The Dubious Hills

by PAMELA DEAN

  “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.

  “Con does say,” she added, her brow clearing, “that the last thing Halver eats ought to be pleasant.”

  Arry went home feeling she could never eat anything again. After she had fed Con and Beldi she left them struggling to invent a new game using the chess pieces, and walked in the kindly golden evening to Oonan’s house. He was sitting on the stone wall with his cats, cutting splints. “No, Physici,” he said when he saw her, “I have not thought of anything else we may do to repel Halver when the moon rises tomorrow.”

  “I wanted to ask you,” said Arry sitting down on the other side of the cats, “what you thought of everybody’s rejoinder to all this. Because if I don’t look closely, I receive the distinct impression that they are mightily enjoying themselves.”

  “Oh, they are,” said Oonan, not looking up from his work. “We enjoy drinking May wine also, but the damage it does is done all the same.”

  “What will the morning after be of all this?”

  “Much worse than any quantity of May wine could produce,” said Oonan. “We can, I think, prevent Halver’s in fact killing anybody who chooses not to become a wolf; but we cannot prevent anybody’s so choosing. And that is what will wreck us.”

  “Does Halver think we deserve to be wrecked, or that we’ll be the better for it?”

  “Of course he does,” said Oonan, looking at her at last. “He told you so himself; he told all of us so.”

  “But is he right?”

  “No,” said Oonan. “There is a balance here, and when he upsets it the restoration will be beyond us.”

  “Do you know this?”

  “I know it.”

  “But can you, if it’s to do with Halver?”

  “It’s not to do with Halver, except as Halver is a force like a flood or a plague. It’s to do with all of us.”

  “Is it too late already?”

  “No, I think not,” said Oonan, his eyes on his work again. “We can absorb a little upset, as the body can absorb a little May wine. But the dosage Halver prescribes for us, that is fatal.”

  “Oonan?”

  “Fatal to the larger body,” said Oonan. “And, of course, to anybody who refuses the dose and then is careless whom he drinks with.”

  “You’re being much too metaphorical,” said Arry, crossly.

  Oonan shrugged. “It soothes anxiety,” he said.

  “If you’re so anxious why don’t you think what else to do?”

  “You’re much more anxious than I am,” said Oonan, “and it doesn’t seem to be helping you to think.”

  “Mustn’t there be something wrong with us and our workings if we can’t think what to do about impending harm?”

  “Mustn’t there be something wrong with the oak, if it but stands on the mountain and lets lightning strike it?” said Oonan. “Or to be more precise, mustn’t there be something wrong
with the birds who nest there, that they cannot alter the oak to be impervious?”

  “Oh, never mind,” said Arry, and slid off the wall and stamped off home.

  She sat in the chair with red cushions, stroking Woollycat with one hand and the pile of books she had been lent with the other. It was interesting that Oonan too sometimes thought of Halver’s bargain as a dreadful storm. We can’t weather it, thought Arry, we can’t outrun it; we must turn it back. Patrick Spens lacked a good wizard. She put Con and Beldi to bed and sat back down in the chair. This is the last night, she thought. No matter what happens, there will be change.

  “Are you ever coming to school again?” said Con the next morning.

  “No,” said Arry.

  “Shall I tell Halver?”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Arry, “when he comes to tea.”

  The afternoon was sunny, kind, and tender. Summer was its most perfect green. The wild roses were blooming early. Arry went down a little early to the stream, and found Zia already there. She had brought one of Mally’s finest linen cloths, but Mally or someone had prevailed on her to bring wooden cups and platters. She had laid a fire but not yet lit it. Arry gave her the oatcake and cheese she had brought, so the children, who would be far too excited to eat any dinner, would have something vaguely resembling nutrition.

  Zia was sparkling and glittering with excitement. She began talking the moment she saw Arry and did not stop until Con and Tany arrived. Tany bore the food Mally had promised; Con had a large jug almost too large for her to carry.

  “What’s that?” said Arry.

  “It’s the blushful Hippocrene,” panted Con, thumping it down in a patch of chickweed. “Jony says it makes all the sleepy herbs work better, and Mally says it’s entirely proper to serve at afternoon tea.”

  “How nice for Halver,” said Arry, a little hollowly.

  They all looked at her. “Will it hurt him?” said Zia.

  “No,” said Arry.

  “Lina’s bringing him,” said Tany. “It’s her turn to help clear up, so she’s bringing him.”

  After this there seemed nothing else to say. Tany lay on his back in the grass and stared up into the new leaves of the oak trees. Con and Zia amused themselves by throwing stones into the stream. Zia had found a good place. The bank was flat and grassy and sloped a little towards the water; the pool beneath it was wide and deep. The stream made small chuckling and splashing noises going through the narrow spot before the pool, but it was not so loud as to impede conversation.

  What in the world are we going to talk about, thought Arry, while the blushful Hippocrene and the valerian work themselves on Halver? I can’t do this. It’s treachery, the most hurtful thing there is. Well, so is what Halver wants to do treachery. It’s worse than treachery. He’s using force. Is that worse than guile?

  “Here he comes,” said Zia.

  Arry looked around. Lina was leading Halver by the hand through the stand of oaks. He looked perfectly serene. Lina brought him over and sat him on a flat stone. He thanked her, and then looked at the rest of them. “This is very good of you,” he said.

  “Mally says it’s good of you,” said Zia, “to have tea with children after spending all day with children.”

  “The obligations are different,” said Halver. “In school, I’m obliged to teach; but now, you are obliged to entertain me. Which you seem to be doing very well. What’s this?” And he took from Con a wooden cup brimming with red bubbly Hippocrene.

  “It’s the blushful Hippocrene,” said Con.

  “Ah,” said Halver. “A beaker full of the warm South. Where did you get this, Con?”

