The Dubious Hills (31 page)

“
I heard about it,” said
Arry.

“
They don’t talk like ordinary
people,” said Beldi. “Mally says you have to sift them.”

“
What, like flour?”

“
Like flour with weevils in, is
what she
said,”
said Beldi, giggling.

“
She thinks their thoughts are
weevily?”

“
Yes, very.”

“
What do you think?”

Beldi’s head, outlined by the fire, moved a little;
but he did not turn to look at her. “I think,” he said, with a
certain relish, “that Zia has a plan, but she hasn’t told anybody
what it is. She isn’t persuaded yet that she needs us, but she’s
keeping us interested with her false plan, or half plan, or a plan
she’d like, even if it wouldn’t work, until she can see what to
do.”

“
She’s only five,” said Arry, a
little taken aback. “So’s Con,” said Beldi.

“
Well, that’s true. What does Zia
want you to think her plan is?”

“
Burn herbs at midnight in the
pine woods, conjure the wolfskin coats up out of nowhere, run away
to the highest meadow there is and sleep under them until we find
out what’s what,” said Beldi.

“
Can Zia conjure?”

“
Mally says not,” said Beldi; he
sounded distinctly doubtful.

“
Well, she knows, Beldi.” Had they
got wind of Mally’s failure concerning Halver?

“
She knows what Zia’s
like,
” said Beldi. “That’s different from what she can
do.”

“
Is it? I don’t know.”

“
Well, I don’t either, but I
think.”

“
When was she going to do
this?”

“
We were going to do it when the
moon is full next. If Zia decides to do it without us, or to do
something else, then she’ll do it any time she thinks is
right.”

“
Does Mally know what she’s up
to?”

“
Mally knows she’s up to
something.” Beldi added reflectively, “Of course, she always
is.”

“
Mmmmm,” said Arry.

“
What are you up to?” said
Beldi.

Arry sat up straight, dislodging Sheepnose. Beldi so
seldom asked questions. She supposed it was only fair; he had told
her what she needed to find out. “I’m trying to find Halver by
sleeping under the wolfskin coat.”

Beldi rolled over on the rug, thus dislodging
Woollycat also, and sat up. “But Niss said—”

“
I heard her.”

“
Do you want to be a
wolf?”

“
Not especially.”

“
But—”

“
I think this is a lesson of
Halver’s. I don’t think I have to become a wolf or die. I think
there are other choices.”

“
But what if you’re
wrong?”

“
It might be very useful to have a
wolf for your sister,” said Arry.

“
A wolf and a wizard,” said Beldi.
He sounded glum, and sulky. Arry looked him over, inwardly. His
pain was so unlike Con’s, or anybody else’s, that she was not
entirely certain it was pain at all.

“
You can be something too,” she
offered.

“
My parents are wolves already,”
said Beldi.

“
I won’t leave you,” said
Arry.

“
How do you know? What if that’s
what wolves do?”

“
Derry says they are very
familial,” said Arry.

“
I’m coming with you,” said
Beldi.

“
Leaving Con alone in the
house?”

“
She’s a wizard,” said Beldi. “And
she never wakes up, anyway.”

“
She’s five years old.”

“
I’m coming with you.”

“
Then I’m not going anywhere,”
said Arry. “I can sleep under the coat on our doorstep, as well as
anywhere.”

“
I’ll watch you, then.”

“
That’s actually a very good
idea,” said Arry. “I can’t tell what happens precisely.” She
pondered. “If I turn into a wolf,” she said, “and look at all
menacing—or even if I don’t—you must run back into the house and
shut and bolt the door.”

“
Are you sleepy now?”

“
No. Let’s play chess.”

Beldi won three games, and Arry decided trying to
sleep would be easier than playing a fourth.

22

She did not think she had slept, at first. The
rustle of the wind, the small sound of Beldi’s breathing, the
rustle and click as he amused himself by playing both sides of a
chess game, never altered. She stretched, finally, thinking she
might make herself some sleepy tea; and Beldi turned his head and
gasped.

Arry opened her mouth to speak, and closed it
hastily. The wolfskin coat was gone: she must be wearing it
indeed. Both cats were asleep in the hollyhocks, and neither of
them stirred. She got down off the doorstep, which was no longer
comfortable for the shape she was, and tried wagging her tail.
Beldi sat where he was, very still, his head turned sideways. Arry
moved very slowly and lay down on the other side of the hollyhocks.
The cats never stirred. The night air was full of intriguing and
unfamiliar smells. But the warm air wafting out of their house held
a green and awful smell, as of potatoes gone very bad. It must be
Niss’s spell.

Arry and Beldi stared at one another. Arry supposed
she could go back to sleep: that seemed to have the effect of
cancelling the transformation of the coat. If Halver came now, she
would not be able to deal with him anyway, unless she chose to tear
his throat out.

She considered this thought. It had never occurred
to her before. She could certainly not act on it without
considering it again in her ordinary form; but it had an
extraordinary appeal to it in her thoughts as she formed them now.
She was not hungry; she had no thought of hurting or killing or
eating Beldi, or Con; she did not want to run through the dark
slashing at Jony; she did not want to chase sheep or pounce on
mice. But killing Halver had a delicious smell to it.

It would hurt, thought Arry. You can’t kill him
without hurting him. She shut her eyes fiercely.

She woke up in her proper shape, in the sheep hut,
which was where she had meant to go for her final sleep under the
coat. She was herself again, and the coat was not with her, which
was a pity, because, as Grel had said it would, the evening had
turned cool. And Halver had taken the blanket from the bed on his
last visit. She sat down on the bare planks, hugging her arms.
Whatever Beldi was seeing, she hoped he was not afraid or
alarmed.

