The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  “You are seeing it,” she told herself sternly. “Behold . . .”

  From a carven box the Attendant took something else, and he placed it with laborious pomp upon his Master’s brow. A crown, beyond all question a crown. It shone under the lights the room required in the gloom of the rainy day, a heavy golden crown with a puffed insert of velvet and fur to match the cloak . . .

  She began to believe it, and she sank right down on the floor to watch the spectacle as it was repeated all over the room at the Hall, flickering there on the screen. His brothers weren’t quite so splendid as Delldon Mallard, their heads were decked with coronets and they held no scepters; the sons, miniatures of the brothers except for an extra gewgaw or two on the costume of Delldon’s boy, looked miserable with both the heat and the attention. And up in the balcony, while every Granny clutched her knitting to her breast in shock, the servingmaids removed the outer cloaks of the Smith women and completed the final touches to their gaudy array.

  “I give you,” bellowed Delldon Mallard Smith, “my brothersthe Dukes of Smith!” He swung his arm wide in a gesture of presentation, and the Attendant next to him ducked hastily, but not quite hastily enough. “I give you my son, the Crown Prince Jedroth Langford Smith the Ninth! My nephews, who will be Dukes one day, and now bear proudly the title of Baronet! I give you my wife and my consort, Queen Marygold of Purdy, Queen of my Kingdom!” And on and on down the list, ending with the Crown Princess, Her Gentle Highness Dorothy of Smith.

  Dorothy, that had always been a pincher. Marygold of Purdy, that had never sent in an order totaled correctly in her life, even when it was for just one item. The Royal Family.

  Delldon Mallard Smith wasn’t through, of course; that would of been too much to expect. “That,” he went on, giving the back of the seat ahead of him three solid thumps with his scepter and making everybody sitting there jump, “that is what a Kingdom is! It has a King! A Queen! All those things that properly . . . uh . . . belong to a Kingdom, it has those things! And when every Family of Ozark has fulfilled its responsibility to First Granny, when every Kingdom has its King and its Queen, then at long last we shall see an end to the tribulations that we have suffered these last ten centuries . . . For it was not the Confederation of Continents that brought our troubles upon us-begging your pardon, Delegate Traveller, but that is . . . uh . . . a misinterpretation. It was the failure, the failure to establish twelve proper Kingdoms as First Granny intended us to do!”

  An Ozarker hesitated to shoot at a sitting duck; but there was one careful question, put by a delegate with his eyes fixed on the ceiling above him and not on the man he addressed. He wondered, just wondered, why First Granny had never seen fit to mention this dreadful mistake.

  It didn’t bother the King of Castle Smith. The whole thing having come to him in a dream, it all being a revelation, as he reminded them he had already stated, he knew the answer to that. “Just plain stubborn,” he said flatly. “She wouldn’t stoop, not First Granny! If we were such plain fools we couldn’t see it, why, we could . . . uh . . . just suffer the consequences. And we have -and we’ve deserved them every last one. It tears at the heart to think of it, First Granny sitting through all those long years waiting, waiting for . . . uh . . . somebody to see the light, and going to her grave with her wishes still denied her . . . It makes a man . . . it brings a man close to tears.” And he wiped ostentatiously at the corner of one eye with a bit of his white fur cuff.

  Responsible would have given half her repertoire of Formalisms & Transformations at that moment for a chance to see the faces of the Grannys up in the balcony, listening to a pitiful fool make out the first of their number to have had less sense than he had.

  There was more, but she was past hearing it. She had thought, she truly had thought that she had considered every possible alternative. But she had been sorely mistaken, for this had never crossed her mind. Not only had it not come in a dream, like a revelation, it had not even drifted through a nightmare! Why, even on Old Earth, even before the Twelve Families left it in disgust, there had been no more Kings and Queens that she knew of. Maybe somewhere in the backwaters of that dying world there’d been a relic monarchy or two, but for the true nations of Earth the days of royalty had been the days of fantasy and fairy tale-and that was one thousand years ago.

