The Ozark trilogy

by Suzette Haden Elgin

  She smiled, remembering the way the Traveller delegation had behaved about the switches that turned things on in Castle Brightwater; she’d seen a mother smack her tadling’s fingers for touching one, like he’d put his hand into goat droppings.

  No, they were pure as pure, using the power of sun and wind and water and plain old-fashioned muscle-and magic. Which was where the trouble lay. Magic. Common Sense Level, available to everybody unless they just plain weren’t interested, same as the times tables and the alphabet were. Middle Level, for the ambitious, or those as didn’t care to be overdependent on the Grannys. Granny Magic, for the Grannys only; Hifalutin Magic, for the Magicians. And for the Magicians of Rank, the highest level-the Formalisms & Transformations. Power there and to spare-at least you could turn a robot off!

  She decided she hadn’t the courage to send down for tea at this hour of the day; it was twenty minutes till time for supper. She pulled on a plain blue dress, left her feet bare to irritate her mother, and padded on down the halls and stairways to the kitchen. She could ask for coffee, anyway.

  “Evening, Miss Responsible,” said the women when they saw her, and a servingmaid smiled and said she was pleased to see her looking rested.

  “Thank you, Shandra of Clark--ladies. Do you suppose I could have a cup of your coffee?”

  They settled her at the big kitchen table with a mug of coffee strong enough to make the spoon stand up straight in it, and she began to feel that she might be able to face the Family for supper after all. She’d rather far have stayed in the kitchen, or eaten in the staff’s own diningroom-but that was for tadlings. And she was going on fifteen.

  At which point in her musings, the Senior Servingmaid set down a long narrow basket in front of her and said, “For you, Miss Responsible, from all of us, and many happy returns,” and she realized that she’d stopped going on fifteen and gotten there.

  “Youall spoil me,” she said, and it was true. They did. For all they had to take from her in the way of scolding about the dust on the furniture and the polish not being high enough on the floors and too much salt in the cornbread-they spoiled her all the same.

  “Open it, miss,” said the Castle Housekeeper, that somebody’d just brought in to see the event. “Go on, now.”

  The basket was new woven, with a handsome R worked right into the lid, and two strong handles, and she’d of been satisfied just to have that for her birthday gift; she looked up at them, surprised.

  “Open it!”

  She lifted off the lid and looked inside, and saw why the basket had had to be such a big one and needed a braced bottom. Inside was a little dulcimer, like the one she’d lost on her Quest, dropping it right off the Mule’s back into the ocean-only much prettier. It had inlays of shell all along the sounding boards, three hearts and a rose with two leaves to it. Her old one had been just plain wood.

  “The basket won’t do to keep it in, Miss Responsible,” said the Housekeeper apologetically. “We had to tip it to get it in there just for the giving. But I expect you’ll find a use for a big basket like that all the same, and we wanted you to have both.”

  Responsible smiled at them, and turned red, and wished she could think of something to say. People being nice to her was too rare for her to have developed any skills in dealing with it; it always took her aback and left her foolish.

  And even more, she wished that she could sing decently, but there was no use wishing that. Might as well wish for wings. She settled for taking the instrument out of the basket, laying it across her lap, and playing them three verses of the easiest song she knew.

  “Ah, it has a sweet tone!” she said, then, while they clappedspoiling her some more-and laid it to her cheek. “I thank you . . . so much.”

  “It pleasured us to do it,” they said, and then the Housekeeper spoke up on the subject of what Thorn of Guthrie would do to them if supper was late to the table, and they scurried around the kitchen while Responsible sat and glowed at them.

  “Sally of Lewis,” she asked the Housekeeper, “just how did youall know I wanted another dulcimer?”

  “The way you’d treasured that one the Granny had made for you when you were a little bit of a thing? And then losing it like you did? Why, miss, it didn’t take all that much brains to puzzle it out that you’d be yearning after another one. It’s small, but then so was your lost one. We did wonder about that. Might could be you’d rather of had a proper one, instead of a child’s. But you were so fond of the other one. . .”

  “You did just right,” Responsible assured her. “I couldn’t manage a bigger one. It’s beautiful, and I love you one and all for thinking of me. It must have taken a precious long time to make it -and the basket, too.”

