The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  She looked at the man, in a silence so thick she could have stirred it with her coffee spoon, and then at his sister, and her heart sank.

  “Ah, Dozens!” she said despairingly. “Dozens! You didn’t even know, did you? I can tell, just looking at you! Without the comsets, and Kintucky out here on the edge of nowhere, and no travelers anymore ... I suppose nobody on Kintucky knows. Ah, the waste of all this! Bloody Bleeding Dozens!”

  Lewis Motley was so taken aback he couldn’t have spoken a word, or moved, but Jewel of Wommack reached over and took the other woman’s hand in both of hers.

  “Tell us,” she said, in the voice that every Teacher was trained to use, or sent to do research and keep out of the classrooms if she couldn’t. It was a voice that could not be disobeyed because it left no possible space for disobedience.

  “My sister,” said Troublesome, and because the exhaustion in her face frightened both the Wommacks, Lewis Motley shouted again for a servingmaid and demanded the last of their whiskey, “just into summertime, after the Jubilee, fell into a kind of sleep. Or a coma ... To look at her, you would think she was dead, but she has no sickness, and the name Veritas Truebreed Motley puts to it is pseudocoma. Just a sleep that does not end and cannot, so far as we’ve been able to tell, be ended. And since the day it began, everything has gone from bad to worse on Marktwain and Oklahomah; we hear there is war on Arkansaw. What may be going on in the rest of the world nobody knows ... or even if there is a rest of the world any longer. Since the trouble started with whatever happened to my sister, the Grannys are convinced that there’s a connection there—that if we could wake Responsible there would be hope for Ozark again. And they were certain—certain sure! —that Lewis Motley Wommack had the key to it ... Law, but they’re going to be in a state over this, and I don’t blame them, I don’t blame them one least bit!”

  “Just a minute, Troublesome,” said Jewel.

  “If Lewis Motley Wommack didn’t even know about this,” insisted Troublesome, “then the Grannys have made a mistake to end all mistakes, and a minute—nor a dozen minutes—won’t change that.”

  The servingmaid came running with the whiskey, and Jewel poured it out with a level hand and passed Troublesome of Brightwater the glass.

  “You drink that,” she said calmly. “And then, let’s us ask him. Before we decide to speak of mistakes and waste and the end of the world, let’s just ask him. Might could be he knows more man you think he knows, provided the questions are put to him properly.”

  Lewis Motley had his whole face buried in his hands, and they could see the muscles of his arms straining under the cloth of his sleeves.

  “Never mind throwing chairs, dear brother,” warned Jewel emphatically, keeping a wary eye on him. “This is not the time nor the place.”

  “Curse them!”

  The bellow shook the lamp hanging above their heads, and although neither Troublesome nor Jewel jumped, they both had to grip their chairs not to.

  “Curse them all, the idiots! I never had any such thing in mind—they must all have been crazy! Oh, it I could only get my hands on them, it I could just— “

  Troublesome looked at Jewel of Wommack. “He knows something,” she said, over the din. “He knows something after all.”

  “He knows everything, from the sound of his conniption fit,” said Jewel coldly. “Now it’s just a matter of getting it out of him ... once he’s worn himself out. Talk of women having hysterics!”

  “I’ve been a damned fool,” said her brother.

  “Not for the first time, nor yet the hundred and first.”

  “But this time is exceptional.”

  “Then the sooner it’s admitted to, the sooner well know if it can be mended. I suggest you tell us what you’ve gone and done, Lewis Motley.”

  “Can I have some of that whiskey?”

  “You can not. That’s for medicine, and precious little we have left of it! There’s nothing wrong with you but temper, and if you haven’t died of temper before this you won’t die of it today. Just speak up.”

  Lewis Motley sighed a long sigh, and began. “Your sister,” he said to Troublesome, “was causing me a good deal of ...misery.”

  Troublesome was dumbfounded.

  “Misery? In what way, causing you misery? She was clear back on Marktwain, you were all the way over here on Kintucky.”

  “I hesitate to say it of her.”

  “Say it!” commanded Troublesome.

  “Your sister would not grant me privacy of mind,” he said then, and the words fell, quaint and formal, in the stillness of the room.

