The Dubious Hills

  Arry would have grinned, if she had not been afraid that any movement would make one of them see her.

  “I don’t,” said Halver, readily. “But it’s the only way for you, here and now.”

  “Mother said anything worth having was worth waiting for.”

  “You have been waiting for it,” said Halver. “You needn’t wait any longer now.”

  “What if I’d rather?” said Con. Halver had managed to make her suspicious—not a difficult thing to do, but she had probably never in her five years had better reason to be suspicious than now. Arry tried to think what to say. If choice were all it took, standing here in silence was not the best of courses.

  Halver had been teaching Con for two years now; he too knew her suspicious mood. He said mildly, “Well, you know, if you go on waiting for the new bread long enough, it’s day-old bread and then old bread and then it’s stale, and you can’t have new bread until next week.”

  “A week’s not long,” said Con.

  Arry did grin. They didn’t notice.

  Halver grinned, too, unfortunately. “Very well,” he said. “When Mally brings the birch candy back from Waterpale, if you don’t eat it, it’s gone until next spring.”

  “It tastes strange anyway,” said Con.

  Arry bit her lip. She wanted to laugh. At the same time she knew she must do something. Con was interested, or she would not be sitting here when there was music and dancing and food and Zia all just a few steps away.

  The smell of honeycake was growing darker and stronger. Either it was going to burn, or Mally would be in here any moment, interrupting. Arry scuffed the sole of her boot on the floor and moved forward briskly. Halver had twitched at the sound and frowned almost as ferociously as Con could. Con went on looking at Halver.

  “Are you supposed to be watching these?” demanded Arry, opening the door of Mally’s oven and looking around for something to protect her hands.

  “No,” said Halver. “We just wanted a quiet place to talk.”

  “Well, they’re about to burn,” said Arry, using the wadded hem of her skirt and maneuvering the hot trays out of the oven and onto the racks awaiting them. She looked from Con to Halver and took a risk. “Shall I leave now?”

  “No,” said Con, still looking at Halver.

  “Arry knows all about it,” said Halver.

  “She does not,” said Con, with considerable scorn.

  Halver, Arry was interested to note, was momentarily confounded. His mouth dropped. Then he turned red.

  Then he laughed, briefly. “I misspoke myself,” he said. “I did tell her, Con, about being a wolf.”

  “Arry doesn’t want to be a wolf,” said Con, in the pitying tone that often succeeded her scornful one.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” said Halver. He pushed his chair back, stood up, and left the room without further ado. He still looked a little red.

  “Do you want to be a wolf?” said Con, turning to regard Arry.

  “Not Halver’s sort,” said Arry. “What did he tell you, Con?”

  “Is Halver a sort of wolf?” said Con.

  “When the moon’s full he is. I saw him. Derry said his tracks were wolf tracks, but that he didn’t act like a wolf. A sort of wolf is exactly the phrase.”

  “You never tell me anything,” said Con.

  “Halver made me promise not to.”

  “Oh,” said Con, disconcerted. She pondered. “He didn’t make me promise.”

  “That’s because you really never do tell anybody anything. He knew you’d want to keep it to yourself.”

  “Only Mally knows that.”

  Now I’m doing it, thought Arry. “Mally would have told him, don’t you think, when you started school?”

  Con abandoned this line of discussion by saying, “If I’m a wizard, I can be a wolf or anything else either, whether the moon is full or not.”

  “Probably you can,” said Arry.

  “So why should I be Halver’s sort of wolf?”

  “No reason in the world,” said Arry firmly.

  “But he thought I should. Why did he think so?”

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “He just said I’d like it,” said Con. “Because then I’d know everything.”

  “Well, he’s been a wolf and he doesn’t know everything, does he?”

  “That’s what I told him,” said Con.

  They must have been around the subject several times before Arry got there. She could not think how to ask if Halver had mentioned their parents without actually mentioning them herself. “Why else did he say you’d like it?”

