The Dubious Hills

  “Before you were grown up,” said Mally, with a peculiar expression on her face, “did you want to be?”

  “I didn’t think about it.”

  “Never?”

  “Well—I wanted to find out what I was going to know; but I didn’t want to know it right away. I just wondered sometimes.”

  “And I wonder,” said Mally, “if Con’s going to be a wizard.”

  Arry looked at her hard.

  “I wonder if she’ll be getting her magic back again. Wim’s cousin was like that: she never gave anybody a moment’s peace between losing her child-magic and getting her knowledge.” Mally added reflectively, “She was slow, too. She didn’t get her knowledge until she was sixteen. Everybody thought she wouldn’t have any.” It might be a long ten years, thought Arry. “Does anybody ever really not have any?”

  “Not here,” said Mally.

  “Here where?”

  “In the Dubious Hills.”

  “What made them think she wouldn’t have any, then?”

  “All the farmers,” said Mally, rather angrily. “If it hasn’t come by now, it won’t come, they kept saying. You’d think they of all people would know better. Jony says half the time when you plant chive seeds they come up two or three years later in the wrong place.”

  “Maybe oats are different.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What happened to Wim’s cousin?”

  “She was so angry at them all that she went away to Heathwill Library.”

  “In the Hidden Land?” Arry was always interested in the country her mother had come from.

  “North of there. Fence’s Country. Sune showed me the map.”

  “Sune was trying to show Halver something in a book, but he didn’t believe it.”

  “He may know better,” said Mally, without any apparent thought; then she dropped the last pea onto her right-hand square of clean cloth and looked at Arry. “What was she trying to tell him?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about herbs. I didn’t notice; I wanted to ask him about Con.”

  “You haven’t really asked me, yet.”

  You wouldn’t let me, thought Arry. She said, “I think there’s something besides the magic. I think our parents’ going away hurt her. Could that happen?”

  “If you don’t know—”

  “It’s not like a broken leg!” cried Arry. “It’s to do with people and what they’re like.”

  “Pain is your province,” said Mally. “But,” she added, forestalling Arry’s getting up and flinging out of the house, “there are some stories that may help you.” She got up heavily and went into the other room.

  Blackie stood up from the hearth and put his muddy nose into Arry’s ear. She rubbed the coarse fur around his neck and wondered why he wasn’t out with Wim. He didn’t hurt anywhere. Mally came back with three books, one covered in red leather, one in green, and one a collection of scrolls in a cedar box.

  “Is anything wrong with the dog?” said Arry. “Oonan told Wim to keep him home today,” said Mally.

  She didn’t sit down again, so Arry got up and took the books. “All the stories in all three?” she said.

  “You like to read.”

  “I’ve been missing school.”

  “That,” remarked Mally, “is why you should reconsider this notion that you’re grown up.”

  “Grown up isn’t the same as educated,” said Arry, irritably. She thought a moment. “Is it?”

  “No,” said Mally. “But it helps.”

  It was clear that Arry had not asked the right question, but Mally said nothing more. She took hold of the loose skin around the dog’s neck, meaning she expected Arry to go now. Blackie wouldn’t go out the open door of his own accord, but Mally said he was fond of following visitors out and looking innocent about it.

  “Thank you,” said Arry, from the doorway. “I’ll return them as soon as I can.”

  “Nobody else needs them,” said Mally.

  Arry went home, made a pot of peppermint tea, and sat down in the chair nearest the window. She started with the scrolls first; they would be the oldest, and this made her nervous. She wanted them read and back in their box and the box hidden before Con got home.

  She read three stories, by the end of which the teapot was empty, the white cat was on her lap, the black cat was under the chair, and her mind was muddled.

  The stories all began, “Once upon a time,” and none of them said where any of their events happened. One was about a little boy and girl whose mother died, after which their father married a woman who hated them and finally sent them off into the woods to be lost and starve, only they came upon a house made of honeycake, in which there lived a witch who tried to fatten them up and cook them, only they tricked her and put her into the oven instead. The story didn’t say if they had eaten her.