  What would they do now, she wondered, not sure she really cared anymore; she couldn’t decide which word was more fitting“tragic” or “hilarious”-and her head felt entirely scrambled. This explained a number of things, all in a swoop. Why Granny Gableframe wasn’t here; no Granny would have countenanced such a charade. Why the Smiths had come late-to call even more attention to their foolish selves and their ridiculous plan, and to avoid the consequences of coming so unhandily late in the alphabet. Why the Smiths had so rudely shut their Castle doors to Responsible when it had been their turn to show her hospitality on her Quest-they’d been afraid that she would see something that would give their scheme away and lose them the advantage of surprise. Surprise they had, and no question about it. The loudest silence Responsible had ever heard lay over the Independence Room; she fancied she could hear that silence spreading out all the way to the Castle. And Delldon Mallard Smith, fool that he was, was not such a fool as to lose that advantage. While he faced no more than a pack of stunned and dumbfounded males, with the females above him helpless to interfere, he called out, “Mr. Chairman, I move we put the motion to a vote now! With no further delay!”

  “Second!” bellowed the Dukes of Smith in chorus. And the Chair, her own uncle, in his own state of shock, quavered, “All in favor say aye,” and the ayes came out of mouths that no more knew what they were saying than if they’d been babes in the cradle-and the act was done.

  And in the Smith row, where she’d not seen him before, Responsible saw the beaming face of Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39th, Magician of Rank of Castle Smith. He was pleased, ah, he was delighted; he’d be dancing in the aisle any minute now. What had he done to Granny Gableframe, she thought, to keep her away, and keep her from warning Responsible that this monstrous thing was in the planning? If he’d harmed the old woman, Responsible would see that he paid . . . but he no doubt knew that. If there’d been any hazard he’d not of been grinning the way he was.

  It was over. Over!

  Not done properly, of course. Few of the delegates had had their opportunity to speak, and no rebuttals had been offered. Any one of the neglected men could of cried “Point of order!” and demanded that the procedures be observed, that had been their right; but they had not. The Travellers had no doubt been holding their breaths for fear someone would come to his senses enough to halt what Delldon Mallard had set in motion. And the Brightwaters, like everyone else, had been vacant-minded with amazement, and miserable with embarrassment, and had let the opportunity pass by and the ayes fall from their mouths as if they didn’t matter . . .

  “Men!” shouted Responsible then, outraged to the point of physical sickness, and she kicked the ailing comset with all her strength. “Bad cess to every last one of them!”

  She was not alone in her opinion.

  Down the center aisle of the Independence Room strode a figure that ought to show Delldon Mallard Smith and his Dukes and Princes what majesty was. She stood almost six feet tall; she was slender as a blade of grass, but there was no hint of frailty to her; a black braid was wound round her head in a coronet that was natural in its magnificence and needed no gold to set it off. And her beauty! In the long periods of time that passed between her rare opportunities to see her sister, Responsible tended to forget the almost awesome beauty that Troublesome of Brightwater carried so casually. She wore a riding costume of plain brown leather, faded and worn, and the heels of her riding boots rang against the polished marble floor, and there was no ornament on her anywhere. She needed none, and Responsible hoped the Smith women were aware of the contrast, them in their gleaming crowns, and their necks and hands hung with baubles like something up for sale on
the cheap!

  Troublesome needed nothing to carry her voice, either. She gave the Chair-Donald Patrick Brightwater the 133rd, him of the popular name--one glance of contempt that should have withered him into fragments right then and there, and turned to face the remnants of Ozark’s government. And while she shouted at them, her voice echoing back from the walls, Responsible wept and clapped and cheered, and so did the Grannys, one and all.

  “Now you’ve done it, you cursed fools!” shouted Troublesome of Brightwater. “Now you’ve gone and done it! I’ve seen foolishness in my day, I thought I’d seen all the kinds of foolishness there were, but you have topped it all! The year three thousand and twelve, this is; a time when we could if we so chose travel from star to star across our skies; a time when the marvels of magic have taken from the backs of our people the burdens that other ages thought the natural lot of humankind forevermore. A time of wonder-if we chose that it should be . . . But you, you Smiths! You Smiths! You choose to throw us back into the darkest of Dark Ages; shall we have the pox, too, to make our Kingdoms more authentic? Eh, Your Majesty?”

