Ta-Kumsaw finished his fish and laid the spit in the fire.

“I also heard a story as I was coming here, about how you captured two Whites from Vigor Church and sent their bloody torn-up clothes to their parents. How you tortured them to death to show how you meant to destroy every White-man, woman, and child. How you said the time for being civilized was past, and now you'd use pure terror to drive the White man out of America.”

For the first time since Taleswapper arrived, Ta-Kumsaw spoke. “Did you believe that story?”

“Well, I didn't,” said Taleswapper. “But that's because I already knew the truth. You see, I got a message from a girl I knew– a young lady now, she is. It was a letter.” He took a folded letter from his coat, three sheets of paper covered with writing. He handed them to Ta-Kumsaw.

Without looking at it, Ta-Kumsaw handed the letter to Alvin. “Read it to me,” he said.

“But you can read English,” said Alvin.

“Not here,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

Alvin looked at the letter, at all three pages of it, and to his surprise he couldn't read it either. The letters all looked familiar. When he studied them out, he could even name them– T-H-E-M-A-K-E-R-N-E-E-D-S-Y-O-U, that's how it started, but it made no sense to Al at all, he couldn't even say for sure what language it was in. “I can't read it either,” he said, and handed it back to Taleswapper.

Taleswapper studied it for a minute, then laughed and put it back into his coat pocket. “Well, that's a story for my book. A place where a man can't read.”

To Alvin's surprise, Ta-Kumsaw smiled. “Even you?”

“I know what it says, because I read it before,” said Taleswapper. “But I can't make out a single word of it today. Even when I know what the word is supposed to be. What is this place?”

“We're in the Land of Flints,” said Alvin.

“We're in the shadow of Eight-Face Mound,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“I didn't think a White man could get here,” said Taleswapper.

“Neither did I,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “But here is a White boy, and there is a White man.”

“I dreamed you last night,” said Alvin. “I dreamed I was on top of Eight-Face Mound, and you were with me, explaining things to me.”

“Don't count on it,” said Taleswapper. “I doubt there's a thing on Eight-Face Mound that I could explain to anybody.”

“How did you come here,” asked Ta-Kumsaw, “if you didn't know you were coming to the Land of Flints?”

“She told me to come up the Musky-Ingum, and when I saw a white boulder on the right, I should take the fork that led left. She said I'd find Alvin Miller Junior sitting with Ta-Kumsaw by a fire, roasting fish.”

“Who told you all this?” asked Alvin.

“A woman,” said Taleswapper. “A torch. She told me you saw her in a vision, Alvin, inside a crystal tower, not more than a week ago by now. She was the one who pulled the caul from your face, when you were born. She's been watching you ever since, in the way a torch sees. She went inside that tower with you and saw out of your eyes.”

“The Prophet said someone was with us,” said Alvin.

“She looked out of his eye, too,” said Taleswapper, “and she saw all his futures. The Prophet will die. Tomorrow morning. Shot by your own father's gun, Alvin.”

“No!” cried Alvin.

“Unless,” said Taleswapper. “Unless Measure comes in time to show your father that he's alive, that Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet never harmed him, or you either.”

“But Measure left days ago!”

"That's right, Alvin. But he got captured by Governor Harrison's men. Harrison has him, and today, maybe even right now, one of Harrison's men is killing him. Breaking his bones, breaking his neck. Tomorrow Harrison will attack Prophetstown with his cannon, killing everybody. Every soul. So much blood that the Tippy-Canoe will flow scarlet and the Wobbish will flow red clear to the Hio.

Ta-Kumsaw leaped to his feet. “I have to go back. I have to–”

“You know how far you are,” said Taleswapper. “You know where your warriors are. Even if you ran all night and all day, as fast as you Reds can go–”

“Noon tomorrow,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“He'll be dead already,” said Taleswapper.

Ta-Kumsaw shouted in anguish, so loud that several birds cried out and flew away from the meadow.

“Now, hold your horses, just wait a minute. If there were nothing we could do, she wouldn't very well have sent me on this chase, now, would she? Don't you see we're acting out a plan that's bigger than all of us? Why did it happen that Alvin and Measure were the two boys that Harrison's hired Chok-Taw kidnapped? How do you happen to be here, and me also, at the very day when we're most needed?”

“They need us there,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“I don't think so,” said Taleswapper. “I think that if they needed us there, then there we'd be. They need us here.”

“You're like my brother, trying to make me fit into his plans!”

“I wish I were like your brother. He has visions and sees what's going on, while all I get is a letter from a torch. But here I am, and here you are, and if we weren't supposed to be here, we just plain wouldn't, whether you like it or not.”

Alvin didn't like this talk of what was supposed to happen. Who was doing all this supposing? What did Taleswapper mean– they were all poppets on sticks? Was somebody making them move any old way, whatever he felt ought to happen? “If somebody's so all-fired in charge of everything,” said Alvin, “he hasn't been doing too good a job of it, getting us into a fix like this.”

Taleswapper grinned. “You really don't take to religion, do you, boy?”

“I just don't think anybody's making us do anything.”

“Nor did I say so,” said Taleswapper. “I'm just saying things never get so bad we can't do something to make them better.”

“Well I'll be glad to take suggestions. What did this torch lady think I ought to do?” asked Alvin.

“She said you're supposed to climb the mountain and heal Measure. Don't ask me more than that– that's all she said. There isn't a mountain worthy of the name in these parts, and Measure's in the root cellar behind Vinegar Riley's house–”

“I know that place,” said Alvin. “I been there. But I can't– I mean I've never tried to heal somebody who wasn't right there in front of me.”

“Enough talking,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Eight-Face Mound called you in a dream, White boy. This man came to tell you to go up the mountain. Everything begins when you climb the Mound. If you can.”

“Some things end on Eight-Face Mound,” said Taleswapper.

“What does a White man know about this place?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.

“Not a thing,” said Taleswapper. “But I knelt by the bed of a dying Irrakwa woman, many years ago, and she told me that the most important thing in her life was, she was the last Irrakwa ever to stand inside Eight-Face Mound.”

“The Irrakwa have all turned White in their hearts,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Eight-Face Mound would never let them in now.”

“But I'm White,” said Alvin.

“Very good problem,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “The Mound will tell you the answer. Maybe the answer is you don't go up and everybody dies. Come.”

He led them along the path the land opened up for them, until they came to a steep hill, thickly grown with trees and brambles. There was no path. “This is Red Man's Face,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “This is where Red men climb. The path is gone. You can't climb here.”

“Where, then?” asked Alvin.

“How do I know?” said Ta-Kumsaw. “The story is that if you climb a different face, you find a different Mound. The story is that if you climb the Builders' Face, you find their ancient city, still alive on the Mound. If you climb the Beasts' Face, you find a land where a giant buffalo is king, a strange animal with horns that come out of his mouth and a nose like a terrible snake, and huge cougars with teeth as long as spears all bow before him and worship. Who knows if these stories are true? No one climbs those faces now.”