The Dubious Hills

He walked on past Arry, bent to the embers of the fire, and stood up with a lighted lantern in his hand. He had put on a black gown; Arry and Oonan each had one like it, for greeting strangers, when there were any. He was barefoot. His yellow hair curled over his forehead and around his sweaty neck. His head hurt, his back hurt, his hand hurt. He was feverish.

  He smiled at her. The light flashed on his teeth and put a red spark in each eye. A man who had been a wolf was far more a cause for unease than the wolf he had been.

  Arry swallowed. “Have you been to see Oonan?”

  “No,” said Halver. “I wanted to see you first. Which hurts the more, the wolf or the man?”

  “The man,” said Arry, “at the moment. But—”

  “I knew that,” said Halver, tranquilly.

  He smiled again, and Arry wished for the wolf back, even the wolf of two nights ago, rattling the milk pans, growling. She said, “I think you should see Oonan.”

  “I shall, in time,” said Halver. “In the meantime I bind you to secrecy by the certainty of knowledge and the strictures of doubt.”

  “You do?” said Arry. He could do it; he was the Gnosi. But he was sick; need she heed him? “What is the occasion?” she said cautiously. Mally said Halver was touchy about his prerogatives, as anybody saddled with everybody’s children for hours every day might well be. It made him speak sharply sometimes.

  He did not speak sharply now. “The occasion,” he said, as if he were explaining geometry to Zia, “is the breaking of history. I so bind you; do you submit, or lodge protest?”

  Arry thought fast, keeping her eyes on Halver’s expression of mild inquiry and her heart on his various pains. She would have liked very much to know if he had the power to change back into a wolf should she displease him. Even more she would have liked to know what had precedence here. He was her teacher; Mally had said she was yet uneducated; by what he knew and she did not, he had the right to bind her to secrecy. He had taught her so himself.

  She took a deep breath. “Until my knowledge outrunneth yours,” she said, “I do so submit.”

  She had used the least of the three possible promises, and Halver looked displeased. All he said was, “Sit down now, and listen.”

  “You always said we learned better after a good night’s sleep,” said Arry.

  “There are too few nights left,” said Halver.

  Arry sat down, on a chair this time. Halver sat down too, on the floor, which felt wrong. Arry was not used to looking down at him. She did so anyway, as austerely as she could manage. Halver, no more moved by this than he had ever been by anybody’s tantrums, scratched his hand briefly and smiled yet again.

  “Did Frances tell you about shapeshifters?” he said. “A little,” said Arry.

  “I am not one of them,” said Halver. “They are distinguished by a multiplicity of shapes and by the operations of will upon their changes. Also they are born so, from parents the same as they. The condition I have comes upon one like a sickness, passed from the already infected to the still healthy; and is governed by the changes of the moon.”

  “How is the sickness passed?” said Arry, wishing for Oonan.

  “It is not a sickness,” said Halver, very sharply indeed. “It is merely passed like one.”

  “Like which one?” said Arry, becoming irate herself. “This is my province, Gnosi.”

  “Where’s the pain in it?” demanded Halver.

  “In your voice,” said Arry. “In every moment you are a man and not a wolf. How is this passed?”

  “Physici,” said Halver, much more coolly, “you ascribe the pain to the wrong causes. But I shall answer your question, because it is my place to teach you.” Arry looked at him, as steadily as she could manage, and bit gently on her tongue to keep herself from saying what she wanted to say.“It is passed by biting,” said Halver.

  “Where? Let me see. Where is the pain in it, indeed.”

  “Or by choice.”

  “What?”

  “I had thought I might teach about the moon,” said Halver. “We have no one who knows about it, since Frances left; but I had Sune read what Frances wrote, and what others wrote, and on the first night it was full I stayed up to look at it. And the wolves came, two of them. They looked at me, as I looked at you on the path. What did you think, then?”

  “Nothing,” said Arry, and then, “That you might not be a wolf exactly; but I had thought that already, because of what Oonan said, and what he said Derry said, and the other things you’d done.”

