The Ozark trilogy (18 page)

“I know the conditions,” he said. “I know there must be some mark of your visit, and I’ll not interfere with the course of things by denying you that. But it will
not
be a playparty, or a festivity, or a hunt—nothing that implies I enjoy or condone such devilment as we’ve just watched. Tomorrow morning, after an ordinary breakfast—properly warded, if you please, Granny Twinsorrel, and no frogs in the gravy for my breakfast biscuits, thank you!—after a
perfectly ordinary breakfast
, we will have a parade. A
solemn
, I might say, a
dignified
, parade. Three times round the Castle, three times round the town, with Responsible riding between me and Rozasham. That satisfactory, Responsible of Brightwater?”

“Quite satisfactory,” I said. “But I’d like to put in a word.”

“Go right to it.”

“I understand your feeling about what happened just now, but I’m not at all sure that it’s got anything to do with wickedness.”

What I meant was that I was a lot more convinced that I could lay all this to Granny Golightly and her Magician of Rank hotting up my Quest for me than to the traitor behind the misuse of magic on Brightwater. But Salem Sheridan Lewis was not interested in my opinions.

“Magic,” he said, looking at me like a bug on a pin beneath his gaze, “is for
certain
purposes. Crops. Healing. Weather. Dire peril. Naming. It is
not
for the usage we saw it given at this table, and I’ll have in the Reverend and the Granny both as soon as you’re gone to clean out the last trace of it. I have no trouble atall recognizing sin when I see it, young woman.”

I held my tongue.

“Now,” he went on, “this parade. We’ll begin at seven sharp, and anybody not there on the mark will be left behind. Is that clear? Not to mention what will
happen
to any such person when we get back—I want our support set out unmistakable for all to see, and be done with it.”

“You stand for the Confederation, then?” I asked, while the berry pie was being handed round. It might not of been necessary, but I liked my knots well tied, and this was a man of strong opinions.

“Responsible of Brightwater,” said the Master of Castle Lewis, in a voice like the thud of an iron bell-clappel; “if every last turntail Kingdom on this
planet
votes against us, Castle Lewis stands for the Confederation. We’ll be at the Jubilee, never you fear. And our votes where they belong.”

“Hurrah!” shouted Boy Salem. Unfortunately. An Attendant scooped him out of his chair like a sea creature out of its shell, and off he went—reasonably quietly—under the young man’s sturdy arm. There was apparently a standard procedure in these cases.

I rested easy that night at Castle Lewis. Granny Twinsorrel warded my room double, and my nose had grown dulled to the garlic by the time I finally found myself in one of the high hard narrow beds the Lewises considered regulation. Not even a dream to disturb me. But the sun that came flooding through my windows in the morning woke me early enough; and when Tambrey of Motley knocked at my door with my wake-up tea she found me already in my traveling dress, sitting sedately in a cedar rocker waiting for her, and only my bare feet to show I’d not been up long.

I drank the tea slowly, enjoying the peacefulness of the morning, and the well-run propriety—a tad constraining, but well-run—of this Castle, and gave over my thinking to how I’d doll Sterling up for this parade. It had to be elegant, and it needed to be memorable, but I must not
over
do it or I’d offend my host. It was a neat little problem, and the kind of thing I liked to ponder over, a good way to begin a morning.

I settled finally on something a bit beyond what Salem Sheridan Lewis would of liked, and a bit less than what
Sterling
would have—she was vain, even for a Mule. Rosettes in her ears in the Brightwater colors, and streamers braided in her tail—which I could triple-loop, for good measure—and me in my splendiferous traveling garb.

We went three times round the Castle, and three times round the town, as specified, the people lining the streets in Sundy best and cheering us on our way, holding up the babies to gawk at the glitter going by. Salem Sheridan even unbent so far as to put a single Attendant at the head of the parade with a silver horn, and allowed him to blow one long note at every third corner.

