The Ozark trilogy (15 page)

“Miss?”

“
Do
sit down,” I said, too cross to be gentle, “and tell me what is the matter with you. And your name.”

“My name? Is there something the matter with my name?”

She had to be a Purdy; her eyes were wild like a squawker got by the neck.

“I did not mean to imply that there was anything wrong with your name, young woman,” I said, “I just asked you what it might
be
.”

“Oh!” she said. “Well, I hoped ... I mean, only the Wommacks have women as aren’t properly named, and—”

“That’s not true,” I interrupted, wondering if she’d had any education atall. “I daresay there’s no Family on Ozark that hasn’t had a girl or two Improperly Named over the years; the Grannys aren’t infallible. The Wommacks just did it more spectacularly than anybody else ever has and got famous for it, that’s all.”

As they surely had. It hadn’t been a matter of naming a Caroline that should have been an Elizabeth; they’d named a girlbaby Responsible of Wommack, and it had been a mistake. That’s a sure way to get famous.

One more time, I thought, and asked her: “Will you tell me your name, then, and what the trouble is?” And if she wouldn’t I fully intended to put her over my knee for her sass.

“Yes, miss,” she said. “Ivy of Wommack’s my name.”

A two. She was properly named. And I was right glad I had not let it slip that I’d taken her for a Purdy.

“And your problem?”

She stared down at the bed she was sitting on and gripped the counterpane with both hands, silly thing, as if it wouldn’t of slid right off with her if she’d done any sliding herself.

“Oh, Miss Responsible,” she said in a tiny, tiny voice, “I have all the bad luck I ever need, I have more than
anybody’d
ever need, and I don’t need any more, and I’m afraid—oh, law, miss, they say there’s been a Skerry appeared!”

Well. That did take me aback a bit, and I sat down myself.

“Who told you so, Ivy of Wommack?” I demanded.

“Everybody!”

“Nonsense. You haven’t talked to everybody.”

“Everybody I’ve talked to, then,” she said stubbornly. “They’re all talking about it, and they’re all worried.”

“And what are they saying? Besides just, ‘There’s been a Skeny appeared.’”

“There’s an old well, down in the garden behind the Castle church, miss—the water’s no good any more, but oh, it’s pretty, with vines growing all over it and the old bucket hanging there, so it’s been left. And they say that last night— there were full moons last night, miss—they say there was a Skerry sitting on the edge-rim of that old well. Just sitting there.”

“At midnight, I suppose.”

“Oh yes ... just at midnight, and under the full moons. Oh, Miss Responsible, I’m glad I didn’t see it!”

She hadn’t much gumption, or much taste. I would dearly have loved to see it, if it was true. A Skerry stands eight feet tall on the average, sometimes even taller; and there’s never been one that wasn’t willow slender: They have skin the color of well-cared-for copper, their hair is silver and falls without wave or curl to below their waists, male or female. And their eyes are the color of the purest, deepest turquoise. The idea of the full moons shining down on all that, not to mention an old well covered with wild ivy and night-blooming vines ... ah, that would of been something to see and to marvel on.

Except there were a few things wrong with the whole picture.

“
Who
told you they saw the Skerry?” I insisted. “Who?”

And I added, “And don’t you tell me ‘everybody,’ either.”

“Everybody in the Castle is talking about it,” she said. Drat the girl!

“Not the Master nor the Missus,” I said. “I’ve been with them these past two hours, and I’ve heard not one word about a Skerry.”

“Everybody on the
staff
, I meant, miss. It was one of the Senior Attendants … he’ll go far. They say he knows more Spells and Charms than the Granny, and he’s a comely, comely man ... he was down there by the well last night with a friend of mine”—she looked at me out of the comer of her eye to see if I was going to make any moral pronouncements about that, but I ignored her; and she went on—”and they
saw
it, sitting there in the full moonlight, all splendid with the light fair blinding on its long silver hair, they said.”

“And then they told everybody.”

“Well, wouldn’t you?” she asked me, and I had to admit that I might have. You didn’t see a Skerry every night, much less under full moons at midnight in a Castle garden.

“But you notice they didn’t tell the Family,” I said. “That’s mighty odd, seems to me. Seems to me that would of been the
first
thing to do.”

The girl rubbed her nose and stared down at the floor, scuffing one shoe back and forth. Not only sloppy, but wasteful, too.

“The Housekeeper told us not to,” she said sullenly. “She carried on about it till we were all sick of listening—what she’d do if we bothered the Master and the Missus with it ...
bothered
them, that’s how
she
put it!”

“Well?” I asked her. “Do you have any inkling in your head why she might of taken it that way?”

She sniffled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know I’m scared. And it’s
not fair
—I already had my share of bad luck.”

“Ivy of Wommack,” I said patiently, “have you given this tale any thought atall? Other than to fret yourself about it, I mean?”

“What way should I be thinking about it?”

“Well, for starters, where do the Skerrys live?”

“In the desert on Marktwain,” she said promptly.

“Quite right. In the desert on Marktwain. The only patch of desert on this planet, girl, and
left
desert only out of courtesy to the Skerrys. They
were
here first, you know, and it was desert then.”

“Yes, miss.”

“And since that’s true, and Skerrys can’t live outside the desert, why in the name of the Twelve Gates and the Twelve Corners would one turn up on Mizzurah, many and many a long mile from its desert, and of
all
unlikely places, sitting on a
well
brim? Skerrys
hate
water, can’t
abide
water, that’s why they live in the desert!”

Her mouth took a pout, which was no surprise.

“Really,” she said, “I’m sure I’m no expert on Skerrys, and it wouldn’t be proper if I was, and as to how it got here, my friend says it would have to be by magic, and she got that from the Senior Attendant, and he’s on his way up in the world—he’s no fool!”

