The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  I had no intention whatsoever of spending three full days—much less four—in the air. According to the maps there was an isolated stretch of thick forest roughly mid-Wilderness; once I got beyond the area where people were likely to be around, I intended to SNAP straight to that spot and spend two of my days in a pleasant contemplation of the Wilderness, some long naps that I was badly in need of, and catching up an account book I had dutifully brought with me having to do with trade in supplies for magic and a good two months out of date. I could then fly in on the third day and join the Airys for supper with all as it ought to of been.

  Nor need I stay at Castle Airy long; they were loyal there. They were as romantic ... quaint, to put it frankly ... in their loyalty to the Confederation as the Travellers were in their resistance to it. Held a Confederation Day every blessed year on December 12, with speeches and bands and bunting and whatnot, the only one of the Kingdoms to have such an innovation. Stamped the Confederation Seal all over everything, and flew its flag beside the flags of Airy and Ozark at the Castle gate. Any day now I expected them to begin opening souvenir stands or publishing a Confederation Gazette.

  Why they were like that, it was hard to say; if we knew why any Family developed as it did rather than in some other fashion, that would be knowledge. I’d put that a sight higher than any of the scientific discoveries that had earned their originators a Bestowing of land in the past ten years. Or past one hundred, for that matter.

  I jumped suddenly as a squawker flew by me, drawing a bray of disgust from Sterling and scaring the squawker into a plunge that I thought for a minute might prove fatal to the ugly thing. It was a male, its blue-and-white-speckled comb rigid with tenor and its raucous call twice the volume a female could muster. And I supposed it had lost its eggs, along with its way, or forgotten the difference between up and down, assuming it ever had known it. It surely had no business being two hundred feet up in the air interfering with me and my Mule.

  “Never mind the fool thing, Sterling,” I said, and soothed her with a sturdy smack to the shoulder “It’s gone now, and if it doesn’t kill itself it’s headed back to the farm where it belongs.”

  The Mule snorted, reminding me of Granny Golightly, who I was well pleased to have behind me this fine morning, and I smacked her once more for good measure. What makes a Mule think a whack on the shoulder is a caress is a mystery, but it appears to be the way of it. Or perhaps they are sickened by lovepats, and look on the thumping as some kind of comradely, Mle-worthy activity. Mules are the only creatures on Ozark that are capable of telepathic communication with a Magician but refuse to have anything to do with the process; their position appears to be that we should mind our own business and leave them to mind theirs, and they maintain that most effectively. You try mindspeech on a Mule—say to let it know there’s a storm ahead and you’d appreciate it taking cover in a hurry—you’ll get yourself a headache that’ll last you three days. There are, among the Teaching Stories, two or three that have to do with young Magicians looking on this situation as a challenge and trying to force a Mute to mindspeech; they’re gory, as Teaching Stories go. Myself, I leave the mind of the Mule strictly alone.

  I stopped thinking about Mules and thought about landing, which was going to be possible fairly soon. I hadn’t seen any sign of habitation now for a considerable time, and on Oklahomah there was mighty little to block your view once you got ten feet above the trees. I took one more look at the map to be sure I had my coordinates straight, waited twenty more minutes for good measure, and SNAPPED, to Sterling’s great relief. The less of this formal travel the better, so far as she was concerned, and she didn’t need to use her psibilities to make that plain. Her braying didn’t become exactly musical— that would be overstating the case a tad—but it took on a definite tone of musical intention.

  The land below us as the air rippled and cleared was so tangled that I pulled back up to give it another good look; I had no desire to land in a bramble thicket or some such. There was nothing down there but forest, big old trees with their branches all twined and knotted in one among the other and their roots humping out of the ground, and I was hard put to it to see a break where we could set down. It would be dark down there, for sure, and not a likely place to run into anybody, give it that. Then I saw the glint of water to my right, a middle-sized creek by the look of it from where 1 was, and I turned that way. We could head down above the water and make a landing slow to the bank, unless it was thickets all the way to the edge.

