Fishy nodded. “I know you mean to do good. It never be enough.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Never enough. But we do our best, and pray that in the long run, it will be enough.”

Alvin knelt again by Calvin, shook him gently, woke him. Calvin opened his eyes and saw Alvin. He laughed in delight. “You,” he said. “You came and saved me.”

15

Fathers and Mothers

Mike Fink and Jean-Jacques Audubon waited a discreet distance away as Hezekiah Study led Verily and Purity through the graveyard. The graves were located in a curious alcove in the wall of the cemetery. Purity knelt at her parents’ graves and wept for them. Verily knelt beside her, and after a while she reached for Hezekiah and drew him down with her as well. “You’re all I have left of them,” she said to Hezekiah. “Since I have no memories of my own, I have to rely on yours. Come with us.”

“I’ll travel with you as far as Philadelphia,” said Hezekiah. “Beyond that I can’t promise.”

“Once Alvin starts talking about the Crystal City, you’ll catch the vision of it,” said Verily. “I promise.”

Hezekiah smiled ruefully. “Will there be a need for an old Puritan minister?”

“No doubt of it,” said Verily. “But a scholar like you—I think we’ll have to tear you away from the things you can learn there in order to get a sermon out of you.”

“My heart isn’t much in sermonizing anyway,” said Hezekiah. “I’m tired of the sound of my own mouth.”

“Then don’t listen,” said Purity. “Why should we miss out on your sermons just because you don’t want to hear them?”

They lingered near the graves for some time. Only when they were leaving did it occur to Verily how odd it was to have such an- alcove enclosing just those two graves. Otherwise the graveyard walls marked out a simple rectangle.

Hezekiah heard the question and nodded. “Well, you see, when they were buried, the witcher insisted the graves had to be outside the churchyard. Can’t have witches in hallowed ground. Then the witchers left, and all the neighbors who knew them and loved them, they tore down the wall at that place, and laid out a new course, and now they’re inside the wall of the churchyard after all.”

They stood on the south bank of the Potomac, waiting for the ferry to return to their shore to carry them across into the United States—specifically New Sweden, which despite its name was now almost as thoroughly English-speaking as Pennsylvania. A long-legged waterbird swept down into the water, elegant in its graceful passage from a creature of air to a creature of water.

“Too bad Audubon ain’t here to tell us what bird that is,” said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart took Margaret by the hand. “You were there,” he said. “You know. What kind of bird was it that carried me?”

Margaret looked at him in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“I remember flying,” said Arthur. “Hour after hour, all the way north. What kind of bird was that?”