruttin in the wood,
A hundred wolves are singin out a dirge,
And a doe, she’s lickin while her fawn is fed.
What you be doin while I’m in my bed?
The trees are wide awake and bendin low,
And the stars are all a-cluster overhead.
What will a prentice do when his master go?
I want to know!”

In answer, Alvin only lifts his plow,
And in the firelight it shines all yellow.
“Lord,” the smith declares, and “damn my eyes,
My boy, you got the gift, I didn’t reelize.”
The smith, he reaches out. “Now give it here,
That’s worth ten thousand sure, I shouldn’t wonder,
All we got to do is melt her down
And we’ll be rich afore another sundown,
Move to town.”

But Alvin, he’s not like to let it go.
“It’s a plow I meant to make, and a plow I got,
And I mean for it to do what a plow should do.”
The smith was mad, the smith, he scald and swore.
“Cuttin dirt ain’t what that gold is for!”
And he reached his hand to take the plow by force,
But when he touched his prentice’s arm, he hissed,
And kissed his fingers, gaspin. “Boy, you’re hot
As the sunlight’s source.

“Hot and bright as sunlight,” says the smith,
“And the gold is yours to do whatever you like with,
But whatever you do, I humble-as-dust beseech you,
Do it away from me, I’ve nothin to teach you.”
Says Alvin, “Does that mean I’m a journeyman?
I’ve a right to bend the black wherever I can?”
And the smith says, “Prentice, journeyman, or master,
For what you done a smith would sell his sister,
Been Satan kissed her.”

What was Alvin totin when he left?
I tell you this—it wasn’t hard to heft:
A burlap bag with a knot of leaden bread,
A hunk of crumbly cheese, and a golden plow.
A map of the world was growin in his head,
For a fellow knows the edge can guess the whole,
And Alvin meant to find the certain soil
Where his plow could cut and make the clover grow,
The honey flow.

He left a hundred village tongues a-wag
With tales of a million bucks in a burlap bag;
The smith, he swore the gold was devil’s make
And therefore free for a godly man to take;
His wife, she told how Alvin used to shirk
And owed them all the gold for his lack of work;
And others said the golden plow was a fake
That sneaky Alvin made so he could gull
Some trustin fool.

The tales of Alvin flew so far and fast
They reached him on the road and went right past,
And many a fellow in many a country inn
Would spy his bag and start in speculatin.
“Kind of a heavy tote you got, I reckon.”
And Alvin nods. “The burlap’s kinda thin—
Do I see something big and smooth and yellow?”
And Alvin nods, but then he tells the fellow,
“It’s just my pillow,”

True enough, if the truth ain’t buttoned tight,
For he put it under his head most every night;
But country folk are pretty hard to trick,
And many a fellow thought that he could get
A plowshare’s worth of gold for the price of a stick
Applied with vigor to the side of Alvin’s head;
And many a night young Alvin had to run
From the bowie knife or buckshot-loaded
gun Of some mother’s son.

While Alvin beat through woods and country tracks,
Comes Verily Cooper, a handiworkin man,
Who boards wherever there’s barrels to make or mend,
And never did he find so fine a place,
So nice a folk nor never so pretty a face
That he’d put away his walkin boots and stay.
It happened that he come to the smith one day
And heard that Alvin had made his golden plow,
And wondered how.

So off he set with boots so sad and worn
And socks so holey, the skin of his feet was torn
And he left a little track of blood sometimes—
Off set Verily Cooper, hopin to find
What tales were envy, and if some tales were true,
What the journeyman blacksmith did or didn’t do.
He asked in every inn, “Did a boy with a bag
Come here, a brown-haired boy so long of leg,
About this big?”

Well, it came about that the findin all was done
On a day without a single speck of sun.
Young Alvin, he come down to the bottom lands,
Where the air was cold and the fog was thick and white.
“In a fog this deep you’d better count your hands,”
Said an unseen man a-waitin by the track.
“What could I see if a man had any sight?”
And the unseen speaker said, “That the sun is bright
And the soil is black.”

Now Alvin knelt and touched the dirt of the road,
But the ground was packed and he couldn’t feel it deep,
And though he fairly pressed his nose to the dirt,
Still the white of the fog was all he could see.
“The soil, it doesn’t look so black to me.”
And the unseen speaker said, “The earth is hurt
And hides in the fog and heals while it’s asleep.
For the tree, she screamed and wept when the beaver gnawed
And no one knowed.”

“I’m lookin,” Alvin says, “for a soil that’s fit
To spring up golden grain, make cattle fat.”
And the unseen speaker says, “What soil is that?”
“I’m lookin,” Alvin says again, “for loam
That a plow can whittle till it comes to life.”
And the unseen speaker says, “A plow’s a knife,
And where it cuts the earth is broke and lame.”
Says Alvin, “Mar to mend, from the moldrin leaf
Will grow the limb.”

“Then go, if you mean to make from the broken ground,
Go till you hear the rushin river’s sound,
For there in the river’s bight is a dirt so rich
You can harrow with your hand and plow with a flitch.”
“Thank you, stranger,” Alvin says, and then:
“I’ve heard your voice before, I can’t think when.”
“In such a fog as this, so cold and wet,
Your sight’s so dim your memory’s in debt
And you forget,

For the fog, it goes afore and it goes behind,
Hides what you’re lookin for and what you’ve found,
And the deeper you go, the dimmer it makes your past.
And yet in all the world, this soil is best.”
With that, though Alvin tried to learn his name,
The unseen speaker never spoke again,
And at last the journeyman smith went on to find
In the fog, by listenin tight for the river’s sound,
That perfect ground.