The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “I’d better-”

  Granny Hazelbide stopped her, pushing her back into her chair with one firm hand.

  “You’d `better’ nothing-you stay right here,” she said. “I’ll be going along to Humpback Bridge myself, soon as it’s dark, and I’ll take Mynna of McDaniels’ hand and lead her back to the graveyard where she belongs. That’s Granny business, and not suitable for you to concern yourself with it.”

  “She won’t stay in the graveyard, Granny-they never do.”

  “Then I’ll go down and lead her back every night for so long as it takes to convince her, and two or three times a night if it’s needful. And some of the other Grannys’ll spell me. A month or two, she’ll settle back down.”

  Responsible rubbed at her eyes with both hands; the sandy feeling was a torment, and tonight, somehow, she’d have to get some sleep. But she said, “I don’t mind going down there, Granny.”

  “Nor do I,” said the old woman, “nor do I. And I’m not worn out with all this the way you are. At ninety a body doesn’t need much sleep.”

  “I thank you-and I do mean it.”

  “I know you do, child. And I’ll have a little something sent up to you to see that you sleep this night. Mind you drink it all down, you’re falling over in your tracks.”

  Responsible nodded, and leaned her head back in the chair, weary to her bones and beyond.

  At the door, the Granny stopped suddenly and stood with one hand on the knob.

  “One more thing, Responsible,” she said, “and I reckon you’d best hear it from me. I’d be averse to your hearing it from Granny Leeward, for example, and if I know that one she’ll be at you with it before supper-or your mother will, one. It’ll be no surprise to you.”

  “What is it, Granny?” Responsible wondered if there ever would be an end to this day.

  “They’re saying that the Bridgewraith’s come out because Troublesome was here in the town.”

  Responsible closed her eyes and smiled.

  “They would say that,” she said. “What else have they got to blame things on? Couldn’t be their own fault, after all.”

  “Like I said,” the Granny answered. “I didn’t think you’d be surprised. And now I’ll be going.”

  The door closed behind Granny Hazelbide, and Responsible sat and rocked and thought and rocked and thought some more. She sent a tentative thought out, feeling for Lewis Motley Wommack, and found him already on board a ship pulling away from the Brightwater Landing, and skittish under her mindtouch as a wild Mule colt. Taking note of that, she let it drop; he had a right to his privacy.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t made it amply clear to her how he felt about mindspeech and mindtouch-exactly the same way the Mules felt about it, so far as she could tell, though he’d not done to her yet what the Mules did when a Magician was fool enough to try to take advantage of their telepathic abilities. The headache she had was from having the world fall in on her; she couldn’t lay it on the shoulders of Lewis Motley.

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  At Castle Smith, Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th was not at all surprised to find something sitting on the Castle’s front steps waiting for him. It was a beautiful cat, grant him that, but he didn’t care much for the look of it at that moment. Its back was arched like a snare, the claws on all six paws were out and at the ready, its long silver hair stood out all over it like the quills of the fabled Porkypine; and it hissed and spat at him in a remarkably eloquent manner.

  The Magician of Rank had been expecting his reception; in the trunk marked with an x there’d been packed not only the thirteen crowns, the king’s scepter, and the rest of the royal paraphernalia, but also a sack of heavy leather with a drawstring round the top. He whipped that out of a deep pocket inside his cloak, dropped it over the cat-that had been too occupied cussing him out in her limited vocabulary to be wary-and pulled the string tight. Then he tucked the bag under his arm, much like carrying a bag full of snakes but perfectly safe, and headed up to his rooms at the fastest pace consistent with the dignity of his position.

  Inside his rooms he lost no time; he went straight to the heavy magic-chest, hewn of the precious cedar that only the Lewises could coax to grow, and pulled out what was needful, laying the squalling sack inside it where he could slam down the lid if the animal thought of anything he hadn’t anticipated. He drew a pentacle of adequate size on his floor, pouring out the coarse salt that made its borders well over an inch wide for safety; and at each of its five corners he laid two silver daggers set down in a cross. He stepped back and looked at it, and decided that though it wasn’t elegant it would serve, and then in one swift motion he loosed the puckerstring to the sack, threw the thing into the middle of the pentacle and leaped back well out of harm’s way.

