The Dubious Hills

  “There’s tea in the kitchen,” said Sune.

  “Thank you, but I can only stay a moment.”

  “Con’s settled for hours,” said Sune.

  Arry looked at her, and Sune nodded. Arry widened her eyes, and Sune nodded again. “Thank you,” said Arry. “I’ll be back in a hour perhaps. Can I bring you anything?”

  “Strawberries,” said Sune, reflectively.

  “Too early,” said Con, without looking up from her buttons.

  “I know, chick; I was being funny.”

  “There’s the strawberry wine,” said Arry.

  “Don’t tempt me,” said Sune. “Oonan says a bit of wine wouldn’t do harm, but I have read such things.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” said Arry. “Don’t be a nuisance, Con.”

  Neither of them made any response to this. Arry left hurriedly and made for the high meadow as fast as she could. On the way she passed Tiln and Zia gathering flowers for the party, and Wim playing his flute, and Derry crawling along the ground like a dog after some especially delectable smell. Arry climbed off the path, which was rather steep just here, and came up behind her. Wolf tracks. They had come this way, then. “Derry,” said Arry.

  “They are certainly wolf tracks,” said Derry, sitting back on her heels and wiping her face.

  “Derry, do wolves catch mice?”

  “Yes,” said Derry. “And eat them too. This happens especially in the far north, when the herds of snow deer move to colder places than the wolves care to follow. They eat mice then, waiting for the deer to come back. And a mother wolf with cubs who cannot hunt yet, she will find mice close by and bring them back.”

  “I thought so,” said Arry. “Have they killed any more sheep?”

  “No,” said Derry. “They don’t seem to like to come near Oonan’s, though they’ve been all up and down most of the hills. And they seem to have gone up to the high meadow again, though there are no sheep there now.”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “I’d like to,” said Derry, “but Vand needs help with the bees.”

  “I could go look for you,” said Arry. “At least, I could tell you if there are tracks like these. How many wolves have been by?”

  “Just two,” said Derry, “the smaller two. Don’t go toiling up there in the heat just for me, Arry.”

  “I want to gather plants anyway,” said Arry, more or less at random. Luckily Derry was not the one to question her about which plants, or whether any of them would be growing yet, or be gatherable at this time, in the high meadow.

  “Do just keep an eye out for the tracks, then,” said Derry, “and if they don’t go where you’re going, just remember where they branch off.”

  Arry said she would do so, and Derry turned and went off to her own house. Arry went on as fast as she could without running, which might attract attention and would leave her unable to speak when she got where she was going.

  The high meadow was full of daisies and sunlight and the shadows of birds. Derry might have been able to find the wolf tracks amid the grass and rock and flowers, but Arry was bewildered. She made for the shepherd’s hut instead. It was cool and dim and empty. Arry scuffed her foot over the straw and dust on the floor, and the bright green letters glowed at her like strange lamplight seen through a dirty window. She cleared the floor, and read, “Neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf.”

  “I won’t if you’ll let me see you!” cried Arry. Nobody answered her. She went back outside and sat down on a rock. It was warm from the sun, almost hot. A white butterfly dipped over the daisies and soared away out of sight. The birds sang fiercely. In the shadow of the rock scilla bloomed as blue as the empty sky. Arry tried to empty her mind, to catch whatever other knowledge might be waiting to move into it. Nothing came.

  When she thought it must be time to go relieve Sune of Con, she got down off the rock and walked over to Derry’s house. Derry had finished helping Vand with the bees and was churning the first milk from their cow. Arry asked her what the siren, the hyena, and the crocodile were.

  Derry frowned, her strong brown arms moving up and down. “The crocodile is in my province: it is a river- going reptile of the remote south.”

  “Does it cry?”

  “No,” said Derry.

  Arry thought she would ask Sune about crocodile tears. She looked expectantly at Derry, who said, “The hyena is on the margin of my province; it is a companion of predators, feeding on carrion. It is related to the wolf and the fox, but rarely kills.”

