“Is there a White Man's Face?” asked Alvin.

“Red Man, Medicine, Builder, Beast. Four other faces we don't know their names,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Maybe one of them is White Man's Face. Come.”

He led them around the hill. The Mound rose on their left hand. No path opened. Alvin recognized everything they saw. His dream last night was true, at least this much: Taleswapper was with him, and he circled the Mound before climbing.

They came to the last of the unknown faces. No path. Alvin made as if to go on to the next face.

“No use,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “All eight faces, none will let us up. The next is Red Man's Face again.”

“I know,” said Alvin. “But here's the path.”

There it was, straight as an arrow. Right on the edge shared by Red Man's Face and the unknown face beside it.

“You are half Red,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“Go on up,” said Taleswapper.

“In my dream you were with me up there,” said Al-vin.

“Maybe so,” said Taleswapper. “But the fact is, I can't see this path the two of you are talking about. It looks just like all the rest of the faces. So I reckon I'm not invited.”

“Go,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Hurry.”

“You come with me, then,” said Alvin. “You see the path, don't you?”

“I didn't dream of the Mound,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “And what you see there, it will be half what the Red man sees, and half a new place that I should never see. Go now, don't waste time anymore. My brother and your brother will die unless you do whatever it is the land brought you here to do.”

“I'm thirsty,” said Al.

“Drink there,” said Ta-Kumsaw, “if the Mound offers you water. Eat if the Mound offers you food.”

Al set his feet on the path and scrambled up the hill. It was steep, but there were roots to grab, plenty of footholds, and before long the path crested, leveled, and the underbrush ended.

He had thought the Mound was a single hill, with eight slopes. Now, though, he could see that each of the eight slopes was a separate Mound, arranged to form a deep bowl.in the middle. The valley seemed much too large, the farthest Mounds much too far away. Hadn't Alvin walked around the entire Mound this morning with Ta-Kumsaw and Taleswapper? Eight-Face Mound was much more inside than it seemed to be outside.

He walked carefully down the grassy slope. It was tufted, irregular, the grass cool, the soil moist and firm. It seemed much farther going down than it had been going up. When he finally reached the valley floor, he stood on the verge of a meadow, with silver-leafed trees, just like in his dream. So his dream had been true, showing him a real place that he could not have imagined.

But how was he supposed to find Measure and heal him? What did the Mound have to do with anything at all? It was afternoon now, they'd taken so long circling the Mound– Measure might already be dying, and he didn't have any idea how to go about helping him.

He couldn't think of anything to do but walk. He thought he'd cross the valley and see one of the other mounds, but it was the strangest thing. No matter how far he walked, no matter how many silver-leafed trees he passed, the mound he walked toward was always just as far away. It made him afraid– would he be trapped up here forever? –and he hurried back in the direction he started from. In just a few minutes he reached the place where his footprints came down the slope. Surely he had walked away from that spot for much longer than that. A couple more tries convinced him that the valley went on forever in every direction except the one he came from. In that direction, it was just like he was always in the very center of the Mound, no matter how far he'd walked to get where he was.

Alvin looked for the gold-leafed tree with the pure white fruit, but he couldn't find it, and he wasn't surprised. The taste of the fruit was still in his mouth from the dream the night before. He wouldn't get another taste of it, waking or dreaming, because the second bite would make him live forever. He didn't mind much, not getting that bite. Death didn't breathe all that heavy down the neck of a boy his age.

He heard water. A brook, clear cold water flowing rapidly over stones. It was impossible, of course. The valley of Eight-Face Mound was completely enclosed. If water ran so fast here, why didn't the valley fill right up to make a lake? Why wasn't there a single stream running off the mound outside? Where would such a stream come from, anyway? The mound was man-made, like all the other mounds scattered all through the country, though none of the others was so old. You don't get springs coming out of man-made hills. It made him suspicious of this water, to have it be so impossible. Come to think of it, though, quite a few impossible things had happened to him in his life, and this was far from being the most peculiar.

Ta-Kumsaw said to drink if the mound offered him water, so he knelt and drank, plunging his face right into the water and sucking the water straight into his mouth. It didn't take away the taste of the fruit. If anything, it was stronger after he drank.

He knelt on the bank, studying the opposite shore of the brook. The water was flowing differently there. In fact, it was lapping the shore like ocean waves, and once that thought occurred to Alvin he saw that the shape of the opposite shore was just like the map of the east coast that Armor-of-God showed him. The memory came back clear and sharp. Here where the shore bowed outward, that was Carolina in the Crown Colonies. This deep bay was the Chase-a-pick, and here was the mouth of the Potty-Mack, which made the border between the United States and the Crown Colonies.

Alvin stood and stepped across the stream.

It was just grass. He didn't see no rivers or towns, no boundaries, no roads. But from the coast, he could pretty much guess where the Hio country was, and where this very mound would be. He took two steps, and all of a sudden there he saw Ta-Kumsaw and Taleswapper, setting on the ground in front of him, looking up at him as surprised as could be.

“You climbed up after all,” said Alvin.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Taleswapper. “We've been right here since you left.”

“Why did you come back down?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.

“But I ain't down at all,” said Alvin. “I'm down here in the valley of the mound.”

“Valley?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.

“We're down here below the mound,” said Taleswapper.

Then Alvin understood. Not so as to put it into words, but well enough to use it, to use what the mound had given him. He could travel across the face of the land like this, a hundred miles in a step, and see the people that he needed to see. The people that he knew. Measure. Alvin touched his forehead in salute to the two men who waited for him, then took a small step. They disappeared.

He found the town of Vigor Church easy enough. First person he saw was Armor-of-God, kneeling in prayer. Alvin didn't say nothing to him, for fear Armor might take it as a vision of the dead. Where would Armor be, though? In his own house? In that case Vinegar Riley's place would be back this way, east of town. He turned around.

He saw his own father, setting with Mother. Pa was smoothing out some musket balls he'd cast. And Ma was whispering to him, all urgent. She was angry, and so was Pa. “Women and children, that's what they are in that town. Even if the Prophet and Ta-Kumsaw killed our boys, them women and children there didn't do it. You'll be no better than them if you raise a hand against them. I won't see you come back into this house, I'll never see you again if you kill one soul of them. I swear it, Alvin Miller.”

Pa just kept on polishing, except once when he said, “They killed my boys.”

Alvin tried to answer, opened his mouth to say, "But I ain't dead, Pa!

It didn't work. He couldn't say a word. He wasn't brought up here to give a vision to his parents, neither. It was Measure he had to find, or Pa's own musket ball would kill the Shining Man.