But I did not get to hear Rozasham of McDaniels sing even one ballad, not even one
hymn
, though I asked politely enough as we returned from our three times round. That would have been too much like frivolity to suit either Rozasham’s husband, or Granny Twinsorrel, or for that matter; Eben Nathaniel Lewis the 17
^th
.

“She sings in church,” said Salem Sheridan, “and does a very good job of it. And that’s sufficient.”

It was days like this that I could see the advantages of the single state most clearly.

THE PARTY THE PURDYS gave for me went very well—I threw in a little something here and there, of my own, to make sure it would. The pies that would of gotten salt in place of sugaring didn’t after all—that got noticed in time. And the beer that had gone flat because somebody left it sitting out overnight acquired some new bubbles in a way that wasn’t strictly natural. And when Donovan Hihu Purdy the 40
^th
got his boot toe under a rough spot in the rug and was headed for a broken hip sure as an egg’s got no right angles, he managed to land— without doing her any harm, and in fact she looked as if she rather enjoyed it—in the lap of a woman of fine substantial size. Instead of flat out on the floor

What I was doing was known as meddling, and it was not looked on with any special favor One of the first things a girl learned in Granny School, right there at the beginning with keeping your legs crossed and how not to scorch milk, was “Mind your own business and leave other people be.” I hadn’t forgotten.

Howsomever; I was fed up to here by that time with listening to every clattering tongue on Ozark meanmouthing the Purdys.

My tolerance had been first reached and then exceeded. I had even realized, a lot more belatedly than did me any credit, that I was guilty of the same thing myself. Taking that silly Ivy of Wommack for a Purdy, for instance, for
no other reason
than that she was silly and looked like she didn’t eat right. There was a name for it all, and not a very nice name either—
Prejudice
, that was its ugly name.

And I’d had time to muse some on the essential
meanness
of human beings. Isolated as they were, the Twelve Families had had no people of black skin among them, nor any of brown or yellow, either. Probably there was a smidgen of Cherokee blood someplace, from the long-ago days, but it had hundreds of years since disappeared in the inundation of Scotch, Welsh, and Irish genes that the Ozarkers carried. Only the brown eyes here and there had survived our outrageous
white
ness. And so, lacking anybody colored differently than ourselves to make our scapegoat, we’d picked the Purdys out for the role.

And of course they
filled
it, once elected, which encouraged everybody to go on with it. Naturally they did. Nothing is more sure to make you spill the tray you’re carrying than knowing for certain and certain that everybody’s just watching you and waiting for you to do that. Waiting so they can look at each other; and all of them be thinking, even if they scruple to say it:

“Purdys! Really, they beat all!”

As I say, I’d gotten a bellyful of that, and it was on my list of things to be tackled when I got some leisure again. High time we took some Purdy daughters in hand and taught them what a self-fulfilling prophecy was, and how to go about canceling one.

We had a fine party, therefore. The food was good, including those pies, and the drink was good, and the bouquet presented to me with a nice rhyme on the Castle bandstand by three little girls of just the sort I had in mind was fresh and beautiful. The one sprig of blisterweed I saw behind a red daisy I threw over the bandstand railing without anybody seeing me, and I had my leather gloves on at the time. No harm done, and an easy job later getting the poisonous oil off the glove.

The Purdys were plainly worried about how much the Parsons and the Guthries had seen fit to tell me of then recent doings, and I saw no harm in that. I dropped hints; and one by one they took me aside to confess some piece of foolishness and tell me how much they regretted it. Which is good for the soul, the stomach, and the disposition.

By the time it was all over, and me tucked up in my bed—an
ample
bed, for a welcome change, that a person could stretch out in it without falling off on the floor—the Purdys were fairly glowing. They’d done themselves proud, and done me honor; and nothing had Gone Wrong. And you could see what a new and delightsome feeling that was for them.

I lay there and reviewed it in my mind as I fell asleep, and I was well satisfied. It was a start, and I’d carry it further when I got home. As for treason ... not the Purdys. They were doing well to just get through the ordinary day, without introducing any magical complications.

And then the Gentle came to me in the night, and woke me with full formality. I was not expecting that.