  “Lewis Motley,” said Jewel simply, “you are either mocking us or you are stalling for time, and whichever one it is, it’s not to be borne.”

  “No, I am not!” he protested. “Responsible of Brightwater mindspoke me” —she had gone far beyond just mindspeech, but he would not talk of that before two women, even to defend his actions— “every day, day after day after day, till I was nearly mad with it. I would be sitting working, I would be eating, I’d be seeing to a problem in the stables, I’d be talking as I am now, with one of the Family ... and suddenly she was there, in my mind.” He shuddered. “There’ve been many females that tried to tag along after me, but they had at least the decency to do it in the flesh, where a person could see them and have a fair chance at getting away. Not Responsible of Brightwater! Oh no—not that one.

  “And so you did what?” Troublesome held her breath, waiting.

  “I sent for the Magicians of Rank, and asked them all to come here on a matter concerning Miss Responsible of Brightwater, which they were willing enough to do, let me tell you; and I told them what she’d done—because she’d gone far, far past the bounds of decency—and I asked them to make her stop. That’s what I did. But not for the smallest wrinkle of time did I intend anything of the sort you’ve described to me, Troublesome. I meant them to reason with her, threaten her perhaps, set a small Spell on her ... just stop her unspeakable mucking about in my mind! Never did I mean them to hurt her ... Jewel, tell her. Little sister, explain to this woman that I never meant them to do her harm.”

  Jewel of Wommack nodded, her eyes the color of river ice in late afternoon.

  “He is mischief incarnate,” she said slowly, in grave agreement, “but he would not do anybody deliberate harm. He simply does not think—he never did. And now, because of his selfish temper, if the Grannys are right we have this dreadful time of trouble all to be laid at my brother’s feet. For all time. Congratulations, to the Wommack Curse!”

  Troublesome gnawed at the end of her thick black braid, dust and leaves and all, a gesture Thorn of Guthrie had tried in vain to break her of.

  “Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said carefully, “what did Responsible say to you when you asked her to stop it? Did she just refuse, say no, flat out with no explanation? That’s not like her ... not that any of it is like her ... but what did she say to you?”

  The man’s face went cold and hard, and now it was Jewel’s turn to clap her hands to her mouth, because she suddenly understood, before the answer came.

  “I never asked her,” he told them, voice like granite and a face to match. “She was in my mind; she knew how it repulsed me ... It would have been a very cold day in a truly hot place before I stooped to beg that vile little—before I stooped to ask Responsible of Brightwater to stop her foul behavior. Ask her, indeed—what do you think I am?”

  Troublesome stood up and went over to a window, turned her back on him and on the Teacher, and stood staring out into the tangled woods beyond. She was shaking from head to foot, and her teeth gritted to keep them from chattering, in spite of the whiskey, and not until she had it under control did she turn round again, even through the spectacular bout of tongue lashing that Jewel of Wommack turned on Lewis Motley with. He had been told in baroque detail what an utter, despicable, pathetic, unspeakable, pigheaded, stupid, fool male he was, with elaborations and codas and emendations to spare, b
efore Troublesome said another word. And when she did speak, her voice was hoarse with rage restrained.

  “Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said, “I cannot explain this, and I shan’t try. I have no way of knowing the truth of it; I never knew even that Responsible had the skill of mindspeech. But I swear to you, and I know whereof I speak: my sister would never have knowingly done what you say she did. If she did it, she was bewitched, or mad, or anything else you fancy—but she would not have done that. Saving only Granny Graylady, there’s not an Ozarker alive more scrupulous about privacy than my sister. And you ... you never even asked her. You couldn’t stoop, to one small question. Lewis Motley, I would not be you and bear the burden of guilt that you will bear. Not for any power in this Universe.”

  “I tell you— “ he began, but Jewel’s hand came down hard on his arm and silenced him.

