Read The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI for Free Online Page A
Authors: Orson Scott Card
will die if somebody does not help, and the yellow fever, personne who live here knows how to cure it.”
It took Alvin a moment to decide that the French word she said must mean nobody . “I don’t know a thing about yellow fever.”
“It’s a terrible thing,” said the girl. “Quick hot fever. Then freezing cold. My mother’s eyes turn yellow. She screams with pain in her neck and shoulders and back. And then when she’s not screaming, she looks sad.”
“Yellow and fevery,” said Alvin. “I reckon the name kind of says it all.” Alvin knew better than to ask what caused the disease. The two leading theories about the cause of disease were punishment for sin and a curse from somebody you offended. Course, if either one was right, it was out of Alvin’s league.
Alvin was a healer, of a kind—that was just natural for a maker, being sort of included in the knack. But what he was good at healing was broken bones and failing organs. A man tore a muscle or chopped his foot, and Alvin could heal him up good. Or if gangrene set in, Alvin could clean it out, make the good flesh get shut of the bad. With gangrene, too, he knew the pus was full of all kinds of little animals, and he knew which ones didn’t belong in the body. But he couldn’t do like he did with the water and just tell everything alive to break apart—that would kill the person right along with the sickness.
Diseases that made your nose or bowels run were hard to track down, and Alvin never knew whether they were serious or something that would just get better if you left it alone or slept a lot. The stuff that went on inside a living body was just too complicated, and most of the important things was way too small for Alvin to understand what all was going on.
If he was a real healer, he could have saved his newborn baby when it was born too young and couldn’t breathe. But he just didn’t understand what was going on inside the lungs. The baby was dead before he figured out a single thing.
“I’m not going to be able to do much good,” said Alvin. “Healing sick folks is hard.”
“I touch her lying on her bed, and I see nothing but she dead of yellow fever,” said Dead Mary. “But I touch you by the fountain, I see my mother living.”
“When did you touch me?” said Alvin. “You didn’t touch me.”
“I bump you when I draw water,” she said. “I have to be sneaky. Personne lets me touch him now, if he sees me.”
That was no surprise. Though Alvin figured it was better to know you’re sick and dying in time to say good-bye to your loved ones. But folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.
Illness or adultery, Alvin figured ignorance worked about as well in both cases. Not knowing just meant it was going to get worse.
There was a plank leading from a hummock of dry land to the minuscule porch of the house, and Dead Mary fair to danced along it. Alvin couldn’t quite manage that, as he looked down at the thick sucking mud under the plank. But the board didn’t wobble much, and he made it into the house all right.
It stank inside, but not much worse than the swamp outside. The odor of decay was natural here. Still, it was worse around the woman’s bed. Old woman, Alvin thought at first, the saddest looking woman he had ever seen. Then realized that she wasn’t very old at all. She was ravaged by worse things than age.
“I’m glad she’s sleeping,” said Dead Mary. “Most times the pain does not let her sleep.”
Alvin got his doodlebug inside her and found that her liver was half rotted away. Not to mention that blood was seeping everywhere inside her, pooling and rotting under the skin. She was close to death—could have died already, if she’d been willing to let go. Whatever she was holding on for, Alvin couldn’t guess. Maybe love for this girl here. Maybe just a stubborn determination
It took Alvin a moment to decide that the French word she said must mean nobody . “I don’t know a thing about yellow fever.”
“It’s a terrible thing,” said the girl. “Quick hot fever. Then freezing cold. My mother’s eyes turn yellow. She screams with pain in her neck and shoulders and back. And then when she’s not screaming, she looks sad.”
“Yellow and fevery,” said Alvin. “I reckon the name kind of says it all.” Alvin knew better than to ask what caused the disease. The two leading theories about the cause of disease were punishment for sin and a curse from somebody you offended. Course, if either one was right, it was out of Alvin’s league.
Alvin was a healer, of a kind—that was just natural for a maker, being sort of included in the knack. But what he was good at healing was broken bones and failing organs. A man tore a muscle or chopped his foot, and Alvin could heal him up good. Or if gangrene set in, Alvin could clean it out, make the good flesh get shut of the bad. With gangrene, too, he knew the pus was full of all kinds of little animals, and he knew which ones didn’t belong in the body. But he couldn’t do like he did with the water and just tell everything alive to break apart—that would kill the person right along with the sickness.
Diseases that made your nose or bowels run were hard to track down, and Alvin never knew whether they were serious or something that would just get better if you left it alone or slept a lot. The stuff that went on inside a living body was just too complicated, and most of the important things was way too small for Alvin to understand what all was going on.
If he was a real healer, he could have saved his newborn baby when it was born too young and couldn’t breathe. But he just didn’t understand what was going on inside the lungs. The baby was dead before he figured out a single thing.
“I’m not going to be able to do much good,” said Alvin. “Healing sick folks is hard.”
“I touch her lying on her bed, and I see nothing but she dead of yellow fever,” said Dead Mary. “But I touch you by the fountain, I see my mother living.”
“When did you touch me?” said Alvin. “You didn’t touch me.”
“I bump you when I draw water,” she said. “I have to be sneaky. Personne lets me touch him now, if he sees me.”
That was no surprise. Though Alvin figured it was better to know you’re sick and dying in time to say good-bye to your loved ones. But folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn’t know about something bad, it wasn’t happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.
Illness or adultery, Alvin figured ignorance worked about as well in both cases. Not knowing just meant it was going to get worse.
There was a plank leading from a hummock of dry land to the minuscule porch of the house, and Dead Mary fair to danced along it. Alvin couldn’t quite manage that, as he looked down at the thick sucking mud under the plank. But the board didn’t wobble much, and he made it into the house all right.
It stank inside, but not much worse than the swamp outside. The odor of decay was natural here. Still, it was worse around the woman’s bed. Old woman, Alvin thought at first, the saddest looking woman he had ever seen. Then realized that she wasn’t very old at all. She was ravaged by worse things than age.
“I’m glad she’s sleeping,” said Dead Mary. “Most times the pain does not let her sleep.”
Alvin got his doodlebug inside her and found that her liver was half rotted away. Not to mention that blood was seeping everywhere inside her, pooling and rotting under the skin. She was close to death—could have died already, if she’d been willing to let go. Whatever she was holding on for, Alvin couldn’t guess. Maybe love for this girl here. Maybe just a stubborn determination