  “He said I’d like the other wolves,” said Con. “Better than people. And he said I could run far, and go all up and down the mountains and all the way to the Hidden Land and Fence’s Country.” She paused, fixing Arry with her big dark eyes. “If we were wolves,” she said, “could we find them?”

  “Did Halver say we could?”

  “No. I just wondered.”

  Clever Halver, thought Arry. And here I thought perhaps being a wolf had made you less able to cope with your charges. “I don’t know, Con,” she said.

  “Well, who does?”

  “If we could think who knew,” said Arry, “I think we’d know ourselves. Since there’s no province for finding lost things.”

  “Why isn’t there?”

  Arry shook her head. “I want you to promise me something, Con,” she said. “If you decide to be a wolf, tell me first.”

  “I don’t want to be a wolf.”

  “If you change your mind.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Con.”

  “If I’m a wolf,” said Con, sliding out of her chair, “you can be a wolf too.” And she ran out of the room, laughing.

  17

  When Arry came into the front room the musicians had stopped playing and Mally was just beginning to organize the giving of the gifts. People kept streaming in and streaming in. It was hot, from the lamps and the people. Sune was exactly where she had been—her feet hurt even sitting down—and Halver had gone back to sit next to her. Arry found Oonan hunched into one corner of a settle behind the table the presents were on. She couldn’t talk to him or even approach him until the gifts had all been dealt with. She was worried about moonrise, but Halver had far more reason to worry than she did. He looked serene.

  Arry went and sat on the floor next to Beldi. “Has Halver been talking to you?” she whispered.

  “No,” said Beldi. “Am I supposed to talk to him?”

  “No, it’s all right, never mind.”

  Beldi looked resigned.

  Mally finished piling objects on the table and brought Tiln in from outside. He was blinking a little in the strong light, sweaty and breathless from the dance; but smiling. People smiled back at him, and the talk grew less. Mally sat him down at the table and looked around the room, and everybody stopped talking. Mally thanked everyone for coming. Then she said, “We have a problem in manners here. It’s customary for one receiving a gift to say, ‘Thank you, it’s beautiful, ’ but Tiln can’t say that if it isn’t true.”

  “I could say, ‘It’s just what I’ve been wanting,” said Tiln, with none of his usual hesitance. “I don’t know any more about that than anybody else does.”

  “No, but I do,” said Mally, ruffling his hair.

  “I shall say, ‘It’s very nice, ’ then, shall I?”

  “I think that’s sufficiently meaningless,” said Mally. Her eyes moved around the room.

  She’s looking for my mother, thought Arry. Whose province was language. Do wolves have language? Nobody said anything. After a moment, Mally nodded to Tiln, and he began to accept his presents.

  Spring was a good time to come into your knowledge. Good things to eat were coming back into abundance; people had been working all winter on this or that frivolous or useful or strange thing, inventing new games and toys, fooling with the shape of a sleeve or the set of a button, wondering how
that recipe would taste with walnuts rather than currants. Arry watched Tiln carefully, and thought she could tell, if not which things he thought were beautiful, at least which ones he had been wanting. When he got to the paint and brushes, he opened every pot and dipped a finger in it to see what color it held; and then he smiled.

  The last thing he took from the table was something Arry had not recognized as a present at all. It was“What is it?” said Tiln, running his hand down a sleeve.

  Halver looked at Derry, who said, “Wolfskin.”

  Arry stopped breathing. She began again almost at once. Hides must be cured and treated, coats must be sewn; the wolf this had belonged to was a last year’s wolf at the very oldest. But she still felt cold, in all this heat.

  “It’s very nice,” said Tiln, in an awed tone.

  Everybody laughed, and Vand started tuning his fiddle. People stood up and stretched, and went back outside, or into the kitchen for food and drink, or up to the table to look more closely at Tiln’s presents. Arry sat where she was, staring at Halver. He was talking to Sune; after a moment she nodded, and Halver put his hand under her elbow and helped her stand up.

