The Ozark trilogy (55 page)

Joan of Smith shook her head firmly, and then again.

“Oh, no!” she said. “There’s nothing of this world as Miss Silverweb wants or needs, Missus, and nothing she lacks. She has the Love of Loves, beside which all else is no more, they say, than dry husks and ashes. Such things happen for a purpose, and hers will be clear in time-we will know, and the Twelve Gates grant these eyes live to see it!-we will know what that purpose is. Until then, there are two things to do.”

“And they are?”

“Wait, in patience and in humility, if you’ll pardon my using the word, as has no right. That’s one. And give her hard work aplenty. Chores! To make a balance. Rapture’s all very well, but madness lies just the other side of it. See to it she’s in the kitchen and the garden and the orchards, make her
sweat,
to tie her safely to this earth in its
wholesome
parts. You’ve been doing that, I’ve had my eye on you; your woman’s knowing, your mother’s knowing, has been directing you as proper as you could be directed. See you don’t stop that, now-I’d make it harder on ‘er, were I you.”

Anne nodded, numb to the core. It was right-every word of itthough how the old creature knew it she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was the fabled wisdom of age, perhaps it was an experience Joan of Smith didn’t care to speak of or had forgotten entirely . . but it had the ring of rightness. Nevertheless, she was blind with anger. That this should happen to her daughter! All that blond ripeness, the heavy braids always wound in their figure eight like a crown! She had seen the pale down on Silverweb’s breasts, and the way they strained at the fabric over them, and the long line of spine when she bent to weeding. And those good hips, meant for babies, designed for them! The waste of it, the utter heartbreaking waste . . . Anne could have cursed the deity that had stolen away her only daughter and denied the motherhood that daughter was fashioned for in every last detail.

Except the spirit. The spirit was

“Warped!” she said aloud, defying the Powers to do their worst. And then, “Maybe she will grow out of it.”

“That happens sometimes,” said the old woman. “Might could be.”

But Anne of Brightwater had seen her daughter’s face, and she knew she spoke a lie, and that Joan of Smith humored her in it. Silverweb would not, would never, grow out of it, and the time would come when it would ripen to a terrible purpose that had nothing at all to do with the ripeness of the flesh, and there was no least thing she could do to stop it, or slow it, or turn it aside. It was like so many other things-it was to be endured.

Responsible’s list of tasks had been reduced considerably by the turn of events. The project for spreading the Purdy girls round the Kingdoms to break the hold of the “you can’t do anything right because you’re a Purdy” idea would have to be postponed; at the moment, Brightwater had no kind of relationship with Castle Purdy to even suggest such a thing. She could also draw a firm line through the item that instructed her to see to the Arkansaw feuds; Farsons, Guthries, and Purdys could now go at one another with broadswords and bludgeons, free from all interference-the advantages of sovereignty. The matter of holding a day of celebration in honor of the alleged Skerry sighting had become irrelevant, even if there really had been a Skerry. The penalty for failing to celebrate was bad luck, and that had already arrived in ample measure. And the superstition at Castle Wommack?

Responsible thought about that one awhile. No question about it, she would of welcomed any sort of excuse to visit Castle Wommack, seeing as how that was where Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd was to be found. Her sleep was filled with dreams of him, far too vivid to be restful, and she woke from them drenched as she had risen from his arms. Once awake, she guarded her mind rigorously, stamping out any thought of him the same way she’d have stamped out fire in dry grass, but her nights were a scandal. The advantage, of course, was that they required no effort on his part and only she was troubled by them; she would heartily have enjoyed a chance to let him share the occasions.

But the Wommacks had done no more to save the Confederation than any of the other Families had, and had left Castle Brightwater as rapidly as everybody else, and they’d left no invitations behind them. While the Confederation stood, she’d felt comfortable touring the Castles; now, for all she knew, they’d bar their gates against her and shout Spells. She’d best leave Castle Wommack alone.

