Orson Card - SEVENTH SON

"All kinds of things might happen," she said, "and I'd be a fool to guess which one. I see it open like a thousand roads before him, all the time. But there's precious few of those roads that bring him here by April, and a whole lot more that leave him dead with a Red man's hatchet in his head."

Taleswapper leaned across the doctor's writing table and rested his hand on hers. "Will he live?"

"As long as I have breath in my body," she said.

"Or I in mine," he answered.

They sat in silence for a moment, hand on hand, eye to eye, until she burst into laughter and looked away.

"Usually when folks laugh I get the joke," said Taleswapper.

"I was just thinking we're a poor excuse for a conspiracy, the two of us, against the enemies that boy will face."

"True," said Taleswapper, "but then, our cause is good, and so all nature will conspire with us, don't you think?"

"And God, too," she added firmly.

"I can't say about that," said Taleswapper. "The preachers and priests seem to have him so fenced up with doctrine that the poor old Father hardly has room to act anymore. Now that they've got the Bible safely interpreted, the last thing they ever want is for him to speak another word, or show his hand of power in this world."

"I saw his hand of power in the birth of a seventh son of a seventh son, some years back," she said. "Call it nature if you want to, since you've got all kinds of learning from philosophers and wizards. I just know that he's tied as tight to my life as if we was born from the same womb."

Taleswapper didn't plan his next question, it just came unthought-of from his lips. "Are you glad of it?"

She looked at him with terrible sadness in her eyes. "Not often," she said. She looked so weary then that Taleswapper couldn't help himself, he walked around the table and stood beside her chair and held her tight like a father holds his daughter, held her for a good long while. If she was crying or just holding on, he couldn't say. They spoke not a word. Finally she let go of him and turned back to the account book. He left without breaking the silence.

Taleswapper wandered on over to the inn to take his supper. There were tales to tell and chores to do in order to earn his keep. Yet all the stories seemed to pale beside the one story that he could not tell, the one story whose end he didn't know.

On the meadow around the millhouse were a half dozen farm wagons, watched over by farmers who had come a good long way to get high-quality flour. No more would their wives sweat over a mortar and pestle to make coarse meal for hard and lumpy bread. The mill was in business, and everyone for miles around would bring their grain to the town of Vigor Church.

The water poured through the millrace, and the great wheel turned. Inside the millhouse, the force of the wheel was carried by interlocking gears, to make the grindstone roll around and around, riding on the face of a quarter dress millstone.

The miller poured out the wheat upon the stone. The grindstone passed over it, crushing it to flour. The miller swept it smooth for a second pass, then brushed it off into a basket held by his son, a ten-year-old boy. His son poured the flour into a sieve, and shook the good flour into a cloth sack. He emptied what stayed in the sieve into a silage barrel. Then he returned to his father's side for the next basket of wheat.

Their thoughts were remarkably alike, as they worked silently together. This is what I want to do forever, each one thought. Rise in the morning, come to the mill, and work all day with him beside me. Never mind that the wish was impossible. Never mind that they might never see each other again, once the boy left for his apprenticeship back in the place of his birth. That only added to the sweetness of the moment, which would soon become a memory, would soon become a dream.