For the first time, Alvin realized how sad the Prophet looked. His face was haggard with grief.

“I saw you in this place. I saw that I had to bring you here. I saw you in the hands of the Chok-Taw. I sent my brother to get you, bring you back.”

“Is it cause you brought me here that you can't never come here again yourself?”

“No. The land has chosen. The end will be soon.” He smiled, but it was a ghastly smile. “Your preacher, Reverend Thrower, he said to me once– if your foot gets sick, cut it off. Right?”

“I don't remember that.”

“I do,” said the Prophet. “This part of the land, it is already sick. Cut it off, so the rest of the land can live.”

“What do you mean?” Alvin conjured up pictures in his mind, about pieces of the land breaking off and failing into the sea.

“Red man will go west of the Mizzipy. White man will stay east. Red part of land will live. White part of land will be very dead, cut off. Full of smoke and metal, guns and death. Red men who stay in the east will turn White. And White men won't come west of the Mizzipy.”

"There's already White men west of the Mizzipy. Trappers and traders, mostly, but a few farmers with their families. "

"I know," said the Prophet. "But what I see here today– I know how to make the White man never come west again, and how to make the Red man never stay east. "

“How're you going to do that?”

“If I tell,” said the Prophet, “then it won't happen. Some things in this place, you can't tell, or it changes, and they go away.”

“Is it the crystal city?” asked Alvin.

“No,” said the Prophet. “It is the river of blood. It is the forest of iron.”

“Show me!” demanded the boy. “Let me see what you saw!”

“No,” said the Prophet. “You wouldn't keep the secret.”

“Why wouldn't I? If I give my word I won't break it!”

“You could give your word all day, Roach Boy, but if you saw the vision you would cry out in fear and pain. And you would tell your brother. You would tell your family.”

“Is something going to happen to them?”

“Not one of your family will die,” said the Prophet. “All safe and healthy when this is over.”

“Show me!”

“No,” said the Prophet. “I will break the tower now, and you will remember what we did and said here. But the only way you'll ever come back and see these things is if you find the crystal city.”

The Prophet knelt down at the place where the wall met the floor. He pushed his bloody fingers into the wall and lifted. The wall rose up, dissolved, turned to wind. They were surrounded now by the scene they left so many hours before, it seemed. The water, the storm, the twister rising back up into the clouds above them. Lightning flashed all around them, and the rain came down, so fast it made the shore disappear. The rain that landed on the crystal place where they stood turned to crystal, too, became part of the floor under them.

The Prophet went to the edge nearest the shore, and stepped out onto the rough water. It went hard under his foot, but it still undulated slowly– it wasn't as firm as the platform. The Prophet reached back, took Alvin's hand, pulled him out onto the new path he was making on the surface of the lake. It wasn't near as smooth as before, and the farther they walked the rougher it got, the more it moved, the slicker it got so it was hard to go up and over the waves.

“We stayed too long!” cried the Prophet.

Alvin could feel the black water under the thin shell of crystal, roiling with hate. Nothingness out of an ancient nightmare, wanting to break through the crystal, get hold of Al, suck him down, drown him, tear him to pieces, to the tiniest pieces of all, and discard him into the darkness.

“It wasn't me!” shouted Alvin.

The Prophet turned around, picked him up, lifted him to his shoulders. The rain beat down on him, the wind tried to tear him from the Prophet's shoulders. Alvin clung tight to Tenskwa-Tawa's hair. He could feel that now the Prophet's feet were sinking down into the water more and more with every step. Behind them there wasn't a trace of a path, all of it gone, the waves rising higher and higher.

The Prophet stumbled, fell; Alvin fell too, forward, knowing he was going to drown–

And found himself sprawled on the wet sand of the beach, the water licking up around him, sucking sand out from under him, trying to pull him back out into the water. Then strong hands under his arms, pulling him away, up the beach, up toward the dunes.

“He's out there, the Prophet!” Alvin shouted. Or thought he shouted– his voice was just a whisper, and he hardly made a sound. It wouldn't have mattered, the wind being so loud. He opened his eyes and they were whipped full of sand and rain.

Then Measure's lips were against his ear, yelling to him. “The Prophet's all right! Ta-Kumsaw pulled him out! I thought you were dead for sure, when that twister sucked you up! Areyou all right?”

“I saw everything!” Alvin cried. But he was so feeble now that he couldn't make a sound, and he gave it up, let his body go limp, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.

Chapter 10 – Gatlopp

Measure saw little of Alvin– too little. After the episode with the tornado on the lake, Measure would have thought Alvin would be awake to his danger here, eager to get away. Instead he seemed to care for nothing but to be with the Prophet, listening to his stories and the perverse poetic wisdom he dispensed.

Once when Alvin was actually with him long enough to set and talk, Measure asked him why he bothered. “Even when them Reds talk English I can't understand them. Talk about the land like it was a person, things about taking only the life that offers itself, the land dying east of the Mizzipy– it ain't dying here, Al, as any fool can see. And even if it's got smallpox, black death, and ten-thousand hangnails, there ain't no doctor knows how to cure it.”

“Tenskwa-Tawa does know how,” said Alvin.

“Then let him do it, and let's get on home.”

“Another day, Measure.”

“Ma and Pa'll be worried sick, they think we're dead!”

“Tenskwa-Tawa says the land is working out its own course.”

“There you go again! Land is land, and it ain't got a thing to do with Pa getting a bunch of the boys together combing through the woods to find us!”

“Go on without me, then.”

But Measure wasn't ready to do that yet. He didn't have no particular wish to face Ma if he came home without Alvin. “Oh, he was fine when I left him. Just playing around with tornadoes and walking on water with a one-eyed Red. Didn't want to come home just yet, you know how them ten-year-old boys are.” No, Measure wasn't ripe to come home just now, not if he didn't have Alvin in tow. And it was sure he couldn't take Alvin against his will. The boy wouldn't even listen to talk of escape.

The worst of it was that while everybody liked Alvin just fine, jabbering to him in English and Shaw-Nee, not a soul there would so much as talk to Measure, except Ta-Kumsaw himself, and the Prophet, who talked all the time whether anybody was listening or not. It got powerful lonely, walking around all day. And not walking far, either. Nobody talked to him, but if he started heading away from the dunes toward the woods, somebody'd shoot off an arrow. It'd land with a thud in the sand right by him. They sure trusted their aim a lot better than Measure did. He kept thinking about arrows drifting a little this way or that and hitting him.

Escape was a silly idea, when Measure gave it serious thought. They'd track him down in no time. But what he couldn't figure was why they didn't want him to go. They weren't doing nothing with him. He was completely useless. And they swore they had no plans to kill him or even break him up a little.

Fourth day at the dunes, though, it finally came to a head. He went to Ta-Kumsaw and plain demanded that he be let go. Ta-Kumsaw looked annoyed, but that was pretty normal for him. This time, though, Measure didn't back down.