  “We all worked at it, miss,” said Sally of Lewis. “It went fast that way.”

  “Bless your hearts,” said Responsible.

  “We’ll need more than our hearts blessed,” the Housekeeper told her, “if you don’t get yourself on in to supper. They’ll be waiting on you.”

  “Law! I’d forgotten all about it!” Responsible touched all the hands she could reach, tucked her dulcimer under one arm and the basket under the other, changed her mind and hid the dulcimer away in the basket again while Sally of Lewis fretted, and hightailed it for the diningroom.

  And then as she went out the door the woman called after her suddenly, “Oh, miss!”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t want to forget . . . one of the stablemen was up here not thirty minutes ago, saying as how that Mule of yours is acting up.”

  “Acting up, Sally of Lewis?” Responsible turned back and leaned against the doorframe. “He have any idea what was wrong with the creature?”

  “No, miss-he’d had the Granny down to look at it; and he told me the Granny said you were to go see to the Mule yourself, after supper. I expect you’d best ask her what the trouble is.”

  Responsible nodded slowly, thinking, and stared at the floor.

  “Is something wrong, miss? You look right peaked to me-and you’re about to crush that basket.”

  “It’s the potion Granny gave me last night,” said Responsible quickly. “That and lying in bed this whole day long.”

  “I know what you mean-nothing makes a person feel more like leftovers than lying all day abed doing nothing. You go on in and get a good meal under your ribs, you’ll feel better.”

  “And then she’ll be turned around entirely,” commented one of the servingmaids. “Sleep all day, you can’t sleep that night . . . it goes on and on.”

  “Half a potion this night,” agreed another one. “To straighten things out. You speak to the Granny, miss; and we’ll see to it your tea’s brought up as soon as it’s light tomorrow morning.”

  Responsible thanked them, and they wished her a happy birthday one more time, and she thanked them for that, and then she headed with a pounding heart for the diningroom.

  Granny Hazelbide, seated at Thorn of Guthrie’s left hand, looked a little peaked herself, Responsible thought, as she slipped into her own place at the corner of the table where her left elbow wouldn’t always be poking people as she ate.

  “Nice of you to honor us with your presence,” said her mother, tart as bad vinegar, and Ruth of Motley moved right in over that with “Happy Birthday, Responsible!” and the salutations ran round the table.

  “Thank you kindly,” she said.

  “How does it feel to be fifteen?” asked her uncle Donald Patrick. “You find gray hairs on your head this morning?”

  She was of the opinion that her hair would be snow-white by the following morning, if the message about her Mule was what she thought it had to be, but she didn’t intend to tell him that.

  “Just one,” she said. “And I pulled it out.”

  Emmalyn of Clark, Jubal Brooks’s wife, set down the forkful of fried squawker she’d had halfway to her mouth and shook a warning finger.

  “I hope to goodness you burned that hair, Responsible of Brightwater!”
Emmalyn declared. “No telling who might find it, you know.”

  The other women at the table avoided one another’s eyes, and Responsible waited, wondering if her mother would be able to resist the chance to make a remark about how Responsible hadn’t even been out of bed the whole day and couldn’t therefore have found any gray hairs among the black ones. When her mother said nothing, she was pleased; perhaps, as time went by, she’d mellow.

  “I took care of it, Emmalyn,” she said courteously. “But I thank you for the reminder.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” said Emmalyn. “You can’t be too careful these days. Such goings-on I’m sure I never heard of before as we’ve had since this year began. It makes me nervous.”

  “Emmalyn of Clark,” said Granny Hazelbide, “you wouldn’t be nervous if you didn’t dwell on everything. It’s not healthy, the way you do, and it’s time you gave it up and had babies instead.”

  It wasn’t especially nice of the Granny, saying that, seeing as how it was due to her judicious alterations here and there in Emmalyn’s diet that she and Jubal Brooks were still without a single babe and them married almost six years now. But Granny Hazelbide was out of sorts, and Emmalyn irritated her rather more than somewhat.

  “Now, Granny Hazelbide,” put in Ruth of Motley, “I’m sure Emmalyn does the best she can.”