  “What’s its voice like?”

  “Raucous,” said Derry.

  “And what’s a siren?”

  “The siren is an arcane and intelligent creature, according to Sune; it’s outside my province.”

  “What does Sune say it’s like?”

  “A woman with the tail of a fish, and a beautiful voice; they sit on rocks and sing sailors to their deaths.”

  “Ah,” said Arry.

  She went along to Sune, who told her that crocodiles affected to cry and then snatched up and ate the sympathetic bystander who got too close. Arry put this away to think about later, and took Con home. They spent the afternoon peacefully making a present for Tiln. It was hard to think of something suitable, given what his knowledge was. It was Beldi who hit on the idea of giving Tiln the means to make beauty. He suggested making paint, as their mother had used to do for them. “Tiln says he never has enough,” he said. They also found a collection of their mother’s brushes, and cleaned and repaired them. It gave Arry a pang to let them go, but none of the three of them painted now, and it seemed that Frances did not want to come home.

  They ate a very sparse supper, since they were going to a party, and at sunset shut the cats inside and went off to Tiln’s house.

  Oonan joined them on the way, and Derry and Vand and Niss and Jony and Elec. As they climbed the hill to Tiln’s house they were hailed by Grel and Rine, whom nobody had seen since the solstice. Everybody else seemed to be already inside. Tiln was greeting people at the door, gravely. The whole house was full of people and food and music. Arry went about smiling and nodding and collecting a plate of food, but what she really wanted was to find Halver. He would have to leave before the moon rose, and she intended to follow him when he did.

  She finally found him sitting in a corner with Sune, glaring at Oonan over Sune’s head. Sune looked extremely tired, and felt it, but the walk didn’t seem to have done her any harm. Arry felt disinclined to watch Oonan and Halver argue any more, so she went to find Niss. This was not easy either: Niss was about Beldi’s size, and though she had red hair, which ought to make her more visible, she usually covered it with a black scarf.

  Arry edged out into the kitchen, and found Mally making nutcakes. “Did you talk to Niss yet?” demanded Arry.

  Mally stopped smiling. “No, I did not,” she said.

  “Can I do it?”

  Mally scooped the nutcakes off the griddle onto a board, and slapped the next batch onto the griddle. “If you’ll put it to her as a hypothetical,” she said. “I take your word seriously, even if you don’t.”

  “I broke it already,” said Arry impatiently.

  “And the sky didn’t fall?” said Mally. “If you promise not to throw rocks, is throwing one as bad as throwing a hundred?”

  “As well be hung for a sheep,” began Arry.

  “That’s about law,” said Mally. “This is about you.”

  “If I put it to her as a hypothetical, will she be able to answer properly?”

  “Better,” said Mally. “Responsibility makes her nervous.”

  “How hypothetical must I be?”

  “Don’t mention Halver’s name,” said Mally, “and don’t tell her what the spell is.”

  The party overflowed into the kitchen at this point, as the musicians came into the only open and half-quiet space left to try to tune their instrum
ents and agree on the first three dances. Arry nodded at Mally and squeezed by Wim and Jony and Grel and Tany and her own brother, who was clutching a drum and looking pleased. She grinned at him.

  Niss was not in the main room; she was not in any of the bedrooms. Arry went back outside. Jonat and Zia and Con were building a bonfire. She walked around the house, finding nobody but the dogs; and when she came back to the door, Oonan stepped swiftly out of it and made her jump.

  “Did you find her?” he said.

  “No,” said Arry.

  “I don’t believe she’s here at all.”

  “Did you ask Jonat?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Right there, making the fire.”

  Oonan walked over to the pile of wood and said, without preliminaries, “Jonat, is Niss here?”

  “She had something to see to,” said Jonat, without glancing up. “Con, I’ll need the moss now. Thank you. But she said she’d be here for the dancing.”

  “Thank you,” said Oonan.

  They walked down the path a little way.

  “Let’s go to her house, then,” said Arry. “I want to know what to do before the moon rises.”