  “You are angry, you dear old thing,” he murmured at the cat, that’s fur had now taken to giving off sparks all on its own, “and I can’t say I blame you. Hold on a minute, and I’ll give you a chance to tell me what a vast number of unspeakable things I am.”

  He had a sudden temptation, almost overpowering, to run the Granny through a set of changes on the way to her proper shapesay a mourning dove, first; and then maybe a ponderous turtle; and then maybe a nanny goat; and so on. But he fought it off. She was going to be trouble enough as it was.

  He set up his Structural Index and his Structural Change with great care-it wouldn’t do to alter so much as the sprigged flowers she’d had in the pattern of her dress goods-and he raised his hands to trace the double-barred arrow in the air. It was a simple Substitution Transformation, and it didn’t take long; one quiet crackle from the golden arrow, and there stood Granny Gableframe good as new and twice as fractious.

  The pentacle had been more than sufficient to hold the cat, furious as it had been; the Granny was something else. She hitched up her skirts to avoid the salt, kicked aside a set of the crossed silver daggers with one pointy-toed shoe, stepped contemptuously right out of the magic shape and right up to him, and jabbed her finger into his chest. He felt the blood come, even through his tunic, and sighed; it was one of his favorite tunics.

  “Now, Granny-” he began, but she cut him off in midsyllable.

  “You,” she said, “are so far beneath contempt that you’re not worth wasting spit on. If you were sitting on the edge of a piece of paper, you’d be able to swing your legs, you’re that small! You are a worthless, sorry, vile excuse for a Magician of Rank, and if I’d the power I’d strip you of that rank, for you don’t deserve it any more than your bed does. Oh, I can’t do it, I know that well, but I can wish, and I’m a powerful wisher, Lincoln Parradyne, just a powerful wisher! And it might could be the just One as runs this universe’ll see fit to do what I can’t-I can pray for that, without ceasing! And when you’ve laid me in my grave at last and think you’re shut of me, Lincoln Parradyne Smith the Traitor, you watch, you watch close-you’ll see my face in every mirror and it’ll be telling you what filth, what slime, what blasphemy you are . . . You’ll see my face in every cup you lift to your lips, you’ll hear my voice at your ear all the day long and all the night long and it’ll be cursing your immortal soul, without ceasing! Vile serpent, vermin out from under a swamplog, you and your false lying tongue, you’ll find me in your pocket when you reach in for a shammybag, you’ll find me in your shoe when you stick your stinking foot into it, you’ll find me in your buttonholes when you . . .”

  It went on and on, earning his considerable admiration before it was over, and he didn’t doubt a single word of it; and all the time that fingernail in his chest, poke, poke, poke, and he took it in silence. He had every bit of it coming to him.

  “Never before,” she said finally, her voice gone to a gravelly rasp but not one bit weary, “never before in the one thousand years we’ve watched this world turn under the three moons, never has a Magician of Rank raised a hand-by magic or in ordinary human mischief-against a Granny! You are the very first to have that sorry distinction
, Lincoln Parradyne Smith, and whatsoever it may have gained you now it will bring you more evil in payment than you ever knew existed! The universe, false Magician, is not mocked!”

  “Granny Gableframe,” he hazarded then, since she appeared to have at least paused for a breath, “do please notice that I’ve done you no harm-none. I know the staff of this Castle, they’ll have fed you on breast of fowl and thick cream all the time we’ve been gone, and the servingmaids’ll waste days hunting for their lost pretty pet. You have my word you missed nothing at the Jubilee, if that is worrying you; it was a boring mess from beginning to end. Look at yourself, Granny Gableframe, you’re just as you were-not a hair on your head is out of place.”

  She raised her index finger straight as a spike beside her temple, and she fixed him with a furious eye.

