The Dubious Hills (22 page)

Arry felt obscurely put upon, as if Con had talked
her around to something. “Aren’t spells different?”

“
No,” said Niss, flatly. She
perched on the edge of the table, her feet dangling, and gestured
with her bowl at the rest of the room.

Arry sat down in a hard chair, and Oonan in a
cushioned one. They sipped tea for a while in silence.

“
But it’s partly your province,”
said Arry.

“
Yes,” said Niss.

“
Will you come with Oonan and
Mally and me, then, at moonrise?”

Niss shook her head. “There’s will involved,” she
said. “What magic alone can accomplish to safeguard us, I have
done. The rest is talk, or action; it isn’t magic.”

“
But—” said Arry.

“
You’re free to choose,” said
Niss. “That is what I have done. The rest is not mine.”

“
What about you? Are you free to
choose too?”

“
I have chosen,” said Niss. “To be
as I am.”

“
Will what you’ve done keep them
from biting us in our sleep and making our choice for
us?”

Oonan moved in his chair but said nothing; Niss slid
off the table and said, “Is that the mechanism, then? I was told
otherwise.”

“
I don’t know,” said Arry. “I
thought you would.”

Niss rubbed her hand over her head, pulling off the
black scarf. Her hair fell down her shoulders like a second fire.
“No,” she said. “I can’t tell, I can’t see. It must be other than
magic, the essential operation must be of character, or of
knowledge, or of the body itself. It isn’t mine.”

Mally tried to give the job to her, thought Arry,
and now she’s giving it back to Mally. She looked at Oonan, who put
his bowl down and stood up. “Will you walk back to the party with
us?” he said to Niss.

Niss nodded, and wound her hair up again in her
scarf. Then she said to the fire, “Some must watch while some must
sleep.” The fire contracted itself and turned green again. Niss
ushered them out of her house, and shut the door firmly.

Lagging behind the other two, who were talking
amiably about whether any spell in heaven or earth would really
keep a sheep from straying if it wanted to, Arry looked over her
shoulder at the house. It glowed dimly under its thatched roof,
like a green luminous mushroom with greener spots.

The bonfire was roaring when they got back, and both
inside and outside the dancing had started. The musicians were
crammed into the doorway so that everybody could hear them. Arry
found Beldi at once, dancing with Zia; both of them were laughing,
and they danced a great deal better than Arry would have expected.
It was Vand, next to them, who tangled the long line going through
the arch by forgetting to turn around twice before his partner
swung him.

But she could not find Con. If Con was not watching
Zia, plotting with Zia, or playing with Zia, it was hard to think
where she might be. Arry went around to the kitchen door, which was
open; out of the doorway came a lovely odor of baking honeycake.
She went in. Con was sitting at the table, listening intently to
Halver. His back was to Arry; Con had just to turn her head to the
right to see her sister.

Arry stood still. Halver was saying, “This is the
only way to know everything.”

You did not have to be Mally to understand what
Halver was doing.

Con scowled as only Con could. “How do you know it’s
the only way?”

Arry would have grinned, if she had not been afraid
that any movement would make one of them see her.

“
I don’t,” said Halver, readily.
“But it’s the only way for you, here and now.”

“
Mother said anything worth having
was worth waiting for.”

“
You have been waiting for it,”
said Halver. “You needn’t wait any longer now.”

“
What if I’d rather?” said Con.
Halver had managed to make her suspicious—not a difficult thing to
do, but she had probably never in her five years had better reason
to be suspicious than now. Arry tried to think what to say. If
choice were all it took, standing here in silence was not the best
of courses.

Halver had been teaching Con for two years now; he
too knew her suspicious mood. He said mildly, “Well, you know, if
you go on waiting for the new bread long enough, it’s day-old bread
and then old bread and then it’s stale, and you can’t have new
bread until next week.”

“
A week’s not long,” said
Con.

Arry did grin. They didn’t notice.