“Tell me again,” I said. “Exactly. What did they say?”

“Kyle Fairweather McDaniels the 17
^th
, that’s the Senior, and my friend—never mind her name, because she wasn’t supposed to be out of her bed at midnight, much less with Kyle Fairweather—they say that they were down by the well and they saw the Skerry as plain as I see you.”

“Walked right up and touched it, did they? Said howdeedo?”

“Miss!”

“Then how did they know it was a Skerry?”

“Well, miss, what
else
is eight feet tall and has copper skin, and silver hair as hangs down to its knees? I ask you’”

“It was sitting on the well, Ivy of Wommack, not standing. You said so yourself. How could they see that it was eight feet tall? And as for the copper skin, a bit of Hallow Even paint will do that—I’ve done it myself, and I’ll wager you have, too— and a silver wig’s easily come by.”

“They were
sure
.”

“Were they?”

“They
were
.”

“They were out where they should not of been, doing what they should not of done—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, I say it, missy,” I snapped at her, “and I say it plain, and between their guilty consciences and the moonlight, it was easy for anybody atall to play a trick on them. And more shame to them for scaring the rest of you with such nonsense ... what trashy doings!”

“You don’t believe it, then, miss?”

“Certainly not. Nor should you, nor anybody else.”

She sat there beside me, quieter now, though she’d switched from wrinkling up the counterpane to wringing those skinny little hands that looked like you could snap them the way Michael Stepforth Guthrie’d snapped my ribs. Only with no need for magic, nor much strength, either,

“Feel better now. Ivy of Wommack?” I asked her finally, and I hoped she did, because I wanted a rest and a read before my supper. I was willing to finish unpacking for myself, if I could just get rid of this skittish creature.

“You know what’s said, miss,” she hazarded. I
wished
she would stop wringing her hands before she wore them out.

“What?” Though I knew quite well.

“That if a Skerry’s seen,” she breathed, and I could hear in her voice the echo of a Granny busy laying out the fines, “that there has to be a whole day of celebration in its honor. A whole day of no work and all celebration ... or it’s bad luck for all the people that know of it. And I’ve worked this livelong day, and so has all the staff!”

“That, I suppose, is why your ‘friends’ spread the news around,” I said. “Sharing out the bad luck.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Might could be that’s why.”

“Covering their bets,” I said tartly. “If they didn’t really see a Skerry, no harm done. If they did, the bad luck that comes from not following the rules gets spread out thin over the whole staff, instead of just falling on the two of them. You think that over, Ivy of Wommack.”

She sighed, and allowed as how I might be right, but she didn’t know, and I occupied myself with sending her on her way. She’d forgotten all about finishing my unpacking, fortunately, and it took me three minutes to do what she’d left and fix what she’d messed up, and then I stretched out on the bed bone-naked under the covers and took up my most trashy novel.

There was a certain very small, you might say tiny, bit of risk here. For a Skerry to show up on Mizzurah, at midnight, or at any other time, might fit right into some Magician of Rank’s idea of an adventure for this particular stage of my Quest. And if so, I was asking for powerful trouble—maybe not right now, maybe not for a long time, but
someday
it would come—if I didn’t speak up and demand the day of festival to honor its appearance.

Furthermore, if a Magician of Rank
had
teleported a Skerry out of its desert and onto the edge of the Motleys’ well, the Skerrys were not going to be pleased about that. Not at
all
pleased. They’d asked precious little of us, when The Ship landed; just to be let alone. And whizzing one around the planet in the middle of the night was distinctly not leaving it alone as promised.

I tried to remember when a Skerry had last been seen, putting my microviewer down for a minute ... not in my lifetime, I didn’t think. In my mother’s, perhaps; it was dim in my memory. But
that
Skerry had come walking out of the desert on Marktwain of its own free will, and had walked right down the street of a town on the desert’s edge in broad daylight. It had been an honor, and I believe Thorn of Gutnrie said there’d been festival for two whole days ...

No. I made up my mind. It had to be a trick, played on the Senior Attendant and his foolish lady friend, and no more. For my benefit, perhaps, meant to distract me and delay me if I believed it, but only a trick all the same. No Skerry would cross all the water between Marktwain and Mizzurah and sit on a well in the middle of the night for two young Castle staff to gawk at. And no Magician of Rank would dare tamper with a real Skerry in that way.

I was not going to take any such obvious bait, and that was all there was to that.

I went back to my book.

I LEFT FOR Castle Lewis after the hunt breakfast, not staying for the hunt itself on the grounds that I had to hurry, and since that was obviously true no one made more than the objections politeness demanded. Mizzurah was so small, and so heavily populated, that anything but ordinary Muleflight was out of the question, and I flew through a blustery spring day, sedate and proper, and reached Castle Lewis only just before the sun began to go down behind the low hills. Sterling was bored, and so was I, and we did nothing fancy; just came down slow and easy over the broad lawn that spread round the Castle, and waited for developments. The wind was brisk enough that the Mule was shivering, and I got down and took an extra blanket from my pack and began rubbing her down.

Castle Lewis was small against the darkening sky, small and tidy, with a central gate and two towers to each side, and a tower at each of its corners. No frills, no fancy battlements and balconies, just a plain small sturdy Castle, and I liked the look of it.

The front gates opened as the sun slipped out of sight completely, and three men came running out with solar lanterns—economy here, I noted, and I approved. They’d been well exposed and threw a fine bright light across the grass, as they should do. One of the men put a shawl around me, very respectfully; one took over the task of rubbing Sterling down, making protesting sounds because I’d started the process myself; and the other stood stiff as a pole, waiting for something.