The Dubious Hills (33 page)

“
But it isn’t.”

They all looked at her.

“
He’s telling them all about it
right now, in school,” said Arry. “He wants to make us all either
be wolves, or die.”

“
Why do you think so?” said
Zia.

“
I slept under Tiln’s coat and
found Halver, and he told me.”

“
If we sleep under the coats, then
he’ll tell us, and we’ll think so too,” said Zia. “So you have to
help us get the coats.”

“
That will take too long,” said
Arry. “He said he couldn’t kill us, but the wolf could; and he’ll
be a wolf again when the moon is full. You don’t think you can all
sleep under the coats by then, do you?”

Zia looked at the other children, her thought plain
on her face. But she did not voice it. “How can you help us, then?”
she said.

“
We could kill him first,” said
Tany. “If he wants to kill us, that’s what we should
do.”

Arry’s stomach contracted. Nobody else seemed
alarmed at all. They looked calmly at Tany, and considered it.
Lina said, “Niss said we mustn’t.”

“
She said we mustn’t do it with
our own magic,” said Zia.

“
That’s because we’re too small to
do it any other way,” said Lina.

“
It’s what she said just the
same,” said Zia.

“
Jony knows about poison,” said
Con.

“
That’ll hurt him,” said Arry,
before she could stop herself.

They all looked at her again.

“
Put him to sleep first then,”
said Lina. “Jony knows about that too.”

“
Will she tell us?” said
Con.

“
I’ll tell you,” said
Tany.

They all looked at him. “Catnip and valerian and
hops,” he said. “Hops are best. Nightshade if you’re careful. It’s
poison, too, but it’ll hurt him. Lavender works a little. Lemon
balm does, too, but it makes you cheerful first. Passionflower.
Sweet woodruff. Wormwood. Yarrow.”

“
You
can
learn if you
think about it,” exclaimed Arry. “Why did you think about all this,
Tany?”

“
I asked Jony a long time ago,”
said Tany. “In case things got too noisy inside.”

Arry stared at him.

“
What do we do after we put him to
sleep?” said Con.

“
Hit him in the head,” said
Zia.

“
Put him in the stream,” said
Lina.

“
Chop off his head,” said Tany.
“Or cut his throat the way Rista does with the old
sheep.”

Arry folded her cold hands firmly over her quivering
stomach. “Chopping off his head would hurt even if he were asleep
already,” she said. “So would cutting his throat.”

“
Hitting him might too, then,”
said Zia. “So we must put him in the stream.”

“
Can we carry him?” said Con.
“Even if Arry helps?”

“
Give him tea by the stream,” said
Lina. “Then just tip him in.”

Arry swallowed hard. She found herself remembering
going up to the high meadow with Oonan, the night after Halver
first killed those sheep. Oonan had used a spell Niss gave him. It
had gone like this: “Hence loathed Melancholy of Cerberus and
blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn ’Mongst horrid
shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the
night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.”

That was a curse, and it seemed it had stuck on
Halver. She had not expected to be bringing it about herself, and
she had most certainly not expected to be letting the little
children plan its execution. She looked at them in awe and
fascination. They don’t know, she thought. They haven’t the
remotest notion. When do we begin to have one? I can’t
remember.

“
Would that hurt him, Arry?” said
Con. “If we made him sleep and then put him in the
water?”

“
He would have to be very
thoroughly asleep,” said Arry. “I should ask Oonan, I suppose, to
be certain.” She stopped speaking abruptly. Old habits indeed, she
thought. Oonan would be horrified.

“
Arry?” said Con. “Who’ll teach
us, after we do this?”

“
I don’t know,” said Arry. “Maybe
we could go to school in Waterpale.”

This met with rather mixed enthusiasm. Then Tany
said, “After we do this we won’t need teaching any more.”

Nobody asked him how he knew.

“
When shall we do it?” said
Con.

