The Dubious Hills

  Neither was being a wolf. She could see less than she was accustomed to, and smell a great deal more. She trotted dutifully about, sniffing; but while she knew that a wolf would have been wildly fascinated with all these scents, she could not make herself be interested. It was like reading a bad recipe. Arry finally lay down and put her nose on her paws and went to sleep, which had the effect of waking her from her human sleep sooner than she liked. It was still morning. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. How long ought one to go between naps, she thought. What Niss had told her really was just like a carelessly written recipe, leaving too much for the experience of the cook to fill in. She cast off the wolfskin coat and sat with her knees under her chin, working the tangles out of her filthy hair and admiring the sun on the new birch leaves.

  If it had been a very little warmer she would have gone and had a bath in the stream. She thought that, if she dreamed she was a wolf again, swimming might do to relieve the boredom. She could not believe that this was what Halver had had in mind. But then, after all, he had intended this coat just for Tiln, and the other just for Beldi. Niss might say that whosoever slept under them three times would suffer this or that effect, but it did not follow that everybody would have the same experience.

  A cooler breeze moved through the trees. Arry pulled the coat over herself and lay down again. She watched the sunlight falling through the may blossoms, pink and white and gold. When she woke up a wolf, she did go swimming in the stream, frightening all the fish and making a great deal of noise. Then she lay down in the sun to dry. It was when she woke up in the sun in her own shape again, but still damp, and with the beginnings of sunburn, that she began to view the wolfskin coat with respect. She shook the dry grass and leaves out of it, and went back to her hawthorn tree to fetch the pouch of food. The strap was there, and a crumble of oatcake.

  “Bother,” said Arry. She was getting hungry; it was early afternoon now, and the pancakes of blushful Hippocrene had not been entirely filling. She stood turning the strap in her hands, frowning. This would be either the third time, or the fourth; it was either necessary, or not; and what her wolf-self was most likely to fill its time with would be in killing something.

  Arry went home and finished cleaning the discarded oddments out of the kitchen. Con and Beldi came home at suppertime, and she fed them potato-and- onion pie. They were both preoccupied. Con declined offers, after dinner, to play chess, to be read to, to play with the cats, to be helped to make scones, and to see if Sune might like to make some music. She went off to her room. Arry looked at Beldi.

  “Well?” she said.

  Beldi was lying on the hearth-rug, and he addressed himself to the fire, which Con had spoken to with somewhat different intention before she went to bed. “It’s very hard to tell with Zia,” he said. “She likes—Mally says so—she likes you to think she always knows what she’s doing, and she makes things up. Mally says she’s the other half of Sune. Tany’s even stranger. Mally says he truly doesn’t believe in anything; she says he’s like the people the Descent of Doubt first descended on, before they changed the spell—did she tell you about that?”

  “I heard about it,” said Arry.

  “They don’t talk like ordinary people,” said Beldi. “Mally says you have to sift them.”

  “What, like flour?”

  “Like flour with weevils in, is what she said,” said Beldi, giggling.

  “She thinks their thoughts are weevily?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “What do you think?”

  Beldi’s head, outlined by the fire, moved a little; but he did not turn to look at her. “I think,” he said, with a certain relish, “that Zia has a plan, but she hasn’t told anybody what it is. She isn’t persuaded yet that she needs us, but she’s keeping us interested with her false plan, or half plan, or a plan she’d like, even if it wouldn’t work, until she can see what to do.”

  “She’s only five,” said Arry, a little taken aback. “So’s Con,” said Beldi.

  “Well, that’s true. What does Zia want you to think her plan is?”

  “Burn herbs at midnight in the pine woods, conjure the wolfskin coats up out of nowhere, run away to the highest meadow there is and sleep under them until we find out what’s what,” said Beldi.

  “Can Zia conjure?”

  “Mally says not,” said Beldi; he sounded distinctly doubtful.

  “Well, she knows, Beldi.” Had they got wind of Mally’s failure concerning Halver?

