Arthur Stuart was glad, for the first time he could remember, that white folks around here didn't pay all that much attention to a half-black young man carrying water with his master. So far nobody had linked him or Alvin to the miracle water. But that didn't mean somebody might not remember how he sat there in the plaza, waiting for his master to come back from some Swamptown shack where Dead Mary had said her mother might have yellow fever. No, said she did have it. The first victim of this epidemic.

And it occurred to Arthur that however much danger the house of Moose and Squirrel might be in, Dead Mary would face much worse, and much quicker, now that the yellow fever was back.

When this thought came to him he was in the market down in the old town, choosing whatever was cheap but still edible. He debated with himself for a moment-what was more urgent, to get food back to Alvin, or go check on the girl?

What would Alvin choose?

Well, that made it easy. He always went for the dramatic over the sensible-or rather, he chose whatever would cause him the most inconvenience and danger.

Arthur had already bought a sack of yams, and not a light one. It not only got heavier as he walked, but it made it so he couldn't run-nothing was more sure to get him stopped than to be a half-black boy running with a sack of something on his buck. Everybody knew that slaves on their masters' business always moved about as slow as they could get away with, without somebody pronouncing them dead. So when a boy of color was running, it was sure to be a crime in progress.

So he walked, but quickly, and followed, as best he could find it, the path he'd seen Alvin's and Dead Mary's heartfires trace through the swamps. He knew he didn't see heartfires anywhere near as well as Alvin did, and once they got a few hundred yards off, or mixed in with a lot of other folks, it was hopeless. But Alvin's heartfire he could follow, it was so bright and strong, and not only that, when he followed Alvin he could see, like a sort of backwash, something of where he was, the terrain he was moving through. And he had traced along with Alvin and Dead Mary all the way to her mother's house. He had seen her heartfire flicker and grow strong, even if he didn't understand what Alvin had done.

Now it took a bit of splashing around and slapping at skeeters before he finally got to the plank bridge leading to Dead Mary's house. He stood this side of the plank and clapped his hands. "Hello the house!" he called. "Company!" Which was wrong, of course-he was supposed to call out, "Alvin Smith's servant here!" Or, if the world had not been so ugly, "Alvin Smith's brother-in-law!" Then again, he didn't know if Alvin had ever so much as told Dead Mary his name. Maybe names wouldn't mean a thing here.

And they didn't. Because no one was home.

Or if they were, they weren't answering.

He walked swiftly across the bridge and pushed open the door, half fearing that he might find them dead, murdered by fearful people. But he knew that couldn't be so-iffen some mob blamed Dead Mary for the plague and wanted to kill her for it, they'd have burned down the house around them.

The house was empty. Cleaned out, too-or else they didn't own a blame thing. Most likely they had realized their peril and fled. He didn't need to tell them how Dead Mary was regarded in this town.

He shouldered his sack of yams and retraced his route back into the city. Staying away from crowded streets and especially from the plaza with the public fountain, he made his way back to the house of Moose and Squirrel, scratching at skeeter bites the whole way.

He emptied the sack of yams into the bin in the kitchen, an action which Alvin, who was stirring the soup, greeted with a raised eyebrow. Which made Arthur Stuart feel guilty about how few of his errands he had finished.

"What?" asked Arthur Stuart. "It's not like I had a lot of money, and besides, I got worried about Dead Mary and her mother, and so I went out to check on them."

"I expect they were gone," said Alvin.

"You expect right," said Arthur Stuart.

"But that's not why I raised my eyebrow at you."

"Too lazy to wave?"

"You don't just dump out a sack of yams. They need washing. Or peeling."

"Why should I, when you can just talk the dirt right off the skins, or the skins right off the yams?"

"Because knacks weren't given to us for frivolous purposes."

"Oh, like the time you made me work half a summer making a dugout canoe when you could have made a canoe out of it in five minutes."

"It was good for you."

"It was a waste of my time," said Arthur Stuart. "And it nearly got you shot by that bear hunter."

"Old Davy Crockett? I ended up kind of liking that fellow."

"Peeling the yams wouldn't stop you from healing those kids upstairs the way you been doing."

Alvin turned slowly. "How do you know that?" said Alvin. "How do you know what it costs me to do that work?"

" 'Cause it's easy for you. You do it like breathing."

"And when you run up a hill, how easy is it to breathe?"

"Maybe I'd know what healing was like if you ever tried to teach me."

"You only just started hotting up metal."

"So I'm ready for the next step. You're working so hard on healing those children, I know you are. So tell me, show me what to do."

Alvin closed his eyes. "You don't think I wish you could?" he said. "But you can't help if you can't see what's going on inside their bodies. And Arthur Stuart, I tell you, you got to be able to see pretty small."

"How small?"

"Look at the thinnest, smallest hair on your arm," said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart looked.

"That hair is like a feather."

Arthur Stuart tried to get his rudimentary doodlebug inside that hair, to get the feel of it like he got the feel of iron. He could almost do it. He couldn't see the featherness of it, but he could sense that it wasn't smooth. That was something.

"And each strand of that feather is made of lots of tiny bits. Your whole body is made of tiny pieces, and each one of them is alive, and there's stuff going on inside those pieces. Stuff I don't understand yet. But I get a sense of how those pieces are supposed to work, and I kind of... you know..."

"I know," said Arthur Stuart. "You tell them how you want them to be."

"Or ... sort of show them."

"I can't see that small," said Arthur Stuart.

"Bones are easier," said Alvin. "Bones are more like metal. Or wood, anyway. Broken bones, I bet you could fix those."

Immediately Arthur Stuart thought of Papa Moose's foot. Was that a problem with bones? Was Alvin maybe hinting something to him?

"But the yellow fever," said Alvin. "I barely know what I'm doing with that, and I think it's out of your reach so far."

Arthur Stuart grinned. "So what about yams? Think I could get the dirt off yams?"

"Sure. By scrubbing."

"What about taking off the skins?"

"By peeling only, my friend."

"Because it's good for me," said Arthur Stuart, and not happily.

"Because if you do it any other way, I'll just put the skins and dirt right back on them."

Arthur Stuart had no answer to that. He sat down and held a yam in his hand. "All right, which is it? Peel or wash? Cause I ain't doing both."

"You asking me?" said Alvin. "You know what a bad cook I am. And I don't think Squirrel wants me to toss these yams into the permanent soup. I think they'd kind of take over the flavor for the next couple of years."

"So we'll roast them," said Arthur Stuart.

"Suits me," said Alvin.

And it occurred to Arthur Stuart that Alvin hadn't grown up watching Old Peg Guester wash and peel taters and yams for twenty or thirty people at a time. All this was new to Alvin. Of course, if Arthur Stuart had his druthers, he'd rather be an expert on healing people with fevers or club feet.