  I had to try twice before we found a break in the undergrowth—no wonder nor Clarks, nor Smiths, nor Airys had cared to claim any of this stretch. It’d have to have diamonds under it to make it worth fooling with. I finally located a little bend in the creek where it eased back into a kind of tumble of boulders, several of them big enough for a Mule to stand on with a foot or two of space to spare, and I brought Sterling down. Seeing as how I didn’t want to slide into the water and ruin my clothes totally, I brought her to a full stop in the air first and then we stepped sedately onto the nearest flat place. She was good, but she couldn’t land naturally with no room for a run-in.

  And then I looked around me, and I was satisfied. There could of been forty people in those woods within ten feet and not one of us would of known the others existed, it was that tangled. Dark! My, but it was dark. We’d come down out of clear skies and a brisk wind and scudding little puffs of cloud, all bright and sparkling; down here it was pure gloom. Very satisfactory.

  I had a microviewer with me, and six trashy novels on fiche that I couldn’t of gotten away with taking time to read at home. I could feel my resolve to work on the account book fading away at the very look of this place; it was designed by its Creator for a good read if ever I saw a place that was, and the serious stuff could wait. I would settle in here in this back-of-nowhere and indulge myself while the chance lay there begging to be taken.

  I pulled the smaller saddlebag off the Mule’s back and set it down, careful it wouldn’t slide, and set myself down beside it. The first step, even before I led Sterling down to drink (provided she waited for me to do that, which was not anything to lay bets on), was to change my clothes. I was just pulling off one of the last of my complicated garments when I got into trouble I hadn’t anticipated.

  Whatever it was that had slapped me into that cold water had been big, and because I’d had my head covered up in swathes of lace and velvet I hadn’t seen or heard or smelled it coming. I hoped I’d given the dratted clothes a hard enough pitch to keep them dry, but not hard enough to throw them into a bramble-bush ... or I’d be spending my planned period of self-indulgence manifesting a new set just like them, out here in the middle of nowhere, by magic, with nothing but my emergency kit and whatever happened to grow handy for makings.

  On the rough principle that what had knocked me into the water was not a water creature itself, since it had been on the bank at the time, I dove for the bottom of the creek. It was murk down there, naturally, no nice clear ocean all pretty with water like a gemstone, but it seemed to be clean water, and flowing, and there were no deepwater weeds in my way to get caught in. And about the time I was congratulating myself on that, I discovered that I’d made a major mistake.

  I’d never seen one before, but I recognized the shape of it well enough when I got my eyes open, even through the dark of the water and the stuff I’d stirred up going in. Only one thing on this planet goes with six legs and is the size of the shadow that twisted just ahead of me (I hope), and I was in sizable trouble. The cavecat can climb anything, and it can swim, and it lives to kill; four of the legs are for running, and the other two for slashing and clawing, and the clawing involves eight three-inch razors to every paw. Not to mention its teeth, of which it has more than it needs by a goodly number:

  There are not supposed to be giant cavecats on Oklahomah. Kintucky, maybe, just maybe, though I’d never heard of one showing up there the past thirty years. But the way of things was supposed to be that
cavecats had been wiped out everywhere except in the Tinaseeh Wilderness—where I was convinced the Travellers not only didn’t try to get rid of them but encouraged them, just to keep everybody off. Nevertheless, this was not Tinaseeh, nor yet Kintucky, this was placid, long-settled Oklahomah, with its Wilderness not much more than a pocket hanky as Wildernesses go, and that was a giant cavecat in the water ahead of me. Right smack dab ahead of me. And I could see how, in this backwood tangle, the Family hunts might of missed a specimen or two.

  I didn’t know how well they swam, but I knew if it got to me it would drown me, even if it had to surface and just hold me under with its middle legs while it had all the air it wanted or needed. And I needed air badly, myself. The bottom was right there, and praise the Twelve Comers, it was rocky—I gave myself a hard shove off the cobbly rocks and shot toward the light, with the cat right behind me, and I scrambled out onto the bank and hollered for Sterling.

