The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  The Reverend listened to them grumble and fuss for a while, and then left, clapping each one in his reach on the shoulder. He was satisfied that the doings at the Castle weren’t worrying the men much; if anything, they were pleased to have something new to talk about. The fall of the Confederation had made no difference in their lives up to now, since they were of Brightwater Kingdom and enjoyed every privilege they ever had, with the added advantage of not having to put up with the Continental Delegations coming in one month in four and filling up the hotels.

  The men of Brightwater were in no way worried; curious, distracted at worst, uneasy perhaps that the Magicians and Magicians of Rank seemed not to know what was going on. But not worried.

  It was the women that worried. At home in their houses, they were white-faced and tight-lipped, and they had just one question: what was going to happen now?

  The Grannys and the Family had asked Veritas Truebreed Motley the same question.

  “Now what, you hifalutin fraud?” Thorn of Guthrie’d thrown at him, speaking for a number of them that wouldn’t have dared say the words. “You and your high-and-mighty magic! What’s going to happen now to my daughter?”

  The Magician of Rank had smiled and expressed his approval of the first concern for her child he’d ever heard from her lips, and Thorn of Guthrie had come near spitting at him. “I’m not concerned for my child,” she said, tossing that Guthrie hair, “not so much as my little finger-end’s worth! My child, from what I can determine and from what you tell me, is resting comfortably. I am talking about the effect of her condition on all the rest of us!”

  Veritas Truebreed raised his eyebrows, and then he bowed his head, ever so slightly, and clasped his hands behind him.”My dear Thorn of Guthrie,” he answered her, “I think `all the rest’ of you have no cause for concern. Responsible attended to a thing or two in this Kingdom, and meddled a good deal more than was appropriate in things elsewhere, but there’s nothing she did that can’t be handled by others. Your Economist can see to the accounts she kept, the staff can-”

  “Veritas Truebreed!”

  “Yes, Thorn of Guthrie! I am not deaf, you know!”

  “I am not referring to the things Responsible did that could be handled by the servingmaids! You’ll push me too far, even for a Magician of Rank! I am referring to her other duties!”

  He looked her right in the eye and assured her that there was nothing-nothing-that Responsible of Brightwater ordinarily saw to that couldn’t be handled just as well by the nine Ozark Magicians of Rank.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  He was sure of it, and so were his colleagues. In the time it had taken them to accomplish the task of putting Responsible into pseudocoma-and that had turned out to be somewhat more of a project than they’d anticipated-they’d come to an agreement on that. The idea that the existence of a female, duly named and designated Responsible, in every generation-the idea that that was somehow essential to the well-being of Ozark-had been thoroughly discussed and set aside for what it was. Mere superstition.

  Epilogue

  It was eight o’clock in the morning on Tinaseeh. Morning prayer, morning chores, and the essentials of the body were out of the way; now it was time for teaching. The Tutors, though they came from the ranks of the Magicians, wore nothing to distinguish them from any other Traveller male. Their charges-exactly twelve per Tutor-were miniature versions of themselves. Black trousers, black shirts, black jackets, black shoes, black hats; the only concession made to childhood was the absence of the tie. In Booneville there were six little boys that didn’t have to go to Tutorials, because they were waiting for six more little boys to reach the age of three and bring their group up to the required dozen. The boys in the Tutorials hated them, because they were still free to play; the boys left out hated and envied the others, and felt deprived because they could not attend and would be late starting.

  There were no problems of curriculum on Tinaseeh. Each Tutor had a heavy book he carried with him, laying out the content of each of the twelve hundred teaching days he would have with his pupils. Four years, from the third birthday to the seventh, he would have them, for three hundred days of the year. And there would never be a day in that twelve hundred when he thought to himself, “Now what shall I do today?” That’s not how it was done on Tinaseeh.

  On this particular day, the subject was “Governments of Our World.”

  “Boys?”

