Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms (21 page)

“Likely,” she said. “Likely!”

“Granny, you know I’m right,” I said, “you a Brightwater by birth; and every Castle on this planet knows quite well why I’m traveling round it. You’re in a wild place here for sure, but this high up the reception on your comsets is certain to be perfect.
You
know why I’m here!”

“Took you long enough,” she muttered.

“No comset on my Mule, Granny,” I said. “I’ve been four days, and all of them
long
days, flying here, and I’ve landed only to make my camp and sleep; I’ve had no news. If I’d known there was trouble here I’d not of stopped for anything.”

She sighed then, and settled back, and I plumped up her pillows for her,

“Speak up. Granny Copperdell,” I said. “For I’ve had not one sensible word out of anybody else in this house—what am I up against?”

“Three days ago, it began,” she said. “You’d already left Castle Purdy, I reckon.”

“Started sudden?”

“A child’s sitting on a windowsill, playing with a pretty and eating a biscuit, happy and fit as a bird,” she told me. “And then in two breaths that child is burning alive with fever, and racked head to foot with misery, and writhing like a birthing woman, fit to break your heart. I’ve never seen anything, not anything, so quick.”

I touched her forehead, though she pulled away from my hand; it was blazing hot.

“What kind of sickness is it?” I asked her

“Well. I wish I
knew
that!” she said, fretting, and turned her head side to side on the pillows. “Think I’d be lying here like an old fool if I knew that? If I knew even the name, it might could be I’d know what to tell the idiot females in this Castle to do ... what’s its name, that’s half the battle won any time.”

“And the Magician doesn’t know either”

I said that under my breath, thinking out loud, and regretted it immediately. A Magician could set bones, and take out sick and useless organs such as an appendix, and deal with cancers. If it had been any of those, the Magician would already have taken care of the matter. And there was no Magician of Rank on Kintucky.

“I’m sorry, Granny Copperdell,” I said, before she could start on me, “I wasn’t thinking straight; just forget I said it. But you help me ... tell me the symptoms of this stuff. Even the little things that you don’t really think matter.”

“High fever,” she said, reciting it like a lesson. “Racking pain in every joint and bone and muscle. That’s likely the worst of it, that pain. All the lymph glands swollen and tender, especially in the armpits. A bloody flux, and pain high on the right of the belly. Rash around the ankles and the hands, and a flaming red patch over both cheeks. Sores in the mouth, sores in the privates ... Hurts to breathe, hurts to swallow, hurts to hear any noise much over a whisper—that’s why the windows are shuttered, child.”

“What have you tried for it?”

“Everything a Granny knows, and some made up new,” she said. “And none of it any use.” She was in no danger but she was exhausted, and I was wearying her more. “I’m not a good patient for you to be observing,” she said accurately, “I’m hardly touched with it yet, and tough as I am I doubt it’ll get much worse. You go look at the others and you’ll see what it’s like.”

“Can I get you anything, Granny, before I do that?”

“You can get
on
with it, and leave off pestering me!”

I plumped the pillows up again, and checked to see that the water was easy to her reach, and I went on out and closed the door behind me. She’d keep a long while yet.

Ah, but the others; they were another matter altogether. I counted fifty-one, and they were truly sick. Even Granny Goodweather. She didn’t so much as ask me my name when I leaned over her, and that frightened me.

They lay in their beds and they twisted, slowly—I can think of no other way to describe it. As if they hung from intolerable bonds. One arm would stretch, the fingers spread like claws, pushing, pushing till I thought the fingerioints would crack, and then the other arm, pushing against some unseen wall. And then the legs, one at a time, stretching till the soles of the bent feet lay flat against the mattress. And no more would the foot reach its terrible extension than it began to move back upon itself ... and then the arms would start. It was like a horrible, endless, solemn, tortured, dance of death; and it was very clear that it hurt them like raw flames. There were women from the town trying to tend them, but I could see that they weren’t accomplishing much. Changing the bedlinens and bathing flesh, bringing them water to drink and soothing the little ones ... that seemed to be it.

