Free Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I by Orson Scott Card Page A

them, and put them on the stool by his bed so they wouldn’t be full of roaches in the morning. He had kind of an agreement with the roaches. They could get into anything they wanted if it was on the floor, but they didn’t climb into Calvin’s bed or Alvin’s neither, and they didn’t climb onto his stool. In return, Alvin never stomped them. As a result Alvin’s room was pretty much the roach sanctuary of the house, but since they kept the treaty, he and Calvin were the only ones who never woke up screaming about roaches in the bed.
    He took his nightgown off its peg and pulled it on over his head.
    Something bit him under the arm. He cried out from the sharp pain. Something else bit him on the shoulder. Whatever it was, it was all over inside his nightgown, and as he yanked it off, it kept right on nipping him everywhere. Finally it was off, and he stood there stark naked slapping and brushing with his hands to try to get the bugs or whatever they were off him.
    Then he reached down and carefully picked up his nightgown. He couldn’t see anything scurrying away from it, and even when he shook it and shook it, nary a bug fell off. Something else fell off. It glinted for a moment in the candlelight and made a tiny twinking sound when it hit the floor.
    Only then did Alvin Junior notice the stifled giggling from the room next door. Oh, they got him, they got him sure. He sat on the edge of his bed, picking pins out of his nightgown and poking them into the bottom corner of his quilt. He never thought they’d be so mad they’d risk losing one of Mama’s precious steel pins, just to get even with him. But he should have known. Girls never did have any bounds of fair play, the way boys did. When a boy knocked you down in a wrestling match, why, he’d either jump on you or wait for you to get back up, and either way you’d be even—both up or both down. But Al knew from painful experience that girls’d kick you when you were down and gang up on you whenever they had the chance. When they fought, they fought in order to end the fight as quick as they could. Took all the fun out of it.
    Just like tonight. It wasn’t a fair punishment, him poking her with his finger, and them getting him all jabbed up with pins. A couple of those places were bleeding, they stabbed so deep. And Alvin didn’t reckon Matilda had so much as a bruise, though he wished she did.
    Alvin Junior wasn’t mean, no sir. But sitting there on the edge of the bed, taking pins out of his nightgown, he couldn’t help but notice the roaches going about their business in the cracks of the floor, and he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like if all those roaches just happened to go a-calling in a certain room full of giggles.
    So he knelt down on the floor and set the candle right there, and he began whispering to the roaches, just the way he did the day he made his peace treaty with them. He started telling them all about nice smooth sheets and soft squishy skin they could scamper on, and most of all about Matilda’s satin pillowcase on her goosedown pillow. But they didn’t seem to care about that. Hungry, that’s all they are, thought Alvin. All they care about is food, food and fear. So he started telling them about food, the most perfectly delicious food they ever ate in their life. The roaches perked right up and came close to listen, though nary one of them climbed on him, which was right in keeping with the treaty. All the food you ever wanted, all over that soft pink skin. And it’s safe, too, not a speck of danger, nothing to worry about, you just go on in there and find the food on that soft pink squishy smooth skin.
    Sure enough, a few of the roaches started skittering under Alvin’s door, and then more and more of them, and finally the whole troop went off in a single great cavalry charge under the door, through the wall, their bodies shiny and glowing in the candlelight, guided by their eternal insatiable hunger, fearless