The Dubious Hills (24 page)

Arry stood up tiredly. “Delighted,” she said. And
then, “Where’s Beldi?”

18

Beldi was not in the house, not asleep in a corner,
not sitting quietly by the dying bonfire, not eating the last bowl
of dried blueberries, not visiting the goats or ferreting out the
nest of new kittens in the hayloft. He was gone.

“
Leave Con with Wim,” said Mally,
“and I’ll come with you.” Oonan also came. Arry could hear Con
clamoring to be brought as well, that she could tell where Beldi
would go; but whatever Wim might have had to do to prevent her, she
did not actually come after them.

“
Maybe she
can
tell,”
said Arry uneasily, as they paused on the path that would take them
to Niss’s, or else back home.

“
Better than I can?” said
Mally.

Arry supposed not. “Where shall we go, then?” she
said.

“
Tiln saw Beldi last just when
Jony left,” said Mally. “He’s such an obliging child, that’s the
difficulty, he would go with two wolves or with one. If it were
Con, I’d know it had to be your parents.”

“
If it were, I wouldn’t worry,”
said Arry. “I think we should assume it’s Halver; that will prevent
more harm.”

In the still cool darkness all riddled with green
scents, she could feel Oonan and Mally looking at one another as
clearly as if they had all been standing in the sunlight and she
could see them.

“
What do you know about my
parents?” she said to Mally.

“
For all love, let’s walk
somewhere or other while we’re arguing,” said Oonan.

“
We’re arguing about where to
walk,” said Arry. “Where would Beldi go to begin with, so a wolf
could find him without alarming the entire party?”

“
The goat barn,” said Mally. “You
didn’t look for tracks, did you, when you were out
there?”

“
It’s mostly rock,” said
Arry.

“
I’ll get a lantern just the
same,” said Mally, and went back into her house.

“
You know you’d feel it if he were
hurt,” said Oonan.

“
It depends how far away he
is.”

“
How far could he get in half an
hour?”

“
How far could a wolf
get?”

“
He’s too heavy to ride a wolf,”
said Oonan. “I asked Derry, while you were looking for him. Con,
now, if it were Con gone missing that would be a possible
thing.”

“
I thought it would be Con,” said
Arry. “I always thought, whatever happened, it would be Con it
happened to.”

“
Con makes things happen, that’s
why,” said Mally; Arry wondered how long she had been standing
there with the lantern. Arry was very tired and her mind seem to go
in erratic jumps, like a spring lamb frolicking. She did not feel
frolicsome.

They took the lantern all around the outside of the
goat barn. There were no tracks. The path itself here was rock, and
while some of the small flowering plants that grew in its cracks
were bruised, there had been so many people walking here today that
this meant nothing.

Arry looked up the dark hill. It was crowned with a
clump of birch trees. Their patchy white trunks seemed to glimmer a
little; their new leaves made a sharp and precise darkness between
them and the sky. “Mally?” she said. “Might he go sit up
there?”

“
Very like,” said
Mally.

They all climbed the hill as fast as they could go.
Arry found breathing difficult; she was filling up with a kind of
thick dread that seemed to leave no room for air. When they got to
the outermost tree she hung back, and Mally and Oonan went through
before her, with a crackling of fallen twigs.

“
Ah,” said Oonan.

Arry craned forward, and took hold of the nearest
birch trunk. It was cold. Beldi was curled up on the ground with
his head in a pile of dead yellow leaves and Tiln’s wolfskin coat
spread over him. He wasn’t hurt at all, any more than the leaves
were.

“
Wake up,” said Oonan
irritably.

Beldi raised his head and blinked in the light of
the lantern. Arry almost fell down, although both her feet were
firmly on the ground and she was holding onto the tree. Death was
not her province, after all; but she had so thought Beldi was dead
it had been almost like knowledge. She would have to ask somebody
about fear.

“
Where’s Halver?” said Beldi. “I
wasn’t done dreaming.”

“
What are you doing with Tiln’s
coat?” said Arry.

