The Dubious Hills (20 page)

“
Con!” yelled Arry.

“
Well, now you’ve ruined it,”
remarked Con, standing up in her dripping smock. “You scared all
the fish.”

“
Don’t wander off without telling
me!”

“
I come down here all the time,”
said Con.

She did, too. Arry swallowed. What was in my head,
she thought. “There are wolves about,” she said.

“
Not in the
daytime
,”
said Con, in the same tone she had used about Beldi’s doing his
lessons.

“
Who says?”

“
Zia.”

“
What does she know about
it?”

Con pondered. “Well. She might have asked
Derry.”

“
Well, next time you ask Derry, or
at least find out if Zia did. Zia’s got a brain like the Autumn
Dance, Mally says so. You mustn’t just believe her.”

“
I don’t believe anybody really,”
said Con, climbing out of the stream and joining Arry on the grassy
bank. “Mally says so.”

Arry bit back her laugh just in time. “Let’s go eat
breakfast,” she said. “And then we’ll take those mice outside.”

“
Maybe we should eat them,” said
Con, accompanying her by jumping from rock to rock.

“
I can’t make mouse stew,” said
Arry, a little absently.

“
Mother could,” said Con. “She
said they eat it in Fence’s Country; but only in the
winter.”

“
I thought I remembered that,”
said Arry. She added carefully, “Have you been thinking about her
lately?”

“
I think about her all the time,”
said Con. “I just don’t talk about her.”

“
Why?”

“
Mally says I don’t like people to
see what I’m thinking.”

“
Who does?” said Arry.

“
Beldi wishes you would,” said
Con.

Arry stopped and stared at her sister, who was
sliding down the last rock before the path went up the hill their
house stood on. “Did Mally say that?”

“
Mmmmm,” said Con.

They started up the hill. “Con,” said Arry.

“
I don’t remember,” said
Con.

When Beldi came home from Mally’s, he brought Tiln
with him. Arry had made more pancakes, as a consolation for having
sent Beldi all the way to Mally’s when Con was just down by the
stream. He and Tiln sat down and ate all of them. Tiln looked
peculiar, both exhausted and exalted somehow.

“
Mally and Wim ask you to my
celebration tonight,” he said when he had finished eating. “Halver
says we won’t begin school until the day after tomorrow, so we can
celebrate unimpeded.” That sounded exactly like Halver, thought
Arry. Although the thought of another day chasing Con alarmed her,
and the notion that Halver might have something else he would
prefer to do in that extra day frightened her, she smiled at Tiln
and said they would all be happy to come. And how do I know that,
she thought. Well, she didn’t, of course. It was just a manner of
speaking.

“
What do you know?” asked Con, who
had been staring at Tiln ever since he came in.

Tiln smiled. “What’s ugly
and
what’s
beautiful,” he said.

“
Con,” said Arry. “Don’t go asking
him. He’s had enough of that.”

“
Only if it really matters to
you,” said Tiln to Con.

“
Everything matters to me,” said
Con.

“
That’s not what Mally says,” said
Tiln; and as Con continued to stare at him and did not even open
her mouth, he made a little bow to Arry, as Halver had taught them
all but none of them ever bothered actually to do. “We’ll see you
with pleasure at sunset,” he said, and left the kitchen.

Arry said, “Let’s get those mice out of our
house.”

“
Tiln must have walked right over
them,” said Beldi.

“
We should have asked him if they
were beautiful or ugly,” said Con, scrambling out of her chair and
making for the front room.

The pile of mice was still there. Arry wondered a
little that the cats had not dragged them off somewhere, or eaten
them on the spot. Maybe it was the smell of wolf.

“
We must put them somewhere the
crows can get them,” she said.

“
We need a box or a bag,” said
Beldi.

“
Let’s use the milk pans,” said
Con.

“
No,” said Arry.

“
You could even stew them in the
milk pans,” said Con.