  Mules. If she’d been there, where I’d left her not two minutes before, I might have been able to SNAP out of that particular hard place before the cat made it out of the water. She wasn’t there, though, nor anywhere in sight. Gone looking for something edible, probably.

  “Sterling, you damn Mule, you, damn your ears and your tail and your bony rump besides!” I shouted, and then I made the very close acquaintance of hundreds of pounds of soaking wet cavecat.

  It pulled me in with one front paw and held me to its chest, which stank the way you’d expect wet cat to stink and then some, and started off across the rocks on the bank. Almost dainty, the way it picked its footing, and in no hurry atall—like any cat, it intended to play with me awhile before it made its kill, and no doubt I was an unusual play-pretty for the nasty thing. If there’d been any people around here in a long, long time we would have known there were still cavecats on Oklahomah ... and I made a note, as it carried me, that when I got back—if I got back—word had to be sent to the three Castles to clear them out.

  It’s amazing how much time a person has to think in a situation like that. Time stretches itself out in front of you, and everything goes to the slowest of all motions, and we went positively stately over those boulders and under arches of trees and through an assortment of bramble thickets. I was bleeding badly, and I was pretty cross, but I didn’t intend to let either interfere with me staying alive. I relaxed, and let just enough blood fall to keep the cavecat’s nostrils contented, and sort of cuddled back into its smelly wet embrace. And waited.

  The problem was the selection of a suitable countermeasure. Common Sense magic would only get me killed—would of had me dead before this, considering the blood I ought to of been losing. The cavecat obviously did not know how frail the hides of humans were, nor that they could die from the loss of their body fluids before it had a chance to have its fun.

  Common Sense magic was not enough, nor Granny Magic. The question was, would Hifalutin Magic do it, or did I have to move clear on up to Formalisms & Transformations? (And make up your mind quick. Responsible, things may seem slow, but this animal is covering the ground at a smart pace and its cave cannot be much farther away!) I needed to be ready the instant it set me down and stretched out to bat me around between its front paws and watch my interesting attempts to get out of its reach—that instant.

  I decided I was not expendable, and whatever firepower I had I’d best use it at its most potent. There was nobody around to see and wonder at a woman using that level of magic, and if there had been I would not have been in any mood to care. Formalisms & Transformations it would be, and all out—now which one? I was a mite short on equipment.

  The cave smelled worse than the cavecat, which I wouldn’t of thought possible in advance. Not that it was fouled—no cat does that, whatever its size—but it had lived there a long time, and it was a tom, and it had marked out all the limits of its territory with great care. It slouched in under a hole in the ground that I doubted I would of spotted as the entrance to anything, and it was suddenly darker than the inside of your head. Not a ray, not a mote, of light was there in that cave ... I had the feeling it was small; no echoes, no water dripping. Just a hole in the ground, perhaps, and not a real cave such as we had flushed these creatures out of long ago on Marktwain. Real enough to die in, however had I intended to die. Which I didn’t.

  It stretched out, long and lazy and reeking, and laid me down between its paws. And it stretched them out, hairy bladed bars on either side of me like a small cage of swords, and it gave me a gentle preliminary swipe with the right one, and batted me back the other way with the left one, to see me roll and hear me whimper

  The Thirty-third Formalism was suitable, and I used it fast, doing it rather well if I do say so myself. Lacking gailherb, I used a strip of flesh from the inside of my upper arm to guarantee Conference; lacking any elixir; I used my own blood to mark out the Structural Description and the desired Structural Change. Make do, my Granny Hazelbide always said; and I made do. It smarted. On the other hand, I would of been embarrassed, dying in a place like this at the whim of a creature with five hundred pounds of brawn and maybe four; five ounces of brain. It would not have been fitting.

