The Dubious Hills (11 page)

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.