Arry drew a very deep breath and steadied her voice.
“This is very serious,” she said. “Breaking Halver so Oonan can’t
fix him, that’s what it amounts to. So it mustn’t be done if
there’s any other way. We should go to school now and see if he’s
threatened everybody yet. And we must give everybody time to talk
to him and persuade him not to kill any of us, even if we refuse
to be wolves. But if he holds to his purpose, then we must do it
before the moon is full again. Tany, if you could ask Jony which of
those herbs work best together, and taste best, and which she has
supplies of, already dried, that would be useful. Zia and Lina, if
you could take a good look at the stream and find a deep pool with
a good tea- taking spot above it. Con, I think when the time comes
it’s you that must invite him. You’re fondest of him.”

She held her breath; but Con must be given the
reminder. Con merely looked thoughtful.

Tany said, “And then we can get the coats and be
wolves.”

He wanted to be a wolf, and she was taking his
choice away. Arry clenched her jaw. It was not a true choice, it
was a contrivance of Halver’s. If Tany became a wolf he would never
come into his knowledge.

Arry supervised the dousing of the fire. Zia packed
up her piles of herbs again. All five of them walked up and down
and up and down the hills until they came to Halver’s house. The
door was open, and they could hear excited voices from the bottom
of the hill. The four little ones broke into a run and disappeared
into the house. Arry sat down on the ground quite suddenly.

The voices went on. Halver must have issued a
general summons: she heard Mally’s voice, and Niss’s, and Oonan’s,
and Sune’s, as well as those of the children. Grel's deep booming
tones and Rista’s melodious ones drifted down to her as well.
Everybody was out.

It had begun to drizzle again. Arry sat in the grass
and let the rain gather on her hair and run down her neck. She was
so cold already that it made no difference. This is a broken thing,
she thought; maybe Oonan can fix it. This is not like Halver; maybe
Mally can tell him. This is sorcery; maybe Niss can deal with it
all. Once he has told them all, in plain terms, what he wants to
do, they’ll have to stop him.

This is hurtful, she thought. I have to stop
him.

23

Arry did not go back to school. Nobody remarked on
this. She did visit Mally, who steadfastly insisted that Halver,
either as man or as wolf, would not kill anybody. Arry was strongly
tempted to ask her if Con and Tany and Zia and Lina would kill
anybody, but if Mally realized the answer was Yes she might very
well begin to think things Arry did not wish her to think. The four
children were, after all, still solidly in Mally’s province. Mally
was harried and overworked: everybody came to ask her if becoming a
wolf were a part of his or her character, a happy or convenient
thing to be doing. None of them, she said irritably on the second
day, asked similar things about dying.

Arry visited Niss, who said she would ward
everybody’s houses against wolves, but could not possibly ward
everything if anybody expected to have a clean harvest and healthy
sheep. She visited Oonan, who frowned worriedly at her every time
he set eyes on her, and fed her a variety of herb teas that did
more harm than good, because they recalled to her the conversation
with her young conspirators. Oonan shared her opinion of what was
likely to happen when next Halver became a wolf: what he did not
share was her conviction that something definite must be done.
Keeping Halver at bay until the moon waned was the only action he
seemed to contemplate. “There’s only one of him,” he said
reasonably.

“
Are we to be besieged forever?”
demanded Arry.

Oonan laughed.

“
Besides, if people do decide to
become wolves, there will be more than one of him.”

“
Bec and Frances didn’t join
him.”

“
They were wolves first,” said
Arry. “Niss says perhaps it matters who makes you a wolf, as well
as what your character was to begin with.”

“
Well, let’s wait and see,” said
Oonan.

His appearance was at odds with his insouciant
speeches. He was thin and twitchy and worried. Arry tried to
ascertain if he had some private plan; he finally snapped at her
that he had nothing of the sort. Arry asked Mally if this were
likely, and was told it was certain.