She sat and waited, while the small sounds of the
night established themselves and grew clear and distinct: frogs
croaking, locusts sawing away, something small slipping through the
grass, the half-heard high chittering of bats.

Frogs? thought Arry. At first she thought it was
some remnant of the wolf-self hankering after a treat; but it was
rather that the frog-chorus was wrong. This was not spring peeping,
but the full summer song. The locusts, too, did not belong to
spring, not to this spring. Arry got up and peered out the door of
the hut. Warm air poured over her. The moon was high and small and
full in the clean sky. The bright soft scent of the wild roses that
grew in the rocks moved along the air.

This must be another dream, thought Arry. The fourth
time must—must—I can’t think what it must, I hope it isn’t the
terrors of the earth. I could go back to sleep. I could go home,
and see what’s there. That feels dangerous: there would be two of
me. She stepped outside. The sheep were back, clumped in the spot
from which the rock could fall on them. On the other hand, she
thought, I could talk to myself; that might be useful. If this is
the summer to come and not one gone by. If this is anywhere at all
really. She squinted at the moonlight and the shadows, trying to
think. She felt very sleepy, much more so than she had when it
would have been useful.

Something dark was running across the field towards
her, its belly low to the ground. Arry sprang back into the hut and
snatched up the first piece of wood that came to her hand; but when
she came back to the door, it was to find Blackie wagging and
prancing and, when she spoke to him, rolling in the wild thyme and
sending up mixed scents of herb and dusty damp dog. She rubbed his
head. He leapt to his feet and began to growl. Arry took her hand
away at once, but he was not growling at her. Somebody else was
coming, who walked upright and wore a white or gray robe. The
person was too thin for Bec and not tall enough for Frances.

“
Well, of course,” said Arry. She
came out of the hut, still holding her stick. Blackie accompanied
her, pressed against her leg and vibrating with low
growls.

Halver looked very bleached in the moonlight. His
voice was rather thready. What he said, however, was entirely like
him. “This is not,” he said, as he had when Jony brought in a
basket of stinging nettle to show a useful plant to the younger
children, or when Tany said that Do What You Will was the whole of
the law, “what I had in mind.”

“
It never is,” said Arry, almost
at random.

“
Now that is untrue,” said Halver.
“You have been an excellent student. It’s in the change from
student to equal that we are, perhaps, having a little trouble. Why
are you sleeping under Tiln’s coat?”

“
It was the only way I could think
of to find you.”

“
Finding me is worth either
becoming a wolf or dying?”

“
I thought you wanted me to become
a wolf.”

“
I thought you wanted very much
the contrary.”

“
It hasn’t been very interesting
so far,” said Arry. Halver laughed. “That’s because you’re not
Tiln,” he said.

“
I wondered if that had something
to do with it. In any case, you did want me to become a wolf, so
you ought to be pleased.”

“
I wanted you to make a choice,”
said Halver. “This wasn’t it. What did you wish to see me
about?”

“
Two things,” said Arry. “First,
my parents. I couldn’t think of any other way to find them,
either.”

“
You won’t find them with me,”
said Halver; his tone was mostly rueful, but there was something
very bitter in his face. Arry wished Mally were here to interpret
it, and then remembered that that might not serve at
all.

“
Why?” said Arry.

“
They think we should let you
be.”

“
We?” said Arry, with a sinking
feeling.

“
We who change shape under the
moon, who have made a choice and abide by it, who are not trammeled
by this spell that sacrifices wisdom for petty
knowledge.”

Who says that’s what it does, thought Arry. She
said, “Let who be? Con and Beldi and me?”

“
The entire company of these
hills.”

“
And what do you think you should
be doing?”

“
Freeing the lot of
you.”

“
From what?”

“
You never would do this in
school,” said Halver regretfully. “It’s amazing to what lengths a
teacher must go simply to provoke a few questions.”

“
Con asks questions.”

“
Oh, anybody under the age of six
will do so. It’s after that concerns me.”

“
I did ask you questions,” said
Arry. “I asked you about Con, about the nature and kinds of pain;
but you put me off, Halver, you didn’t answer them.”

“
I couldn’t,” said Halver. “It
wasn’t my province. And that is the heart of the
matter.”

“
Can you answer them
now?”

“
Indifferently; I have had them
under my study for very little time. But of a certainty there are
more pains than the physical, and they are sometimes easier and
sometimes harder of assuagement.”

“
I could have told you that
much.”

Halver laughed again. He seemed, in fact, in
excellent spirits. Arry considered him. No fever, no headache, and
his hand had stopped itching.

“
If you wish to study these pains,
you must come out,” said Halver. “Come out from under this
spell.”

“
How?”

“
Choose.”

“
To become a wolf, or
die?”

“
Transformation is necessary,”
said Halver, “and this is the one I know.”

“
Why can’t I choose to become a
wolf, or not to become a wolf?”

“
I teach the reluctant as well as
the eager,” said Halver.

“
I don’t see where dying enters
into it.”

“
I put it there,” said
Halver.

“
Why?” said Arry. She remembered
the question about the blind child, and his careless answer, as
careless as this answer. She could not believe he had said it, or
that he could mean it. It’s one of his games, she thought, one of
the advanced ones. She still felt outraged. “Isn’t there enough
dying as it is?”

“
That is the root of the problem,”
said Halver; he was pleased with her; she was being a good student.
Arry wondered if the transformation were less thorough than he
seemed to think. His province still concerned him. Or it might be
that people’s knowledge was indeed suited to their natures, and it
was in his nature to be a teacher.