The Dubious Hills (15 page)

Sune was sitting in the grass, leaning on the tree,
still spinning. She felt fairly awful, but nothing was actually
happening. She glanced up, saw Arry, and looked as if she might
have been startled if she could have found the energy.

“
That isn’t very comfortable,”
said Arry.

“
What, lumpy cold damp ground
underseat and a great willow root pressing one’s spine the wrong
way? It’s much the same whether I’m here or in the rocker.” Oonan
and Mally both said, and Arry was beginning to know, that pregnant
women often knew about discomfort, though not usually pain. Arry
wondered, for the first time, if this said something about the
exact nature of the spell that blessed them all, or about the
nature of pregnancy. This was probably not the time to ask Sune
about it.

She sat down on a fallen branch. The deep grass was
scattered with snowdrops, though it was late for them according to
Jony. Bluebells were up but not blooming yet. Jony said they were
late this year as well.

“
If you’re coming every day about
the baby,” said Sune, “I don’t mind, you needn’t invent
questions.”

Arry said, “Well, I don’t invent them, they just
arrive.”

“
Ask away, then. How is the baby,
though? I’d like to know.”

“
Crowded,” said Arry. “Not hurting
at all. You could ask Oonan, though, to be certain; he could tell
you more.”

“
I don’t wish to hear that much,
perhaps,” said Sune.

Arry looked at her. Worry, like a teardrop or a
candle flame, of which the blurred or bluish edges were fear. It
made the heart feel heavy somehow, it was as bad as a stomachache.
Unlike most stomachaches, it seemed to have no cause, or none she
knew how to distinguish. Arry blinked, and the sudden dislocation
of her knowledge, like a step missed on a rocky path, almost made
her fall off the log.

“
What did you want to ask?” said
Sune.

Arry blinked again, and steadied herself with one
hand on the damp rough surface of the log. “Are the Lukanthropoi
out of nature?” she said.

“
Are they what?”

“
Mally gave me a story about
children in the forms of things unknown and it had written in the
margin, ‘once out of nature. ’” Arry did not look at Sune; she was
afraid of what else she might see that she was not supposed to be
seeing, that lay outside her field of knowledge.

“
Yes, I know both those stories,”
said Sune readily. “The writer means death.”

“
That’s what out of nature
means?”

“
Well, it’s all I can think of.
Whether the Lukanthropoi are a made race or are enspelled, they
partake of the nature of things.”

“
But the dead don’t?”

“
No. Death is natural, but what
comes after is indeed out of nature.”

“
What does come after?”

“
I don’t know,” said
Sune.

“
Who would?”

Sune shook her head. Arry tried to think of some way
to ask Sune who else might know about nature at all, but realized
that she would be seeming to doubt Sune if she did this. She looked
cautiously at Sune, ready to look away at once; but all she knew
was that Sune’s feet were swollen and her back painful and various
parts of her complaining, more or less loudly, about being pushed
out of their proper places. She said, “Is there anything I can do
for you while I’m here?”

“
You can tell me why you want to
know about the Lukanthropoi.”

“
Derry says the wolves that got
the sheep didn’t act like wolves.”

“
Ah,” said Sune.

Arry said, “What does that mean?”

Sune looked slightly startled, but she answered. “It
means, of course, I should have remembered.” She moved both hands
over the baby, which kicked her gently. “One gets preoccupied,” she
added.

“
I suppose one would,” said
Arry.

“
You aren’t thinking of finding
out for yourself, are you?”

“
First Oonan, now you,” said Arry,
half amused and half annoyed. “Is there a way you people can tell
when you should ask? Ought I to worry?”

“
Maybe Oonan has a way,” said
Sune. “I haven’t. But because of young Knot here, I’ve been
remembering my own growing up, and today I was thinking about the
summer I was fourteen.”

“
Did you want to have a
baby?”

“
No,” said Sune, smiling, “but
what I did want would have got me one.”

“
There isn’t anybody, really,”
said Arry.

