She apparently didn't detect the irony in his words. "You be so lucky," she said.

Arthur Stuart spent the next hour studying the charm to learn how it was put together-"in case she come apart on the road," La Tia said-and learning the words and the motions.

"What if I don't do it exactly right?" said Arthur Stuart. "What if I forget some bit? Will it just work a little slower, or will it not work at all?"

La Tia glared at him again. "Don't forget any. Then we never find out how much she go wrong when stupid boy forget."

So even after she was satisfied that he knew what to do, Arthur Stuart went off by himself, to a stand of trees near the river, to go through it all again.

That's where he was when Dead Mary found him. But he was asleep by then, exhausted from all that he'd been doing for days. The greensong helped him and everyone else stay vigorous all through the night and into the morning, but the need for sleep had caught up with him and there was no denying it.

Arthur Stuart felt a hand on his shoulder and sat bolt upright. He was confused to see that it was Dead Mary who was kneeling beside him, because she had also been in his dream.

"Alvin sent me to look for you," said Dead Mary. "Sorry to wake you up."

Arthur shook his head. "That's all right," he said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"What's that you were lying on?"

Arthur Stuart looked down and was horrified to see that he had rolled over on the smaller charm and bent it. He said a swear word, apologized for it, and when Dead Mary said it was all right, he thanked her and said it again. "She's gonna kill me if I don't get this back together right."

"La Tia?" said Dead Mary. "Sometimes I think she might kill someone for practice. The power she has!"

"I'm just glad she's on our side," said Arthur Stuart.

"She is for now."

"Same could be said for you," said Arthur. "When we get to safety, what then? Where will everybody go?"

"Where can we go?" said Dead Mary. "All these runaway slaves, where will they be safe? And my people, the French- we don't speak the way they do in Paris, you think they'll want us in Canada? We will be strangers wherever we go. Maybe we stay in the United States. Maybe we stay with Alvin."

"Alvin wanders all the time," said Arthur Stuart. "He hardly sleeps in the same bed twice."

"Then maybe we wander."

Oh right, Alvin was bound to want her along on his journeys. "He's married, you know."

She looked at him like he was crazy. "I know that, ignorant boy."

"Is that what I am?"

"When you talk like that, yes," said Mary. "You think I want a husband? You think all women, they want a man for a husband or not at all?"

"Well, you ain't got a husband," said Arthur Stuart.

"And when I want one," she answered, "I will tell him and it will be none of your business."

So much for Arthur Stuart's dream. "It's none of my business now." He looked at the small charm from every angle. There was nothing wrong with it that he could see, and yet it still didn't feel quite right.

"Was this supposed to be part of it?" said Mary. She held up a grain of dried maize-a red one.

"Yes, yes, thank you." He inserted it into its place between two pieces of birchbark. "It's hard to remember what you're not seeing. I'm going to mess this up, I just know it. This is important, and they're crazy to send an ignorant boy to do it."

She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You are not really an ignorant boy," she said.

"No, you had it right."

"You are an ignorant boy when you try to guess what a woman is thinking," said Mary. "But you are not an ignorant boy when it comes to doing a man's work."

"I guess then I'm an ignorant man" he grumbled, but he liked having her touch his shoulder, even if she was sweet on a married man.

"I saw you in the crystal ball," she said. "I saw you running and running. Through desert, up a mountain. To a great valley surrounded by tall mountains, with a lake in the middle, and a city on the lake. I saw you run to the middle and light a fire and it turned all the mountains into great chimneys giving off smoke, and then the earth began to shake and the mountains began to bleed."

"Well, the plan is for me not to be there by the time that stuff happens."

"The ball does not show what will actually happen," said Mary. "It shows the meaning of what might happen. But you will run, yes? And thousands of people will be saved from the fire."

"A fire that wouldn't happen except for this." He held up the bigger charm. "You want to know how scary La Tia is?"

"I have seen my mother ride the back of a shark," said Dead Mary. "I have seen her swim with sharks, and play with them like puppies. I am not afraid of La Tia."

"Why are some people so powerful, and other people barely got a knack at all?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"Why can I see sickness and death, and do nothing about it?" asked Mary. "Why can you speak any language you want, but you don't know what to say? To have a knack is a burden; not to have a knack is a burden; God only cares to see what we do with the burden we have."

"So now you're speaking for God?"

"I'm speaking the truth," said Mary, "and you know it." She got up. "Alvin wants you and I came to bring you."

"I remember," said Arthur Stuart. "But I wasn't coming back till I got this fixed."

"I know," she said. "But now it's fixed, and here we are. What are you waiting for, Arthur Stuart?"

"We was talking is all," he said.

Then, to his surprise, she put her hands on his shoulders, leaned up, and kissed him right on the mouth. "You were waiting for that," she said.

"Reckon I was," he said. "Was I waiting for maybe two of them?"

She kissed him again.

"So you're telling me you're not sweet on Alvin?"

She laughed. "I want him to teach me everything he knows," she said. "But you-I want to teach you everything I know."

Then she ran off ahead of him, toward the red city.

When Arthur Stuart got back to camp, La Tia immediately demanded to see the charms, and though she clucked and straightened a little here and there, she did it as much on the one he had not crushed as on the one he had, so he figured she was just fussing and he had done OK at putting it back together.

Alvin took him out of the city right after supper. "You had your nap," he said, "and anyway, the greensong will sustain you."

"You're going to get me started," said Arthur Stuart, "but I'm gonna have to stop along the way, if only to ask directions, and then how will I get started again?"

"You can stop without losing the greensong," said Alvin. "Just hold on to it, keep hearing it. You'll see. It's easier, though, if you stay away from machinery."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"It's one of the things that makes it hard for me," said Alvin. " 'Cause I love machinery, and I love the greensong, and a lot of the time I just can't have them both at once. Tenskwa-Tawa sneers at the Irrakwa for choosing railroads over the music of the earth, but I tell you, Arthur Stuart, the railroads got a music of their own, and I love it. Steam engines, wheels and gears, pistons and fires and speed over the rails ... sometimes I wish I could settle down and be an engineer."

"Engineers only get to go where the tracks have been laid," said Arthur Stuart.

"There you have it," said Alvin. "I'm a journeyman, and that's the truth."

"That's why you should be making this trip, not me," said Arthur Stuart. "I'm gonna mess this up, and folks are gonna wish it had been you all along."

"Nobody wished it had been me leading that exodus across the delta lands."

"I did."

"You'll do fine," said Alvin. "And now we ought to stop talking, and get your journey started."

They began to run, and soon Arthur Stuart was caught up in the greensong, stronger than he'd ever heard it before. The red farmland wasn't like white men's farms. The maize and the beans grew right up together, all mixed in, and there were other plants and lots of animals living in it, so the song didn't go silent where the ground had been plowed and planted. Maybe there was a way that machines could be made harmonious with the earth the way these farms were. Then Alvin wouldn't have to choose between them.