  “Is there some hurry?” said Oonan.

  Arry did not want to discuss her parents with him. She said, “Once the moon changes, nothing can happen for another month; we can’t find anything out, can we?”

  “Why not?” said Oonan.

  “You feel the same way,” said Arry.

  “I do,” said Oonan. “But I mistrust the feeling.”

  “What can it hurt to go?”

  “That’s your province, I suppose,” said Oonan.

  “Come on, then,” said Arry.

  They went up and down, through the Little Marsh and up again, across a long narrow meadow full of rocks, and down and up one last time. Niss and Jonat and the children who lived with them had a small stone house with the only thatched roof left in these parts.

  There was a light in it, not the yellow of lamplight, but a vivid, beautiful, and unnatural green.

  “Oh,” said Oonan, stopping and staring up at the house. The green light fell on his sweaty face and the bright untidy spikes of his hair. He looked bemused.

  “They’re in there,” said Arry, and made for the door.

  She was pulled up short with a jerk that felt just like the wolf-spell hitting and bouncing away again, but it was just Oonan grabbing the tail of her jacket.

  “Wait just a moment,” he said. “You wouldn’t like it if she interrupted you in your work, would you?”

  “I think my parents are in there and I want to go in there now,” said Arry, prying at his fingers.

  Oonan let go of her, but he said, “There’s only one door to that house.”

  “There are windows,” said Arry, and ran across the rocky yard and into the house.

  It was very green inside, which somehow made it hard to see. Arry stopped short. A cat yowled somewhere. Something clattered.

  “Stand still and be silent,” said Niss’s light voice, very sharply.

  Arry stood still, biting her lip. She saw the hearth, on which burned the green fire; she saw two cushioned chairs, three hard chairs, a table, pots and pans hanging on the walls, a striped rug, the black-and-white cat, a stack of firewood, herbs hanging from the rafters, a broom, a wooden puzzle shaped like a sheep. No wolves. She could not see Niss, and then, as she thought the name, she saw the little human figure standing to one side of the fire with a bunch of flowers in her hands.

  She was looking at Arry, and when Arry had stood still and silent for what seemed like a very long time, she went back to breaking off flowers and tossing them into the fire. It died down to yellow each time and then blossomed back to green.

  “From the hag and hungry goblin,” said Niss, tossing flowers, “that into rags would rend ye, and the spirit that stands by the naked man in the book of moons defend ye.”

  Oh, no, thought Arry.

  “From noise of scare-fires rest ye free,” said Niss, “from murders benedicite. From all mischances that may fright your pleasing slumbers in the night, mercy secure you all, and keep the goblin from you while you sleep.”

  What’s a goblin, thought Arry, she keeps going on about them.

  Niss tossed the last blossom onto the fire, which turned slowly red and gold again, like any wood fire on a cool spring evening. “Come in,” she said.

  Arry walked over the threshold, with Oonan behind her. “Did you see the wolves?” said Arry.

  “Wolves?” said Niss, startled. “No; not a one.”

  “Why were you doing that spell, then?”

  “Something’s amiss,” said Niss, “and I was setting it straight, that’s all.”

  “What was it?” said Oonan.

  “Things that should be firm were shifting,” said Niss.

  Arry wondered if this meant Halver would not turn into a wolf tonight after all. She meant to be there to see, in either case. “What things?” she said.

  “The ones you’ve come to ask me about, I expect,” said Niss coolly. “Would you like some tea? The peppermint’s come up on the south side of the house, so you won’t have to settle for old chamomile.”

  “Weren’t you coming to Tiln’s party?” said Oonan.

  “There’s time for tea and then for that,” said Niss. She made a small pile of pinecones at the front of the fireplace, lit it from the larger fire, and put a kettle on it. Then she looked at them. It was difficult to make out her expression.

  “Mally said I had to put this to you as a hypothetical,” said Arry, baldly; she could not think well enough to be clever or cunning or even, she feared, properly courteous. “What we need to know, Oonan and Mally and I, is whether a particular matter is your province. But I think you’ve shown already that it is.”