  “What I thought,” said Halver, “was a spell I had not heard, a spell that Niss, when I asked her, did not know.” He shut his eyes, and said, “Feet in the jungle that leave no mark, eyes that can see in the dark, the dark, tongue, give tongue to it, hark—”

  Arry felt the spell, as she had rarely felt any: when Oonan cursed the wolves in the meadow, she had understood the intent if not the words; when Con summoned the fire, the words had been plain to her. But this was like wind, like rain on your head, like mud sucking you down. She stood up, fast, took three quick steps backwards, and tripped on an end of her shawl that had come unwound. She caught herself on Halver’s table; and it was the shock of almost falling that woke her up, as the same sensation will wake people from the edge of sleep.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “That’s not choice.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” said Halver. “You chose to stand up. The rest follows.”

  “Who would choose to sit still?”

  “I did,” said Halver. “For the knowledge I would have of it.”

  “How did you know you would have knowledge?”

  “I am a teacher.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “There might be knowledge suited to you as well, in running under the moon.”

  He did not, Arry noticed, say, “might have been.” He did not think that her having chosen to stand up meant there was no knowledge for her in this change.

  “I think I need to go home now,” she said.

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Halver.

  What’s out there worse than you? thought Arry, and glanced swiftly at Halver, as if he might have heard her. The thought had come with the solidity of knowledge, and yet it was a question. Her head hurt. If she had such thoughts of Halver, he must be hurting her. She yanked up the trailing end of shawl. “Thank you,” she said, and led the way outside.

  It was even colder, and beginning to be misty. The moon was down. The wind had dropped, but the early sunlight dripped onto her shivering head like milk that had been down the well for a week. I’m sickening for something, thought Arry; it’s the ague.

  Halver delivered her to her front door, bowed, and walked away into the morning. Arry slipped inside, bolted the door, and jumped like a pinched melon seed at the touch of a cat’s cold nose on the calf of her leg. She had to sit down on the floor while both of them sniffed her over thoroughly, with special attention to the folds of nightgown and skirt and shawl on which Halver had laid his wolf head.

  While she sat, she thought, and came to the dismal conclusion that, since she could not tell anybody what had happened to Halver, or ask any questions that might lead them to find it out, she must do a great deal of discovery herself. Trying to find out what ailed Con was tangled and time-consuming enough; this would be far worse. Unless, she thought. Unless. Unless the pain this state caused Halver was of the same sort as the pain she thought she knew in Con. Then her knowledge would truly outrun Halver’s, she would be free to tell Oonan all about it, and she might in the end know what to do about Con.

  That was a pleasant story, but it did not feel at all right. Arry sighed heavily, dislodged the long-somnolent cats from her lap, and went to have a look at her brother and sister. Beldi was in bed where he belonged, and had not even kicked his quilts off. Con was not in bed, nor in the main room, where she occasionally crawled under the table to sleep; she was in a corner of the washing-room, in one of the beds Arry had made for the cats before it
became evident that if you made a bed for a cat, the cat would never sleep in it—even in the warmest room in the house. Arry covered Con with Con’s own towel, which, because Con had not washed as she should, was quite dry. Then she went to bed herself.

  Falling asleep was difficult. Over and over she halfdreamed she slipped going down a muddy hill, fell out of bed, fell out of the pine tree, missed the slate step at Sune’s front door; and came wide awake at once each time she began to fall. When she did sleep, she dreamed about wolves. They sat in the kitchen and looked at her; they tripped her up when she went outside; they lay before the fire at night and showed her their red jeweled eyes. When one of them—not Halver—bit her on the wrist, she woke up, and discovered that Con was poking her arm and saying plaintively, “Who put this towel on me, Arry?” over and over.

  “Towel-sprites, no doubt,” said Arry, sitting up.

  “Halver says swearing means—”

  “I’ve heard him. Go get dressed, Con, and wash your face and hands, or the towel-sprites will cover you with water next time.”