  When the cavecat lay purring quietly, content with the fat white pig it now thought was what it had caught originally (assuming it thought at all), and which I had Substituted for my own skinny white form, I gathered my battered self together and crawled on my stomach back out into what passed in these parts for daylight. I found myself regretting very much that there was no way to do a single Formalism—let alone a Transformation—while being clutched to a cavecat’s bosom. Like a Mule landing, I had needed a little space, and I’d gotten mighty beat up before it became available. I was going to have a good night’s work ahead of me cleaning up all this mess, and maybe longer. I looked like something blown through a door with rusty nails in it, and most assuredly my appearance was not anything that would impress the Airys if they could see me now. Or before tomorrow morning, I rather expected.

  “Botheration,” I said, and hollered for Sterling one more time. She turned up at once, naturally, now that I didn’t need her to save my life, and looked at me with the most Mulish distaste.

  “Don’t like my smell, do you?” I muttered. I didn’t blame her; I didn’t like it either. “Let’s get back to the water,” I said, “and I’ll do something about it.”

  I didn’t know the coordinates, or even the general direction, and I was too tired and too weak to SNAP even if I had known them. So I just followed her tail. I could count on her to take me back to where we’d landed, since she wouldn’t be enjoying all these brambles and brush any more than I was. I wanted water; and the medicines in my emergency kit, and the denims I’d been about to put on when this adventure—

  I stopped short, right there. I stopped, battered as I was, and the elaborateness with which I blistered the air all around me impressed even Sterling; her ears went flat back against her head.

  “And plenty of adventures as you go along. That’s required!” she’d said, had dear old Granny Golightly, and I’d ignored her and gone right on talking without so much as an acknowledgment that I’d heard her mention the matter. Nor had I thought of it since. If I hadn’t been so young I’d of thought I was getting old.

  This changed things.

  Sterling brayed at me, and I hushed her.

  “Wait a minute now,” I said. “Let me think.”

  There were but two possible readings. One, this had been an accident, no more, and my simplest course was to heal my wounds and settle and furbish myself to appear at Castle Airy as if I’d had no hair disturbed on my head since I flew out from Castle Clark. Two—this was Granny Golightly’s doing—and she had an amazing confidence in my abilities if it was, or an outright dislike for me—and I should somehow or other contrive to have myself rescued by somebody else ... or whatever. Clear things up just enough to stand it, maybe, throw myself over the Mule’s back at the proper time, and straggle into Castle Airy a victim just short of d
eath.

  Foof. I didn’t know what to do. From Granny Golightly’s perspective I’d been getting off easy; two Castles stopped at already, and not one adventure to show for my trouble yet— hardly the way that things were supposed to be laid out. Under the terms of the Constraints set on a Quest, its success was directly proportional to the number and the severity of the adventures encountered along the way, and Golightly might well have felt she had a duty to support me more than I might of cared to be supported. And if Granny’s story explaining my by-passing Castle Smith was a cavecat mauling, and I showed up unmarked and spoiled it—there’d be trouble. But how was I to know?

  Until Sterling and I made it out onto the bank of the creek again, me fretting all the way and her whuffling, and there, in the absolute middle of nowhere, naked and alone out on a bare gray boulder, sat a pale blue squawker egg. No nest, no squawker, no coop. No farmer. Just the egg. Granny Golightly was mean, but she wasn’t careless; the question was neatly settled, and a few more points to her. I wondered just how far that one’s range extended?

  Well, it was dramatic, I’ll say that for it. There I was at the gates of Airy before the eyes of their greeting party, clinging to Sterling’s mane with one poor little gloved hand, my gorgeous velvets sodden with blood and my hair hanging loose below my waist in a tangle of brambles and weeds and dirt. I chose a spot that looked reasonably soft, pulled up the Mule weakly, moaned about a twenty-two-caliber moan, and slid off gracefully onto the ground at their feet in a bedraggled heap. If I’d been watching, I’m sure my heart would of ached for me.

  They carried me into the Castle at full speed, shouting for the Grannys (the Twelve Corners help this poor Family, they had three of the five Grannys of Oklahomah under their roof), and I allowed a faint “a cavecat ... a huge one ... back there ... “to escape my lips before I surrendered consciousness completely. (Under no circumstances did I intend to undergo the ministrations of three Grannys in any other condition but unconsciousness.)