Some of the Families had been prompt in their actions, praise the Gates. Castles McDaniels, Clark, and Airy had sent bids for alliance, obviously written as fast as Family meetings could be held, votes taken, and Mules saddled to fly the documents to Brightwater. Castle Motley had sent its own Magician of Rank, Shawn Merryweather Lewis the 7th, to let Brightwater know that Castles Motley and Lewis would remain allied with Brightwater for so long as it was possible to do so.

She looked up at the map above her desk; the tiny continent of Mizzurah had all of Arkansaw between it and Brightwater, and looked more like an island off Arkansaw’s coast than a nation of two Kingdoms. It was brave of Lewis and Motley to send the message, and a bit of good fortune for them that they had a Magician of Rank to SNAP it on to Brightwater; but they were very isolated now, just the same. When their supplies began to dwindle, which wouldn’t be all that long a time off, she was reasonably sure they’d have no choice but to turn to Arkansaw for help-and that would be the end of their ties to Brightwater.

There’d been no word from Castle Smith, now surrounded by Brightwater allies but only a brief flight away from Castle Guthrie, just across the narrow channel between Oklahomah and Arkansaw. Presumably they were debating their options . . . or might could be Delldon Mallard Smith was really fool enough to think he could go it entirely alone.

She turned back to her list, it being pleasanter food for thought than the blamed Smiths. There was the question of whether Una of Clark had acted alone in using magic against Brightwater to scuttle the Jubilee-she’d waste
no
time on that one! The Jubilee, and all that went with it, was over, and she intended to put it behind her, thought
and
deed, like any dead and dishonored thing.

But there was one task that had now become not just one more promise, one more duty postponed, but a matter of urgent necessity. She had given the Gentles her word. Whatever happened to the Confederation of Continents, stand or fall, they would not be involved in the results. For thirty thousand years of recorded history they had lived in the caves of Arkansaw; they had granted the surface of the land without stint or hesitation to the humans, by treaties that guaranteed them the right to go on with their own lives as they always had. And now they were smack in the middle of the feuds. Might could be the Farsons and the Guthries, and the Purdys following along, would hold to the treaties for the sake of simple decency; she would have liked to think so. Might could be, on the other hand, they’d take the position that the old treaties were Confederation agreements and no longer bound them. The Gentles would of been safer, all in all, at the hands of the Travellers, obsessed as they were with righteousness. No telling
what
the Arkansaw Families might do . . .

It was going to be a curious situation, grant that right off. The Granny had been discussing it that morning at the breakfast table, and Granny Hazelbide had laid it out for the rest of them with absolute accuracy.

“It’d be one thing,” she’d said, glaring over the top of her coffee cup, “if the very minute of First Landing we’d divided this world up twelve ways and sent everybody off to their own homeplaces and stayed that way since. That’d be
one
thing! As it is, that is
not
what we have on our platter, not in any degree whatsoever. We’re all scrambled and mixed and conglomerated . . . why, there’s not a place on Ozark that’s not got folks all settled in from every one of the Twelve Families!”

“Travellers excepted, might could be,” said Granny Gableframe. “I misdoubt there’s anybody on Tinaseeh but Travellers, Farsons, and Purdys-maybe a Guthrie or two. No more.”

“Tch!” went Ruth of Motley. “That’s not even decent.”

“If we’d gone the way Granny Hazelbide was mentioning,” Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater pointed out, “we’d of been inbred worse than the goats long before this.”

“Jonathan Cardwell! Such talk!”

“May not be elegant, m’dear, but it’s accurate,” he answered her, and bent to kiss her cheek. “It’s a right good thing the Families had sense enough to mix it up, and plenty of other family lines represented among them at the beginning.”

“So it is,” said Granny Hazelbide, “so it is. But it leads to a pure
mess
now. Take Brightwater, seeing it’s so handy-is there any Family we don’t have among the folks living here, Responsible?”

“No Travellers,” she said. “Nary a one.”

