The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  Charity’s voice went on and on, soothing and stroking, going out to four Kingdoms. Even Veritas Truebreed Motley, nursing his aching temples with a cold cloth at Brightwater, was nodding agreement. She had the principle right, however ignorant she might be of its workings.

  “Now,” said Charity of Airy, “I’ll do it with you. We’ll all be calm together, calm as pond water. 100. 97. 94. 91. Hmmmm ... 88. 85 ...”

  In the houses, they said it with her. And the tadlings tried the other thing and were amazed at how hard it was. Glottal stop, that was easy. Z, to go on with. Y, and then X, a person could manage. But from there on it was hard work, and who ever would of thought it? The alphabet, that everybody knew like they knew the look of their thumbs! Backwards it fairly brought the sweat out all over you. X... Q?

  “Can’t be Q!” said a tiny one, crossly, stamping her foot. “It’s not time yet for Q”

  “What is it, then?” challenged her brother. “You’re so smart ... oh! I know! W! Before X comes W!”

  “Pheeyeew,” fussed the little girl. “W... now, let’s us just see ...”

  Charity of Airy and the Grannys were well satisfied; they could feel the easing in the air almost immediately. It was just as well, under the circumstances, that none of them could see or sense the carnage in Smith Kingdom, where Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th was paying the penalty for his phony Granny that was no Granny, and the people of the Kingdom along with him. Long before it occurred to any of the other Magicians of Rank to ask a Mule to pass the message along to the Mules of Smith, Lincoln Parradyne had paid his bill in full; he lay dead on the floor of the Throne Room, his brain crisped in his skull like a dead coal. And the only thing spared him was the horror outside and in, where the people of Smith trampled one another in their panic as they tried insanely to flee the menace above them. The crystal over Castle Smith was just a little different; its color matched the color of the blood smeared on the streets and the stairs of the town, almost exactly.

  Troublesome of Brightwater lifted her sister out of the spring and held her close, sacred water and all, wondering if she had ever been so happy before. Bring on the giant alien crystals, bring on the slimy alien wickednesses, bring on anything you fancied; nevertheless, her sister was awake again.

  Responsible fought herself free of Troublesome’s embrace, which was somewhat more enthusiastic than was compatible with breathing.

  “Troublesome?”

  She tugged at the long black braid, to get Troublesome’s attention, and wiped some of the water on her face, and asked plaintively if she could please have an explanation. It was not every day a person woke up naked in a creek, with a crowd attending.

  She listened, her face growing more and more stern, while she was told. All about the awfulness that had come when she was put in pseudocoma. The poverty and the sickness and the weather all uncontrolled ... it sounded like the tales of Old Earth ... and nobody knowing what might be happening anyplace but the four Kingdoms of the Alliance, except for rumors. All about the Grannys’ climb up the mountain, and Troublesome’s dreadful ocean voyage. And when the part about Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd came along she cried out a broad word in total indignation that startled Silverweb of McDaniels right out of the last scraps of her rapture.

  “It would of been when I was asleep, Troublesome,” declared Responsible of Brightwater. “That fool man! Ignorant, that’s what he is, not to mention no sense at all. Half the night on Brightwater it’s day on Kintucky, clear across that ocean on the other side of the world—did he never learn anything? I was dreaming ... I remember the dreams. Oh, I remember them well, and they’re not fit for Silverweb’s ears. But never, never did I imagine that while I dreamed I was intruding on his mind ... The idiot! Oh, I’ll make him pay, I promise you—oh, how I’ll make him pay! He’ll curse the day he was born, and long for the day that death releases him before I’m through ... stupid man!”

  “He is that,” said Troublesome. “He might have asked you—but he wouldn’t stoop. That’s how he put it.”

  Responsible struggled from her sister’s arms onto the rocks, where she sat hugging her knees and clothed only in her long hair, that was almost dry now in the hot desert sun.

  “It was the Timecorner Prophecy,” she said sorrowfully, “and no way to escape it. But I must say there’s nothing elegant to the way it was fulfilled.”

  “Nor any excuse,” said Silverweb. “For either him or you.”

  Responsible hadn’t any interest at that moment in subtle moral questions. “Now what?” she said. She was a tad dazed, but she was not so addled that she intended to get into a discussion of how she and young Wommack might have managed to avoid what had been decreed since the beginning of time. What she wanted to know was the status of things.

