The Dubious Hills

by PAMELA DEAN

  “First they showed you their teeth.”

  “How many visited you?”

  “Just one. The big one.”

  “The same?”

  “I think.”

  “Well, did it limp?”

  “Oh. I don’t—I think I would have seen, but maybe not.”

  “Mine didn’t. They weren’t very large, as wolves are said to go.” He rubbed his eyes. “There was something wrong with them. Was yours in pain?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think mine were either. Something other was wrong.”

  “That’s what I think about Con,” said Arry.

  “It’s not what I know about her.”

  They looked at each other for a long time. The wind blew the smell of muddy sheep in through the open door, and the cold green smell of spring, and a thread of woodsmoke from some more responsible person’s fire.

  “Who should we ask?” said Arry.

  “We’d have to ask Mally. This is outside the bounds of anything she’s said to me.” Oonan rolled back and stared into his fireplace.

  “I was just to see Mally yesterday. She gave me some stories.”

  Oonan looked at her again, but said nothing.

  “I couldn’t tell if they were knowledge or history.”

  “Ask Sune.”

  “I didn’t think,” said Arry.

  “I’ll come with you. I want to ask her what the books say about wolves.”

  7

  Sune lived in a small house halfway down the hill from Halver’s. Usually she was up at the school most of the day; but this morning they found her at home, spinning. Her back hurt, her feet hurt, and her stomach was uneasy. As they put their heads around the door, the baby gave an enormous kick. The spindle sprang out of Sune’s hand and wrapped its yarn around the rocker of her chair.

  “I’m going to call this one Knot,” said Sune, a little grimly. She ran the offending yarn through her hands, shrugged, and let it fall. “What is it? Is the baby coming?”

  Arry began to laugh. What else should Sune think, with both the Physici and the Akoumi come to see her unexpectedly?

  “No,” she said, after looking at Oonan in case he knew something she didn’t. “Mally gave me some stories, and I don’t know what they are.”

  She handed the cedar box to Sune, who said, “There’s tea in the kitchen,” opened the box, and began to read.

  Oonan went into the house’s other room and came back with three mugs on a tray. Sune had the only chair, and all the cushions, so Arry sat on the hearth rug. Sune moved her lips when she read, and frowned heavily— not from the baby, who had quieted down again. She took the mug Oonan handed her and held it without drinking. Arry drank hers. Peppermint. Good for the uneasy stomach. She wished Sune would drink some.

  Outside a robin sang in the willows down by Sune’s stream, and occasional bursts of laughter came out of the school. Finally Sune looked up. “Why did Mally give you these?” she said. She rolled them neatly as she spoke, and put them back into their box.

  “I was asking her about Con,” said Arry. “And if having one’s parents leave could be hurtful.”

  “Ah,” said Sune. She had no lap to lay the box in, and dropped it on top of her wool.

  “I can’t tell if it’s knowledge or history.”

  “There’s something else,” said Sune. “These are that.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “I don’t know. But I know it when I see it.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Maybes,” said Sune, incomprehensibly. “Might-have-beens.”

  Arry looked at Oonan, who was in fact already looking at her. Sune was the strange one, Mally had always said so. Was she hurt or broken or simply herself, that was the question.

  “I thought,” said Arry, “that you knew what you read?”

  “I know about what I read, too,” said Sune, rather wearily. It wasn’t the baby. Maybe she had told Mally this already.

  “But not what it’s all called?”

  “No. Nobody knows why I don’t know that, not even Mally.”

  “Why would she give me these books, then?”

  “Ask Mally.”

  “I mean, what’s in them that would tell me what might hurt Con?”

  “I can’t think,” said Sune. “You’re supposed to know what hurts Con already.”

  Arry took a deep breath. “If there are other kinds of hurt, I might not know it yet. Could these stories help me know?”

  “I don’t see how,” said Sune. “But I’ll read them again if you like.”

  “What do they tell you?”

  Sune considered. The baby kicked her again. She was crowded in there, though not dangerously. “What does a chair tell you?” said Sune. “Or wait, no, not a chair.” She thought some more. “Think of the prettiest thing you can,” she said.