Sune seemed to be thinking this over. The baby
kicked her again, rather hard, but she didn’t notice. She said,
like somebody listing the items to be taken on a journey, “You were
the only baby born in your year; I remember everybody’s remarking
on it. Boys mature later than girls. Even then there’s only Tiln.
Oonan is your uncle.” She looked up. “Halver?”

“
No,” said Arry, before she had
decided whether to speak or not.

Sune seemed to accept this. “Well, you know, your
father had to go to the Hidden Land to find your mother,” she
said.

“
Why are you trying to find
somebody for me to have a baby with if I’m too young to have a baby
in the first place? By the time I’m old enough Tiln would be,
too.”

“
I’m thinking about displaced
energies,” said Sune.

“
What?” said Arry, and realized
with irritation that she sounded just like Con.

“
What
do
you think
about?” said Sune.

“
Con and Beldi,” said Arry. “The
cats. The house. The weather. The planting. The songs Bec used to
play. Why leaves turn yellow in the fall. Whoever’s hurt. What hurt
means, really, how many kinds of hurt there are, what’s to be done
about them all.”

“
Ah,” said Sune again.

“
What should you have remembered
now?”

“
That I’m not like you. When one
knows what one reads, one needn’t define one’s knowledge in the
same way, finding the boundaries. Almost it has none.”

“
How strange,” said Arry, again
involuntarily.

“
You seem strange to me, too,”
said Sune; she sounded a little wistful.

“
We all seem strange to one
another,” said Arry. “Mally says so.”

“
She would,” said Sune. She
shifted her body and braced herself with her arms. “If you would
help me up, I think I’ll go inside and attempt to be useful. Would
you like some tea?”

Arry declined on the grounds that she had a great
deal to do yet today, and helped Sune get off the log. Standing up
made Sune’s back hurt. She walked Sune back up the slope to her
house and saw her safely inside. Then she set off for Mally’s
house. It was almost hot out now, and the air felt heavy. Arry
stopped at home to get a drink of water. The empty house felt
strange, and, after the huge spaces of the spring sky, small and a
little musty. The cats were nowhere in sight. Arry stood in the
kitchen drinking absently out of Beldi’s breakfast mug and trying
to formulate her questions to Mally in such a way that Mally might
actually answer them.

The water tasted odd. Not flat or spoiled; a little
sweet, almost bubbly, like the cider Wim sometimes made when there
were too many apples. Arry supposed it was the blushful Hippocrene
again. She would have to speak to Con. Whatever was the matter with
Con, getting her magic back did not seem to have helped it. Arry
left the mug on the table and went to see Mally.

The door was open today. The black dog slept in the
shade of the lilac bush. There was a great deal of noise in the
house, laughter and trampling and shrill children’s voices. Oh,
no, thought Arry, Zia’s plan. She put her head around the edge of
the door, cautiously.

All the furniture had been pushed to the walls. Tiln
sat just to the right of the door, in a carved chair much too big
for him. On the other side of the chair was the kitchen table.
Lined up from the table all around the room and through the door
into the kitchen were what what seemed like every child in the
whole village. They were all clutching something, sheets and rolls
of paper, dolls, jewelry, garden tools, clothing. Beldi was in the
middle of the line, looking resigned. He had one of their mother’s
blue plates. Arry couldn’t see Con, or hear her either, which was
remarkable. Zia seemed to be missing as well.

The far end of the line was disorderly, with shoving
and shrieking and consequent crumpling of paper and tears and
recriminations; there was also a lot of laughter and at least one
game of chess. The children closer to Tiln were quiet, peering over
one another’s shoulders to see what he was doing.

What he was doing, just now, was looking at a doll
held by his sister Mora. Her face was deeply worried. Tiln just
looked thoughtful. The doll was one of the rag ones that Rine made,
according to Mally, when she got bored. They all had black wool
hair and blue embroidered eyes and red embroidered lips; they were
made with various kinds and colors of cloth all stained a uniform
color with walnut juice, and dressed in red smocks, trousers, and
boots from a lot of cloth Arry’s mother had had sent from the
Hidden Land but not, when she saw it, cared for the quality of.