  The second one was about a girl whose mother had died, after which her father married a woman with two daughters, all of whom were ugly and cruel and made the girl do all the work of the house, only a fairy came and helped her go to a dance, where the prince of some country fell in love with her, traced her through a shoe she left behind, and after refusing to take either of her stepsisters, carried her off and married her. Nobody in this story, it seemed, had anybody to tell them what hurt, or the stepmother and stepsisters would never have cut off bits of their feet so the girl’s shoe would fit them.

  The third story was about a girl whose beautiful mother died and whose stepmother gave her a poisoned apple.

  Arry put the book down. “Who says so?” she said.

  Mally? No, Mally had only given her the books. Sune might not even have read them, and in any case Sune hadn’t said anything to Arry about any of this, ever. Who would say such things? This wasn’t knowledge: it must be history. Stories, Mally had said; stories that would help. Arry had asked her, might it hurt Con that their parents were gone; and Mally had handed her these uncatalogued and incomprehensible narrations.

  It had hurt all these children that their mothers died, because the new mothers were cruel to them. And what were their fathers doing, thought Arry irritably. She sat up straight, and the white cat complained and jumped to the floor. Was she the new mother? Was she cruel?

  Arry got up, quickly. Con and Beldi would say she was, if there was nothing for them to eat when they came back from school, which they would do very soon, even if they played in every mud puddle between Halver’s house and here. She had been reading for a long time. Having put the scrolls carefully away and hidden the box in her bed, she made more tea and rummaged about, thinking of honeycake. Then she went down into the cellar and got out some of the dried apples.

  When Con and Beldi came in, she watched them narrowly. They were both muddy and windblown, especially Beldi. She ought to cut his hair. Con shrieked happily at the apples and splashed four slices into her cup of tea so they could swell up. Beldi asked if there were any bread, and settled for oatcake. If anybody was hurting at the moment, thought Arry, it wasn’t Con. Beldi looked as if his head might hurt, but it didn’t.

  “When are you coming to school again?” said Con with her mouth full. “Zia says—”

  “I don’t know,” said Arry. She might as well ask them. “Am I cruel?”

  “Very,” said Con, promptly. “You never make us any pudding.”

  “Who says that’s—”

  “She made some six days ago,” said Beldi, spitting out an apple seed.

  “Didn’t have enough raisins,” said Con.

  Arry tried again. “Who says that’s—”

  “That’s not cruel,” said Beldi.

  “What is, then?”

  “Making you do all the work would be,” said Arry, without thinking.

  Con’s whole face clouded over. “I did do it when I wasn’t old!”

  Not cruel, thought Arry, just stupid. And what was the difference, when pain was the outcome either way? She thought about telling Con that Mally said she might be a wizard when she
grew up. No. “What did you learn about today?” she said.

  “I hate learning,” said Con. “I like knowing.”

  “Be glad you don’t live in the Hidden Land,” said Arry, rather desperately. “They have to learn everything. They don’t know anything.”

  “Who says so?”

  “Sune.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “Con.”

  “But it just means she read it.”

  “Somebody has to,” said Beldi.

  Arry added, “Mother used to say just the same. You remember.”

  Nobody said anything more. Beldi scooped the last of the apples out of the bowl Arry had put them in. He had made it last year and seemed to feel that this gave him rights in anything it contained. “I was thinking,” he said.

  “What about?” said Arry, faintly. Mally had never said Beldi didn’t think, but he had certainly never mentioned doing it before.

  “Did you wonder about what you were going to know before you knew it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you right?”

  “Not really. I wanted to be like Oonan, just before I found out. Before that I thought of lots of things.”

  “So you were almost right?”

  “Well—”

  “I’ve just been thinking, maybe I’ll be like Sune.”