  “Sunset,” said Arry, cautiously. They had no Kallosi at present, nobody who knew what was beautiful. But Mally had talked to the the old one a lot; Frances said the old one had been Mally’s sister. Frances said she herself had been friends with a Kallosi in the Hidden Land.

  “Sorry,” said Sune; she felt, in fact, rather happier than she had before. “Something a person has made, the prettiest one of those you can think of.”

  Arry thought of Tiln’s paintings; of the vest her father had made for her when she was five, with triangles of blue and green cloth in the shape of the sun and a mountain; of the kaleidoscope Oonan had, that came from Druogonos with the milk pans. She even thought about the milk pans. “Jony’s garden,” she said finally. “Not now, but in July.”

  Sune smiled. “Why?” she said.

  She was acting just like Mally—though Mally wouldn’t say so. But this was the field of Sune’s knowledge, so Arry thought as well as she could.

  “When you come into the garden,” she said, “you see the marigolds, all bright and crowded. And then the daisies, white and crowded. And then you go around the side of the hill and there’s the crabapple tree with the spurge and the borage under it. The colors are different and they look airier.”

  She paused for breath. This was hard. You had to remember what name and color you’d been told the flowers were, and then say what you had seen. “Then you go around the next part of the circle and see the long straight path with enormous white lilies and the arch at the end of it with red roses all over it. And through the arch you can see the water, and the purple loosestrife. And if you go all the way through the arch and cross the water on the stones, then you go along another path with red lilies and through another arch that has white roses, and there’s a birch tree with yellow lilies under it and then more marigolds, and then you’re out again on the grass.” She breathed and looked at Sune.

  “Why is that pretty?” said Sune.

  “I’m not sure it is,” said Arry.

  “Yes, of course you’re not. If it were, though, why might it be?”

  “It’s the same and different at the same time.” “Why is it prettier than the high meadow in spring?”

  “Because it’s ordered.”

  “Ah,” said Sune.

  Arry looked at Oonan. He shrugged.

  “So are the stories,” said Sune. “More than history, and more than knowledge, the stories are ordered. Also—” The baby kicked her again, and she caught her breath. “This one doesn’t want to me think,” she said. “Also—you can make a bigger order out of stories of the same type. Mally gave you stories about children whose parents left. With them you can make a pattern.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Mustn’t Mally know you can do it?”

  “Oh,” said Arry.

  “Must she?” said Oonan.

  “Oh, not necessarily, I suppose,” said Sune, irritably. Once again, the source of her irritation was not the baby, not her stomach or her feet or her back. It seemed to be Oonan.

  Arry got up. Oonan said, “Sune, in the intervals of being pummelled,
might you see what the books say about wolves? In especial their more strange behaviors with regard to approaching people and with regard to things they choose not to eat?”

  “Did you lose some sheep?” said Sune.

  “Two,” said Oonan.

  “The lambs?”

  “No, they left the lambs.”

  “I’ll look as soon as I finish this spinning. If young Knot’s to have a blanket to receive her, I must be busy.”

  “We’ll leave you to it,” said Oonan.

  “If you need other clothes,” said Arry, “you could have some of Con’s.” Since there won’t be any more babies in this family any time soon, she added silently.

  Sune smiled. “I’ll come and look at them tomorrow after school, shall I? I can bring your stories back then, too.”

  “Yes, do,” said Arry, and they thanked Sune for the tea and went outside. The wind pounced on them hard. It had blown some of the clouds away and stretched the rest across the sky like rags on a loom to make a rug. A blue and white and gray rug like that would be pretty, thought Arry. But how do I know that? Do I know it?

  “What now?” said Oonan.

  “I expect I should go to school.”

  “Or to sleep.”

  “School’s easier.”

  “Go, then. I’ll talk to you after Sune’s told me about the wolves.”

  “Or if you think of anything about Con.”

  “Well, yes,” said Oonan.