As for treason, the thought was indecent. The Wommacks were so grimly convinced their whole household was cursed that they considered the most absolute neutrality no more than their duty toward their fellows. Even when they were without other troubles to distract them, no Wommack took sides, for fear their bad luck would rub off on the side they’d chosen. With things as they were here right now, 1 could put all else out of my mind and consider only this sickness.

As it happened, I did know what it was. But I wasn’t that surprised the Grannys hadn’t recognized it, especially since they’d come down with it almost immediately themselves. They’d not really had time to think before their own fever set in, and it was not a common disease.

I went down the stairs and found the Wommacks still gathered there silently, waiting for me, and I had a strong suspicion looking at them that most—including the Master of this Castle—would be in their beds themselves before the day was out. Considering the number sick upstairs, they’d made a brave showing, and I credited them for that; but not a one that wasn’t white around the mouth, and the red tinge coming up on their cheeks, hectic, and a line of beads of moisture at the edge of the coppery hair to betray them further. All that time out in the sun with me had surely done them no good, and I’d of bet the party food they’d put down lay heavy in their stomachs this minute like Kintucky stone.

“I know what it is,” I said to them, not bothering to dawdle and back and fill.

“But neither of the Grannys had any idea, nor the Magician either!” objected a thin boy by the name of Thomas Lincoln Wommack the 9
^th
.

“Well, I
do
,” I said, “whoever does or doesn’t, and the Grannys would of known, too, if they hadn’t been taken themselves before they could run it down. What you have upstairs, by my count, is fifty-one cases of something called Andersen’s Disease. Or, if you prefer less formality, some call it deathdance fever—which does describe it. And looking at youall, I see a few more cases to add to the count—you’d better every one of you get to your beds.”

“And those upstairs?” asked Gilead.

“You need capable people up there, taking care of your sick,” I said. “Not townswomen wandering around wondering where to fling water next. It’s no trifle, this disease, people can
die
of it! Why haven’t you sent for help?”

They looked at me, and I looked back, and I said a broad word, not caring particularly if I did shock their sensibilities. They hadn’t sent for help because, being the Wommacks, they figured it would be no use anyway. Bad luck was bad luck, and those as were marked for death would die, and a lot of similarly superstitious nonsense. And I was very grateful that none of them knew something I wasn’t going to take time to think about right now, which was that Andersen’s Disease was
not
contagious. If they’d known that, and it running through their castle like wildfire, I daresay they’d of just given up and died on me on the spot; I had no plans of telling them.

“Shame on you’” I said. It was uppity of me, and not kind, especially toward Jacob Donahue, who was a good fifty years my senior; But I was thoroughly disgusted. The idea of half a hundred people stretched on the rack for the last three days while helpless hands were wrung and mournful moans were made about the Wommack curse ... it turned my stomach. Eventually I would have to face the problem of just who among the Magicians of Rank was behind this monstrous cruelty, but not now. Now what mattered was putting an end to that cruelty, and without delay.

“You need a Magician of Rank here,” I said, “and you need him at once. There’s two good ones on Arkansaw—”

“We’ll have nobody from Arkansaw,” said Jacob Donahue Wommack.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say, we’ll have nobody. Magician of Rank or anybody else, from Arkansaw. Not in this Castle.”

“In the name of the Twelve Gates and the Twelve
Corners
, Jacob Donahue Wommack, why
ever not?
” I shouted at him. “Have you seen those people upstairs?”

“I’ve seen them- I live here.”

“Then—”

“They’re feuding on Arkansaw,” he said doggedly, “and have been these past six months. No talking them out of it, either—we’ve had good men trying. And we want no part of it.”

“At a time like
this
, you—”

I was so furious it’s likely just as well that Gilead cut me off.

“Responsible of Brightwater,” she said, “since distance makes no difference to a Magician of Rank, then it also makes no difference where he comes from. Do think of that.”

