“I want to write in the book,” he said. “I want my sentence in there along with Maker Ben’s.”

“Not yet,” said Taleswapper.

“When!”

“When you’ve whipped that old Unmaker, lad. That’s when I’ll let you write in this book.”

“What if I don’t ever whip him?”

“Then this book won’t amount to much, anyway.”

Tears sprang to Alvin’s eyes. “What if I die?”

Taleswapper felt a thrill of fear. “How’s the leg?”

The boy shrugged. He blinked back the tears. They were gone.

“That’s no answer, lad.”

“It won’t stop hurting.”

“It’ll be that way till the bone knits.”

Alvin Junior smiled wanly. “Bone’s all knit.”

“Then why don’t you walk?”

“It pains me, Taleswapper. It never goes away. It’s got a bad place on the bone, and I ain’t figured out yet how to make it right.”

“You’ll find a way.”

“I ain’t found it yet.”

“An old trapper once said to me, ‘It don’t matter if you start at the bung or the breastbone, any old way you get the skin off a panther is a good way.’”

“Is that a proverb?”

“It’s close. You’ll find a way, even if it isn’t what you expect.”

“Nothing’s what I expect,” said Alvin. “Nothing turns out like anything I figured.”

“You’re ten years old, lad. Weary of the world already?”

Alvin kept rubbing folds of the blanket between his thumb and fingers. “Taleswapper, I’m dying.”

Taleswapper studied his face, trying to see death there. It wasn’t. “I don’t think so.”

“The bad place on my leg. It’s growing. Slow, maybe, but it’s growing. It’s invisible, and it’s eating away at the hard places of the bone, and after a while it’ll go faster and faster and—“

“And Unmake you.”

Alvin started to cry for real this time, and his hands were shaking. “I’m scared to die, Taleswapper, but it got inside me and I can’t get it out.”

Taleswapper laid a hand on his, to still the trembling. “You’ll find a way. You’ve got too much work to do in this world, to die now.”

Alvin rolled his eyes. “That’s about as dumb a thing as I’ve heard this year. Just because somebody’s got things to do don’t mean he won’t die.”

“But it does mean he won’t die willingly.”

“I ain’t willing.”

“That’s why you’ll find a way to live.”

Alvin was silent for a few seconds. “I’ve been thinking. About if I do live, what I’ll do. Like what I done to make my leg get mostly better. I can do that for other folks, I bet. I can lay hands on them and feel the way it is inside, and fix it up. Wouldn’t that be good?”