Halver grinned, too, unfortunately. “Very well,” he
said. “When Mally brings the birch candy back from Waterpale, if
you don’t eat it, it’s gone until next spring.”

“
It tastes strange anyway,” said
Con.

Arry bit her lip. She wanted to laugh. At the same
time she knew she must do something. Con was interested, or she
would not be sitting here when there was music and dancing and food
and Zia all just a few steps away.

The smell of honeycake was growing darker and
stronger. Either it was going to burn, or Mally would be in here
any moment, interrupting. Arry scuffed the sole of her boot on the
floor and moved forward briskly. Halver had twitched at the sound
and frowned almost as ferociously as Con could. Con went on looking
at Halver.

“
Are you supposed to be watching
these?” demanded Arry, opening the door of Mally’s oven and
looking around for something to protect her hands.

“
No,” said Halver. “We just wanted
a quiet place to talk.”

“
Well, they’re about to burn,”
said Arry, using the wadded hem of her skirt and maneuvering the
hot trays out of the oven and onto the racks awaiting them. She
looked from Con to Halver and took a risk. “Shall I leave
now?”

“
No,” said Con, still looking at
Halver.

“
Arry knows all about it,” said
Halver.

“
She does not,” said Con, with
considerable scorn.

Halver, Arry was interested to note, was momentarily
confounded. His mouth dropped. Then he turned red.

Then he laughed, briefly. “I misspoke myself,” he
said. “I did tell her, Con, about being a wolf.”

“
Arry doesn’t want to be a wolf,”
said Con, in the pitying tone that often succeeded her scornful
one.

“
Why don’t you ask her?” said
Halver. He pushed his chair back, stood up, and left the room
without further ado. He still looked a little red.

“
Do you want to be a wolf?” said
Con, turning to regard Arry.

“
Not Halver’s sort,” said Arry.
“What did he tell you, Con?”

“
Is Halver a sort of wolf?” said
Con.

“
When the moon’s full he is. I saw
him. Derry said his tracks were wolf tracks, but that he didn’t act
like a wolf. A sort of wolf is exactly the phrase.”

“
You never tell me anything,” said
Con.

“
Halver made me promise not
to.”

“
Oh,” said Con, disconcerted. She
pondered. “He didn’t make me promise.”

“
That’s because you really never
do tell anybody anything. He knew you’d want to keep it to
yourself.”

“
Only Mally knows
that.”

Now I’m doing it, thought Arry. “Mally would have
told him, don’t you think, when you started school?”

Con abandoned this line of discussion by saying, “If
I’m a wizard, I can be a wolf or anything else either, whether the
moon is full or not.”

“
Probably you can,” said
Arry.

“
So why should I be Halver’s sort
of wolf?”

“
No reason in the world,” said
Arry firmly.

“
But he thought I should. Why did
he think so?”

“
Well, what did he
say?”

“
He just said I’d
like
it,” said Con. “Because then I’d know everything.”

“
Well, he’s been a wolf and he
doesn’t know everything, does he?”

“
That’s what I told him,” said
Con.

They must have been around the subject several times
before Arry got there. She could not think how to ask if Halver had
mentioned their parents without actually mentioning them herself.
“Why else did he say you’d like it?”

“
He said I’d like the other
wolves,” said Con. “Better than people. And he said I could run
far, and go all up and down the mountains and all the way to the
Hidden Land and Fence’s Country.” She paused, fixing Arry with her
big dark eyes. “If we were wolves,” she said, “could we find
them?”

“
Did Halver say we
could?”

“
No. I just wondered.”

Clever Halver, thought Arry. And here I thought
perhaps being a wolf had made you less able to cope with your
charges. “I don’t know, Con,” she said.

“
Well, who does?”

“
If we could think who knew,” said
Arry, “I think we’d know ourselves. Since there’s no province for
finding lost things.”

“
Why isn’t there?”

