Now we have said that the last toothway to New Jerusalem had failed; and if you do not recall this matter, we will refresh you here.
And of course we have told how Hank Makeway came to the gums of Kailani Tate and cleansed them; here.
And the clarification, here, and the first tooth, here, and the error, here and here.
Now the goddess asks Hank a difficult question: how can he challenge her to assert her own great worth, when he knows—as her maker—that she hath not the strength for that assertion?
She asks him in bleakness; but his answer shall be craft. . . .
Craft
“These are Drink-Deep,” Hank says, “and Paneity.”
Under the weight of her attention, the horses shy.
“They are a transformation,” Hank says. “If you wish it. What is immured in worthlessness, in Paneity, is opened to freedom in Drink-Deep.”
The toothway goddess stares into the horses’ souls. She sees herself in wine-dark shades embedded in their fires. Their shape is internal to her own; to ride the horses’ path is to travel her own road, and enter New Jerusalem.
She gives the most tenuous murmur of consent.
Hank leads the horses to the left edge of Kailani’s mouth. He puts one hand on each of the horses’ backs.
“You may still refuse,” he tells the goddess.
She is silent.
So Hank nods. “Here,” he says.
In this process the smith takes part; horses are wise, but they have not the vision to bind a goddess to her self-conceit, nor do they have a smith’s invariance of purpose. Hank is integral to the transformation, as much a beginning and ending to the young goddess’ road as the horses or the gums.
The world twists in on itself. It rushes through him, until his skin and his teeth are alive with the waves of the horses and the goddess-mind. The knot pulls tight and the mortal consciousness of Hank Makeway dissolves to foam. Only a rootless remnant of attention remains, grasping desperately in the darkness for anything that shines.
There.
The knot pops from the thread.
Something grasps for its name, uncertain if it is horse, smith, or toothway. An intolerable pressure of ignorance builds up before at last its mind gasps, Henry.
“Henry,” he says. “Hank. Hank Makeway. I’m in the toothway. I’m . . . I just . . .”
He surges up to his feet.
“Are you all right?” he says.
“That is unfair,” says the goddess. “It is taking me rather longer to locate my name, considering.”
“I’d be widely praised,” Hank says, “by cartographers, if you’d settle for I-791.”
“I-791,” she says. “Intercity 791. Alaia.”
“Alaia Goodway,” he offers.
“Is this New Jerusalem?” she asks.
“What we usually say,” Hank says, “is that the experience shares a nomenclatural homology with New Jerusalem, but is topologically distinct; or, that is, not as such.”
Skeptically she defocuses her perception of him.
“This is knowing that you are a road to New Jerusalem,” Hank Makeway says. “This is the experience that encodes the same information as an experience that being there encodes as a place. This is being a toothway bounded by Drink-Deep and Paneity, who will remind you always that at a certain point and a certain time, we said together, ‘this toothway we have built is good.’”
“This toothway we have built,” she says. “Is good.”
For a long moment Hank simply contemplates his finished task; and there is love and joy burning in him like a fire.
Then he shakes himself free of the mood and takes up again the burdens of a smith.
The truth of the road has been defined, and the truth of its purpose; but there are three months, at least, of detailing work to go.
Hank walks up and down the ways. Flesh-Ripper plants the last teeth of the lower jaw, and Crust-Cruncher of the roof. Hank and the goddess clean and sort the threads of Kailani’s destiny and make a cavity-retardant shell for all her teeth.
Sometime near the end of this the yearning for completion becomes a wistfulness.
It is hard for a smith to let a toothway go; and harder for a toothway to surrender its smith.
But inevitably they reach the point where they can no longer find any little piece of work un-done; and with a last bittersweet polishing of the enamel, Hank Makeway declares his mission closed.
“You’re as right a road as ever made by smith,” he says.
Numinous in the mouth of Kailani Tate the goddess contemplates herself; and like the seraphim she finds it just.
“I wish we were not parting,” Alaia Goodway says. “And may Lauemford treat you well.”
There is the lightest tone of teasing in her voice, and Hank sticks out his tongue before returning to his camp.
“Want the horses?” he says.
“Crust-Cruncher,” she says, “perhaps.”
So he pats Flesh-Ripper on the neck and he sets Crust-Cruncher loose. He gathers up the material implements of his craft and he cooks his last meal in Kell’s gums.
It will be four years before the main teeth come in and the standards will call this toothway safe; but Alaia is an impatient god. The first pilgrims and daredevils are riding through before Hank’s even packed his bags.
Lee has designed, built and managed online community websites since 1999, when he founded the online community program at Solucient, LLC (a healthcare data company). In 2003 he founded Common Craft, LLC, a consulting company that specializes in Social Design for the Web (