“Responsible of Brightwater,” it said at my bedside, “you who bear the keys and keystones, daughter of all the Grannys and mother of all the Magicians and all the Magicians of Rank—awaken and speak with me!”

I can’t say I was addressed like
that
often. It brought me bolt upright instantly, clutching the bedclothes. There’d been a Responsible of Brightwater hundreds of years ago who’d perhaps been called all those things, and may have deserved them, for all I knew, but it was a new experience for me, and my teeth needed brushing, and I had not the first faintest notion what I was supposed to say. This constituted a kind of diplomatic exchange between two humanoid races, and for sure required all the formality there was going, but how exactly did you be formal in your nightgown and all mussed and grubby from sleep, and taken wholly and entirely by surprise?

I’m ashamed to say that I settled for, “Dear goodness, just a minute, please!” and added, “I shall return at once,” for good measure, hoping that at least sounded hifalutin, and bolted for the dressingroom that went with my guestchamber in Castle Purdy. There wasn’t time to change the nightdress, but I did add my shawl and tend to my hair and teeth and face, and I was back in my bed propped up on the pillows for audience before the Gentle could of counted to twenty-four.
Nervous
, but I was there.

This was a real Gentle, no baby trick like the Skerry on the well curb; and it was waiting for me patiently, standing there beside my bed in silence, till I should collect myself and respond in some sensible fashion. I saw that it was a female—
she
, then, was waiting for me patiently. I searched my memory for the old phrases, and prayed they’d be the right ones.

“I am happy to see you, dear friend of the Twelve Families,” I began, “more happy than I can say.” Was that right? I hoped so. “And may I know how you are called?”

She told me, and I found I could say it competently enough. Her name was T’an K’ib; not too difficult for an Ozarker tongue. It was for the sake of our rare speech with the Gentles that we had added the glottal stop to our Naming alphabet all those many years ago; for all the sounds of their language except that one the alphabet of Old Earth served well enough. (Not that the Gentles were interested in their name-totals, despising all magic and anything to do with magic as they did. But it delighted First Granny to put a twenty-seventh letter in the alphabet. Three nines, nine threes—
much
improved over the twenty-six we’d always had to make do with previously.)

“Greetings, T’an K’ib,” I said slowly, “and I beg your pardon if my words don’t come easily ... your people visit us rarely, and we have little chance for converse. You honor me; I thank you for coming and welcome you in the name of Castle Brightwater.”

It was an honor, and no mistake. The Gentles were a people so ancient we could scarcely bring the numbers to mind; their history was said to be a matter of formal
record
for more than thirty thousand years. By their reckoning we Ozarkers had only just popped up on this planet like mushrooms in a badly drained yard, and we merited about the same degree of attention. They considered us a backward and primitive race—and were probably right, from their perspective—and they saw us only when absolute necessity demanded. I had never seen a Gentle before, nor my mother either; I believe that Charity of Guthrie’s mother claimed to have.

T’an K’ib wore only a hooded cloak, and wore that out of deference to Ozarker morals, I assumed. A being that is covered head to foot with soft white fur has little need for clothing. She was not quite three feet tall, if my guess was right (and I was good at judging such things), and I knew she was female because she had no beard or neckruff. Her eyes, the pupils vertical like a cat’s, were thick-lashed and the color of wood violets, the deepest purple I had ever seen in a living creature.

We understood the Gentles, after a fashion; they were physically quite reasonable for the planet. The Skerrys, that were the only other intelligent species native to Ozark—unless you counted the Mules, and perhaps you’d better—we didn’t understand at all. Not how their skeletons supported their height; not how their metabolisms functioned; not anything about them. No one had ever found or seen or (praise the Twelve Comers) stolen a Skerry bone, but whatever its substance was it had to be something different from what held us Ozarkers upright in our skins. The Gentles, on the other hand, could be looked upon as roughly equivalent to furred Little People without wings; and we’d been well acquainted with several Little Peoples before we ever left Old Earth. The Gentles did not alarm us;
we
alarmed
them
.