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an open furnace-hole with his bellows, but clad in ceremonial white; Stokes who led him into the little room with forest scenes painted on the walls
all around; Stokes who took him to the ironwood bier in the center—that open space that had ever represented the clearing at the end of the path.
Big Jack Ross also wore white, although his was a fine linen shroud. His lidless eyes stared raptly at the ceiling. Against one painted wall leaned
his coffin, and the room was filled with the sour yet somehow pleasant smell of it, for the coffin was also of ironwood, and would keep this poor
remnant very well for a thousand years and more.
Stokes let go of his arm, and Tim went forward on his own. He knelt. He slipped one hand into the linen shroud’s overlap and found his da’s hand.
It was cold, but Tim did not hesitate to entwine his warm and living fingers with the dead ones. This was the way the two of them had held hands
when Tim was only a sma’ one, and barely able to toddle. In those days, the man walking beside him had seemed twelve feet tall, and immortal.
Tim knelt by the bier and beheld the face of his father.
When he came out, Tim was startled by the declining angle of the sun, which told him more than an hour had passed. Cosington and Stokes
stood near the man-high ash heap at the rear of the smithy, smoking roll-ups. There was no news of Big Kells.
“P’raps he’s thow’d hisself in the river and drownded,” Stokes speculated.
“Hop up in the wagon, son,” Cosington said. “I’ll drive’ee back to yer ma’s.”
But Tim shook his head. “Thankee, I’ll walk, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Need time to think, is it? Well, that’s fine. I’ll go on to my own place. It’ll be a cold dinner, but I’ll eat it gladly. No one begrudges your ma at a time
like this, Tim. Never in life.”
Tim smiled wanly.
Cosington put his feet on the splashboard of his wagon, seized the reins, then had a thought and bent down to Tim. “Have an eye out for Kells as
ye walk, is all. Not that I think ye’ll see ’im, not in daylight. And there’ll be two or three strong fellas posted around yer homeplace tonight.”
“Thankee-sai.”
“Nar, none of that. Call me Peter, lad. You’re old enough, and I’d have it.” He reached down and gave Tim’s hand a brief squeeze. “So sorry
about yer da’. Dreadful sorry.”
Tim set out along Tree Road with the sun declining red on his right side. He felt hollow, scooped out, and perhaps it was better so, at least
for the time being. With his mother blind and no man in the house to bring a living, what future was there for them? Big Ross’s fellow woodcutters
would help as much as they could, and for as long as they could, but they had their own burdens. His da’ had always called the homeplace a
freehold, but Tim now saw that no cottage, farm, or bit of land in Tree Village was truly free. Not when the Covenant Man would come again next
year, and all the years after that, with his scroll of names. Suddenly Tim hated far-off Gilead, which for him had always seemed (when he thought of
it at all, which was seldom) a place of wonders and dreams. If there were no Gilead, there would be no taxes. Then they would be truly free.
He saw a cloud of dust rising in the south. The lowering sun turned it into a bloody mist. He knew it was the women who had been at the cottage.
They were bound in their wagons and traps for the burying parlor Tim had just left. There they would wash the body that had already been washed
by the stream into which it had been cast. They would anoint it with oils. They would put birch bark inscribed with the names of his wife and son in
the dead man’s right hand. They would put the blue spot on his forehead and place him in his coffin. This Hot Stokes would nail shut with short
blows of his hammer, each blow terrible in its finality.
The women would offer Tim their condolences with the best will in the world, but Tim didn’t want them. Didn’t know if he could bear them without
breaking down once again. He was so tired of crying. With that in mind, he left the road and walked overland to the little chuckling rivulet known as
Stape Brook, which would in short order bring him to its source-point: the clear spring between the Ross cottage and barn.
He trudged in a half-dream, thinking first of the Covenant Man, then of the key that would work only once, then of the pooky, then of his mother’s
hands reaching toward the sound of his voice . . .
Tim was so preoccupied that he almost passed the object jutting up from the path that followed the course of the stream. It was a steel rod with a
white tip that looked like ivory. He hunkered, staring at it with wide eyes. He remembered asking the Covenant Man if it was a magic wand, and
heard the enigmatic reply: It started life as the gearshift of a Dodge Dart.
It had been jammed to half its length in the hardpan, something that must have taken great strength. Tim reached for it, hesitated, then told himself
not to be a fool, it was no pooky that would paralyze him with its bite and then eat him alive. He pulled it free and examined it closely. Steel it was,
fine-forged steel of the sort only the Old Ones had known how to make. Very valuable, for sure, but was it really magic? To him it felt like any other
metal thing, which was to say cold and dead.
In the proper hand, the Covenant Man whispered, any object can be magic.
Tim spied a frog hopping along a rotted birch on the far side of the stream. He pointed the ivory tip at it and said the only magic word he knew:
abba-ka-dabba. He half-expected the frog to fall over dead or change into . . . well, something. It didn’t die and it didn’t change. What it did was hop
off the log and disappear into the high green grass at the edge of the brook. Yet this had been left for him, he was sure of it. The Covenant Man had
somehow known he’d come this way. And when.
Tim turned south again, and saw a flash of red light. It came from between their cottage and the barn. For a moment Tim only stood looking at
that bright scarlet reflection. Then he broke into a run. The Covenant Man had left him the key; the Covenant Man had left him his wand; and beside
the spring where they drew their water, he had left his silver basin.
The one he used in order to see.
Only it wasn’t the basin, just a battered tin pail. Tim’s shoulders slumped and he started for the barn, thinking he would give the mules a good
feed before he went in. Then he stopped and turned around.
A pail, but not their pail. Theirs was smaller, made of ironwood, and equipped with a blossie handle. Tim returned to the spring and picked it up.
He tapped the ivory knob of the Covenant Man’s wand against the side. The pail gave back a deep and ringing note that made Tim leap back a
step. No piece of tin had ever produced such a resonant sound. Now that he thought of it, no old tin pail could reflect the declining sun as perfectly
as this one had, either.
Did you think I’d give up my silver basin to a half-grown sprat like you, Tim, son of Jack? Why would I, when any object can be magic? And,
speaking of magic, haven’t I given you my very own wand?
Tim understood that this was but his imagination making the Covenant Man’s voice, but he believed the man in the black cloak would have said
much the same, if he had been there.
Then another voice spoke in his head. He’s made of lies from boots to crown, and his gospels bring nothing but tears.
This voice he pushed away and stooped to fill the pail that had been left for him. When it was full, doubt set in again. He tried to remember if the