Ozark Trilogy 2: The Grand Jubilee (16 page)

“It’s a sorry mess, child, and a scandalous waste.”

“Not just for us, Granny-think of the Lewises. They’ve got no money to spend on frills like trips to Brightwater, but they sent twenty-four, and every last one of them in Sundy best . . . I know how long they had to save to do that.”

“There was no way we could of known,” Granny Hazelbide insisted.

“There should of been!”

“And there should be only bliss and glory, but there isn’t. How many nights did you spend casting Spells, trying to see your way through this, Responsible’? Not even the Magicians of Rank could say how it would come out. All any of you got for your efforts was `There’ll be trouble’!
I
remember.”

She stood up then, and brushed her skirts down, looking grim. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you that there’s a piece of trouble left over,” she muttered.

“Ah, Granny! A piece of trouble-we haven’t even seen the beginning of the troubles yet!”

“This is something . . . more ordinary.”

“What? What’s happened?”

“Well, now, it seems as there’s a Bridgewraith.”

“Oh, Granny Hazelbide!” Responsible knew she must look despair doubled and pleated, but it was too much. “Not now!”

“Now,” sighed the Granny. “You recollect that little bit of a bridge on Pewter Street, the one they call Humpback, though it has about as much of a hump as I do-that’s where she is.”

“You know who it is?”

“For sure I do. It’s Mynna of McDaniels. But there being strangers in town, and young people as weren’t here when Mynna died-she’s been taken home twice already. They say her mother’s in a sorry state, Responsible; Mynna’s been dead it must be twenty years this October. Two of the Airy Grannys are down in the diningroom this minute telling those as are left eating not to pay Mynna any mind no matter how she cries and begs; but it won’t be easy. Mynna was a pretty little thing, and she’s standing on the bridge crying fit to kill, wearing the blue dress she had on the day she tripped and fell off that bridge into the water. Hit her head on a rock, Mynna did, and drowned in water not even six foot deep, and her a good strong swimmer for a girl of ten. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“I’d better-”

Granny Hazelbide stopped her, pushing her back into her chair with one firm hand.

“You’d `better’ nothing-you stay right here,” she said. “I’ll be going along to Humpback Bridge myself, soon as it’s dark, and I’ll take Mynna of McDaniels’ hand and lead her back to the graveyard where she belongs. That’s Granny business, and not suitable for you to concern yourself with it.”

“She won’t
stay
in the graveyard, Granny-they never do.”

“Then I’ll go down and lead her back every night for so long as it takes to convince her, and two or three times a night if it’s needful. And some of the other Grannys’ll spell me. A month or two, she’ll settle back down.”

Responsible rubbed at her eyes with both hands; the sandy feeling was a torment, and tonight, somehow, she’d have to get some sleep. But she said, “I don’t mind going down there, Granny.”

“Nor do I,” said the old woman, “nor do I. And I’m not worn out with all this the way you are. At ninety a body doesn’t need much sleep.”

“I thank you-and I do mean it.”

“I know you do, child. And I’ll have a little something sent up to you to
see
that you sleep this night. Mind you drink it all down, you’re falling over in your tracks.”

Responsible nodded, and leaned her head back in the chair, weary to her bones and beyond.

At the door, the Granny stopped suddenly and stood with one hand on the knob.

“One more thing, Responsible,” she said, “and I reckon you’d best hear it from me. I’d be averse to your hearing it from Granny Leeward, for example, and if I know that one she’ll be at you with it before supper-or your mother will, one. It’ll be no surprise to you.”

“What is it, Granny?” Responsible wondered if there ever would be an end to this day.

“They’re saying that the Bridgewraith’s come out because Troublesome was here in the town.”

Responsible closed her eyes and smiled.

“They would say that,” she said. “What else have they got to blame things on? Couldn’t be their own fault, after all.”

“Like I said,” the Granny answered. “I didn’t think you’d be surprised. And now I’ll be going.”