  “Emmalyn has always been delicate, haven’t you, Emmalyn?” said her sister Patience of Clark demurely.

  Emmalyn gloried in being called delicate, and while she was glowing with pleasure and Jubal Brooks was patting her hand to show he too appreciated her frailties, she forgot all about Responsible’s one gray hair and the hazards thereof.

  “Responsible,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “you going to tell us what you’ve got there in that basket by your feet, or not? It’s big enough to hold a morning’s firewood, or a couple of babies set head to toe, if they scrunched up a tad. You can’t expect us not to be curious.”

  Responsible hadn’t realized she’d been so obvious with the basket; that showed how distracted she was, and Granny Hazelbide clucked her tongue.

  “A birthday present from the staff,” she said, and showed them all the lid with her initial worked in, and the dulcimer tucked inside.

  “Law,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “here I was so grateful when you lost the old one, and now you’re all equipped again. They must be out of their minds.”

  The uncles chuckled, and Emmalyn fell in behind them, and Responsible gave the basket a shove with her toe to get it out of sight under the table. “I had no plans of singing to you, Mother,” she told Thorn of Guthrie. “I believe you can stop worrying about it.”

  “Won’t be caterwauling under my window in the middle of the night, eh?”

  There went Thorn-prick and poke, poke and prick. Responsible had been six years old, and the dulcimer Granny’d given her brand-new, the year she’d decided it would be appropriate to celebrate Thorn’s birthday by serenading her from under her bedroom window. It had not been a great success.

  “No, ma’am,” said Responsible. “Set your mind at rest.” Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater the 12th put his oar in then. “Thorn,” he said, “you are downright mean. I don’t know what keeps you from pickling in your own juices, I tell you I don’t. Pass your girl some food here before she faints away-that’s the least you can do, I happen to know you forgot her birthday again-and stop your jabbing at her. Listening to you, I understand why Troublesome stays on top her mountain and won’t come down; shows good sense on her part, if you ask me. You trying to drive Responsible off the same way?”

  Ah, thought Responsible; the bosom of her family. However, at one hundred and nine a man had certain privileges, and Thorn of Guthrie apologized charmingly to her father-in-law, who responded that he should think she would be sorry.

  “You get my message, young lady?” Granny Hazelbide asked, as if it had been maybe something about piece goods.

  “I did,” said Responsible. “And I’ll see to it.”

  “You do that,” said the Granny. “Pass the gravy, Emmalyn!” Jubal Brooks was a swift eater; he pushed his plate away and concentrated on his coffee, and Responsible felt him looking at her from under his thick black brows.

  “Something on your mind, Jubal Brooks?” she asked him. Might as well be helpful.

  “Yes, as it happens,” he said. “I’m wondering. You’ve had a day off now-don’t remember you having one since that time you were taken so sick three years ago. And the Jubilee’s over-for five hundred years or forever, whichever comes first. Now I’m wondering what you plan to do starting tomorrow morning.”

  “Well,” said Responsible, “I plan to be busy.”

  “So Granny Hazelbide told us,” said Ruth of Motley, “and she was right sharp about it, too.”

  “Details!” said Jubal Brooks. “That’s what I want to hear.”

  Emmalyn smiled proudly. She fancied her husband something of a power in the Castle, especially when he was being forceful like he was now. And Responsible gave up pretending to eat.

  “First thing that happens tomorrow,” she told them, “is we cut back the comset power till it transmits only to the borders of this Kingdom. For example.”

  Both of the uncles whistled long and low, and Jonathan Cardwell swore a round oath, women or no women. “You don’t plan on the grass growing under your feet, do you, missy?” he demanded. “You really think it has to be done that fast? Law, and I was calling your mother mean!”

  “Has to be done,” said Responsible, “and it won’t be a whit easier next week than tomorrow. Whatever a whit is.”

  “But what will people do?” quavered Emmalyn. “How’ll they get messages around and how’ll they get the news? And what’s going to happen to the lessons for the older kids, and-”

  “Emmalyn,” answered Responsible, “I don’t have any idea whatsoever what `people’ will do. That’s `people’s’ own problem.”