True enough. Since a Magician of Rank was not only allowed, but
expected
to take his Mule by SNAPS instead of trundling along at sixty miles an hour, and since there was, strictly speaking, no time taken up by that process except leaving and landing, she was quite right.

“What will you accept, then?” I asked them, trying to sound a tad less arrogant.

“Anywhere but Arkansaw,” said the Master of Wommack. “ Anywhere atall.”

“From Castle Motley, then.” I said. “I don’t know the man well, I’ve only seen him once or twice, but they say he’s highly skilled. To go on with, he’s a Lewis by birth, and that means he cuts
no
corners—everything done strictly by rule, and strictly by the book. And we’ll have Diamond of Motley send a Granny along as well, to give him a hand.”

“You think it’s worth a try?” asked Gilead.

“I do.” Worth a try ... I had no stomach left for arguing with these people. If and when I ever got back home, and the Jubilee over and done with, and could put my mind to something new in the way of planning, I would tackle the problem of superstition gotten out of hand in far comers. We for sure wanted the people accepting the system of magic by which this planet functioned; to lose that would be roughly comparable to losing photosynthesis, or gravity, or two and two coming up five. But this was 3012, not 1400 of Old Earth, Some balancing needed doing, clearly, or this crew would be throwing entrails and dunking for witches.

Somewhere in the back of my mind a kind of icy voice spoke up to point out that the list of things to be seen to in some vaporous unspecified “later” was getting longer and longer; and I told it to shut up. Now was not the moment for either accounting or reform.

“Jacob Donahue,” I said, “will you show me where your comset room is, so that I can send for help? Or do you plan to stand there like that till everybody upstairs is dead in their beds?”

That brought him out of it, as I had expected it would. “I’m not helpless, young woman,” he said, “nor yet crippled. I’ll send the message myself.” And he spun on his heel—staggering only a little at the turn with his fever—and left us, with his children staring at me accusingly. I’d made their daddy unhappy, and they didn’t care for that.

There was a low bench against the wall beside the Castle door at the foot of the stairs; I went on down and sat there, leaning my head gratefully back against the chilly stone. I was trembling all over And young Thomas Lincoln came over to stand in front of me.

“Will the Magician of Rank be able to fix everybody?” he wanted to know.

“Well,” I said wearily, “those as aren’t too far gone, yes— he’ll be able to fix them about as fast as you can say ‘Magician of Rank.’ He won’t be able to help anyone that’s really near to death—that’s interfering with the laws of things, Thomas Lincoln. I’m sorry, but that’s the straight of it.”

“We should of sent for him sooner,” said me boy.

“That you should.”

“Wommacks don’t care to be beholden,” he told me stiffly.

“Then Wommacks must live with the consequences of their doings,” I said right back.

“Responsible of Brightwater, don’t be hard on the boy,” one of the daughters pleaded, but I wasn’t interested. If they’d called for a Magician of Rank the instant their Grannys had said they didn’t know what sickness they were dealing with,
nobody
would have been in any danger. Not one person. Now ... a lot of time had passed, and a lot of suffering endured. Now, they’d be losing some of their own, to their own stupidity.

The time had come for another judicious lie, and I mustered up the strength to provide it.

“It will spread to the town unless it’s seen to,” I said, “and on beyond—it’s stuff that spreads like wildfire. Only two things have kept that from happening before this, you hear me there? One is the size of this place, with you able to keep everybody in a room of their own; that’s helped. But primarily, my good Wommacks, what’s kept your illness inside this Castle is nothing but
good luck
. Plain old miraculous twelve-square common garden variety good
luck
. Now you think on that.”

A drop in the bucket, but mine own drop. “And if your father should happen to forget, because he’s got the stuff himself and I’d judge his fever’s headed for this roof, the name of it is Anderson’s Disease, and the access code’ for the computers is somewhere in the 441’s. If—”