  He turned and went back down the hill, past Sune’s little stone house and into the willows, his jacket flapping in the wind and his red hair blown straight backward. Arry looked after him until the wind made her eyes tear. Then she turned around and stood with the wind at her back, looking up at Halver’s house. She could go see Mally and ask if Mally thought she was good at making patterns.

  Or she could try making some and see how far she got. She hadn’t read all the stories yet, either. But what of the ones she had?

  “It was the mothers that left,” she said, to the mud and the rough pink speckled rocks and the tentative green around them. “And the fathers found new mothers and they were all cruel.” But her father had gone first, and her mother after him; nobody had gone and brought Arry home, she had been home already, she was one of the children. She shivered inside her jacket, the jacket her father had made. Was the cruel mother coming? But who should choose her?

  She thought she could guess what Mally would say about her talent at making patterns. Mally said school could teach you most things. She walked up the hill through the mud and went into the school.

  Tiln and Jony and Beldi were in a corner with the maps. Beldi must have mastered the second form of memory, to have been allowed to study with those two. He must be growing up. He looked small beside the older children, stocky and short like his father. Tiln and Jony were tall for their ages, and thin. Tiln’s hair was as white as Mally’s, and he had Mally’s round face. Jony had her father Jonat’s long thin one, with large eyes and nose. They both had Jonat’s greeny-dark skin. Jony had his dark hair, too.

  Arry stood in the doorway, wondering if she should catch Halver’s eye. He was in the corner opposite Beldi’s, with Con and Zia and Tany, writing something on the big slate. His pencil squeaked. Arry decided to talk to him later, and went on over to her companions. Beldi saw her first, and flashed her a delighted grin. Jony noticed that, and looked up, and moved aside so Arry could share her cushion. Tiln, his head bent over the map, never noticed. He did speak, after a few moments.

  “Who drew this map?”

  “How should we know?” said Jony.

  “Why?” said Beldi.

  “It’s ugly.”

  Jony looked at Arry. There was a moment of perfect stillness. “How do you know?” Jony said to her half- brother.

  Tiln said impatiently, “It’s obvious. Look here.” With a long grubby finger he traced the line the mountains of Fence’s Country made southward into the Hidden Land, west to Druogonos, east to the Kingdom of Dust. “That’s a bad shape,” he said.

  “Is it wrong?” said Jony, a little cautiously. “Are the mountains otherwise in truth?”

  “How should I know? Ask Frances.”

  Frances had not known geography, Mally said; but she had, she said herself, been all over those mountains with people who did know it, as far as Outsiders could be said to know anything. Somebody in this corner of the room hurt. Arry looked at Beldi. He was eyeing the map, obedient and dutiful as always. But his eyes squinched a little, like somebody’s with a headache. It was not his head that ached.

  Arry felt as if hours had gone by, but when Jony spoke she was answering Tiln, as one did seem often to answer one’s brother, a little scornfully. “We can’t, oh doubter; she’s gone.”

  “Mally says swearing means you aren’t thinking.”

  “Frances is gone just the same,” said Jony. Her head came up; Arry saw her searching for the authority to back up what she had said. Jony looked at Arry, who shrugged at her; at Beldi, who was staring steadfastly at the map. “Mally and Halver said so,” said Jony.“What are we supposed to be studying here?” said Arry.

  “Halver supposes us to be memorizing the map,” said Jony. “Tiln got us off track, worrying about how the mountains look.”

  “You aren’t sheep,” said Tiln, moving his dirty finger along a river with “Owlswater” written along it. “I’m not a sheepdog.”

  “Mally says you are utterly without the ability to comprehend metaphor.”

  “What’s metaphor?” said Arry.

  Jony blushed a little. “She said I should ask Sune or Halver, but I forgot.”

  “It’s saying something’s like something else when it isn’t really,” said Tiln, impatiently.

  I think I do that all the time, thought Arry. She said, “Have you looked at the map enough? Shall you draw it while I watch to see if you’re right?”

  “Yes, or Halver will say something about all this talking.” Jony took out their slate and went to work. She could draw all the lines perfectly, mountains, rivers, lakes, the desert of sand and the desert of dust and the desert of salt water. She could name them all, too. But she had not learned where the lines went between all the little countries. Arry pointed this out, and Jony said crossly, “It makes no sense anyway.”