  Tutor Ethan Daniel Traveller the 30th tapped his ironwood pointer once, for order, and was rewarded with instant silence. He was an experienced Tutor-weary of it, if the truth were known, and hoping this year’s examinations in magic would free him of the role-and his charges gave him no problems. They wouldn’t have dared.

  “You’ll look at the map now,” he said, and raised the pointer to touch each continent as he spoke.

  “Kintucky!” he said first. “Up here in the left-hand corner, with the Ocean of Storms all around it. Kintucky, settled in-” He waited, with the ironwood poised.

  “Twenty-three thirty-nine!” they shouted, and he nodded approval.

  “Kintucky is held by the Wommack Family, and it is a mite different from the other Kingdoms. It’s governed, right now, by a man called a Guardian, the uncle of the rightful Master of Castle Wommack, just until the boy is old enough to take his place. The name for such a government is a regency. You will remember that.”

  “Yes, Tutor Ethan Daniel.”

  “Mizzurah, across the Ocean of Storms and off the coast of Arkansaw, was settled in twenty-three thirty-two. It’s a very small place, as you can see, but it belongs to two Families-the Lewises and the Motleys. They are both democratic republics-as Kintucky will be, one of these days-and that means their government is a kind of council, that elects its leader. But it has never happened on Ozark that that leader was not also Master of the Castle in that Kingdom. And so the government of Mizzurah is led by the Masters of Castles Lewis and Motley. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” chorused the boys. Those old enough to write made notes with their styluses, and the three- and four-year-olds said it over and over under their breath to help themselves remember.

  “Moving on, we have the continent-a continent, boys, is a large body of land completely surrounded by water; you will remember that-we have the continent of Arkansaw. Cletus Frederick Farson? Are you paying attention? Look at the map, Cletus Frederick, not the ceiling; there is nothing written on the ceiling!”

  The other eleven boys laughed and nudged each other; and Cletus Frederick, supremely uninterested in the topic of “Governments of Our World” but not so stupid as to let it be known, fixed his eyes firmly on the point of the stick and stared at the map.

  “The continent of Arkansaw, with the Ocean of Storms on the west and the Ocean of Remembrances on the east, was settled in-”

  “Twenty-one twenty-seven!”

  “Twenty-one twenty-seven, quite right. It is held by three Families: the Farsons, the Guthries, and the Purdys. The Farsans and the Guthries have Kings, and are called-monarchies. You will remember that. Now Kingdom Purdy is a little different: it does not have a King, but it is not a democratic republic. It has a group of three men ruling it, that are called Senators; they rule together. This kind of government is called an oligarchy. Say it after me.”

  “Oligarchy!”

  “Again!”

  “Oligarchy!”

  “That’s it. Now, crossing the ocean, still going clockwise, we come to Marktwain, the continent where First Landing happened in the year twenty twenty-one. For six years all of the Families lived together on Marktwain, which-as you can see-is small, almost as small as Mizzurah. It is shared by two Families-the Brightwaters and the McDaniels-both Kingdoms are democratic republics.”

  “That’s where the comsets are!” piped one very small boy. “That’s true, James Thomas,” agreed the Tutor. “But we don’t want the comsets, do we, boys?”

  “No, sir!”

  “An
d why don’t we?”

  “Because they are evil!”

  “So they are, so they are. And what else is there on Marktwain, in the Kingdom of Brightwater, that is evil?”

  The boys looked at each other, not quite sure what he wanted. There was so much evil everywhere.

  “James Thomas?” said the Tutor sharply. “You brought up the comsets-how about you telling us the answer to my question?”

  “Responsible and Troublesome,” mumbled the little boy very fast, looking at his feet and hoping.

  “That is exactly right!” the Tutor thundered. “Exactly! Two evil women. Troublesome of Brightwater, exiled now for years to the top of a far mountain also called Troublesome, where decent people will not have to be around her! And Responsible of Brightwater?”

  “She’s asleep!”