  “What do we need two for?” demanded Con.

  “You be quiet,” said Beldi.

  She was, probably from sheer astonishment. Arry said, “Would you like that?”

  “I like to read.”

  “You can do that anyway.”

  “Yes, but it’s very muddling.”

  “It certainly is,” said Arry, feelingly.

  “I’d like to be sure of what I read.”

  “Even when you’re wrong?”

  “Well—”

  “I’m never going to be wrong,” said Con, slurping the last of her tea and sliding out of her chair. “Where are the cats,” she yelled, and ran back outside.

  Beldi followed her with the last of the oatcake. Arry put her head in her hands and thought Con was probably right. Then she laughed, but not very heartily.

  6

  Con wanted to cut off the heel of her right foot so she could fit it into a shoe of honeycake and thus always be right about everything. Arry knew the only way to dissuade her was to make Oonan explain what going about without a heel was like; but if she left to get Oonan, Con would go ahead and cut. Beldi was there, eating a marzipan doorstop shaped like a hedgehog. He wanted the knife to cut pieces of marzipan off, but wouldn’t promise not to give it back to Con when he was finished. Arry’s mother came in from the kitchen with a basket of kittens and said, “Take the knife with you, Arry.”

  Arry picked it up, and Con threw back her head and howled like a wolf. Arry waited for her mother to make Con shut up, but her mother only turned around and went into the kitchen again. The whole back of her was not a person at all, but a huge cookie made of the honeycake dough rolled flat. Arry started to throw the knife at her, and dropped it.

  It made an appalling clatter that mixed with Con’s howling. All the kittens started to mew shrilly. Beldi put the marzipan doorstop over his head. Arry bent for the knife, and opened her eyes on the darkness of her room. The clattering and howling were still going on. So was the mewing. Arry put her hand on Woollycat, who was sitting on her pillow. Woollycat stopped fussing, which only meant that Arry could hear Sheepnose under the bed, making the noises that meant there was a large dog taking liberties with the cats’ property.

  The other sounds were outside the room. Arry climbed out of the bed and dragged her father’s walking-stick from under it. Then she opened the door of her room. In the center room the banked fire was a muted red spot; the moon shone through the windows, except where two white-shirted figures with tousled heads blocked the light by craning out the back window. Arry sprang across the room and stared over their heads. The trees were still; the moonlight followed the paving stones down the black hill and up the next one. A few puddles glinted faintly. The cold wind blew Beldi’s hair into Arry’s face.

  “What’s happening?” said Arry.

  Neither one of them so much as started.

  “Isn’t it wolves?” said Con.

  “What’s the clattering?”

  “Milk pans, maybe?” said Beldi.

  “Doubt!” said Arry, and ran for the door. The day before Oonan lost his sheep, she had scalded three of the four pans she owned, put them outside to sun, and forgotten them utterly. They came from Druogonos and, according to Bec, had cost the earth. She wrenched the bar aside, flung a furious “Stay here!” over her shoulder, and pelted around the side of the house. The door banged behind her: good, they had some sense; more than she did. Sliding in the cold mud, she plunged to a stop beside the flat rock where she had left the pans.

  They were gone. Looking over the far side of the rock at her was a wolf. The wolf tilted its head at her. Very slowly, it lifted its lips away from its teeth. It made no sound, but all the hair stood up on Arry’s neck and arms. Arry took a slow step backwards. The wolf s lip crinkled more, and Arry bumped into somebody small but solid. She swallowed a hysterical exclamation and breathed, “Con. Get back in the house this minute.”

  “Beldi gets to—”

  “Both of you. Slowly. Quietly. Now.”

  The pressure of Con against her legs vanished. Arry kept her eyes on the wolf. It was looking at her. The rustle and pad of Con and Beldi’s bare feet on the rocks and dry leaves and pine needles did not even make it twitch its ears. Maybe they were too small for dinner; it seemed unlikely. Nor did the wolf look at her as the cats would look at a bird or a vole. There was consideration in it, a consideration like Oonan’s, looking at Beldi’s lip.