The door closed behind Granny Hazelbide, and Responsible sat and rocked and thought and rocked and thought some more. She sent a tentative thought out, feeling for Lewis Motley Wommack, and found him already on board a ship pulling away from the Brightwater Landing, and skittish under her mindtouch as a wild Mule colt. Taking note of that, she let it drop; he had a right to his privacy.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t made it amply clear to her how he felt about mindspeech and mindtouch-exactly the same way the Mules felt about it, so far as she could tell, though he’d not done to her yet what the Mules did when a Magician was fool enough to try to take advantage of their telepathic abilities. The headache she had was from having the world fall in on her; she couldn’t lay it on the shoulders of Lewis Motley.

At Castle Smith, Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th was not at all surprised to find something sitting on the Castle’s front steps waiting for him. It was a beautiful cat, grant him that, but he didn’t care much for the look of it at that moment. Its back was arched like a snare, the claws on all six paws were out and at the ready, its long silver hair stood out all over it like the quills of the fabled Porkypine; and it hissed and spat at him in a remarkably eloquent manner.

The Magician of Rank had been expecting his reception; in the trunk marked with an
x
there’d been packed not only the thirteen crowns, the king’s scepter, and the rest of the royal paraphernalia, but also a sack of heavy leather with a drawstring round the top. He whipped that out of a deep pocket inside his cloak, dropped it over the cat-that had been too occupied cussing him out in her limited vocabulary to be wary-and pulled the string tight. Then he tucked the bag under his arm, much like carrying a bag full of snakes but perfectly safe, and headed up to his rooms at the fastest pace consistent with the dignity of his position.

Inside his rooms he lost no time; he went straight to the heavy magic-chest, hewn of the precious cedar that only the Lewises could coax to grow, and pulled out what was needful, laying the squalling sack inside it where he could slam down the lid if the animal thought of anything he hadn’t anticipated. He drew a pentacle of adequate size on his floor, pouring out the coarse salt that made its borders well over an inch wide for safety; and at each of its five corners he laid two silver daggers set down in a cross. He stepped back and looked at it, and decided that though it wasn’t elegant it would serve, and then in one swift motion he loosed the puckerstring to the sack, threw the thing into the middle of the pentacle and leaped back well out of harm’s way.

“You
are
angry, you dear old thing,” he murmured at the cat, that’s fur had now taken to giving off sparks all on its own, “and I can’t say I blame you. Hold on a minute, and I’ll give you a chance to tell me what a vast number of unspeakable things I
am.”

He had a sudden temptation, almost overpowering, to run the Granny through a set of changes on the way to her proper shapesay a mourning dove, first; and then maybe a ponderous turtle; and then maybe a nanny goat; and so on. But he fought it off. She was going to be trouble enough as it was.

He set up his Structural Index and his Structural Change with great care-it wouldn’t do to alter so much as the sprigged flowers she’d had in the pattern of her dress goods-and he raised his hands to trace the double-barred arrow in the air. It was a simple Substitution Transformation, and it didn’t take long; one quiet crackle from the golden arrow, and there stood Granny Gableframe good as new and twice as fractious.

The pentacle had been more than sufficient to hold the cat, furious as it had been; the Granny was something else. She hitched up her skirts to avoid the salt, kicked aside a set of the crossed silver daggers with one pointy-toed shoe, stepped contemptuously right out of the magic shape and right up to
him
, and jabbed her finger into his chest. He felt the blood come, even through his tunic, and sighed; it was one of his favorite tunics.

“Now, Granny-” he began, but she cut him off in midsyllable.

“
You,
” she said, “are so far beneath contempt that you’re not worth wasting spit on. If you were sitting on the edge of a piece of paper, you’d be able to swing your legs, you’re that small! You are a worthless, sorry, vile excuse for a Magician of Rank, and if I’d the power I’d strip you of that rank, for you don’t deserve it any more than your
bed
does. Oh, I can’t do it, I know that well, but I can wish, and
I’m
a powerful wisher, Lincoln Parradyne, just a
powerful
wisher! And it might could be the just One as runs this universe’ll see fit to do what I can’t-I can pray for that,
with
out ceasing! And when you’ve laid me in my grave at last and think you’re shut of me, Lincoln Parradyne Smith the Traitor, you watch, you watch close-you’ll see my face in every mirror and it’ll be telling you what filth, what slime, what blasphemy you are . . . You’ll see my face in every cup you lift to your lips, you’ll hear my voice at your ear all the day long and all the night long and it’ll be cursing your immortal soul,
with
out ceasing! Vile serpent, vermin out from under a swamplog, you and your false lying tongue, you’ll find me in your pocket when you reach in for a shammybag, you’ll find me in your shoe when you stick your stinking foot into it, you’ll find me in your buttonholes when you . . .”