  “Responsible,” said Donald Patrick slowly, “this isn’t going to be much help to business, you know. Are you sure we oughtn’t to have a kind of transition period here, while some other arrangements are worked out?”

  Responsible stared at him.

  “As I recall,” she said coldly, “when the delegations of the Twelve Kingdoms began whooping and hollering their votes to dissolve the Confederation of Continents, you made no least move to stop them-though you were chairing at the time and the whole procedure was out of order. I don’t recall you even saying `point of order,’ Donald Patrick.”

  “The sense of the meeting was clear!”

  “It was that. And a part of the sense of the meeting was that there was to be no more central government, am I not right? And that we were, as of the moment that fool vote went round, twelve separate and sovereign nations, each to its own self. You correct me, Donald Patrick, if I’m wrong.”

  When he didn’t answer her, she went on.

  “I can’t quite see how, without taxes from the other eleven Kingdoms, we could manage here at Brightwater to continue a planetwide communications system. You ask the Economist what it costs to run the comsets if you think it can be done for the price of eggs, dear Uncle. Furthermore, it appears to me that sending out comset broadcasts from this separate and sovereign nation into the other separate and sovereign nations would constitute interference in their national affairs. I surely wouldn’t want to be guilty of that, would you? Downright unboonely. Sticking our noses in where they’re not wanted.”

  “Responsible,” said Donald Patrick, “when those comsets go dead, all over this world, there’s going to be an uproar like . . . like . . .”

  “They’ll have to send their uproar by ship, Mule, or lizzy,” said Responsible grimly. “They’ll not be sending anything else by comset.”

  “Oh, now,” said Jubal Brooks, still staring at her, and his coffee going stone-cold in his cup, “I object! There’s no need to go off into extremes like that, and you never said a word of warning before the vote.”


  Granny Hazelbide saved her the trouble of answering.

  “You mean to tell me,” she demanded, beating her fork on the edge of her plate to point out her opinions, “you mean to sit there and tell me that a whole roomful of grown men, and those men trusted these past I don’t know how many years with the governing of this entire planet, they needed to be told such baby stuff as that?”

  “Well, Granny Hazelbide, I don’t know that I care for your tone!” he protested. “We were fully cognizant of the political facts. Fully cognizant!”

  The Granny snorted and went back to her eating, talking through the mouthfuls.

  “Would of done you a sight more good to be just a tad cognizant-cognizant!-of the practical common-sense facts,” she said. “I’m with Responsible; it never would of entered my head that you men all assumed the Kingdoms could pull out of the Confederation and put crowns on all their pointy little heads and still count on all the services to go on just like they always had. And no reason it should of entered Responsible’s head, either-it was obvious to a plain fool. You men made your decision; now you can live with it.”

  “You can be certain,” put in Responsible, “that Castle Traveller had thought of every one of the practical consequences. And were mighty careful not to point them out to any of the rest of the baa-goats in the room, who-I might add-it is not my place to lead by the hand and pick up after. Why didn’t you think?”

  “Responsible, you can’t talk to Jubal like that,” said Emmalyn, and then jumped as Patience pinched her under the table.

  “I beg your pardon, Emmalyn,” said Responsible, “but I suggest you consider carefully what your Jubal, and the rest of the Brightwater men present at the Hall-not to mention our so-called friends and allies-allowed to happen. Then, you care to speak sharp to me on their behalf, I’ll listen to you.”

  “Responsible-”

  “If,” she went on, “if procedure’d been held to, as Donald Patrick had full authority to insist that it should be-he was Chair, remember?-if there’d been the rest of the speeches for and against, and the rebuttals, as the law calls for, then there’d of been time for these matters to be raised. One of the Lewis delegates, someone from Castle McDaniels or Castle Motley, someone among you distinguished gentlemen, would no doubt have asked the necessary questions. Such as: how did the others plan to get along without the comset system, that’s been broadcast from Brightwater these many hundred years? Such as: what happens to supply deliveries, that have been worked out and run by the computers at Castle Brightwater since the day they were hooked upand the only Kingdoms with ships large enough to serve as supply transport are Brightwater and Guthrie?”