  It was a very large wolf. Its ears were bigger than her hand. Oonan would know, if he were here, what the teeth it still showed her could do; and she knew, all by herself, what they would feel like. She showed it her own flat, blunt teeth, half sheep’s, half dog’s, essentially unlike those of any animal she had seen.

  Its tilted head straightened and it uncurled its lip. Then the wolf stood up and trotted down the hill, tail waving. Arry thought of the milk pans; then she backed and finally ran. The door opened before she got there. She skidded inside, and Con slammed the door and Beldi shot the bolt.

  “Did you get the milk pans?” said Con.

  Arry sat down on the cold floor and began to laugh. After a moment Beldi started giggling. Con was unimpressed. “It’s what you went out for, isn’t it? Didn’t they cost the earth?”

  “Indubitably,” said Arry, still laughing.

  “What’s funny?” said Con.

  “Nothing, really,” said Arry. “It was stupid of me to go outside for the milk pans when there was a wolf out there.”

  “You mean it might hurt you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she cost even more than the earth,” said Beldi.

  Arry stared at him. He shrugged.

  “Did you?” said Con, fascinated.

  “So did you,” said Arry. “So did every one of us.”

  “Who says?”

  “I just know.”

  Even in the moonlight she could see Con struggling with this and deciding not to press it. Con said, “But how does Beldi know?”

  “I told him.”

  “When?”

  “By laughing.”

  “But it wasn’t funny.”

  “That’s why,” said Beldi.

  It was clear that Con didn’t understand this, either. Arry wasn’t sure she did herself.

  “Con,” she said. “The next time I tell you to go into the house, go into the house. Don’t argue.”

  Con scowled. Arry, looking at her, thought for the first time in all the months they had been without their parents: I can’t manage this; I don’t know what to do.

  “Let’s go back to bed,” she said, and went over to close and shutter the windows.

  T
hey went without saying anything else, and Arry went back to her own bed. But she stared at the dark for a long time, and wondered if Oonan too had been visited. When she slept, it was to dream of snarling sheep with dogs’ teeth and glass hooves.

  She sent Con and Beldi off to school in the morning and walked over to Oonan’s house to ask him. It was a cold gray day with a wind like the slap of a wet cloth. Oonan’s house was entirely surrounded by sheep. They were quiet for sheep crowded like that. Oonan’s two dogs, Mud and Water, and Mally’s dog Blackie, and Jony’s puppy Mouse, were keeping them from spreading out all over the hill. Arry pushed through them, paused to let the puppy sniff her ankle, and put her head into the open doorway. Oonan was lying on the cold hearth with his head propped on his hands.

  Arry sprang through the door, and the thump of her muddy boots brought Halver’s gray dog, Wind, in from the other room. It was not until the dog barked at her that Oonan turned his head. He had blue circles under his pale blue eyes and you could have counted his freckles, if you had nothing better to worry about. He gazed at her vaguely for a moment; then his whole face sharpened, and he sat up, looking like himself.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” said Arry. “I mean—I thought something was the matter with you.”

  “Are you sleeping?” said Oonan.

  “Are you?”

  Oonan drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “Sit down,” he said, very patiently, “and tell me why you came to see me.”

  “I wanted to know if you’d had any more wolves.”

  “You may well ask,” said Oonan. “We brought the sheep down in the afternoon, and Wim stayed with them, and I went back up to the meadow.”

  “And?” said Arry, though she thought she knew.

  “I had wolves, yes,” said Oonan. “Two of them. Not the sheep. They came to see me.”

  “What did they do?”

  “You tell me,” said Oonan.

  Arry sat down on a stool. “They looked at you,” she said. “As if they were thinking what was wrong with you. And they went away.”

  “Is that all?”