“The boy says no,” said Taleswapper.

“What does he know, in pain as he is?”

“He has to keep his wits about him, if he can,” said Taleswapper. He knelt by the bed, just to the right of Faith, so he was even nearer to the boy’s face. “Alvin, do you hear me?”

Alvin groaned. It must have meant yes.

“Then listen to me. Your leg is very badly hurt. The bones are broken, but they’ve been set in place—they’ll heal well enough. But the skin was torn away, and even though your mother has sewn it back in place, there’s a good chance the skin will die and take gangrene, and kill you. Most surgeons would cut off your leg to save your life.”

Alvin tossed his head back and forth, trying to shout. It came out as a moan: “No, no, no.”

“You’re making things worse!” Faith said angrily.

Taleswapper looked at the father for permission to go on.

“Don’t torment the boy,” said Miller.

“There’s a proverb,”,said Taleswapper. “The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse, how he shall take his prey.”

“What does that mean?” asked Faith.

“It means that I have no business trying to teach him how to use powers that I can’t begin to understand. But since he doesn’t know how to do it himself, I’ll have to try, won’t I?”

Miller pondered a moment. “Go ahead, Taleswapper. Better for him to know how bad it is, whether he can heal himself or not.”

Taleswapper held the boy’s hand gently between his own. “Alvin, you want to keep your leg, don’t you? Then you have to think of it the way you thought of the stone. You have to think of the skin of your leg, growing back, attaching to the bone as it should. You have to study it out. You’ll have plenty of time for it, lying here. Don’t think about the pain, think about the leg as it should be, whole and strong again.”

Alvin lay there, squinting his eyes closed against the pain.

“Are you doing that, Alvin? Can you try?”

“No,” said Alvin.

“You have to fight against the pain, so you can use your own knack to make things right.”

“I never will,” said Alvin.

“Why not!” cried Faith.

“The Shining Man,” said Alvin. “I promised him.”

Taleswapper remembered Alvin’s oath to the Shining Man, and his heart sank.

“What’s the Shining Man?” asked Miller.

“A—visitation he had, when he was little,” said Taleswapper.

“How come we never heard of this afore now?” Miller asked.

“It was the night the ridgebeam split,” said Taleswapper. “Alvin promised the Shining Man that he’d never use his power for his own benefit.”

“But Alvin,” said Faith. “This isn’t to make you rich or nothing, this is to save your life.”