  “You don’t know about towel-sprites.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I will, though,” said Con, cheerfully, and ran out of the room.

  Arry put her head in her hands, pushing away the dim chorus of who said what about children, the future, morning, sunlight, dreams, cats, cotton, wood, going barefoot, eating breakfast.

  “There’s no food,” said Beldi from the doorway.

  “Certainly there is,” said Arry, without moving her hands.

  “If Con can make fire, why can’t she make potatoes?”

  “Ask her,” said Arry, and then yelled, “No, don’t!” at the empty doorway.

  She got out of bed. “Maybe I’d rather be bitten by a wolf after all,” she snarled at the sunlight.

  10

  Con refused to eat breakfast, saying she was going outside to make not just potatoes, but potato pancakes and the strawberries and cream to go with them, and to eat everything all by herself. Arry and Beldi sat on the floor by the fire, roasting potatoes in the embers and burning their fingers. The cats had gone outside with Con, possibly to find mice, more likely in search of somebody with milk to spare.

  Con had not gone far: Arry could feel her seething out there, in a way very unsettling to good digestion.

  Beldi said, “Are you going round to get more food today?”

  It was certainly past time to do it. But the people from whom Arry would be getting the food would not, except for Derry, be the ones she needed to ask questions of. She said carefully, “I was going to ask you and Con to do it.”

  “Con won’t do anything,” said Beldi.

  “I thought of asking Mally to take her,” said Arry.

  “If I can go by myself I’ll get the food,” said Beldi at once.

  “Will you watch her while I go ask Mally?”

  “If you hurry.”

  Arry scraped the last bit of her potato out of its blackened skin with her bottom teeth, and decided against having another. Better to go before Beldi changed his mind or Con wandered off too far and did something indescribable. Besides, if she left a potato or two, Con might eat them once Arry was safely gone.

  “Con ought to eat something,” she said to Beldi, opening the door.

  Beldi gave her an eloquent look, as if she had told him that the sun should shine on a rainy day. Very nice, no doubt, but not easy of accomplishment. They went outside. The morning was half over, but still rather chilly. The sun had burned the mists away. It lay kindly on the small new leaves of the ash trees and on all the beginning grass. In the brown needles and rocks under the pine tree all the crocuses had bloomed. They were so late this year Derry had said perhaps mice had eaten them.

  “Tiln should see that,” said Arry.

  Beldi looked at her.

  “If he knows what’s beautiful.”

  “I thought he knew what was ugly.”

  “Mustn’t it be both?”

  “Well, you know what hurts, but do you know what feels good?”

  “I know what stops the hurting.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I see what you mean. I’ll ask Mally, maybe.”

  “There’s Con,” said Beldi.

  She was sitting with her back to them, on the rock where Arry had left the milk pans, singing a song with no words.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” Arry said to Beldi, and ran down the hill, away from both of them and the house and all.

  The mud of the paths was drier. In the meadows between the hills, the old dead grass was undercut with new green, and starred with minute blue and white and bright yellow. High up in the dazzling air a lark was singing. It was the first one Arry had heard this year. Somebody had called it, perhaps. There was a song for it. Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings, and Phoebus ’gins arise, his steeds to water at those springs on chaliced flowers that lies, eyes that can see in the dark, the dark.

  Arry stopped running and sat down on a rock. Her shadow was plain before her, tangled hair, fringed scarf, shaking hand; but she felt as if there were some large shape between her and the sun. Her heart hurt her. Her stomach jerked, as if she had missed a step and almost fallen.

  “Oh, no,” she said, with what breath she had. “No wolves.”

  She looked over her shoulder, and the mild meadow smiled back at her. Her mother had once taught her a charm against the nightmare, which she said worked for as long as a child had need of it, even if the child’s other magic had waned already. She said shakily, “You spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blindworms do no wrong.” She was getting her breath back. “Never harm,” she sang, “nor spell, nor charm, come our lovely lady nigh. So good night, sing lullaby.” Which was funny enough in the bright morning that she laughed, and got up, and went on. But she kept an eye on her shadow, in case she should see another following it. She could not decide whether to see Halver as soon as she had delivered Con, or to avoid him as long as she could, while she gathered more stories.