  “She knows what Zia’s like,” said Beldi. “That’s different from what she can do.”

  “Is it? I don’t know.”

  “Well, I don’t either, but I think.”

  “When was she going to do this?”

  “We were going to do it when the moon is full next. If Zia decides to do it without us, or to do something else, then she’ll do it any time she thinks is right.”

  “Does Mally know what she’s up to?”

  “Mally knows she’s up to something.” Beldi added reflectively, “Of course, she always is.”

  “Mmmmm,” said Arry.

  “What are you up to?” said Beldi.

  Arry sat up straight, dislodging Sheepnose. Beldi so seldom asked questions. She supposed it was only fair; he had told her what she needed to find out. “I’m trying to find Halver by sleeping under the wolfskin coat.”

  Beldi rolled over on the rug, thus dislodging Woollycat also, and sat up. “But Niss said—”

  “I heard her.”

  “Do you want to be a wolf?”

  “Not especially.”

  “But—”

  “I think this is a lesson of Halver’s. I don’t think I have to become a wolf or die. I think there are other choices.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?”

  “It might be very useful to have a wolf for your sister,” said Arry.

  “A wolf and a wizard,” said Beldi. He sounded glum, and sulky. Arry looked him over, inwardly. His pain was so unlike Con’s, or anybody else’s, that she was not entirely certain it was pain at all.

  “You can be something too,” she offered.

  “My parents are wolves already,” said Beldi.

  “I won’t leave you,” said Arry.

  “How do you know? What if that’s what wolves do?”

  “Derry says they are very familial,” said Arry.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Beldi.

  “Leaving Con alone in the house?”

  “She’s a wizard,” said Beldi. “And she never wakes up, anyway.”

  “She’s five years old.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Then I’m not going anywhere,” said Arry. “I can sleep under the coat on our doorstep, as well as anywhere.”

  “I’ll watch you, then.”

  “That’s actually a very good idea,” said Arry. “I can’t tell what happens precisely.” She pondered. “If I turn into a wolf,” she said, “and look at all menacing—or even if I don’t—you must run back into the house and shut and bolt the door.”

  “Are you sleepy now?”

  “No. Let’s play chess.”

  Beldi won three games, and Arry decided trying to sleep would be easier than playing a fourth.

  22

  She did not think she had slept, at first. The rustle of the wind, the small sound of Beldi’s breathing, the rustle and click as he amused himself by playing both sides of a chess game, never altered. She stretched, finally, thinking she might make herself some sleepy tea; and Beldi turned his head and gasped.

  Arry opened her mouth to speak, and closed it hastily. The wolfskin coat was gone: she must be wearing it indeed. Both cats were asleep in the hollyhocks, and neither of them stirred. She got down off the doorstep, which was no longer comfortable for the shape she was, and tried wagging her tail. Beldi sat where he was, very still, his head turned sideways. Arry moved very slowly and lay down on the other side of the hollyhocks. The cats never stirred. The night air wa
s full of intriguing and unfamiliar smells. But the warm air wafting out of their house held a green and awful smell, as of potatoes gone very bad. It must be Niss’s spell.

  Arry and Beldi stared at one another. Arry supposed she could go back to sleep: that seemed to have the effect of cancelling the transformation of the coat. If Halver came now, she would not be able to deal with him anyway, unless she chose to tear his throat out.

  She considered this thought. It had never occurred to her before. She could certainly not act on it without considering it again in her ordinary form; but it had an extraordinary appeal to it in her thoughts as she formed them now. She was not hungry; she had no thought of hurting or killing or eating Beldi, or Con; she did not want to run through the dark slashing at Jony; she did not want to chase sheep or pounce on mice. But killing Halver had a delicious smell to it.

  It would hurt, thought Arry. You can’t kill him without hurting him. She shut her eyes fiercely.

