“I think my real vision was about the same thing,” said Alvin.

“You don't have to tell me about the Shining Man,” said Taleswapper. “I never mean to pry.”

“You mean you just pry by accident?” said Alvin.

That was the kind of remark that got him a slap across the face at home, but Taleswapper only laughed.

“I did something evil and I didn't even know it,” said Alvin. “The Shining Man came and stood by the foot of my bed, and first he showed me a vision of what I done, so I knowed it was bad. I tell you I cried, to know I was so wicked. But then he showed me what my knack was for, and now I see it's the same thing you're talking about. I saw a stone that I pulled out of a mountain, and it was round as a ball, and when I looked close I saw it was the whole world, with forests and animals and oceans and fish and all on it. That's what my knack is for, to try to put things in order.”

Taleswapper's eyes were gleaming. “The Shining Man showed you such a vision,” he said. “Such a vision as I'd give my life to see.”

“Only cause I'd used my knack to cause harm to others, just for my own pleasure,” said Alvin. “I made a promise then, my most solemn vow, that I'd never use my knack for my own good. Only for others.”

“A good promise,” said Taleswapper. “I wish all men and women in the world would take such an oath and keep it.”

“Anyway, that's how I know that the– the Unmaker, it isn't a vision. The Shining Man wasn't even a vision. What he showed me, that was a vision, but him standing there, he was real.”

“And the Unmaker?”

“Real, too. I don't just see it in my head, it's there.”

Taleswapper nodded, his eyes never leaving Alvin's face.

“I've got to make things,” said Alvin. “Faster than he can tear them down.”

“Nobody can make things fast enough for that,” said Taleswapper. “If all the men in all the world made all the earth into a million million million million bricks, and built a wall all the days of their lives, the wall would crumble faster than they could build it. Sections of the wall would fall apart even before they built them.”

“Now that's silly,” said Alvin. “A wall can't fall down before you build it up.”

“If they keep at it long enough, the bricks will crumble into dust when they pick them up, their own hands will rot and slough like slime from their bones, until brick and flesh and bone alike all break down into the same indistinguishable dust. Then the Unmaker will sneeze, and the dust win be infinitely dispersed so that it can never come together again. The universe will be cold, still, silent, dark, and at last the Unmaker will be at rest.”

Alvin tried to make sense out of what Taleswapper was saying. It was the same thing he did whenever Thrower talked about religion in school, so Alvin thought of it as kind of a dangerous thing to do. But he couldn't stop himself from doing it, and from asking his questions, even if they made people mad. “If things are breaking down faster than they're getting made, then how come anything's still around? Why hasn't the Unmaker already won? What are we doing here?”

Taleswapper wasn't Reverend Thrower. Alvin's question didn't make him angry. He just knit his brow and shook his head. “I don't know. You're right. We can't be here. Our existence is impossible.”

“Well we are here, in case you didn't notice,” said Alvin. “What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn't true?”

“It has problems, I admit.”

“I thought you only told stories you believe.”

“I believed it while I was telling it.”

Taleswapper looked so mournful that Alvin reached out and laid his hand on the man's shoulder, though his coat was so thick and Alvin's hand so small that he wasn't altogether sure Taleswapper felt his touch. “I believed it, too. Parts of it. For a while.”

“Then there is truth in it. Maybe not much, but some.” Taleswapper looked relieved.

But Alvin couldn't leave well enough alone. “Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.”

Taleswapper's eyes went wide. Now I've done it, thought Alvin. Now I've made him mad, just like I make Thrower mad. I do it to everbody. So he wasn't surprised when Taleswapper reached out both arms toward him, took Alvin's face between his hands, and spoke with such force as to drive the words deep into Alvin's forehead. “Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”

And the words did pierce him, and he understood them, though he could not have put in words what it was he understood. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. If it feels true to me, then there is something true in it, even if it isn't all true. And if I study it out in my mind, then maybe I can find what parts of it are true, and what parts are false, and– And Alvin realized something else. That all his arguments with Thrower came down to this: that if something just plain didn't make sense to Alvin, he didn't believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense. “Taleswapper, does that mean that what I don't believe can't be true?”

Taleswapper raised his eyebrows and came back with another proverb. “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.”

Alvin was fed up with proverbs. “For once would you tell me straight!”

“The proverb is the straight truth, lad. I refuse to twist it up to fit a confused mind.”

“Well, if my mind's confused, it's all your fault. All your talk about bricks crumbling before the wall is built–”

“Didn't you believe that?”

“Maybe I did. I reckon if I set out to weave all the grass of this meadow into bug baskets, before I got to the far end of the meadow the grass would all have died and rotted to nothing. I reckon if I set out to turn all the trees from here to Noisy River into barns, the trees'd all be dead and fell before I ever got to the last of them. Can't build a house out of rotted logs.”

“I was going to say, 'Men cannot build permanent things out of impermanent pieces.' That is the law. But the way you said it was the proverb of the law: 'You can't build a house out of rotted logs.'”

“I said a proverb?”

“And when we get back to the house, I'll write it in my book.”

“In the sealed part?” asked Alvin. Then he remembered that he had only seen that book by peeking through a crack in his floor late at night when Taleswapper was writing by candlelight in the room below him.

Thleswapper looked at him sharp. “I hope you never tried to conjure open that seal.”

Alvin was offended. He might peek through a crack, but he'd never sneak. “Just knowing you don't want me to read that part is better than any old seal, and if you don't know that, you ain't my friend. I don't pry into your secrets.”

“My secrets?” Taleswapper laughed. “I seal that back part because that's where my own writings go, and I simply don't want anyone else writing in that part of the book.”

“Do other people write in the front part?”

“They do.”

“Well, what do they write? Can I write there?”

“They write one sentence about the most important thing they ever did or ever saw with their own eyes. That one sentence is all I need from then on to remind me of their story. So when I visit in another city, in another house, I can open the book, read the sentence, and tell the story.”

Alvin thought of a remarkable possibility. Taleswapper had lived with Ben Franklin, hadn't he? “Did Ben Franklin write in your book?”

“He wrote the very first sentence.”

“He wrote down the most important thing he ever did?”

“That he did.”

“Well, what was it?”

Taleswapper stood up. “Come back to the house with me, lad, and I'll show you. And on the way I'll tell you the story to explain what he wrote.”