  “You have tampered with my person!” she hissed. “You have tampered with my freedom! You have made a lower animal of a woman that was doing magic, and doing it with skill, before ever you were born! Don’t you tell me you’ve done me no harm, you sorry piece of work-and you’d of done more if you dared. A Magician of Rank, using his Formalisms & Transformations against an old woman-phaugh, it’d make a worm puke for shame. Now stand aside!”

  And she marched out of the room, with him following her at a discreet distance and feeling that it wasn’t going well, and down to the parlor where the Family had gathered for coffee and ginger cake. They sat up nervously when she sailed into the room, he noticed, and Dorothy-now Princess Dorothy-began to bawl.

  Delldon Mallard spoke up first, his voice warm and sticky with his confidence in his own righteousness, and bid the Granny good afternoon.

  “Sit down and have some coffee and some of this good cake with us, Granny Gableframe,” he said. “We have a lot to tell you, now we’re home.”

  “I wouldn’t sit with you,” said the Granny, “if both my legs’d been removed. Which you might very well direct your toy Magician of Rank over there to do next, I reckon!”

  “Now, Granny,” said Delldon Mallard, “when you hear what we have to tell you, you’ll forget all about your mad. You’ll be sorry you didn’t go along to be part of it all, and you’ll be proud of this Family. Sit down, Granny, and let us tell you about it.”

  “Don’t you put yourself out to tell me anything,” she spat at him. “I know all about what happened-and you know who told me? A Mule told me, in your own stables, that’s who! A Mule won’t stoop to mindspeech with a human being, but it’s perfectly willing, I discovered, to share minds with a cat-and I know all about it. Ever hear a Mule laugh, Delldon Mallard? They haven’t left off laughing since you made your speech!”

  “Granny Gable-”

  “You hush!” she declared. “Don’t you talk to me, you pitiful excuse for I declare I do not know what! And as for you females, you’d best really settle in to your weeping and your wailing, for you’ve got a lot of it to do down the road, and a long and lonesome road it is, mark my words. I’ll not stay under this roof another night, just for starters; not one night. I’m a decent woman, raised decent, lived decent, and plan to go on the same way; I’ll not cast my lot with such trash as you-cover your worthlessness with royal velvet, will you? Might as well go crown the goats! You pitiful females, you hear me now-there’s no velvet heavy enough to cover you, ever again!”

  “Granny,” Lincoln Parradyne objected, “you’re frightening the women.”

  “Am I? Am I? I should surely hope I am! They know their duties in this world, and well they know what they’ve done-oh, Dorothy of Smith, don’t you shake your head at me, your crown’ll fall off; and I raised you my own self, don’t you dare tell me you don’t know what you’ve done. Shame on you!”

  “Granny, please listen for-”

  “Silence!” she thundered, and struck the floor with her cane so hard she dented the planking; and they made not another sound. “You think you’re a sovereign Kingdom now, do you, with a royal court, and a King and a Queen, and a Crown Prince and a Royal Princess and a passel of Royal Whatnots and Flumdiddles , . , and all of it blamed on First Granny, bless her soul as is whirling somewhere, I can tell you! And here you sit, on the southwest corner of Oklahomah, sharing this continent with Castle Clark and Castle Airy, neither one of which’d give you a crossclover leaf to play at casting Spells with. It’s many a long and weary mile to Kintucky and Tinaseeh, clear across the Ocean of Storms-and there’ll be no help for you from either Traveller or Wommack, they’ll have their hands full and running over with their own troubles.”

  “Granny Gableframe,” put in Marygold of Purdy-and then waited a minute, till she was sure the Granny planned on letting her speak-”that makes no special difference. It’s no more than a step over to Arkansaw, no more than half a day’s flight by Mule from here to Castle Guthrie. We’ve near neighbors, and near friends.”