  “You’ve told us,” said Troublesome. “You’ve told us all I care to hear from you. You’ve answered the question I came to ask, and the Grannys were right. It took all the Magicians of Rank to put my sister to sleep, apparently; it will no doubt take all of them together now to wake her up. All of them; now when the ships are not running the oceans, and the Mules are not flying, and the Magicians of Rank are scattered to the four corners of the world ... four of them somewhere in the wilds of Tinaseeh, if they still breathe. And somehow, we will have to get them all together at Brightwater and have them undo this awful thing. And I’d best get on with it. The crew was half mutinous all the way here. Not a cloud came up they didn’t charge me with having caused it just by being on their leaky old rowboat. I’m not anxious to leave them waiting for me any longer on your coast.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” said Lewis Motley at once. “I know the shortest ways—we’ll save time.”

  Jewel of Wommack stood up, put one slender finger in her brother’s chest, and pushed. It was a measure of his state of mind that it brought him to a full stop; ordinarily, he was about as easy to stop as an earthquake.

  “You will not,” she said flatly. “You’ve done enough. You’ve done so much more than enough already, my beloved brother, that your name will go down in history—be satisfied with that. You may well have destroyed an entire world for the sake of your pride—be satisfied with that. And I will ride with Troublesome of Brightwater to the coast to see if her ship has waited for her. And if it hasn’t, I will see to it that a way is found to get her home, if I must call in every man still able-bodied on Kintucky to turn his hand to shipbuilding “

  “I would feel better if— “

  “No doubt you would!” she cut him off. “I haven’t any interest in you feeling better. You have a lifetime ahead of you to spend trying to ease your guilt, but I’ll not help you! And besides that, they wouldn’t obey you, Lewis Motley. Not as they will me, if that proves needful.”

  Lewis Motley closed his eyes and made no more objections. She was right. Not a man on Kintucky that would not, if a Teacher asked it of him, build a ship or a cathedral or a rocket or anything else she might demand. It had been planned that way, and it had gone according to plan; the Teachers were not just respected, they were reverenced. He could not command that sort of loyalty.

  And then ... there was the way his head was whirling. It could not be true, but what if it were? What if Responsible had not known, really had not known, what she was doing to him? And he had not even given her the chance to stop?

  He had seen it himself, it was what had led him to her bed, scrawny plucked creature that she was; there had been something special about her, and he had been determined to investigate it. Was it his curiosity, and his pride, that had made Ozark a wasteland ... and how many deaths lay at his door?

  He could not have ridden to the coast, he realized, as the two women left the room and slammed its door behind them. He could not, at that moment, have risen from his chair.

  Chapter 6

  It was cold at Castle Brightwater; bitter bone-stabbing cold, the cold that comes when the skies are full of snow that refuses to fall; and the sky was a leaden sorrowful gray. No fires burned in any of the Castle fireplaces. The people in the towns and on the farms were better off by far than those at the Castle, because it had been for the most part a clear and sunny winter, and the solar collectors on their roofs had been adequate to carry them even through days like this one. The problems of keeping warm a hulking stone Castle designed with all the traditional drafty corridors and stairways were considerably more formidable.

  Troublesome had gone through the gloom of the Castle like a wind added to the drafts that already whined there, with a fine disregard for the staff scuttling out of her way and the just-barely tolerance of the Family, shouting for Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4th, the Castle’s very own Magician of Rank. “Where is the man?” she had demanded as she tore up and down the halls and through the parlors, and “Where has he gotten to?” She got nothing for her troubles but shrugs and raised eyebrows, but she was accustomed to that; ten years’ practice being shunned toughened you up some.

  She found him at last, by the simple expedient of looking everywhere there was, up on the Castle roof rubbing his hands together and cursing fluently in a spot where a tower kept off the wind but let the dim light by.

  “It’s a fine thing,” he observed, glaring at her, “when it’s warmer outside the place you live in than it is inside, in the dead of winter. I’ve a good mind to move into that hotel down by the landing. I’d be more comfortable there, and I’m sure the company would be better. How did you find me, anyway?”

  “Used an algorithm,” said Troublesome.

  He made a face, not appreciating that word in her mouth, and went on as if she’d not used it. “And it’s finer yet, when a man can’t even find privacy on the bestaggering roof of a bestaggering Castle! First, it was one of the Grannys; and then it was Thorn of Guthrie—curse her narrow pointy little soul—and now, the Twelve Gates defend us all, it’s you! What’s next, ghosts and demons?”

