Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Read Online Free PDF Page B

high ideals. Surely she could have some influence here, to root out the evil of slavery from this land. It was in Appalachee that Arthur Stuart had been conceived by a cruel master’s rape of his helpless slave. It was in Appalachee, then, that Peggy would quietly but deftly maneuver to help those who hated slavery and hinder those who would perpetuate it.
    She traveled in disguise, of course. Not that anyone here would know her, but she didn’t like being called by the name of Peggy Guester, for that was also her mother’s name. Instead she passed as Miss Lamer, gifted teacher of French, Latin, and music, and in that guise she went about tutoring, here a few weeks, there a few weeks. It was master classes that she taught, teaching the schoolmasters in various towns and villages.
    Though her public lessons were conscientiously taught, whatconcerned her most was seeking out the heartfires of those who loathed slavery, or those who, not daring to admit their loathing, were at least uncomfortable and apologetic about the slaves they owned. The ones who were careful to be gentle, the ones who secretly allowed their slaves to learn to read and write and cipher. These good-hearted ones she dared to encourage. She called upon them and said words that might turn them toward the paths of life, however few and faint they were, in which they gained courage and spoke out against the evil of slavery.
    In this way, she was still helping her father in his work. For hadn’t old Horace Guester risked his life for many years, helping runaway slaves make it across the Hio and on north into French territory, where they would be no longer slaves, where Finders could not go? She could not live with her father, she could not remove any part of his burden of grief, but she could carry on his work, and might in the end make his work unnecessary, for it would have been accomplished, not a slave at a time, but all the slaves of Appalachee at once.
    Would I then be worthy to return and face him? Would I be redeemed? Would Mother’s death mean something then, instead of being the worthless result of my carelessness?
    Here was the hardest part of her discipline: She refused to let any thought of Alvin Smith distract her. Once he had been the whole focus of her life, for she was present at his birth, peeled the birth caul from his face, and for years thereafter used the power of the dried-up caul to protect him against all the attacks of the Unmaker. Then, when he became a man and grew into his own powers enough that he could mostly protect himself, he was still the center of her heart, for she came to love the man he was becoming. She had come home to Hatrack River then, in disguise for the first time as Miss Larner, and there she gave him and Arthur Stuart the kind of book learning that they both hungered for. And all the time she was teaching him, she was hiding behind the hexes that hid her true faceand name, hiding and watching him like a spy, like a hunter, like a lover who dared not be seen.
    It was in that disguise that he fell in love with her, too. It was all a lie, a lie I told him, a lie I told myself.
    So now she would not search for his bright heartfire, though she knew she could find it in an instant, no matter how far away he was. She had other work in her life. She had other things to achieve or to undo.
    Here was the best part of her new life: Everyone who knew anything about slavery knew that it was wrong. The ignorant—children growing up in slave country, or people who had never kept slaves or seen them kept or even known a Black man or woman—they might fancy that there was nothing wrong with it. But those who knew, they all understood that it was evil.
    Many of them, of course, simply told themselves lies or made excuses or flat-out embraced the evil with both arms—anything to keep their way of life, to keep their wealth and leisure, their prestige, their honor. But more were made miserable by the wealth that came from the