She visited Derry, who was almost as harried as
Mally, as everybody demanded information about what it was like to
be a wolf and exactly how being a wolf was likely to have taken
Halver. She sent them to pester Sune instead. Sune was in a high
state of discomfort and impatience, and tended to hand out books
with a wild impartiality rather than bothering to tell anybody
anything. “If this child doesn’t arrive soon I’ll become a wolf
just to shock her into a sense of her duties,” she said.

“
Is that a good idea?” said Arry
cautiously.

“
No, of course not,” said Sune.
“If you want to watch Oonan turn the color of sour milk, just
mention it to him.”

This sent Arry back to Oonan, not to watch him turn
the color of sour milk but to demand what he thought Halver would
do if Sune had not had the baby by the time her choice must be
made. This was how she found out that Oonan cherished a firm belief
that Bec and Frances would somehow forestall Halver’s entire plan,
or at least defend everybody who held out against turning into
wolves from his depredations.

Arry went back to Mally and demanded who was likely
to wish to become a wolf, even at the expense of knowledge. Mally
was washing lettuce. The first time Arry asked her, she just shook
her head. When Arry repeated the question, Mally burst into tears,
saying she didn’t want to know, and fled the room. Arry sat dumbly
at the table where Tiln had been when all the children brought him
their things to be judged beautiful or not, and stared at the
kitchen door that Mally had slammed. This house is full of pain,
she thought, but in the body at least, nobody is hurting at
all.

Arry walked home very thoughtfully. She had not
thought of refusing knowledge before, but certainly if she were
Mally she might not want to know these things either. If you knew,
you might feel you had to do something about it, talk people out
of it, and yet if you knew them, you would know when you couldn’t.
Of course it would hurt.

Arry did not visit her fellow conspirators. Beldi
dutifully reported to her that Zia’s interest in her original plan
had become perfunctory; he was persuaded she was planning something
else instead, and that Con was part of the plan as well, but they
told him nothing. He did say they all seemed to be intending to
become wolves.

“
And what about you?” said
Arry.

“
I can’t decide if I don’t know
what my knowledge will be,” said Beldi.

“
Surely whatever it is it’s better
than none?”

“
But if it’s very small and petty
and useless.”

“
No knowledge is useless,” said
Arry, very sharply.

“
If,” said Beldi, not looking at
her, “Bec and Frances are staying away from us so we don’t become
wolves, then if we did become wolves just the same, would they come
back?”

“
If we become wolves,” said Arry,
“they won’t have anything to come back to. Everything will fall
completely apart. Oonan says so; so does Niss.”

“
We could go live in the Hidden
Land,” said Beldi.

“
Everybody will be
hurt,”
said Arry, very clearly.

Beldi said slowly, “But we’ll know it.”

“
Well?”

“
Halver says that’s how we
learn.”

“
I say he doesn’t know learning
from jumping off a cliff,” said Arry furiously.

Beldi gave her a shocked look and stopped
talking.

Summer came in early with a rush, and the moon grew
fat and fatter in the starry sky. Two days before the full, Arry
went up to the sheep hut with an armful of blankets, and slept on
the bed of planks. She slept not well, but long enough to dream.
She dreamed of the cruel sisters in the stories Mally and Sune had
given her: the ones who cut off bits of their feet to make their
stepsister’s glass slipper fit and so steal the prince who sought
her; the one who drowned her sister and married her sister’s
betrothed, only to be betrayed by the harp the minstrels had made
of her sister’s breastbone. Nobody came to wake her, wolf or
person. When school was over the next day, she went to find
Zia.

Zia told her that Lina and Con had already invited
Halver to take tea on the bank of the stream, in the late afternoon
of the following day. It had fitted neatly into their lessons, she
said, because Halver was teaching them the history of hot drinks.
Mally, who seemed to think the entire matter was very funny, had
agreed to supply honeycake and even perhaps gingerbread; since she
had also said something about asking Halver to dinner to make up
for his ordeal, Zia seemed a little put out by the offer, though
she had accepted it.