  “Morning, Veritas Truebreed,” said Troublesome calmly. “Nice to see you, too, I’m sure.”

  “What do you want with me?” the Magician of Rank demanded, cross as a patch. “Whatever it is, the answer is either no, I can’t or no, I won’t—there aren’t any other answers at the moment.”

  “Might could be you’re right,” she said, “and might could be you’re wrong. Long as we’re being all binary here.”

  “Troublesome, you’ll provoke me,” he warned her, and she let him know how alarmed she was at that prospect.

  “Besides which,” she added, “you were already provoked before ever I set foot on this roof. And you may go right on being provoked till you choke, for all I care.”

  “Well?” Veritas Truebreed was blue with cold and purple with outrage, but he knew quite well she could outlast him. “Speak up, woman; what are you here tormenting me for?”

  Troublesome looked him up and down, noting that he’d abandoned the elegant garments of his station for something that looked more like a stableman’s winter wear. Something nubby and bulky, with a thick lining and a narrow stripe and a capacious hood. It showed good sense on his part.

  “I want you to wake up Responsible,” she told him.

  “You want me to what?”

  “I’ve been to Kintucky and back, Veritas, and I— “

  “You’ve been to where?”

  “As I said, Veritas Truebreed, I’ve been to Kintucky and back—never you mind how, just let me tell you it wasn’t easy and it was hardly what you might call a holiday excursion—and I’ve heard the whole sorry tale from the lips of Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd his very own self, and you’d best hop it. Time’s a-wasting.”

  The Magician of Rank stopped rubbing his hands together then, and blowing on them, and he leaned back against the stone of the tower, closed his eyes, and groaned aloud like a woman birthing.

  “Only you could have brought this upon me. Troublesome of Brightwater,” he said at last through clenched teeth, when he’d do
ne with his groaning, “only you! We don’t have trial and misery enough already; now we have to have this. Oh, for the power to do just one tiny Transformation... I’d turn you into a slimeworm, with the greatest of pleasure, I’d step on you with my shoe heel ... no, I’d set fire to you, right at the tender end where your little yellow eye was, and then— “

  “Demented,” said Troublesome.

  “What?”

  “You’re demented. Mad. Plain crazy. And I’ve heard enough and a few buckets left over from you. I’m not interested in the twisted inventions of your imagination, Veritas Truebreed. I am interested in having you wake up my sister—bringing in all the other Magicians of Rank you need to help you at it, if that’s required, and I suppose it is, though it’s mighty curious that it takes nine-to-one odds for one small female like Responsible—and I’m interested in seeing if the Grannys are right that that will improve things around here a tad. Either you leave off your drivel and come along to get started on that, or I’ll push you off the roof—how’s that for managing without Formalisms & Transformations? Nothing fancy, O Mighty Magician, just shove you right off and let you try the effect of the stone down there in the courtyard on the very same body you came into this world with. You’ll squash, I expect, and the Holy One knows you deserve it.”

  He opened his eyes and sighed, and she wondered impatiently what was next. There are only just so many meaningful noises in the sigh & moan & grunt & groan category, and he was running through them at a great rate.

  “It can’t be done,” he said simply, and that surprised her. “I’m more than willing, but it—cannot—be—done. Don’t you think we tried?”

  Troublesome hunched down beside him and regarded him seriously. This didn’t look to be at all funny, if he spoke the truth.

  “You explain,” she said. “Right quick.”

  “When we realized what we’d done,” said the man, making vague hopeless gestures, “we tried right away to undo it. The Mules weren’t making more than about ten miles an hour by then, some of the boats were a knot or two faster, whatever was left of the energy that had been fueling the system was winding down fast ... but since it had taken all nine of us to put Responsible into pseudocoma we had a feeling it would take all nine to get her back out again. We all got here; and since you were yammering about the difficulties of your jaunt to Kintucky, allow me to observe that there was nothing easy about that—but we did get here somehow. And in the dead of night we stood round her bed and we did everything we knew, and made up a sizable amount of stuff that had never been tried before ... and we kept at it until there was barely time for some of us to get out before people saw us leaving. Whether everyone got back home again, I don’t know ... and I’m not sure I care. But we did try, Troublesome.”