  “Yes; she’s asleep. She was so wicked that the Holy One struck her down, putting her into a sleep like unto death-and she has been that way now for ten months, two weeks, and three days. You see where evil leads?”

  They assured him that they did, until he was satisfied.

  “Now,” he said, “you see the Outward Deeps there, off to the east of Marktwain? We don’t know anything much about the Outward Deeps. But to the south of Marktwain is the continent of Oklahomah, settled in twenty-one twenty-seven jointly with Arkansaw. That is, an expedition moved from Marktwain in two parties; one to Arkansaw, one to Oklahomah, at the same time. That is called a joint expedition. You will remember that.

  “On Oklahomah,” he went on, “there are three Families. Two of them are democratic republics-the Kingdoms of Clark and Airy. One, Smith Kingdom, is a monarchy, which means that it has-”

  “A King! A King!”

  “Good. A King. And finally, we come to”-he swept the pointer around to the bottom left-hand corner of the map with a flourish, and the boys cried-”Tinaseehl”

  “Settled in-”

  “Twenty-three forty-nine!”

  “Good boys! Tinaseeh is the largest of all the continents, and it is the only one to have an inland body of water large enough to be called a sea. That is our Midland Sea. And its government is?”

  “A Holy Republic!”

  “So it is. And do we have a King?”

  “No!”

  “Why not? Why don’t we have a King?”

  “The Holy One is our leader!”

  “And the Holy One’s representative on this continent, that interprets the laws and says how we must behave?”

  “Jacob Jeremiah Traveller, Master of Castle Traveller! Hurrah!”

  Cheers from all directions; the Tutor allowed that for a minute or two. They were, after all, very young. And enthusiasm for Jacob Jeremiah Traveller was a sentiment to be encouraged. “Now, are we through?” he asked finally, quieting them.

  “Yes!”

  “No; no, we are not. First, there is a very important question. Remember that there are six”-he held up six fingers-”six Kingdoms on Ozark that call themselves democratic republics. Those six-Brightwater, McDaniels, Clark, Airy, Lewis, and Motley-are joined as the Alliance of Democratic Republics. You will remember that. Now-does anybody know what the important question is?”

  He didn’t expect them to know, so he did not wait, but went right on. “What,” he asked, “is the difference between a democratic republic and a Holy republic? Well?”

  Silence. The Tutor tapped the pointer. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “Think!” he said. “Think how they are ruled; isn’t that what we’ve been talking about all morning? How the Kingdoms are ruled? Now, repeat after me. A democratic republic is ruled by a man, but the Holy Republic is ruled by the Holy One! All together, now. . :”

  He made them say it three times.

  It didn’t matter how many girls there were to a Granny School; a Granny took as many as happened to be there. And since, on all of Tinaseeh, the only Granny was Granny Leeward, it was a large group of little girls she faced that same day. But she had no more concern about what they must be taught than the Tutors did for the boys, and she needed no book to keep it straight in her head.

  “Men,” she was saying, “are of but two kinds: splendid, and pitiful. The splendid ones are rare, and if you chance on one you’ll know it. What I tell you now has to do with the rest of ‘em-as my Granny told me, and her Granny told her before that, and so back as far as time will take you . . . ‘

  AND THEN THERE’LL BE FIREWORKS

  Chapter 1

  The child struggled under his hands; and he blamed it not at all. The sight of the Long Whip rising and falling on the naked back of ten-year-old Avalon of Wommack made his own stomach churn. Avalon was a slight and scrawny child, narrow of shoulder, the copper Wommack hair gone dark now with the swift-pouring sweat of her agony and clinging in a drenched coil along one frail shoulder blade. Something about the nape of her neck, where a babyish curl nestled all alone, tore at him worse than the blood.

  “Look you well,” hissed Eustace Laddercane Traveller the 4th through clenched teeth, holding his youngest son’s head as every parent in Traveller Kingdom had learned it must be done. Not just the iron grip that kept the small head from turning away, but the little finger of each hand jabbed cruelly into the corners of the child’s eyes, drawing the eyelids back taut against any possible hint of their closing.