  She waited, and when nobody challenged her, she went on.

  “And I’m a fool, too,” she said, “to stand here wasting my voice on youall. My fellow fools, I should be saying. My dear, fellow fools . . . You’ve done it, you’re a Confederation no longer; you’ve thrown away five hundred years of striving toward a respectable system of government, thrown it away for a mass of confusion and a pile of chaos, thrown it away for a cheap parlor trick that left you all gawking at the funny man and his funny hat and his funny scepter . . . I speak for Brightwater-no, dear Uncle, you stood and let this pass without a word, don’t you interfere with me now, and don’t you presume to speak for us!-I, Troublesome of Brightwater, l speak for this Castle and this Kingdom, and I tell you to get out of this room and out of this Hall and out of my sight! You sicken me, you disgrace this ancient building . . . Goats have more sense than you, I’ll let them in here; Brightwater will stable its Mules in here, they have an intelligence that merits it. But you! Fools! In the name of the Twelve Bleeding Suffering Gates, begone from here before I take a whip to your pitiful backs . . . and don’t you think, don’t you think for one breath, that I wouldn’t! You deserve whatever happens to you now . . . and Brightwater will weep no tears for you!”

  Her voice ran them from the room as surely as if it had been a whip, and in the magnificence of her rage she was as sure a scourge as an earthquake or a flood would have been, and even the Magicians of Rank went scurrying out of the Hall with all the speed they could manage.

  As for the Royal Family . . . they were a tad encumbered in their heavy velvets, and no doubt suffering greatly from the heat in them. And Responsible cackled like a squawker in its coop to see two of the Baronets-Baronets! they could at least have gotten the titles right!-chasing down the aisles after the little golden circlets that had fallen from their unaccustomed heads.

  Chapter 9

  Granny Hazelbide came straight to Responsible’s room to tell her about what she’d missed.

  “Law, you’d of been proud of your sister!” she said, rocking fast. “You saw her order that pack of cowards and ninnies out of the Hall; you should of seen ‘em scurry, like something was yapping at their tailfeathers, and all the `royal’ Smiths tripping over their purple trains!” The Granny smacked her knee and chortled deep in her throat. “And then your sister went all around that Hall, child, and she locked every window in every room, all three stories of them, and she locked the back door and the side doors, and then she threw the bolts and slammed the front door as well. Left the place tight as a cast iron egg, she did. And then she marched out to get her Mule-know where she’d hitched it?”

  “To the statue on the lawn, I expect,” said Responsible.

  “Quite right, quite right, and tied up to First Granny’s left ankle! She untied that Mule and rode it right down the street and out of town with never so much as a look back at anybody, but there was no trouble atall reading what she was thinking purely from the look of her back! Not to mention the Mule’s, but we’ll leave that lie. I never thought to see such a sight as I saw today, never in all my life-and I’m sorry you weren’t there. Your delegates were damned fools, which comes as no surprise; but your feisty sister! Law, Responsible, she was a privilege to behold and an honor to observe!”

  “I didn’t even get to say hello to her,” said Responsible slowly. “And I wanted to, Granny-I realized, the other day, I’ve been missing her.”

  Granny Hazelbide stretched out her hand and tucked in a strand of the girl’s hair that had come loose from the ribbon binding it back. “She came when you sent for her, child,” she said gently. “There’s nobody else alive she’d do that for.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to make do with that.”

  “I reckon you will-and appreciate it.”

  “Granny?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “Tell me how that happened.”

  “Tell you where one end of a wedding ring starts and the other ends, you mean? It’s that kind of question.”

  Responsible ignored her, and kept worrying at it.

  “How,” she demanded, “after all the planning, and all the discussing, and all the saying what we’d do if this happened and how we’d do if that happened, and all the rest of it . . . how could such a fool thing happen?”