“Well, they don’t count anyway. If they lived here they’d have to worry all the time about their precious souls, what with our wicked electric lights and our evil lizzies and far on into the night. You can’t count them.”

“Everybody else, though,” Responsible agreed, “we have passels of. I know what you mean, and I don’t know precisely how they’ll do. Say you’re a family with Smiths in all directions, living here in Brightwater, then what? That make Delldon Mallard your King, or not?”

“It has always been true,” said Patience of Clark gravely, “that a woman gone to live in the house of a man considered herself a part of
his
family, from that time on, or went back to her own place. And the same for a man.”

“True,” said Thorn of Guthrie. “But that was when it didn’t matter, if you follow me. That was when we were all one Confederation. There might be squabbles among us, and some Families more annoying than others, the way one of the tadlings in a house’ll be more bothersome than all the rest put together. But in the ways that mattered, we were all
one.”

“Bless my stars,” muttered Granny Hazelbide, “if Thorn’s not begun to learn politics in her old age! Never thought I’d see the day.”

Thorn of Guthrie curled her perfect lips and looked scornful, and allowed as how a question that related to the real world was worth noticing and she wasn’t such a poor stick she
couldn’t
notice it, thank you very much.

“It’s a skein that’ll be a long time unwinding,” observed Patience of Clark. “I’m not all that comfortable about it.”

“Nor
me, child,” said Granny Gableframe. “I’ve got a feeling in my bones.”

“People will have to make up their minds, I suppose,” said Jubal Brooks. “Do they go by lines drawn on a map, when it comes to their loyalties, or do they go by blood? And say you’re a Farson man married to a McDaniels, and the both of you living in Kingdom Motley-if you
did
want to go back to your own kind, which one’d take precedence? Farson or McDaniels? And the children, would they want to go or would they consider theirselves Motleys by having been born there?”

“It’s Old Earth all over again,” said Granny Hazelbide grimly. “Next thing you know we’ll have people starving one side of a line that doesn’t exist, and people fat and sleek on the other, burning their garbage. I can just see it coming. Just see and
hear
it coming!”

“This world once more,” Granny Gableframe declaimed, “and then there’ll be fireworks.” Whatever that might mean.

It had put something of a pall on breakfast.

And thinking now, musing over the Families, scrambled or not, Responsible felt a good deal less than comfortable herself. She was
worried
about the Gentles.

Nothing she knew of the Guthries, for all that they were her close kin, led her to be optimistic about their behavior; they were sharp of wit, but they were by and large outrageous. The Farsons had a kind of elegant devious charm that was more dangerous than any of the right out front stupidities the Smiths had carried through. And the Purdys! Prejudice or not, you could
not
trust the Purdys. They didn’t even trust one another. And there sat the Gentles, relying on the sworn word of Responsible of Brightwater, completely surrounded on all sides by the three of them. And not knowing, might could be, that anything had changed.

Her mind was made up. Anything that might come up here at Brightwater for sure didn’t require
her
attention; there was a Magician of Rank and two Grannys under this roof. Already, she was pleased to remember, the Grannys had settled the Bridgewraith, and with the two of them working together it had taken hardly any time at all. She would go this very night, no more excuses, soon as it was dark enough to travel easily, and she’d see to the warding of the Gentles. The supplies she’d gathered that night Lewis Motley Wommack had made such a sorry showing trying to follow her were adequate for the task, if she was. It was near on nine o’clock this minute; if she planned to see to the matter tonight, and for sure she did, it would take her all the rest of the day and a hard push to get ready in time. Starting with locking her door and sending down word that she was to be left alone and not bothered even for meals. That would give the Family something else to talk about at the table, at least.

Two hours later, purged of her breakfast-and thank the Twelve Corners the conversation that morning hadn’t been the kind that made for a good appetite-and as clean as the three ritual baths could make her, her skin sore from the crushed herbs, she sat in
her blue rocker and considered the problem. It was a nice one, and the more she thought about it the more complicated it became.