  Arry got up too, swiftly. Halver had helped Sune walk here; how thoughtful of him to see her home again before he went and turned into a wolf. A wolf has no arm for you to lean on. Arry stifled a laugh. Sune and Halver paused to speak to Tiln, and then went out the door. Arry went after them, and paused in the doorway to give them a good start. She had thought of simply accompanying them on the grounds that she wanted to go home now, too, but they would wonder about Con and Beldi.

  They kept stopping to speak to people, so Arry made a quick foray through the house and found Oonan in the kitchen, cutting up a wheel of red cheese.

  “Halver’s taking Sune home,” she said. “I’m going to follow him until moonrise.”

  “And what are you going to do then?” said Oonan. “Can you run as fast as a wolf? You can’t follow him, Arry, unless he wants you to.”

  “Could Derry?”

  “Ask her,” said Oonan.

  “I can’t, Oonan, without telling her why.”

  “Then why bring it up?”

  “I have to find my parents,” said Arry through her teeth.

  “I think,” said Oonan, putting down his knife and regarding her gravely, “that they have to find you.”

  “They’re telling me to keep away,” said Arry; it was almost a wail, and she stopped talking and looked at the door.

  “When; how?” said Oonan, coming around the table.

  Arry told him about the green letters.

  “Then do as they tell you,” said Oonan. “They’re your parents.”

  “They’re not themselves.”

  “Who says so?”

  “Oh, you’re hopeless!” cried Arry, and bolted back through the front room and outside.

  Sune and Halver were gone, but there was really only one path home, especially for someone so heavily pregnant, and she caught up to them without difficulty in the water meadow. They were about halfway across it when she came down the hill; she could see Sune’s hair glinting faintly and hear the murmur of their voices.

  Arry considered going to Sune’s along the stream, which would be shorter, and then following Halver from there. She could think of no particular reason he should not wish to take Sune home and get out of sight before turning into a wolf.

  Unless, of course, he wanted for some reason for Sune to see him do it. This was Mally’s province; Arry had no idea why or whether he would do such a thing. The mere fact that she had thought of it at all made her uneasy. She stepped out softly into the water meadow after the two of them. If they looked back they might see her, since she was wearing a white shirt; but she walked on anyway.

  They did not look back. They went on steadily on their way home, passing Oonan’s house and Arry’s and Halver’s and moving slowly down the hill to Sune’s small house. Arry came around the corner of Halver’s house just in time to hear Halver say, “What in all doubt is that?”

  Sune’s house, like Niss’s, showed green light through its windows and around its door.

  “Niss said she might be by, with some kindly spells for young Knot,” said Sune, placidly.

  “Green’s for warding,” said Halver, not placidly at all.They walked forward to the house; Arry came halfway along the downhill path and then sat down next to a rock and watched. Sune opened her door and the green light poured out like some strange form of melted butter and colored all the rocks and grass and flowers with itself.

  Sune said something, and then laughed.

  “What does it say?” said Halver.

  He was keeping well back, Arry saw, and as much out of the light as he could manage.

  Sune said, “And from the wolf I save thy soul, by my might and power, and keep thy soul, my darling dear, from dogs that would devour; and from the lion’s mouth that would thee all in sunder shiver, and from the horns of unicorns I safely thee deliver.

  “Mally says Niss is over-careful,” said Sune, laughter still in her voice. “Unicorns indeed. Will you come in, Gnosi, and take some tea?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Halver. “If I hurry, I’ll be back in time to hear Wim play the pipes.” And he backed out of the green light and came quickly up the hill. Arry sat where she was. He plunged past her, almost running. Sune had gone into her house and shut the door. The green faded and went out, and plain yellow light lit up the windows. Arry got up and went after Halver.

  His hand was itching furiously, and he was having more trouble with his breathing than she would have expected from somebody who had walked and run in these hills all his life. Arry ran lightly behind him, trying to be quiet but not worrying overmuch about it. Her feet seemed to know the path and to avoid rocks and roots of themselves. The air was growing lighter. Arry looked up and saw the moon shouldering its way over the hills. She was immediately shaken by a violent dislocation of everything, and just as it subsided she tripped on nothing and fell on her face.