  Granny Gableframe sniffed. “Marygold, you pay as much attention to what goes on in this world as the squawkers do, you know that? You needn’t expect help from Castle Guthrie, nor yet the Farsons . . . Might could be the Purdys would be willing to help, seeing as you’re their close kin, but they won’t dare. Guthrie and Farson are feuding, and Purdy’s caught in the middle playing looby-loo and trying to keep their skirts out of both puddles. They’ll have nothing to spare for you for a very long time. I think you’re about to find yourselves mighty lonely, you Smiths-thank the Gates, Lincoln Parradyne, I am a Brightwater by birth and not one of this line. Envy me that, don’t you?”

  “Granny Gableframe,” said Delldon Mallard, brushing ginger crumbs off his smocked velvet trousers, “I know you feel obligated to granny at us, and I ... uh ... must admit you’re doing a right fine job of it. But there are things you don’t know-things we men know. There’s nothing that the other Kingdoms ever did for us we can’t do for ourselves, and I’m not all that willing to humor you any longer in your tirade at these innocent women. It’s not . . . uh . . . called for.”

  His brothers the Dukes allowed as how they agreed, and the women looked at the floor, and the Granny just looked amazed. “Part of that, the part about humoring me, I’ll ignore,” she said disgustedly. “It’s not worth my time. But I suggest you think again about your claims to being so sufficient. True-you’d be hard put to it to remember calling on most of the other Families for anything. You’ve never had to. Never been any need, so long as youall had Castle Brightwater for a sugartit to do everything for every last soul on Ozark-all the rest of you, you’ve just hung there, hundreds of years now. You’ve forgotten all about what Brightwater’s been doing for you, same way you don’t think on what the sun does for you, nor the air . . . Well, Brightwater’ll do for you no more, pretty ladies, fine gentlemen. No more!”

  Lincoln Parradyne could see by their faces that not a one of them knew what the old woman was talking about. Possibly Dorothy might of had a glimmer, since as eldest daughter she had more to do with the Castle accounts than any of the others, but she was so wrapped up in her own hysterics he doubted she’d even heard the Granny’s words, much less understood them.

  “Granny Gableframe,” he said at last, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms, “you’re wasting your breath on this group. They don’t follow you, my dear lady.”

  “I am not your dear lady, nor never was, nor never will be,” she informed him, and he begged her pardon.

  “Nevertheless,” he said calmly, “I am here. And what this Castle can’t obtain by trade agreements from the other Kingdoms, I can produce for them myself.”

  The Granny stared at him, flabbergasted, and shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “The depths of your ignorance!” she breathed. “It’s a bottomless well, a pit with no end to it! You see yourself, do you, using Insertion Transformations to feed and clothe and heal and otherwise provide for the needs of every man jack of this Kingdom? Is that what you mean, Lincoln Parradyne Smith? You that it takes half an hour’s preparation and an hour’s restup to come up with one little old peachapple
for a demonstration, when the Tutors call you in to show the little boys what a Magician of Rank can do? You see yourself materializing tons of grain, and bales of herbs, and . . .”

  Her voice trailed off into silence, and then what was clearly a snicker, and Lincoln Parradyne felt a small twinge of uneasiness. It was true, he’d be busy, but he’d had no doubts of his ability to handle whatever the ordinary economic processes wouldn’t be adequate for, no doubts of his ability to bring the Kingdom through this brief period of adjustment. And he had no doubts now, really. It was just the way the Granny was looking at him, as if she knew something he didn’t and had no mind to tell him what it was. He turned his back on her and stared at a painting of some ancient Smith, hanging on the wall; he’d had all he chose to take from the old crone. Let her rail and rant at the rest of them; he was through listening.

  She had one question left for him, however, and she didn’t mind directing it to his backside.

  “Think on this, Lincoln Parradyne!” she said. “You plan on taking a great deal out; what do you plan on putting back in?”

  Dorothy stopped her blubbering for a moment, and spoke to her father.

  “Daddy,” she started out, and then when he cleared his throat and frowned at her, she began again with, “Sire, I mean to say-”

  The Granny clapped her hands. “Sire, is it?” she cackled. “Sire? Such as the goats have, and the Mules? And you plan on addressing your mother as `Dam,’ do you?”