“No, I wouldn’t say jinx.”

Taleswapper noted that in fact they both had said it. But he didn’t comment on their indiscretion. After all, it was the third voice that made bad luck true. His silence was the best cure for their carelessness. And the other two caught on quickly enough. They, too, held their silence.

After a while, Measure came down the hill with Alvin Junior. Taleswapper dared not be the third voice, since he had taken part in the conversation before. And it would be even worse if Alvin himself spoke next, since he was the one who had been linked with a jinx. So Taleswapper kept his eye on Measure, and raised his eyebrows, to show Measure that he was expected to speak.

Measure answered the question that he thought Taleswapper was asking. “Oh, Pa’s staying up by the rock. To watch.”

Taleswapper could hear David and Calm breathe a sigh of relief. The third voice didn’t have jinx in his mind, so Alvin Junior was safe.

Now Taleswapper was free to wonder why Miller felt he had to keep watch at the quarry. “What could happen to a rock? I’ve never heard of Reds stealing rocks.”

Measure winked. “Powerful strange things happen sometimes, specially with millstones.”

Alvin was joking with David and Calm now, as he tied the knots. He worked hard to get them as tight as he could, but Taleswapper saw that it wasn’t in the knot itself that his knack was revealed. As Al Junior pulled the ropes tight, they seemed to twist and bite into the wood in all the notches, drawing the whole sledge tighter together. It was subtle, and if Taleswapper hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen. But it was real. What Al Junior bound was bound tight.

“That’s tight enough to be a raft,” said Al Junior, standing back to admire.

“Well, it’s floating on solid earth this time,” said Measure. “Pa says he won’t even piss into water no more.”

Since the sun was low in the west, they set to laying the fire. Work had kept them warm today, but tonight they’d need the fire to back off the animals and keep the autumn cold at bay.

Miller didn’t come down, even at supper, and when Calm got up to carry food up the hill to his father, Taleswapper offered to come along.

“I don’t know,” said Calm. “You don’t need to.”

“I want to.”

“Pa—he don’t like lots of people gathered at the rock face, time like this.” Calm looked a little sheepish. “He’s a miller, and it’s his stone getting cut there.”

“I’m not a lot of people,” said Taleswapper. Calm didn’t say anything more. Taleswapper followed him up among the rocks.