Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II by Orson Scott Card Page A

and the ground yielded gently under his feet. The White man had to wear rough heavy boots to walk far in this land, because the dirt scuffed and tore at his feet; the Red man couldwear the same moccasins for years, because the land was gentle and welcomed his step. As he moved, Ta-Kumsaw felt soil, wind, river, and lightning all moving with him; the land within him, all things living, and he the hands and feet and face of the land.
    There was a shout inside the fort. And more shouts:
    “Thief! Thief!”
    “Stop him!”
    “He’s got a keg!”
    Curses, howls. Then the worst sound: a gunshot. Ta-Kumsaw waited for the sting of death. It didn’t come.
    A shadowy man rose above the parapet. Whatever man it was, he balanced a keg on his shoulders. For a moment he teetered on the very peak of the stockade poles, then jumped down. Ta-Kumsaw knew it was a Red man because he could jump from three man-heights, holding a heavy keg, and make almost no sound upon landing.
    On purpose maybe, or maybe not, the fleeing thief ran straight to Ta-Kumsaw and stopped before him. Ta-Kumsaw looked down. By starlight he knew the man.
    “Lolla-Wossiky,” he said.
    “Got a keg,” said Lolla-Wossiky.
    “I should break that keg,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
    Lolla-Wossiky cocked his head like the redbird and regarded his brother. “Then I’d have to take another.”
    The White men chasing Lolla-Wossiky came to the gate, clamoring for the guard to open it. I have to remember this, thought Ta-Kumsaw. This is a way to get them to open the gate for me. Even as he thought that, however, he also put his arm around his brother, keg and all. Ta-Kumsaw felt the green land like a second heartbeat, strong within him, and as he held his brother, the same power of the land flowed into Lolla-Wossiky. Ta-Kumsaw heard him gasp.
    The Whites ran out of the fort. Even though Ta-Kumsaw and Lolla-Wossiky stood in the open, in plain sight, the White soldiers did not see them. Or no, they
saw;
they simply did not notice the two Shaw-Nee. They ran past, shouting and firing randomly into the woods. They gathered near the brothers, so close they could havelifted an arm and touched them. But they did not lift their arms; they did not touch the Red men.
    After a while the Whites gave up the search and returned to the fort, cursing and muttering.
    “It was that one-eye Red.”
    “The Shaw-Nee drunk.”
    “Lolla-Wossiky.”
    “If I find him, I’ll kill him.”
    “Hang the thieving devil.”
    They said these things, and there was Lolla-Wossiky, not a stone’s throw from them, holding the keg on his shoulder.
    When the last White man was inside the fort, Lolla-Wossiky giggled.
    “You laugh with the White man’s poison on your shoulders,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
    “I laugh with my brother’s arm across my back,” answered Lolla-Wossiky.
    “Leave that whisky, Brother, and come with me,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “The redbird heard my story, and remembers me in her song.”
    “Then I will listen to that song and be glad all my life,” said Lolla-Wossiky.
    “The land is with me, Brother. I’m the face of the land, the land is my breath and blood.”
    “Then I will hear your heartbeat in the pulse of the wind,” said Lolla-Wossiky.
    “I will drive the White man back into the sea,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
    In answer, Lolla-Wossiky began to weep; not drunken weeping, but the dry, heavy sobs of a man burdened down with grief. Ta-Kumsaw tried to tighten his embrace, but his brother pushed him away and staggered off, still carrying the keg, into the darkness and the trees.
    Ta-Kumsaw did not follow him. He knew why his brother was grieving: because the land had filled Ta-Kumsaw with power, power enough to stand among the drunken Whites and seem as invisible as a tree. And Lolla-Wossiky knew that by rights whatever power Ta-Kumsaw had, Lolla-Wossiky should have had ten times that power.But the White man had stolen it from Lolla-Wossiky with murders and likker, until Lolla-Wossiky wasn’t man