“But it says nothing of victory,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“It never does.”

Alvin wondered if you could just tie another thread onto the end of one of the broken ones, and save somebody's life. He looked for the spools of thread from which the warp was formed, but he couldn't find them. The threads hung down from the back beam of the loom, taut like there was a heavy weight hanging on them, but Alvin couldn't see where the threads came from. They didn't touch the floor. They didn't exactly stop, either. He looked this far, and there they were, hanging tight and long; and he looked this much farther, and there weren't no threads, nothing there at all. The threads were just coming out of nowhere, and there was no way the human eye could see or make sense of how they started.

But Alvin, he could see with other eyes, inward eyes, the way he studied into the tiny workings of the human body, into the cold inward currents of stone. And with that hidden vision he looked into a single thread and traced its shape, following how the fibers wound around and through, twisting and gripping each other to make the strength of the yarn. This time he could just keep following the thread. Just keep on following until finally, far beyond the place where the threads all disappeared to natural eyes, the thread ended. Whosever soul that thread bespoke, he had a good long life ahead of him, before he died.

All these threads must end, when the person dies. And somehow a new thread must start up when a baby got born. Another thread coming out of nowhere.

“It never ends,” said Becca. “I'll grow old and die, Alvin, but the cloth will go on.”

“Do you know which thread is you?”

“No,” she said. “I don't want to know.”

“I reckon I'd like to see. I want to know how many years I got.”

“Many,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Or few. All that matters is what you do with however many years you have.”

“It does too matter how long I live,” said Alvin. “Don't go saying it don't, cause you don't believe that yourself.”

Becca laughed.

“Miss Becca,” said Alvin, “what do you do this for, if you don't make things happen?”

She shrugged. “It's a work. Everybody has a work to do, and this is mine.”

“You could go out and weave things for folks to wear.”

“To wear and then wear out,” she said. “And no, Alvin, I can't go out.”

“You mean you stay indoors all the time?”

“I stay here, always,” she said. “In this room, with my loom.”

“I begged you once to go with me,” said Isaac.

“And I begged you once to stay.” She smiled up at him.

“I can't live forever where the land is dead.”

“And I can't live a moment away from my cloth. The way the land lives in your mind, Isaac, that is how the lives of all the souls of America live in mine. But I love you. Even now.”

Alvin felt like he shouldn't be there. It was like they forgot he was there, even though he'd just been talking to them. It finally dawned on him that they'd probably rather be alone. So he moved away, walked over to the cloth again, and again began tracing its path, the opposite direction this time, scanning quickly but carefully, up the walls, through the bolts and piles, searching for the earliest end of the cloth.

Couldn't find it. In fact, he must have been looking the wrong direction or got himself twisted up, because pretty soon he found himself on the same familiar path he had followed, the path that first led him to the loom. He reversed direction, and after a short time he found himself again on the path to the loom. He could no more search backward to find the oldest end of the cloth than he could search forward to find where the newest threads were coming from.

He turned again to Ta-Kumsaw and Becca. Whatever whispered conversation they had carried on was over. Ta-Kumsaw sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her, his head bowed. She was stroking his hair with gentle hands.

“This cloth is older than the oldest part of this house,” said Alvin.

Becca didn't answer.

“This cloth's been going on forever.”

“As long as men and women have known how to weave, this cloth has passed through the loom.”

“But not this loom. This loom's new,” said Alvin.

“We change looms from time to time. We build the new one around the old. It's what the men of our kind do.”

“This cloth is older than the oldest White settlements in America,” said Alvin.

“It was once a part of a larger cloth. But one day, back in our old country, we saw a large portion of the threads moving off the edge of the cloth. My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather built a new loom. We had the threads we needed. They pulled away from the old cloth; we continued it from there. It's still connected up– that's what you're seeing.”

“But now it's here.”

“It's here and there. Don't try to understand it, Alvin. I gave up long ago. But isn't it good to know that all of the threads of life are being woven into one great cloth?”

“Who's weaving the cloth for the Red folk that went west with Tenskwa-Tawa?” asked Alvin. “Those threads went off the cloth.”

“That's not your business,” said Becca. “We'll just say that another loom was built, and carried west.”

“But Ta-Kumsaw said no White folk would ever cross the river to the west. The Prophet said it, too.”

Ta-Kurnsaw turned slowly on the floor, without getting up. “Alvin,” he said, “you're only a boy–”

“And I was only a girl,” Becca reminded him, “when I first loved you.” She turned to Alvin. “It's my daughter who carried the loom into the west. She could go because she's only half White.” She again stroked Ta-Kumsaw's hair. “Isaac is my husband. My daughter Wieza is his daughter.”

“Mana-Tawa,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“I thought for a time that Isaac would choose to stay here, to live with us. But then I watched as his thread moved away from us, even though his body still was with us. I knew he would go to be with his people. I knew why he had come to us, alone from the forest. There is a hunger deeper than the Red man's hunger for the song of the living forest, deeper than a blacksmith's yearning for the hot wet iron, deeper even than a doodlebug's longing for the hollow heart of the earth. That hunger brought Ta-Kumsaw to our house. My mother was still the weaver at the loom then. I taught Ta-Kumsaw to read and write; he rushed through my father's library, and read every other book in the valley, and we sent for more books from Philadelphia and he read those. He chose his own name, then, for the man who wrote the Principia. When we came of age, he married me. I had a baby. He left. When Wieza was three, he came back, built a loom, and took her west over the mountain to live with his people.”

“And you let your own daughter go?”

“Just like one of my ancestors sat at her old loom and let her daughter go, across the ocean to this land, her with a new loom and her watchful father beside her, yes, I let her go.” Becca smiled sadly at Alvin. “We all have our work, but there's no good work that doesn't have its cost. By the time Isaac took her, I was already in this room. Everything that happened has been good.”

“You didn't even ask how your daughter was doing when he got here! You still haven't asked.”

“I didn't have to ask,” said Becca. “No harm comes to the keepers of the loom.”

“Well, if your daughter's gone, who's going to take your place?”

“Perhaps another husband will come here, by and by. One who'll stay in this house, and make another loom for me, and yet another for a daughter not yet born.”

“And what happens to you then?”

“So many questions, Alvin,” said Ta-Kumsaw. But his voice was soft and tired and English-sounding; Alvin wasn't in awe of the Ta-Kumsaw who read White men's books, and so he paid no heed to the mild rebuke.

“What happens to you when your daughter takes your place?”