Arry went off into the kitchen and found, among the
piles of discarded objects still to be dealt with, a wooden milk
bucket acquired when they had kept a goat. She brought the bucket
and the fire tongs back to the front room and began lifting mice
out of the pile and dropping them into the bucket. Con demanded to
try, and after dropping a mouse onto Beldi’s feet and one onto
Arry’s, got quite fast and accurate at it. Arry sat back down in
the chair she had slept in and tried not to watch. The mice were
certainly in no pain now, but they made her flinch just the
same.

When Con was finished, she sent Con and Beldi to
carry the bucket up to the top of Windy Hill and spread the mice
around for the crows. She herself got water and soap and the brush
and knelt to scrub the stain off the floor. At least wolves were
tidier than cats. Cats would have left all those mice on the rug,
at the very least. She held the brush dripping over the floor, and
paused.

Where the drops of water had fallen, lines of
bright, beautiful, and unnatural green showed on the smooth gray
floor. Arry dripped more water, and more, and finally scraped very
lightly with the brush over the mess the mice had left. The brush
did not take off the green, so she applied it a little harder. When
she had cleared all the soapy mousy mass of water off that patch of
floor, the green lines revealed themselves as blocky letters, which
said uncompromisingly, “Keep the wolf far hence, that’s foe to
men.”

It was part of a burial spell Oonan had taught her.
She had not even been born, he and Wim and Mally all said, the last
time anybody here had had to use it, but tears came up in her eyes
and ran down her cheeks. When one of them dripped down onto the
floor, all the green letters winked out like the stars at dawn.

Arry wiped her nose fiercely on her hand and
scrubbed the entire floor, much to the annoyance of Sheepnose, who
came in halfway through, and Woollycat, who came in just as she had
finished cleaning up Sheepnose’s dirty pawprints. She wiped up the
new prints, and emptied her bucket, and washed and dried the bucket
and the brush and hung them in their places.

Then she sat in the front door, staring at the
crocuses under the pine tree, waiting for Con and Beldi to come
back so she could disobey the message left her. Her brain must be
slow, but it had finally occurred to her that, while wolves might
sleep in the woods or out on the mountain, her parents were,
presumably, wolves only when the full moon was up. Where would they
take shelter, then, during all the days? She meant to go around to
all the possible places, and find them.

She spent some time wondering what to do with Con
and Beldi, and finally decided that she would just take them along.
They had a right to see their parents too, after all, surely they
must.

When they got back, Con looked flushed and
triumphant and Beldi distinctly frazzled. Arry told them she
needed to go visit Sune and that she meant to go all around the
hills picking flowers. Beldi said he would rather do his lessons,
and looked pleadingly at Arry, so she set off with just Con. It was
almost hot, and after the night’s rain rather sticky. All the early
leaves had doubled their size since yesterday, and the late ones
had come out vigorously. Larks and robins and sparrows and
wheatears sang madly in all directions; the mockingbird made cat
noises, as if the concert of its fellows had disconcerted it.

When they got to Halver’s house, Arry suffered a
pang of cowardice, and said to Con, “I want to speak to Halver for
a moment. Will you run down the hill and tell Sune I’m coming?”

“
What about?” said Con.

“
The baby,” said Arry,
patiently.

“
Halver doesn’t know anything
about babies.”

So much for misdirection. “I want to talk to him
about Beldi.” Which was true as far as it went.

“
Oh,” said Con, and ran full tilt
down the rocky hill. Arry winced, and turned her back, and knocked
hard on Halver’s door.

It was strange to be knocking to be admitted to
school. Nobody admitted her, either. She knocked again. Then she
went around the house knocking on all the windows she could reach.
The ones in the back, where you would expect people to be sleeping,
were all shuttered—in this weather. She would have shouted, but she
was afraid Con and Sune would hear her; the wind was blowing down
the hill from Halver’s house to Sune’s. There was no sound from the
house, but Arry thought she felt somebody listening. She went back
to the door and tried it. It was bolted. She tried the low
schoolroom window, and it swung open easily. Arry looked over her
shoulder at Sune’s house, saw nobody, and climbed in.