Arry shook her head. “I want you to promise me
something, Con,” she said. “If you decide to be a wolf, tell me
first.”

“
I don’t want to be a
wolf.”

“
If you change your
mind.”

“
I don’t want to.”

“Con
.”

“
If I’m a wolf,” said Con, sliding
out of her chair, “you can be a wolf too.” And she ran out of the
room, laughing.

17

When Arry came into the front room the musicians had
stopped playing and Mally was just beginning to organize the
giving of the gifts. People kept streaming in and streaming in. It
was hot, from the lamps and the people. Sune was exactly where she
had been—her feet hurt even sitting down—and Halver had gone back
to sit next to her. Arry found Oonan hunched into one corner of a
settle behind the table the presents were on. She couldn’t talk to
him or even approach him until the gifts had all been dealt with.
She was worried about moonrise, but Halver had far more reason to
worry than she did. He looked serene.

Arry went and sat on the floor next to Beldi. “Has
Halver been talking to you?” she whispered.

“
No,” said Beldi. “Am I supposed
to talk to him?”

“
No, it’s all right, never
mind.”

Beldi looked resigned.

Mally finished piling objects on the table and
brought Tiln in from outside. He was blinking a little in the
strong light, sweaty and breathless from the dance; but smiling.
People smiled back at him, and the talk grew less. Mally sat him
down at the table and looked around the room, and everybody stopped
talking. Mally thanked everyone for coming. Then she said, “We have
a problem in manners here. It’s customary for one receiving a gift
to say, ‘Thank you, it’s beautiful, ’ but Tiln can’t say that if it
isn’t true.”

“
I could say, ‘It’s just what I’ve
been wanting,” said Tiln, with none of his usual hesitance. “I
don’t know any more about that than anybody else does.”

“
No, but I do,” said Mally,
ruffling his hair.

“
I shall say, ‘It’s very nice, ’
then, shall I?”

“
I think that’s sufficiently
meaningless,” said Mally. Her eyes moved around the
room.

She’s looking for my mother, thought Arry. Whose
province was language. Do wolves have language? Nobody said
anything. After a moment, Mally nodded to Tiln, and he began to
accept his presents.

Spring was a good time to come into your knowledge.
Good things to eat were coming back into abundance; people had
been working all winter on this or that frivolous or useful or
strange thing, inventing new games and toys, fooling with the shape
of a sleeve or the set of a button, wondering how that recipe would
taste with walnuts rather than currants. Arry watched Tiln
carefully, and thought she could tell, if not which things he
thought were beautiful, at least which ones he had been wanting.
When he got to the paint and brushes, he opened every pot and
dipped a finger in it to see what color it held; and then he
smiled.

The last thing he took from the table was something
Arry had not recognized as a present at all. It was“What is it?”
said Tiln, running his hand down a sleeve.

Halver looked at Derry, who said, “Wolfskin.”

Arry stopped breathing. She began again almost at
once. Hides must be cured and treated, coats must be sewn; the wolf
this had belonged to was a last year’s wolf at the very oldest. But
she still felt cold, in all this heat.

“
It’s very nice,” said Tiln, in an
awed tone.

Everybody laughed, and Vand started tuning his
fiddle. People stood up and stretched, and went back outside, or
into the kitchen for food and drink, or up to the table to look
more closely at Tiln’s presents. Arry sat where she was, staring at
Halver. He was talking to Sune; after a moment she nodded, and
Halver put his hand under her elbow and helped her stand up.

Arry got up too, swiftly. Halver had helped Sune
walk here; how thoughtful of him to see her home again before he
went and turned into a wolf. A wolf has no arm for you to lean on.
Arry stifled a laugh. Sune and Halver paused to speak to Tiln, and
then went out the door. Arry went after them, and paused in the
doorway to give them a good start. She had thought of simply
accompanying them on the grounds that she wanted to go home now,
too, but they would wonder about Con and Beldi.