  She woke up in her proper shape, in the sheep hut, which was where she had meant to go for her final sleep under the coat. She was herself again, and the coat was not with her, which was a pity, because, as Grel had said it would, the evening had turned cool. And Halver had taken the blanket from the bed on his last visit. She sat down on the bare planks, hugging her arms. Whatever Beldi was seeing, she hoped he was not afraid or alarmed.

  She sat and waited, while the small sounds of the night established themselves and grew clear and distinct: frogs croaking, locusts sawing away, something small slipping through the grass, the half-heard high chittering of bats.

  Frogs? thought Arry. At first she thought it was some remnant of the wolf-self hankering after a treat; but it was rather that the frog-chorus was wrong. This was not spring peeping, but the full summer song. The locusts, too, did not belong to spring, not to this spring. Arry got up and peered out the door of the hut. Warm air poured over her. The moon was high and small and full in the clean sky. The bright soft scent of the wild roses that grew in the rocks moved along the air.

  This must be another dream, thought Arry. The fourth time must—must—I can’t think what it must, I hope it isn’t the terrors of the earth. I could go back to sleep. I could go home, and see what’s there. That feels dangerous: there would be two of me. She stepped outside. The sheep were back, clumped in the spot from which the rock could fall on them. On the other hand, she thought, I could talk to myself; that might be useful. If this is the summer to come and not one gone by. If this is anywhere at all really. She squinted at the moonlight and the shadows, trying to think. She felt very sleepy, much more so than she had when it would have been useful.

  Something dark was running across the field towards her, its belly low to the ground. Arry sprang back into the hut and snatched up the first piece of wood that came to her hand; but when she came back to the door, it was to find Blackie wagging and prancing and, when she spoke to him, rolling in the wild thyme and sending up mixed scents of herb and dusty damp dog. She rubbed his head. He leapt to his feet and began to growl. Arry took her hand away at once, but he was not growling at her. Somebody else was coming, who walked upright and wore a white or gray robe. The person was too thin for Bec and not tall enough for Frances.

  “Well, of course,” said Arry. She came out of the hut, still holding her stick. Blackie accompanied her, pressed against her leg and vibrating with low growls.

  Halver looked very bleached in the moonlight. His voice was rather thready. What he said, however, was entirely like him. “This is not,” he said, as he had when Jony brought in a basket of stinging nettle to show a useful plant to the younger children, or when Tany said that Do What You Will was the whole of the law, “what I had in mind.”

  “It never is,” said Arry, almost at random.

  “Now that is untrue,” said Halver. “You have been an excellent student. It’s in the change from student to equal that we are, perhaps, having a little trouble. Why are you sleeping under Tiln’s coat?”

  “It was the only way I could think of to find you.”

  “Finding me is worth either becoming a wolf or dying?”

  “I thought you wanted me to become a wolf.”

  “I thought you wanted very much the contrary.”

  “It hasn’t been very interesting so far,” said Arry. Halver laughed. “That’s because you’re not Tiln,” he said.

  “I wondered if that had something to do with it. In any case, you did want me to become a wolf, so you ought to be pleased.”

  “I wanted you to make a choice,” said Halver. “This wasn’t it. What did you wish to see me about?”

  “Two things,” said Arry. “First, my parents. I couldn’t think of any other way to find them, either.”

  “You won’t find them with me,” said Halver; his tone was mostly rueful, but there was something very bitter in his face. Arry wished Mally were here to interpret it, and then remembered that that might not serve at all.

  “Why?” said Arry.

  “They think we should let you be.”

  “We?” said Arry, with a sinking feeling.

  “We who change shape under the moon, who have made a choice and abide by it, who are not trammeled by this spell that sacrifices wisdom for petty knowledge.”

  Who says that’s what it does, thought Arry. She said, “Let who be? Con and Beldi and me?”

  “The entire company of these hills.”

  “And what do you think you should be doing?”

  “Freeing the lot of you.”

  “From what?”