  It hurt, of course; but not so much as the smack of that Whip would hurt, should one of the College of Deacons see the child avoiding its present duty: to watch the public whipping of Avalon of Wommack. And one day this boy he held so tightly now would perform the same service for the babe that swelled his mother’s belly this very moment, as his older children held their younger brothers and sisters all around him. His wife had not been spared, either, though Eustace Laddercane had requested it; her time was very near, and it a tenth child—this whipping was enough to set off her labor and see his tenth-born arrive in the public square. But the Tutor had been absolutely adamant about it. Should that happen, he’d told him, it would be a blessing for the newborn, its first sight in this world one guaranteed to further its moral education and set it on the Straight path for life.

  Should that happen, thought the father, he’d blind the babe with his own two thumbs before he’d let that be its first sight of the world ... the Holy One grant that it not happen.

  Avalon of Wommack was well shielded from any lustful eyes. The Whipping Cloth hung foursquare from its hooks above her head to her bare feet, with only the narrow space cut away at the back to allow the Whip room. But it did nothing to shield her screams. Eustace Laddercane hoped they hurt the ears of the Magicians of Rank that stood one at each corner of the cloth, twelve inches between them and their pitiful victim.

  The whipping itself, now—no man could have done that, though not one had courage enough to stop it. It was Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller, her that was the own mother of the Castle Master, that wielded the Long Whip.

  She’d explained Avalon of Wommack’s grievous sins to them all carefully before she began the chastisement, looking all around her with those measuring eyes, counting. She knew precisely how many people should be there on the walkway that bordered the square, did the Granny. Ninety-one excused by the College of Deacons for illness near unto death, a sign of sure wickedness in those ninety and one; and seven hundred thirteen that left to be counted. Eustace Laddercane was certain that Granny Leeward was able to count each and every one of the seven hundred thirteen, and would have known if even one had been missing. They lined up by household and by height, the tallest at the back.

  There still was not room for all of them within the Castle walls, and it had been necessary to lay out this whipping ground outside, burning away every last sprig and blade of growing life, grading it flat as the top of a table, anchoring down the board walkway that bordered it with spokes of ironwood hammered into chinks blasted out of the Tinaseeh rock. But that was changing. The people of Tinaseeh, they were dying with a terrifying speed, ten and twenty and more now in a single da
y ... soon they’d be able to take their Whipping Cloth inside one of the courtyards, right into Roebuck ... might could be soon they’d have ample space in the Castle Great Hall itself, and be hard put to it to find anybody left to whip.

  Avalon of Wommack had sinned doubly. First she had sinned against the cause that bid the Chosen People of Tinaseeh repopulate this land, to replace the dying who by their very deaths had revealed the vileness of their souls. Avalon’s father had brought her home a husband, a man of seventeen, and Avalon not only had not welcomed her bridegroom tenderly and obediently as was expected of her, not only refused to go willingly to the marriage bed where this male twice her size and near twice her age might do her the favor of placing his seed in her womb—Avalon had tried to hide herself away. They had dragged her from a granary, half suffocated already on the grain and on her terror. Despite the fact, Granny Leeward had hammered the point home, that Avalon’s womb had been through two full cycles. And secondly, there was the additional fact that Avalon of Wommack was a Two, and a female whose name came to the numeral two was intended by destiny to be passive and submissive and weak. The girl had also sinned against her Naming.

  That, the Granny had said, was the greater sin of the two. A young girl, modest and timid as was fully appropriate, might be leniently treated for fearing the wedding bed and the inevitable childbed that followed it. She might well of had only a token stroke or two of the Long Whip for that, provided she went then and did her duty ever after.

  But to rebel against her Naming was not just to rebel against Jeremiah Thomas Traveller’s orders to marry and be fruitful, the orders of a mere man. It was rebellion against the path laid out for her by the Holy One; a fearsome evil, a defying of the divine law.