Read Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I for Free Online

gone,” said little Peggy.
    The woman on the bed wept bitterly, her birthwracked body shuddering.
    “Grieving at the baby’s birth,” said Mama. “It’s a dreadful thing.”
    “Hush,” whispered Eleanor to her mother. “Be joyous, or it’ll darken the baby all his life!”
    “Vigor,” murmured the woman.
    “Better nothing at all than tears,” said Mama. She held out the crying baby, and Eleanor took it in competent arms—she had cradled many a babe before, it was plain. Mama went to the table in the corner and took the scarf that had been blacked in the wool, so it was night-colored clear through. She dragged it slowly across the weeping woman’s face, saying, “Sleep, Mother, sleep.”
    When the cloth came away, the weeping was done, and the woman slept, her strength spent.
    “Take the baby from the room,” said Mama.
    “Don’t he need to start his sucking?” asked Eleanor.
    “She’ll never nurse this babe,” said Mama. “Not unless you want him to suck hate.”
    “She can’t hate him,” said Eleanor. “It ain’t his fault.”
    “I reckon her milk don’t know that,” said Mama. “That right, little Peggy? What teat does the baby suck?”
    “His mama’s,” said little Peggy.
    Mama looked sharp at her. “You sure of that?”
    She nodded.
    “Well, then, we’ll bring the baby in when she wakes up. He doesn’t need to eat anything for the first night, anyway.” So Eleanor carried the baby out into the great room, where the fire burned to dry the men, who stopped trading stories about rains and floods worse than this one long enough to look at the baby and admire.
    Inside the room, though, Mama took little Peggy by the chin and stared hard into her eyes. “You tell me the truth, Margaret. It’s a serious thing, for a baby to suck on its mama and drink up hate.”
    “She won’t hate him, Mama,” said little Peggy.
    “What did you see?”
    Little Peggy would have answered, but she didn’t know words to tell most of the things she saw. So she looked at the floor. She could tell from Mama’s quick draw of breath that she was ripe for a tongue-lashing. But Mama waited, and then her hand came soft, stroking across little Peggy’s cheek. “Ah, child, what a day you’ve had. The baby might have died, except you told me to pull it out. You even reached in and opened up its mouth—that’s what you did, isn’t it?”
    Little Peggy nodded.
    “Enough for a little girl, enough for one day.” Mama turned to the other girls, the ones in wet dresses, leaning against the wall. “And you, too, you’ve had enough of a day. Come out of here, let your mama sleep, come out and get dry by the fire. I’ll start a supper for you, I will.”
    But Oldpappy was already in the kitchen, fussing around, and refused to hear of Mama doing a thing. Soon enough she was out with the baby, shooing the men away so she could rock it to sleep, letting it suck her finger.
    Little Peggy figured after a while that she wouldn’t be missed, so she snuck up the stairs to the attic ladder and up the ladder into the lightless, musty space. The spiders didn’t bother her much, and the cats mostly kept the mice away, so she wasn’t afraid. She crawled right to her secret hiding place and took out the carven box that Oldpappy gave her, the one he said his own papa brought from Ulster when he came to the colonies. It was full of the precious scraps of childhood—stones, strings, buttons—but now she knew that these were nothing compared to the work before her all the rest of her life. She dumped them right out, and blew into the box to clear away the dust. Then she laid the folded caul inside and closed the lid.
    She knew that in the future she would open that box a dozen dozen times. That it would call to her, wake her from her sleep, tear her from her friends, and steal from her all her dreams. All because a baby boy downstairs had no future at all but death from the dark water, excepting if she used that caul to