  “I made it,” said Con.

  “Truly?” said Halver. “We’ll hope you can help Rine with the beer when you come into more knowledge, then.” He sniffed his cup, and looked thoughtful. “Have you drunk any of this?” he asked Con.

  “No,” said Con. “I made pancakes of it.”

  “You had perhaps better not drink much of it.”

  “Beldi says it tastes bad,” said Con, accepting a cup from Zia and regarding it suspiciously.

  “To the fresh palate, it probably does,” said Halver. “Mix it with water, Zia; that will give us enough for a toast.”

  Zia had a jug of water already, for making the tea; she did as Halver told her, and handed out the cups. Arry got the cupful Zia had originally given to Con, being, she supposed, old enough to no longer have a fresh palate. Halver held his cup up in a shaft of sunlight. “To transformation,” he said, and drank.

  They all drank, including Arry. I’ll show you transformation, she thought. Halver looked at her over the rim of his cup, exactly as if she had spoken. “What have you all decided?” he said.

  Arry opened her mouth, but she was forestalled by Zia. “Mally says,” said Zia, “that asking personal questions at tea is very rude.”

  Arry shut her mouth in time to turn her laugh into a snort, probably as rude in its way as a personal question.

  “Mally has the right of it,” said Halver, agreeably. “But it’s rude to correct your guests, as well. You must make it up to me with more Hippocrene.”

  Zia poured him another cup full. Halver drank it fairly rapidly. Arry sipped her own and wondered about him. Either he was in fact finding the continued presence of small children wearing, or he was in some anxiety about what might happen when the moon rose. “What isn’t rude to talk about at tea?” said Con.

  “Why tea?” said Arry, suffering and giving in to an impulse of mischief. “Why is tea more polite than supper?”

  “Because it’s superfluous,” said Zia, coming out with the entire word in one triumphant breath. “Mally says so.”

  “But surely,” said Arry, “the necessary ought to be more palatable than the optional?”

  The children looked at her resignedly, but Halver said, “Palatable is one thing, decorated another. We decorate tea with amiable nothings.”

  Arry grinned into her Hippocrene.

  “What is the blushful Hippocrene?” asked Lina, prompting Halver to quote the entire spell. While he was doing so, Con and Zia made the fire and boiled the water and made the tea, and Arry observed Halver. He was certainly rather flushed and cheerful. She hoped Jony was right about the combined effect of sleepy tea and wine.

  Tany then asked how one could have a beaker full of the south, or any other direction, and in the very confused conversation that followed, the tea got brewed very strong indeed. Zia finally tore her attention away from Tany’s adamant refusal to admit the value of metaphor, and poured out a greeny-yellow decoction that looked more like a medicine than a drink. Arry supposed it was. She gestured at Zia and then at the honey pot, and Zia shot a huge spoonful of honey into the cup she meant for Halver.

  When Arry got her own tea, she decided that it was just as well. The tea was very bitter. She almost asked for honey herself, and then realized that the rest of them had better not drink much tea. They were all smaller than Halver and would be snoring well before him. Which would be not only disastrous to the plan, but very rude. Arry found herself chortling, and stopped hastily. Halver gave her a knowing look, and drank his tea. Arry saw that the Hippocrene had made him thirsty. This might work after all.

  It did work, with an almost terrifying rapidity. Halver ate some honeycake, declined cheese and oatcake, drank another cup of tea, leaned back against his rock saying something about which bird was singing in the oak tree, and was suddenly asleep.

  Lina grinned. “I put valerian in the honeycake, too,” she said. “And I got a spell from Niss to say over it.”

  Zia began clearing cups and cakes off the cloth, which she then folded tidily. Arry sat and watched as she made an easy path for rolling Halver into the water. She watched as the four of them pulled him down off the rock and tried to roll him so he was, as he had taught them the concept, parallel to the stream. The loose gray robe he wore caught on the rough rock. He was too heavy for them. They stopped and looked at her.
r />   “We can’t do this,” said Arry. “Truly, we can’t.”

  They went on looking at her.

  “You could teach us when he’s gone, I think,” said Lina. “We listen to you. Even Tany listens to you.”

  “You sound like me,” said Tany. He flashed her a delighted and charming grin.

  Oh, wonderful, thought Arry. “I’m glad you do,” she said, “because I’m going to have to disappoint you. It was the talk of courtesy that made me realize. You can’t murder your guest, you really can’t. He trusted us; we can’t kill him.”

  “Does this mean we lose the game?” said Zia.

  “No, it’s just a different game than we thought.” They went on looking at her, three pairs of brown eyes and one of blue, sweet little faces, a trifle flushed with their watered wine and smeared a bit here and there with honey or crumbs.

  “Oh, well,” said Zia suddenly, “now we know it works. This was—what does Vand call it—a dry run. We can always do it later.”

  “But if it’s rude?” said Lina.

  “We could be his guests,” said Zia. “We’ll think of something.”

  “But what do we do now?” said Lina, looking at Halver.

  “You go home with your cloth and dishes,” said Arry. “I’ll stay with him until he wakes up.”

  “I’m staying too,” said Con.

  “All right, but go find Beldi first and let him know where we are.” She looked again at Mally’s children. “Thank you,” she said, “for having such lovely manners.”

  They packed up their tea things and went off chattering. Con said, “But is he still going to hurt us, Arry?”

  “Yes,” said Arry, “but we needn’t hurt ourselves even more.”

  Con went off silently to find Beldi. Arry sat looking at the ashes of the fire. Was that stupid? she thought. For he is dangerous, and something must be done, because he’s hurting us all, he’s hurting whatever we are together, he’s ruining something bigger than all of us, whereby we live. But it would have hurt those children to let them roll his helpless body into the water.