It went on and on, earning his considerable admiration before it was over, and he didn’t doubt a single word of it; and all the time that fingernail in his chest, poke, poke, poke, and he took it in silence. He had every bit of it coming to him.

“Never before,” she said finally, her voice gone to a gravelly rasp but not one bit weary, “never before in the one thousand years we’ve watched this world turn under the three moons,
never
has a Magician of Rank raised a hand-by magic or in ordinary human mischief-against a Granny! You are the very first to have that sorry distinction, Lincoln Parradyne Smith, and whatsoever it may have gained you now it will bring you more evil in payment than you ever knew existed! The universe, false Magician,
is not mocked!
”

“Granny Gableframe,” he hazarded then, since she appeared to have at least paused for a breath, “do please notice that I’ve done you no harm-none. I know the staff of this Castle, they’ll have fed you on breast of fowl and thick cream all the time we’ve been gone, and the servingmaids’ll waste days hunting for their lost pretty pet. You have my word you missed nothing at the Jubilee, if that is worrying you; it was a boring mess from beginning to end. Look at yourself, Granny Gableframe, you’re just as you were-not a hair on your head is out of place.”

She raised her index finger straight as a spike beside her temple, and she fixed him with a furious eye.

“You have tampered with my
person!”
she hissed. “You have tampered with my freedom! You have made a lower animal of a woman that was doing magic, and doing it with skill, before ever you were born! Don’t you tell me you’ve done me no harm, you sorry piece of work-and you’d of done more if you dared. A Magician of Rank, using his Formalisms & Transformations against an old woman-phaugh, it’d make a worm puke for shame. Now stand aside!”

And she marched out of the room, with him following her at a discreet distance and feeling that it wasn’t going well, and down to the parlor where the Family had gathered for coffee and ginger cake. They sat up nervously when she sailed into the room, he noticed, and Dorothy-now Princess Dorothy-began to bawl.

Delldon Mallard spoke up first, his voice warm and sticky with his confidence in his own righteousness, and bid the Granny good afternoon.

“Sit down and have some coffee and some of this good cake with us, Granny Gableframe,” he said. “We have a lot to tell you, now we’re home.”

“I wouldn’t sit with you,” said the Granny, “if both my legs’d been removed.
Which
you might very well direct your toy Magician of Rank over there to do next, I reckon!”

“Now, Granny,” said Delldon Mallard, “when you hear what we have to tell you, you’ll forget all about your mad. You’ll be sorry you didn’t go along to be part of it all, and you’ll be proud of this Family. Sit down, Granny, and let us tell you about it.”

“Don’t you put yourself out to tell me anything,” she spat at him. “I know all about what happened-and you know who told me? A
Mule
told me, in your own stables, that’s who! A Mule won’t stoop to mindspeech with a human being, but it’s perfectly willing, I discovered, to share minds with a cat-and I know all about it. Ever hear a Mule laugh, Delldon Mallard? They haven’t left off laughing since you made your speech!”

“Granny Gable-”

“You hush!” she declared. “Don’t you talk to me, you pitiful excuse for I declare I do not know what! And as for you females, you’d best really settle in to your weeping and your wailing, for you’ve got a lot of it to do down the road, and a long and lonesome road it is, mark my words. I’ll not stay under this roof another night, just for starters; not one night. I’m a decent woman, raised decent, lived decent, and plan to go on the same way; I’ll not cast my lot with such trash as you-cover your worthlessness with royal velvet, will you? Might as well go crown the goats! You pitiful females, you hear me now-there’s no velvet heavy enough to cover you, ever again!”