  “I cannot tell you all I would,” said Niss, slowly.

  Arry looked at Oonan, where he still stood in the doorway; the firelight glinted in his eyes as he stared back at her and nodded his head. “Nor can we tell you all we would,” he said.

  “But is it your province?” said Arry. “Are you dealing with it?”

  “I’m doing what I may,” said Niss, “but it seems larger than provinces. Spells are my province. You named Mally; surely it is to do with her also, the character of those enspelled? And if you and Oonan are worried, then there must be danger, whether of hurt or of damage.”

  The kettle boiled, and Niss padded her hands with a towel and lifted it off the fire and poured the water into a shallow bowl. The smell of peppermint filled Arry’s head.

  Arry said, “But if it’s all caused by a spell, can’t you just counter it?”

  Niss laughed, heartily, and handed her a smaller shallow bowl of tea. “If it’s all caused by pain,” she said, “can’t you just counter it?” She gave Oonan his bowl. “If you perceive it’s broken, cannot you fix it?”

  Arry felt obscurely put upon, as if Con had talked her around to something. “Aren’t spells different?”

  “No,” said Niss, flatly. She perched on the edge of the table, her feet dangling, and gestured with her bowl at the rest of the room.

  Arry sat down in a hard chair, and Oonan in a cushioned one. They sipped tea for a while in silence.

  “But it’s partly your province,” said Arry.

  “Yes,” said Niss.

  “Will you come with Oonan and Mally and me, then, at moonrise?”

  Niss shook her head. “There’s will involved,” she said. “What magic alone can accomplish to safeguard us, I have done. The rest is talk, or action; it isn’t magic.”

  “But—” said Arry.

  “You’re free to choose,” said Niss. “That is what I have done. The rest is not mine.”

  “What about you? Are you free to choose too?”

  “I have chosen,” said Niss. “To be as I am.”

  “Will what you’ve done keep them from biting us in our sleep and making our choice for us?”

  Oonan
moved in his chair but said nothing; Niss slid off the table and said, “Is that the mechanism, then? I was told otherwise.”

  “I don’t know,” said Arry. “I thought you would.”

  Niss rubbed her hand over her head, pulling off the black scarf. Her hair fell down her shoulders like a second fire. “No,” she said. “I can’t tell, I can’t see. It must be other than magic, the essential operation must be of character, or of knowledge, or of the body itself. It isn’t mine.”

  Mally tried to give the job to her, thought Arry, and now she’s giving it back to Mally. She looked at Oonan, who put his bowl down and stood up. “Will you walk back to the party with us?” he said to Niss.

  Niss nodded, and wound her hair up again in her scarf. Then she said to the fire, “Some must watch while some must sleep.” The fire contracted itself and turned green again. Niss ushered them out of her house, and shut the door firmly.

  Lagging behind the other two, who were talking amiably about whether any spell in heaven or earth would really keep a sheep from straying if it wanted to, Arry looked over her shoulder at the house. It glowed dimly under its thatched roof, like a green luminous mushroom with greener spots.

  The bonfire was roaring when they got back, and both inside and outside the dancing had started. The musicians were crammed into the doorway so that everybody could hear them. Arry found Beldi at once, dancing with Zia; both of them were laughing, and they danced a great deal better than Arry would have expected. It was Vand, next to them, who tangled the long line going through the arch by forgetting to turn around twice before his partner swung him.

  But she could not find Con. If Con was not watching Zia, plotting with Zia, or playing with Zia, it was hard to think where she might be. Arry went around to the kitchen door, which was open; out of the doorway came a lovely odor of baking honeycake. She went in. Con was sitting at the table, listening intently to Halver. His back was to Arry; Con had just to turn her head to the right to see her sister.

  Arry stood still. Halver was saying, “This is the only way to know everything.”

  You did not have to be Mally to understand what Halver was doing.

  Con scowled as only Con could. “How do you know it’s the only way?”