Orson Card - SEVENTH SON

He whanged with the hammer, the iron rang out, there was a cracking of stone, and once again crumbled stone pattered on the ground.

"I can see why you have him do all the cutting," Taleswapper said.

"Seems like the best way," said Miller.

In only a few minutes, the stone was fully rounded. Taleswapper said nothing, just watched to see what Al would do.

He set down his tools, walked to the millstone, and embraced it. His right hand curled around the lip of it. His left hand probed back into the cut on the other side. Alvin's cheek pressed against the stone. His eyes were closed. It looked for all the world as though he were listening to the rock.

He began to hum softly. A mindless little tune. He moved his hands. Shifted his position. Listened with the other ear.

"Well," Alvin said, "I can't hardly believe it."

"Believe what?" asked his father.

"Those last few cuts must have set up a real shiver in the rock. The back is already split right off."

"You mean that millstone is standing free?" asked Taleswapper.

"I think we can rock it forward now," said Alvin. "It takes a little rope work, but we'll get it out of there without too much trouble."

The brothers arrived with the ropes and horses. Alvin passed a rope back behind the stone. Even though not a single cut had been made against the back, the rope dropped easily into place. Then another rope, and another, and soon they were all tugging, first left, then right, as they slowly walked the heavy stone out of its bed in the cliff face.

"If I hadn't seen it," murmured Taleswapper.

"But you did," said Miller.

It was only a few inches clear when they changed the ropes, passing four lines through the center hole and hitching them to a team of horses uphill of the stone. "It'll roll on downhill just fine," Miller explained to Taleswapper. "The horses are there as a drag, pulling against it."

"It looks heavy."

"Just don't lie down in front of it," said Miller.

They started it rolling, very gently. Miller took hold of Alvin's shoulder and kept the boy well back from the stone—and uphill of it, too. Taleswapper helped with the horses, so he didn't get a good look at the back surface of the stone until it was down on level ground by the sledge.

It was smooth as a baby's backside. Flat as ice in a basin. Except that it was scored in a quarter dress pattern, straight lines radiating from the lip of the center hole to the edge of the stone.

Alvin came up to stand beside him. "Did I do it right?" he asked.

"Yes," said Taleswapper.

"It was the luckiest thing," said the boy. "I could just feel that stone ready to split right along those lines. It just wanted to split, easy as you please."

Taleswapper reached out and drew his finger gently along the edge of a dress cut. It stung. He brought his finger to his mouth, sucked, and tasted blood.

"Stone holds a nice sharp edge, don't it?" said Measure. He sounded as if this sort of thing happened every day. But Taleswapper could see the awe in his eyes.

"Good cut," said Calm.

"Best one yet," said David.

Then, with horses bracing against a rapid fall, they gently tipped it to lie on the sledge, dress side up.

"Will you do me a favor, Taleswapper?" asked Miller.

"If I can."

"Take Alvin back home with you now. His work's done."

"No, Papa!" Alvin shouted. He ran over to his father. "You can't make me go home now."

"Don't need no ten-year-old boys underfoot while we're manhandling a stone that size," said his father.

"But I've got to watch the stone, to make sure it don't split or chip, Pa!"

The older sons looked at their father, waiting. Taleswapper wondered what they hoped for. They were too old now, surely, to resent their father's particular love for his seventh son. They also must hope to keep the boy safe from harm. Yet it meant much to all of them that the stone arrive safely, unbroken, to begin its service in the mill. There could be no doubt that young Alvin had the power to keep it whole.

"You can ride with us till sundown," Miller finally said. "By then we'll be close enough to home that you and Taleswapper can head back and spend the night in beds."

"Fine with me," said Taleswapper.

Alvin Junior plainly wasn't satisfied, but he didn't answer back.

They got the sledge under way before noon. Two horses in front and two behind, for stopping, were hitched to the stone itself. The stone rested on the wooden raft of the sledge, and the sledge rode atop seven or eight of the small rollers at a time. The sledge moved forward, passing over new rollers waiting in front. As the rollers emerged from the back, one of the boys immediately yanked the roller out from under the ropes hitched to the trailing team, raced to the front, and laid it in place directly behind the lead team.

It meant that each man ran about five miles for every mile the stone traveled.

Taleswapper tried to take his turn, but David, Calm, and Measure wouldn't hear of it. He ended up tending the trailing team, with Alvin perched atop one of the horses. Miller drove the leading team, walking backward half the time to make sure he wasn't going too fast for the boys to keep up.

Hour after hour they went on. Miller offered to let them stop and rest, but they seemed not to tire, and Taleswapper was amazed to see how the rollers held up. Not a one split on a rock or from the sheer weight of the stone. They got scuffed and dented, but that was about all.

And as the sun sank to about two fingers above the horizon, awash in the ruddy clouds of the western sky, Taleswapper recognized the meadow opening up before them. They had made the whole journey in a single afternoon.

"I think I got the strongest brothers in the whole world," Alvin murmured.

I have no doubt of it, Taleswapper said silently. You who can cut a stone from the mountain without hands, because you "find" the right fractures in the rock, it's no surprise that your brothers find in themselves exactly as much strength as you believe they have. Taleswapper tried again, as he had tried so many times before, to puzzle out the nature of the hidden powers. Surely there was some natural law that governed their use—Old Ben had always said so. And yet here was this boy who, by mere belief and desire, could cut stone like butter and give strength to his brothers. There was a theory that the hidden power came from friendship with a particular element, but which was it that could do all that Alvin did? Earth? Air? Fire? Certainly not water, for Taleswapper knew that Miller's stories were all true. Why was it that Alvin Junior could wish for something, and the earth itself would bend to his will, while others could long for things and never cause so much as a breeze to blow?

They needed lanterns inside the millhouse by the time they rolled the stone through the doors. "Might as well lay it in place tonight," said Miller. Taleswapper imagined the fears that ran through Miller's mind. If he left the stone upright, it would surely roll in the morning and crush a particular child as he innocently carried water up to the house. Since the stone had miraculously come down from the mountain in a single day, it would be foolish to leave it anywhere but in its proper place, on the foundation of rammed earth and stone in the millhouse.

They brought a team inside and hitched it to the stone, as they had when they lowered it on the sledge back by the quarry. The team would pull against the weight of the stone as they levered it downward onto the foundation.

At the moment, though, the stone was resting on built-up earth just outside the circle of foundation stones. Measure and Calm were working their lever poles under the outside edge of the stone, ready to pry it up and make it fall into place. The stone rocked a little as they worked. David was holding the horses, since it would be a disaster if they pulled too soon and rocked the stone over the wrong way, to lie on its dress face in the plain dirt.