“
That isn’t Tiln’s coat,” said
Mally over her shoulder. “I saw Tiln’s coat in the front room when
I went back for the lantern. Besides, the colors are different.
This one is mostly black and gray; his has more cream in
it.”

“
It’s Halver’s,” said Beldi,
sitting up. He looked resigned and rather grumpy. He was not, in
fact, hurt in the least, unless you counted a small pain in his arm
where he had lain on a stone.

“
What happened?” said Oonan. He
sat down in the leaves next to Beldi. Mally loomed over them with
the lantern. Arry stayed where she was.

“
I walked away from the fire after
the dancing,” said Beldi. “Arry says I always get too hot and
should remember to cool off. So I walked up the hill, and I met
Halver coming down. He had the coat over his shoulder. He asked me
if I’d like to be a wolf. I said I had never thought about it; I
told him he ought to ask Mally. He told me that if I came into this
place and covered myself with the coat and went to sleep, I would
dream about being a wolf, and then I would know.”

“
He said just that?” said
Oonan.

Beldi nodded. “I asked him if that would be my
knowledge, then, what it was like to be a wolf. I thought that was
strange, but I didn’t think I’d mind. He laughed. He said that
would be only the smallest part of my knowledge. And he said it was
part of my education. That’s his province; so I did as he told
me.”

“
What was it like?” said Oonan.
And when Beldi said nothing, he added,
“Did
you like
it?”

Beldi looked at Mally.

“
Not altogether,” said
Mally.

“
Except that I wasn’t finished
when you woke me,” said Beldi.

“
What didn’t you like?” said
Oonan.

Beldi looked at Mally again, but she said nothing.
At last Beldi said, “There was nobody to ask.”

“
You were alone?”

“
Yes, but that isn’t what I meant.
There was nobody to ask, anywhere.”

“
How could you tell?”

Beldi scowled; momentarily, he looked just like Con.
“I don’t remember,” he said. His face cleared a little. “It was a
dream,” he offered. “Niss and Sune both say—”

“
Yes,” said Oonan.

He and Mally looked at one another over the
lantern. Arry could not really see what their faces were saying.
She thought of Halver’s face, lit by the lantern in the sheep
hut.

“
Perhaps we’d better not start
school again tomorrow after all?” said Oonan.

“
Truly,” said Mally. “I believe it
must be time to put in the oats. I’ll talk to Jonat.”

“
Somebody should show that coat to
Niss,” said Arry. “And Tiln’s too.”

“
Somebody should be certain Tiln
doesn’t sleep under his tonight,” said Oonan.

“
Why?” said Beldi, standing up and
folding the coat. It was almost as big as he was. “I couldn’t tell
anything for certain,” he said, delivering the coat to Mally,
“because I haven’t my knowledge yet. But Tiln would know, wouldn’t
he, if it would be a beautiful or an ugly thing to be a
wolf?”

“
The question is, is true choice
allowed?” said Oonan. He relieved Mally of the lantern. “A question
for Niss, in the morning, I assume.”

“
A question for Niss, now,” said
Arry. But her voice cracked, with fatigue and distress and
bewilderment, and she could see, as plainly as if she knew it,
Oonan and Mally’s sudden alliance as adults against an overtired
and importunate child.

“
We’ll keep Con tonight,” said
Mally; and, as Arry opened her mouth, added, “and keep a watch over
her. Go home and sleep. You can fetch her after you’ve talked to
Niss. Tomorrow.”

Mally went off down the hill with the wolfskin coat,
leaving the three of them with the light.

They walked home slowly, not speaking. There was a
heavy dew, and the first few birds were talking to themselves by
the time the three of them got to Oonan’s house. Oonan handed Arry
the lantern. “Come fetch me when you’re ready to talk to Niss,” he
said, and turned away up his own hill.

Arry and Beldi walked on, squelching a little on the
grassy parts of the path. Arry was wondering so hard why Halver had
not tempted either her brother or her sister with their parents
that she could not speak; she was afraid she would tempt Beldi
herself. Beldi and Con were the only other people who would
understand how important it was, yet she could not tell them, and
not only because she had given her word. There should be somebody
she could ask, she thought hazily, as they climbed the hill to
their house, whether you could break your word to somebody who
would hurt Jony’s arm like that.