  So much for my feet knowing anything, she thought, sitting up and brushing gravel out of her leggings. She had torn her skirt, too, but was not herself hurt. She got up quickly and looked around for Halver. He had been at the bottom of the hill she was just rounding the top of, but he was nowhere to be seen. She ran down and up again and turned in a circle at the top of the next hill, looking for any movement, at man- or wolf-height. Nothing. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her shirt, thinking. He could not go to the sheep hut; possibly the whole meadow was barred to him: she didn’t know the extent of Niss’s spells.

  “I wonder,” said Arry to the rising mist, and she turned and trudged all the way back to Halver’s house and up to his shut door. No green light. She knew he had eaten quite a lot at Tiln’s party, but she did not know if his wolf-stomach needed feeding separately. What did he do when he wasn’t killing sheep and dragging people about to witness his transformation so he could try to talk them into sharing it?

  “Bother,” said Arry, and went back to Tiln’s party.

  She stopped at her own house first. It did not glow hugely as Sune’s had, but there was a faint wavery almost-light about it, like the reflection of sunlight off water on the shady underside of a bridge. Arry supposed the warding was still working. There had been nothing like that around Halver’s house.

  The party, when she got back to it, had shrunk but grown denser, like paper crushed tightly. A number of parents had taken their children home. Most of the remaining party was playing charades in the front room; Beldi was with them. Arry slipped behind Tiln, who appeared to be enacting a drunken cow with a broom, and went into the kitchen. To her great relief, Con was there, rolling out little balls of dough into circles so Zia could put spoonsful of honey and nuts on them and Tany could fold them into crescents and give them to Mally, who was frying them in fat. If everything were only the way this kitchen smells, thought Arry vaguely. She sat down on a stool out of the way.

  ??
?Why do they puff up when you fry them, Ma?” said Zia.“Dough-sprites,” said Con.

  “I say so,” said Tany.

  Mally said, “The heat of the boiling fat expands the liquid in the dough. Grel says so.”

  “Can’t we have dough-sprites?” said Zia.

  “We can if we want to,” said Tany.

  “Maybe in yeast,” said Mally, lifting a strainer full of little brown crescents out of her kettle and emptying it onto a towel.

  “Let’s make something with yeast in, then,” said Zia.“I don’t think this is going to be that long a party,” said Mally. “People won’t stay for breakfast.”

  Arry took this to mean that Mally hoped they wouldn’t. She was tired, and her arms were speckled with little burns from the spitting fat. Arry was tired, too. Con and the other children were emphatically not tired in the least. I should send all of them after Halver, thought Arry, except that he could eat them in one bite if he fancied eating a child. I wish I could tell if he did fancy it, if he could. But no, he wouldn’t want to talk them into becoming wolves if he wanted to eat them. Unless it’s to prevent himself eating them.

  “Do wolves eat children?” she said aloud.

  “Not if they can help it,” said Mally, very quickly; Arry suspected that reassurance was more on her mind than the truth. But she added, “I asked Derry earlier tonight. She said, not if they can find anything else, even mice or frogs.”

  Oh, fine, thought Arry, I’ll come home tonight and find a pile of frogs on my doorstep.

  “They can eat me if they like,” said Tany, licking his fingers. “When I’m inside I’ll make them run around.”

  “Does it hurt if a wolf eats you?” said Con.

  “Extremely,” said Arry.

  Tany looked at her. He was very dark, but he had light blue eyes, which made him always seem to be thinking of strange things. On the other hand, thought Arry, given what he said sometimes, perhaps he really was always thinking of strange things. He said now, “Not if they eat me.”

  Arry looked at him. What a mercy he was not her child. “Just you wait,” which was what she usually said to similar pronouncements by Con, did not seem precisely appropriate here. She was still thinking what to say when a jolt of pain as if Mally had emptied the hot fat over her went down her arm. She sprang off the stool. “Somebody is hurt,” she said, and ran out of the kitchen, through the startled players of charades and into the windy moonlit darkness.