  Before Troublesome or Silverweb could speak, the Skerrys took it up.

  RESPONSIBLE OF BRIGHTWATER, THE PLANETS OF THE GARNET RING NOW SEE THIS WORLD AS RIPE FOR THE CONQUERING, AND THEY HAVE COME TO PLUCK IT—IT FALLS NOW WITHIN THEIR LAWS OF COLONIAL RIGHT.

  I CAN SEE THAT IT MIGHT, Responsible replied, not caring how much her mindspeaking might startle the other two women. There didn’t seem to be much left in the way of secrets anyhow. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE, EXACTLY?

  THEY HAVE HEARD THE REPORT OF THE OUT-CABAL, THAT THIS WORLD HAS FALLEN TO ANARCHY AND DISASTERS, AND THEY HAVE SET A ... YOU HAVE NO SEMANTIC CONSTRUCT FOR IT. NO ... YOU DO! YOU MUST IMAGINE A STORAGE CELL, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, ONE HUNDRED AND TEN FEET FROM POINT TO POINT, POISED OVER EACH AND EVERY OZARK CASTLE AND FEEDING NOW—CHARGING NOW—WHILE WE STAND HERE TALKING. THEY ARE SHAPED LIKE DIAMONDS, AND YOU WOULD CALL THEM ... CRYSTALS. THEY ARE DEADLY, AND THERE IS VERY LITTLE TIME.

  WHAT HAS BEEN DONE? Responsible asked them, and Troublesome realized suddenly that her sister’s mindvoice was just that, a voice, and not bells. When she had the leisure, if she had the leisure, she would consider the question of why that caused no barrier to the conversation. HAVE THEY BROUGHT OUT THE LASERS AGAINST THE THINGS? HAVE THEY TRIED A TRANSFORMATION, A DELETION TRANSFORMATION WITH ALL THE NINE MAGICIANS OF RANK—

  The Skerry cut her off.

  YOU FORGET, it Said. THERE HAS BEEN NO MAGIC ON THIS WORLD WHILE YOU SLEPT—YOU HAVE BORNE IT ALL WITHIN YOURSELF. AS FOR THE LASERS, YOUR PEOPLE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT IT MIGHT DO IF THEY WERE TO PIERCE THE CRYSTALS, OR EVEN IF THEY WERE TO TRY—NOR DO WE, NOR DO THE MULES, NOR DO THE GENTLES. THE GENTLES, DAUGHTER OF BRIGHTWATER, ARE VERY DISTRESSED BY ALL THIS... I DO NOT KNOW IF THEY WILL EVER COME UP TO THE DAYLIGHT AGAIN. NOW, WE ALL ASK THE SAME THING, AND IT SEEMS TO US ONLY JUSTICE, SINCE IT IS YOUR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BROUGHT ALL THIS UPON US. WE ASK THAT YOU DO SOMETHING, FOR THIS WORLD IS IN YOUR CHARGE.

  It seemed to Troublesome that that wasn’t justice atall, or even likely, and she and Silverweb both protested at once that Responsible was bound to be weak and like a newborn babe for some time, that she would have to get her strength back as anybody does after a long time ill, and that asking her to take on a whole passel of alien planets in her condition was downright ridiculous. It came out garbled, a scrap from Troublesome and a scrap from Silverweb, and some scraps from both, but they were of one mind on the matter.

  What they had not taken into account was the strength of the energy that was being lent to Responsible by the Skerrys and the Mules. This was their planet, too, and had been theirs many thousands of years before ever an Ozarker set foot on it, and they had no desire to see it fall to the Garnet Ring, with who knew what consequences to follow. They didn’t know a great deal about the peoples of the Garnet Ring, but they knew enough to be sure they weren’t anybody you’d want for neighbors, and never mind the details.

  Responsible of Brightwater gave her sister and Silverweb one look of considerable irritation, drew on the more than ample reservoir of energy the Mules and the Skerrys were offering her, and before the other two women could so much as draw a breath she had SNAPPED the three of them back to her own bedroom at Castle Bri
ghtwater, leaving Sterling to bring the wagon home.