  Mally’s door was shut. Arry beat on it with the knocker. She could hear the dog barking inside, but nothing else for a long time. If Tiln had his knowledge, perhaps they had stayed up late drinking to it. She banged again. It was not early by anybody’s standards but Oonan’s.

  “They’re putting the beans in,” said a shrill voice behind her.

  Arry gripped the knocker hard, and managed not to jump visibly. She turned around. It was Mora, Mally and Jonat’s youngest; she was Con’s age, but they did not often play together. They would do it today, if Arry had anything to say about it.

  “Are you all by yourself?” she said.

  Mora wrinkled her nose. Even so young, it looked like Jonat’s formidable beak. “Blackie’s here,” she said.

  “But he’s in the house and you’re outside.”

  Mora looked guilty. “I was going in,” she said.

  Arry gave up any notion of leaving two children with the dog instead of one. Suggesting that Halver let school out for a few days had not been so fine a thing as she had thought.

  “You go in, then,” she said, “and I’ll find Mally. I was hoping Con could come play with you today.”

  “She likes Zia,” said Mora, with finality. “I’m not brown enough for her.” She was in fact greeny-brown like Jony, and her hair was much the same shade as her skin.

  “I didn’t know Con demanded brownness in her friends,” said Arry, rather haphazardly.

  “Mally knows, though,” said Mora.

  There was no arguing with that. “Well, I’ll go talk to her, then,” said Arry. She stood waiting, and after a moment Mora opened the door, went into the house, and shut the door again.

  Arry set off down the hill for the bean fields. It was getting warmer. As she came down the hill into the plowed field, the heat hit her in the face as if she had leaned very close to a fire. She passed Lina sitting on a rock, eyes closed, face fierce. She wa
s chanting, “Sumer is icumen in, lude sing cuckoo.”

  That spell was so old the language had changed since somebody wrote it down. Arry went by her softly, and stood at the bottom of the slope looking at the figures scattered over the tumbled dirt. Most of them were small; but there was Mally. Arry walked along the path until she was at the end of Mally’s furrow. It was hugely and impossibly hot. The sun and sky could not have made it so hot down here. Arry waved, and after a moment called. Mally unstooped herself and came briskly along the furrow to Arry. Her face was damp and shiny and red. Her white hair looked like a hundred seeding dandelions after a rainstorm. She seemed extremely pleased.

  “Why is it so hot?” said Arry.

  “Beans need warm soil, but we really couldn’t wait any longer to plant them if we want three crops. Lina may be overdoing it a bit. Have you come to help?”

  “I can’t today. I’m seeking knowledge. I wondered if Con could come play with Mora, but Mora says Con thinks Mora’s not brown enough. And two of them with only the dog might mean mischief.”

  “Send her here,” said Mally. “We’ll see if she can make the beans fly through the air and bury themselves in the proper places.”

  “I will, then,” said Arry, a little faintly. “Thank you. I wanted to ask,” she added, as Mally showed signs of going back to work, “if she told me aright, that you’ve given her very powerful spells and think she may not lose her magic at all, and grow up to be a wizard.”

  “I told you I thought she might be a wizard,” said Mally. “There’s no knowing until the time comes. I do think she may never lose her magic.”

  “Doesn’t that always mean a wizard?”

  “No,” said Mally. “Your mother never lost hers either.”

  “She wasn’t even born here.”

  “It’s the water,” said Mally. “The earth, the air, something. Born doesn’t matter.”

  “Mally, do wizards, or people who are going to be, hurt differently than others?”

  “How should I know?” said Mally, gently enough.

  “Isn’t that a part of what they’re like, a part of their character? Wouldn’t you know?”