The schoolroom was dim and cool and tidy, and
smelled of oil paint and sawdust. Arry marched across the red rug
before she could think about it, and almost failed to stop in time
when she saw that the door between schoolroom and Halver’s part of
the house was shut. She pushed at it. It was bolted from the other
side. Arry thought, and shook her head. No. She could remember no
bolt on that door. But he
is
the wolf, she thought, why
should he bolt
his
door? She heard herself laughing, and
stopped. But something had moved on the door’s other side.

Arry retreated to the window, picking up the largest
of the wooden geometry blocks on her way. They can’t be wolves in
the daytime, she thought; but her heart was beating as fast as it
ever had and she could hardly breathe. She wasn’t hurt; this was
fear.

There was the creak of a wooden bolt withdrawing,
and the door opened. Arry opened her eyes as wide as she could.

It was only Halver. He was blinking and tousled and
wearing his nightshirt. He had no fever, no headache, no sore
joints or muscles. His hand still itched.

“
It’s me,” said Arry.

“
I thought it might be,” said
Halver, mildly. “What do you want?”

“
I want to see my
parents.”

“
They aren’t here,” said
Halver.

“
Where are they?”

“
Choose,” said Halver, in a gentle
and reasonable tone that made Arry shiver, “and I’ll take you to
them when next the full moon rises.”

“
Very well,” said Arry, “I choose
not to be a wolf.”

Halver smiled. “You wot well what I did mean,” he
said, in the accents of Arry’s mother.

Arry put down the block, lest she throw it at him.
“I’ll find them myself,” she said, and with no regard to dignity at
all she climbed back out the window and ran down the hill to Sune’s
house.

16

Con was in fact at Sune’s house. Sune was sitting in
her rocking chair and spinning; Con was sprawled on the floor with
Sune’s button box. She must have been importunate, or Sune must be
very tired. Sune was certainly tired. Con had probably been
importunate as well.

“
There’s tea in the kitchen,” said
Sune.

“
Thank you, but I can only stay a
moment.”

“
Con’s settled for hours,” said
Sune.

Arry looked at her, and Sune nodded. Arry widened
her eyes, and Sune nodded again. “Thank you,” said Arry. “I’ll be
back in a hour perhaps. Can I bring you anything?”

“
Strawberries,” said Sune,
reflectively.

“
Too early,” said Con, without
looking up from her buttons.

“
I know, chick; I was being
funny.”

“
There’s the strawberry wine,”
said Arry.

“
Don’t tempt me,” said Sune.
“Oonan says a bit of wine wouldn’t do harm, but I have read such
things.”

“
I’ll be as quick as I can,” said
Arry. “Don’t be a nuisance, Con.”

Neither of them made any response to this. Arry left
hurriedly and made for the high meadow as fast as she could. On the
way she passed Tiln and Zia gathering flowers for the party, and
Wim playing his flute, and Derry crawling along the ground like a
dog after some especially delectable smell. Arry climbed off the
path, which was rather steep just here, and came up behind her.
Wolf tracks. They had come this way, then. “Derry,” said Arry.

“
They are certainly wolf tracks,”
said Derry, sitting back on her heels and wiping her
face.

“
Derry, do wolves catch
mice?”

“
Yes,” said Derry. “And eat them
too. This happens especially in the far north, when the herds of
snow deer move to colder places than the wolves care to follow.
They eat mice then, waiting for the deer to come back. And a mother
wolf with cubs who cannot hunt yet, she will find mice close by and
bring them back.”

“
I thought so,” said Arry. “Have
they killed any more sheep?”

“
No,” said Derry. “They don’t seem
to like to come near Oonan’s, though they’ve been all up and down
most of the hills. And they seem to have gone up to the high meadow
again, though there are no sheep there now.”