  “Where do the wolves come from?” asked Beldi. He had been quiet so long that all three of them jumped.

  Jony shouldered Tiln aside a little and looked at the original map. “Derry says here,” she said, laying her clean dark hand on the western edge of the Dubious Hills. “Halver says they come from Fence’s Country and also Wormsreign. Sune says they used to be in Druogonos, too, but Belaparthalion drove them out.”

  “Who?” said Tiln, looking up.

  “Sune says he was a dragon.”

  “What about the Hidden Land?” said Beldi.

  “Sune says they used to have wolves a long time ago but Belaparthalion drove them out of there as well,” said Jony.

  “Can you draw the map?” Arry asked Beldi.

  Jony handed him the pencil and wiped her own correct and nameless offering from the slate.

  By the time Halver was ready for them they could all draw the map and name everything on it, and Tiln had insisted on drawing a new map with the mountains in a more beautiful configuration. Halver walked over to their corner and caught sight of it just as Jony, to Tiln’s protests, wiped half of it away.

  “What’s the matter?” said Halver.

  “Tiln,” said Jony, with a long-suffering air, “says the mountains aren’t right.”

  “Which, these?” said Halver, touching with his own slate pencil the mountains at the Hidden Land’s southern border. “He’s probably right, though I don’t know how he might know. It’s difficult to get any geography in those lands right. The Wormsreign spells down there are thick as sorrel. How did you see that, Tiln?”

  “Not those mountains,” said Tiln. “Ours. They’re ugly.”

  His tone ma
de Halver look at him, and at Jony and at Arry. Beldi was wiping the rest of the map off the slate, and he kept on doing it as if nothing had been said.

  “Are they?” said Halver.

  “Look at them,” said Tiln, impatiently. “Anybody can see it.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Halver. “Talk to Mally when you get home, and ask her to talk to me.”

  This time it was Tiln who became perfectly still. Arry looked at him. He was twelve. He hadn’t started growing notably, his voice wasn’t changing. Arry said, “Mally says knowledge comes with growing up. But he hasn’t yet.”

  “Mally may say it,” said Halver, almost absently, “but—” he stopped. Arry thought it was the four shocked stares that had awakened him. Nobody talked about Mally that way, any more than they would talk about Oonan or Arry or Derry or Halver himself, or anybody who had come into knowledge.

  Halver looked around the circle of his students, and rubbed at the place on his hand where the sliver had been. It didn’t hurt, but it was itching. Not really enough to make him behave so oddly. Arry concentrated on him. He had not slept, either. Perhaps that was it.

  “Ask Mally when you go home,” said Halver. “In the meantime, draw me these ugly mountains.”

  “I can’t,” said Tiln. “Truly, I can’t. It makes my head hurt.”

  Halver looked at Arry. “Try a bit,” said Arry. Tiln wrinkled up his forehead and did so. Arry nodded at Halver. “It does make his head hurt—Tiln! How do you know that?”

  Tiln looked helpless. “Should I go home now?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Halver. “Jony can show you what else we do today.”

  Tiln stood up slowly. His face was more green than dark. He was as tall as Halver. “I’ll see you at supper,” he said to his sister, and went out of the schoolhouse, shutting the door quietly.

  “Will we have a party?” said Beldi hopefully.

  “If Mally says so,” said Halver. “Now, tell me what I’ve said about the Owlswater.”

  While Jony did this, Arry looked attentive and remembered the day she came into knowledge. Her birthday, Wim said, was in August, and it had been her birthday. She was helping her mother put up the beans; there had been, Mally and Jony and Wim all agreed, an enormous crop that year. They were working in a wooden shed Frances and Beldi had made, with a roof for shade but open sides. Con had chosen that day to learn to walk, and being Con had toddled straight outside and put both hands in the fire they were cooking the beans over. It had hurt more than anything Arry had felt since, though probably less than having a baby. She had hated it. She screamed and grabbed Con, who of course had screamed too, deprived of her interesting play.