  “You never would do this in school,” said Halver regretfully. “It’s amazing to what lengths a teacher must go simply to provoke a few questions.”

  “Con asks questions.”

  “Oh, anybody under the age of six will do so. It’s after that concerns me.”

  “I did ask you questions,” said Arry. “I asked you about Con, about the nature and kinds of pain; but you put me off, Halver, you didn’t answer them.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Halver. “It wasn’t my province. And that is the heart of the matter.”

  “Can you answer them now?”

  “Indifferently; I have had them under my study for very little time. But of a certainty there are more pains than the physical, and they are sometimes easier and sometimes harder of assuagement.”

  “I could have told you that much.”

  Halver laughed again. He seemed, in fact, in excellent spirits. Arry considered him. No fever, no headache, and his hand had stopped itching.

  “If you wish to study these pains, you must come out,” said Halver. “Come out from under this spell.”

  “How?”

  “Choose.”

  “To become a wolf, or die?”

  “Transformation is necessary,” said Halver, “and this is the one I know.”

  “Why can’t I choose to become a wolf, or not to become a wolf?”

  “I teach the reluctant as well as the eager,” said Halver.

  “I don’t see where dying enters into it.”

  “I put it there,” said Halver.

  “Why?” said Arry. She remembered the question about the blind child, and his careless answer, as careless as this answer. She could not believe he had said it, or that he could mean it. It’s one of his games, she thought, one of the advanced ones. She still felt outraged. “Isn’t there enough dying as it is?”

  “That is the root of the problem,” said Halver; he was pleased with her; she was being a good student. Arry wondered if the transformation were less thorough than he seemed to think. His province still concerned him. Or it might be that people’s knowledge was indeed suited to their natures, and it was in his nature to be a teacher.

  She said, “That sounds like the beginning of a long speech. Will you come in and sit down?”

  “It’s spring in there, and cold with it,” said Halver.

  “Come and sit in the wild thyme and lean on the welcoming rock.”

  Arry did so
, cautiously. Halver sat down facing her. “Now,” he said. “Pain was in the world from the beginning; we do ourselves no service by trying to rid ourselves of it. We are made to suffer it.”

  “Not here,” said Arry. “Not here.”

  “Even here, you suffer it.”

  “There’s a purpose in that,” said Arry. “I suffer it, others don’t—and I know what to do about it.” She began to add, “And it doesn’t frighten me,” but that was not true and Halver had probably been told so. She said instead, “It’s my province. It’s large and strange enough.”

  “It’s as small as these hills,” said Halver.

  Arry thought most vividly of her long walk with Oonan: hill piled on hill, the small woods, diminutive meadow after meadow, the deep pools and the gentians. She thought of the road to Waterpale, which had taken her father and then her mother to so strange a fate; she thought of the river crossing to the Hidden Land. “It’s large enough for me,” she said.

  Halver let his breath out, ran a hand through his hair, and smiled. He had thought of another approach. “People are entitled to their own pain,” he said. “It is itself a powerful teacher.”

  “They’ve got their own pain,” said Arry. “The pain of the heart, the mind, the soul, whatever it is that is at the borders of my province, that makes Con say ‘I hate this, ’ they can learn from that. They’d better; it must be good for something.”

  “They can’t learn from it if they don’t regard it.”

  “I’ll show them to regard it, then. This is a life’s work in itself, Halver; I’ve got plenty to do.”

  “You cannot do it under this spell,” said Halver. “The pain of the heart is among those matters the Eight felt they must deal with, that there would be no more war. You cannot do it if you don’t come out.”

  “How do you know?” said Arry.

  She felt this was a telling retort, and for a moment Halver seemed to agree with her. He looked utterly blank; then he put his head in his hands. Arry half expected him to laugh, and admit defeat. Instead he dropped his hands and stood up. “I feared this,” he said. “Under this spell the intelligence cannot choose. The heart cannot choose. That is why I have made the threat. Change or die, that is the choice.”