“
Zia says it’s ugly,” said
Mora.

Tiln picked the doll up by the waist and stared at
it. He seemed uncomfortable. Arry thought for one appalling moment
that he had something severely wrong with his stomach; then she
realized that he was at least as worried as Mora, and that worry
made his stomach hurt.

“
No,” said Tiln flatly.

Mora snatched the doll from him and galloped into
the kitchen, shouting, “Ha! Ha, Zia! Ha!”

Tiln did not roll his eyes as a brother might; he
just looked miserable. Arry cleared her throat. Tiln jumped and
stared at her, and all the children clutching their objects hushed
and stared too.

“
I’m sorry to interrupt,” said
Arry, “but I wanted to speak to Mally.”

“
I’ll show you where she is,” said
Tiln, and got up with alacrity.

He gestured Arry back out the door and took her
around the house to the goat barn. Mally was sitting on the fence
scratching the smallest goat behind the ears. She turned and saw
them. She said to Tiln, “You needn’t go on with this if you don’t
like it.”

“
It’s easier than listening to
Zia.”

Mally grimaced. “Tell her no. A little noise won’t
hurt us.”

“
Will it?” said Tiln to
Arry.

“
Not physically,” said
Arry.

Mally looked at her for the first time. Mally was
underslept, though less severely than Halver, and her joints were
a little sore from planting all the beans. “Still worrying at that,
are you?” Mally said.

“
Didn’t you know I
would?”

“
If you hadn’t had a satisfactory
answer, yes.” Mally looked back at Tiln. “Shall I tell Zia?” she
said.

“
Of course not,” said Tiln. “I
have to go back now, or they’ll be all over Wim.”

He turned around and trudged over the new grass to
the house as if he were going up a very steep slope indeed. Arry
and Mally both watched him. Arry said, “What’s Zia doing?”

“
She claims,” said Mally
precisely, “that she is helping his knowledge to unfold faster by
having every child in the place bring him objects and ask him
whether or not they are ugly.”

Arry found herself shivering. “I’m glad she wasn’t
born yet when I found out what my knowledge was.”

“
Truly,” said Mally, “you
are.”

“
I talked to Derry about wolves,”
said Arry. “And she said that wolves know better than to kill and
not eat, and so do we, here in the Dubious Hills; but that people
outside don’t.”

“
Of course they don’t,” said
Mally. “That was the whole point of the spell that makes us
different. What do you think war is?”

“
How should I know?” said
Arry.

“
Well, come to that,” said Mally,
“how should I? But that’s what Sune says. What were you really
asking me?”

“
If everybody here really does
know better. Than to kill and not eat.”

“
Certainly,” said
Mally.

Arry leaned on the fence and rubbed the goat’s back.
Wolves knew better; people here knew better; yet when Halver was a
wolf, what did he do but kill and not eat. She sighed.

“
That’s not what’s worrying you,”
said Mally.

Even I know that, thought Arry. She said,
“Everybody has started asking if I want to have a baby and then
pointing out that there’s nobody for me to have one with.”

“
Who is everybody?”

“
Oonan and Sune. They also say I
shouldn’t have one, so I don’t see why it matters that there isn’t
anybody to have one with.”

“
But?”

“
But Oonan and I realized, there
isn’t anybody for Oonan or for Halver either. And I wondered
why.”

“
Did Oonan wonder why?”

“
He said we knew too
much.”

Mally laughed. She laughed so hard she affronted the
goat, which twitched itself from under Arry’s forgetful hand and
tore across the yard to the other side, where it thrust its head
over the fence and began eating a branch of lilac. Mally said,
“First, you should remember that if, like Sune, you just want a
baby, anybody here will do for that. If, like Oonan, you want a
companion, then matters become more difficult.”