The house was faintly green, as Sune’s had been.

“
Tread carefully,” said Arry to
Beldi.

There were no frogs on the doorstep. Arry opened the
door, and both cats burst outside, complaining and purring at once.
Beldi went in first, and as he crossed the flagstones where the
green letters had been, he staggered and put out his hand to the
wall.

“
What?” said Arry, leaping through
the door and staring at him.

“
I felt as if I’d put my foot down
on a step that wasn’t there,” said Beldi. He pushed his hair back
and blinked several times. “I must be walking in my
sleep.”

“
Go to bed, then,” said Arry. “Or
do you want tea first, or something to warm you up?”

“
No,” said Beldi, “thank you, good
night,” and he went slowly across the front room and into the
scrubbing room.

Arry looked at the floor. It needed washing, except
for the spot where the mice had been, which was clean and gray. No
green letters. Keep the wolf far hence, she thought. Just you do
that. She shut the door, and went to bed.

She dreamed of the Fairy Melusine, who had a tail
like a fish, and whose children all were monsters. What woke her
was the smell of frying onions. Arry went sleepily into the
kitchen and found Beldi making breakfast. He never cooked, because,
he said, he could never be as good a cook as Bec had been. He
smiled apologetically at her over his steaming pan and said, “I
thought I’d make up for being troublesome last night.”

Arry almost did it. She almost laughed and told him
he was never troublesome. Half the laugh came out, but she squashed
the rest of it and said swiftly, “Maybe you were a little. You
shouldn’t wander off without saying anything.” She remembered that
he had missed the uproar over Jony, and added, “Jony got bitten by
a wolf last night: it might just as easily have been you who was
hurt.”

“
I was with Halver,” said
Beldi.

“
So you were. I
forgot.”

Beldi set his pan on the hearth and stirred the iron
kettle. He must have made enough oatmeal for an army. Well, they
could always make bread out of it, now that there was honey. He
said, “I couldn’t have bitten her, could I?”

“
Wouldn’t you
remember?”

“
It was very like a dream,” said
Beldi. He reflected, stirring. “I don’t remember being angry, or
hungry either, so perhaps I didn’t.”

“
We can ask Niss,” said Arry, “but
I don’t think, if you were asleep under a wolfskin, you could have
bitten Jony. She wasn’t dreaming, she was just going for a
walk.”

“
Wandering off,” said
Beldi.

“
It’s been safe here,” said Arry.
“I think now it isn’t.”

“
Breakfast is ready,” said Beldi,
spooning potatoes and onions onto Arry’s plate. He stood and held
it out to her, and suddenly looked stricken. “I forgot to make the
tea.”

“
Never mind,” said Arry, taking
her plate. “I’ve had enough tea this month to last the rest of my
life.”

Getting everybody fed and washed and dressed was
much easier when everybody did not include Con. It was only the
middle of the morning when they walked over the green hills to
Oonan’s house. Arry had assumed they would have to wake him, but he
was sitting on the stone wall of his garden with all three cats. He
looked and felt very much as if he had not been to sleep at all. He
was sitting on one wolfskin coat and had the other over his lap,
stroking the thick stiff fur.

“
Did you sleep under those?” said
Arry sharply.

“
I did indeed,” said Oonan. He
smiled crookedly. “As you might, perhaps, expect, even without
asking Derry, a wolf knows not what is broken nor how it may be
fixed. There is a certain sensation of wrongness in some
circumstances, and a set of behaviors to go with them, but no
knowledge.”

“
What did you do?” said Arry, and
when Oonan only looked at her, she said, “As a wolf, in your dream,
or whatever it was, what did you do?”

“
I can’t tell you,” said Oonan. He
lifted a fold of the coat over his lap. “After Niss has looked at
these, you may wish to sleep beneath one yourself. If she says it
will cause no harm.”