  Sitting on the edge of her bed, where she’d lain so long silent and motionless, she clucked her tongue, and glared at Troublesome and Silverweb, both of them more than slightly startled by their unaccustomed mode of transportation.

  “This won’t do,” announced Responsible. “This won’t do atall. Let me get something on my bones besides my skin, and I’ll see to it.”

  And she headed for her wardrobe with her hands already busy braiding her hair, pausing only the few seconds it took to advise Troublesome that she’d never seen anybody quite so grubby and it would be a good thing if she had a tidy-up before she forgot how the parts of a decent female were supposed to be arranged.

  Chapter 10

  “My lady—I am afraid.”

  The words came from an unusual source; Jessica of Lewis, Teacher Jessica these past seven months, was in the usual run of things a tower of strength. She was a true Three: brilliant, creative, high-spirited, and one for whom everything seemed to come easily. She had slipped into the Teaching Order as a hand slips into a glove made to its measure. None of the usual kicking at the traces for Jessica of Lewis. Not a flicker when her beloved books— “Real books!” the others had whispered. “Not micros, real books. And three of them!” —had been taken from her and added to the community library in Castle Wommack’s north wing. When all the rest were down, it was Teacher Jessica they relied on, to bring their spirits up and to remind them once again that for those that are vowed to poverty that experience of poverty is no hardship.

  Now she sat in Faculty Meeting, fifth down from Teacher Jewel of Wommack, so fast had she ascended through the ranks, and said: “My lady, I am afraid.”

  “We are all afraid,” Teacher Jewel responded. “Not to be afraid would show a lack of common sense, or an unhealthy detachment from reality. There is a group consensus; nowhere in that consensus is there space for the crystal suspended above this Castle. How could we not be afraid?”

  “That bodacious great rock hanging over our heads and ready for to drip down blood, it looks like ... Law! Teacher Jessica, I should hope we’re afraid!”

  “If it is a rock,” said Jewel of Wommack carefully, giving the new Teacher Candidate a measuring look, “what is holding it where it is, Cousin Naomi? Rocks do not float, neither do they fly. And there is no more magic.”

  Naomi of Wommack met her kinswoman’s eyes without flinching; a good sign, thought Jewel. Naomi’s speech was rougher than any Candidate’s they had accepted yet; one would have thought she was trying for the formspeech used by the Grannys, except that even the Grannys no longer said “for to” before their verbs ... perhaps in a moment of great excitement one might, but Jewel could not recall an example. Naomi had come out of a pocket on the far side of the Wilderness Lands of Kintucky, from a cluster of six households so isolated they had not had comsets even before Responsible of Brightwater was struck down. The rest of Kintucky had not even known they were there, and given the possibilities of marriage open to them they would not have lasted long—it was good fortune a Teacher, canvassing the Wilderness on her Mule, had stumbled across them.

  “There will be again,” said Naomi, confident as a child. “As there do be star and sun and tree. Somehow it’s got a hitch in it, it’s a kind of drought as comes in a bad year for the rains, but no reason for to doubt. I don’t doubt.”

  Jewel of Wommack believed her; she was as transparent as thin new ice on a puddle. And—always provided they all lived through whatever this crisis was—Naomi’s ways might require more polishing than the other Candidates’ had. Maybe. Jewel had discussed it when Naomi of Wommack joined them, and there had been disagreement among the senior faculty.

  “She will be going back to Teach in the Wilderness Lands and along their borders,” Jewel had reminded them. “Might could be that if her speech and her manners are greatly changed they won’t trust her there, and trust is the foundation of Teaching. Think of my brother—when he took up the speechmode of the Magicians of Rank, purely to spite them, and then kept it up purely to spite the rest of us—think how it changed the way people behaved around him. He has a good deal more difficulty coaxing the young women into the haymows than he had when he spoke like anybody else ... and a very good thing that is, I might add.”

  “But how, my lady,” the others had protested, letting the matter of Lewis Motley drop, “how can she be respected if she speaks like she does, and drinks her coffee out of her saucer?”

  Jewel’s eyes, always dark blue, had gone even darker, and she had rebuked them sharply, reminding them for what seemed to her the ten thousandth time that it was presence that inspired respect, not fine manners and flowery speech.

  “Do you ever look at your Teachers’ Manuals?” she had asked them, exasperated. “It’s set down there for you clearly enough, if you’d only look!”