  “You’ve put your finger on it,” said Granny Hazelbide. “We had all our preparations made, like you said, for many a different comealong; but we never thought to prepare against a fool thing! And that is how they got us. You can use all the logic you like, seeing what this cause will do for this consequence . . . but nobody’s so wise they can plan for fools. There’s no logic to a fool, Responsible, just no logic atall-remember that.”

  Responsible swallowed hard, and nodded, not that it would do her much good to remember it.

  “What’s happening now, Granny Hazelbide?” she asked. “I don’t have the heart to go see for myself.”

  “Just about what you’d expect to be happening,” said the Granny. “As fast as they can pack up, the Families are riding out of here, flying out of here, sailing out of here. They can’t look each other in the eye, and for sure they can’t look at the Brightwaters! They’re stuffing their faces in the diningrooms, making their hastiest excuses to your mother, and then heading for their homes like the sorry shamed creatures they rightly ought to consider theirselves.”

  She fanned herself briskly; she’d come as close to a run on her way here as a woman of ninety could get, and she was feeling the warmth.

  “It’d of been a mighty different thing if it’d been done right,” she went on. “Say the Confederation had fallen, in spite of the speeches and the rebuttals, there’d still have been the other three days of the Jubilee. Jeremiah Thomas Traveller would of organized it all so each of the Twelve Kingdoms could of met in smaller rooms of the Hail, and he’d of had trade treaties going, and plans drawn up for Parliaments or some such all around, and brand-new Ambassadors flying back and forth from room to room, feeling important . . . It wouldn’t of been what we wanted-but it would still of been a Jubilee, and done with dignity! This was a Mule of a different breed, Responsible. None of ‘em quite realizes yet what’s been done, none of ‘em wants to admit they behaved like tadlings deciding who’s to be It-they just want to be gone, with their tails between their legs. Purple velvet tails, in the case of the Smiths.”

  “Well,” said Responsible bitterly, “the Economist should be happy. This will save Castle Brightwater three days’ rations for near on two hundred people, and a respectable number of Mules.”

  “It’s a sorry mess, child, and a scandalous waste.”

  “Not just for us, Granny-think of the Lewises. They’ve got no money to spend on frills like trips to Brightwater, but they sent twenty-four, and every last one of them in Sundy best . . . I know how long they had to save to do that.”

  “There was no way we cou
ld of known,” Granny Hazelbide insisted.

  “There should of been!”

  “And there should be only bliss and glory, but there isn’t. How many nights did you spend casting Spells, trying to see your way through this, Responsible’? Not even the Magicians of Rank could say how it would come out. All any of you got for your efforts was `There’ll be trouble’! I remember.”

  She stood up then, and brushed her skirts down, looking grim. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you that there’s a piece of trouble left over,” she muttered.

  “Ah, Granny! A piece of trouble-we haven’t even seen the beginning of the troubles yet!”

  “This is something . . . more ordinary.”

  “What? What’s happened?”

  “Well, now, it seems as there’s a Bridgewraith.”

  “Oh, Granny Hazelbide!” Responsible knew she must look despair doubled and pleated, but it was too much. “Not now!”

  “Now,” sighed the Granny. “You recollect that little bit of a bridge on Pewter Street, the one they call Humpback, though it has about as much of a hump as I do-that’s where she is.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “For sure I do. It’s Mynna of McDaniels. But there being strangers in town, and young people as weren’t here when Mynna died-she’s been taken home twice already. They say her mother’s in a sorry state, Responsible; Mynna’s been dead it must be twenty years this October. Two of the Airy Grannys are down in the diningroom this minute telling those as are left eating not to pay Mynna any mind no matter how she cries and begs; but it won’t be easy. Mynna was a pretty little thing, and she’s standing on the bridge crying fit to kill, wearing the blue dress she had on the day she tripped and fell off that bridge into the water. Hit her head on a rock, Mynna did, and drowned in water not even six foot deep, and her a good strong swimmer for a girl of ten. I remember it like it was yesterday.”