  It was among the Rules Major.

  The essence of inspiring belief is to achieve congruence, so that the channel of the voice and the channel of the body are in every smallest feature in true harmony.

  And the codicil:

  And it would be well if the channel of the heart could be harmonious as well, providing always for the protection of the innocent.

  That is ... if you knew too much, keep it to yourself, and never mind the congruence of the heart, which was why it went in a codicil.

  Candidate Naomi of Wommack met that congruence requirement to perfection. Her words were rough, her features were rough, her manners were rough, her movements were rough. She strode when she walked, she leaped up when she stood, she collapsed in a heap when she sat ...

  “It is congruence.” Teacher Jewel had said, ending the discussion. “It may be of great value. I know no requirement that Teachers must be like dolls, all matched the way the Grannys are. I may in fact go back to an easier way of speaking my own self; I was more comfortable that way.”

  A voice in the back of her head had said sadly: No, you will not. And she had known it was true. Senior Teacher of the Order, and not yet sixteen, she needed every mark of authority she could get, including the elegant speechmode—not quite his own, but elegant nonetheless—in which Lewis Motley Wommack had drilled her till she wept. He had been quite right.

  “My lady?”

  Jewel was wrenched from her reverie, and embarrassed that she’d been able to fall into it, considering the circumstances.

  “I apologize,” she said distractedly. “My mind was somewhere ... in a pleasanter time.”

  “We are wondering,” said the speaker, a young Teacher whose voice had the granite edge fright gives when held back on tight rein, “if we should go on with the lessons today. We are afraid ... the children are even more so.”

  “And what are the children doing at this moment, Teacher Cristabel?” Jewel asked her. “Do you know?”

  “Huddled around their parents, sitting in their laps and being rocked if they’re little enough, cowering under beds and porches ... anything to get out of sight of that ... thing. Whatever it is.”

  “In that case,” said Jewel of Wommack resolutely, “we will of course go on with lessons. And the quicker the better. The most helpful thing we could do would be to present those children with that idea that there is order in their days despite that unholy object, and that it hasn’t the power to make the grownups set aside the usual daily routine.”

  One of her faculty had a thought that had been thick on the far side of the world, in Airy Kingdom.

  ‘They are all about to die,” she said. “Better they die together than apart.”

  Jewel felt a rage that would be no help here, and she put it aside to be dealt with another time, and set her questions.

  “Teacher Cecilia,” she asked, “how is it that you know they, or any of us, are about to die?”

  “My lady!”

  “Well? If you have information, speak up; and if you have none, hold your peace. Has that crystal done any one of us, or any thing, injury?”


  “Not yet, my lady.”

  “Not yet! But it will, eh? It does not fit the group consensus, will not be poked or shoved into the model we have built and labeled HERE SITS THE REAL WORLD ... and therefore, it has to be a source of death.”

  “But my lady— “

  “Perhaps,” said Jewel icily, “might could be the time has come for a change in that model. Had you thought of that? It is unknown; one fears the unknown. No doubt the first rainbow ever to be seen in the sky had people running and squalling, too.”

  Teacher Candidate Naomi was fascinated. Jewel could tell, and before she could call out something disgraceful, the Senior Teacher moved smoothly on into her next sentence.

  “Until such time as we have evidence that that thing is a danger, we will behave normally,” she instructed them. “That is our duty.”

  The Teachers and the Candidates nodded, though some did it reluctantly. They could see the rightness of what she said, and hoped those Teachers out riding their circuits or in residence in small towns beyond reach of the Castle would see it as well. The sight of the Teachers at their posts presenting history and grammar and mathematics and ecology and music theory to the children, as they did on any other day, would go a long way toward calming any panic. Business as usual, that was what was needed.

  Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd must have thought so, too. He came into the room in a fury, demanding to know why they weren’t already on their way to their classes.

  Jewel’s voice sliced the air like a whip: “When I say that they are to go to their classes, they will go—and not until!”

  The other women dropped their eyes and folded their hands; except for Naomi, who would not for anything have missed a single detail of the confrontation between brother and sister.

  “Jewel, I do not mean to interfere— “ the young man began.

  “Then don’t. Go on about your business ... if you have any business ... and leave us to ours. You have nothing to contribute here, and we have no time to coddle you.”