The Dubious Hills (7 page)

“
Grown up isn’t the same as
educated,” said Arry, irritably. She thought a moment. “Is
it?”

“
No,” said Mally. “But it
helps.”

It was clear that Arry had not asked the right
question, but Mally said nothing more. She took hold of the loose
skin around the dog’s neck, meaning she expected Arry to go now.
Blackie wouldn’t go out the open door of his own accord, but Mally
said he was fond of following visitors out and looking innocent
about it.

“
Thank you,” said Arry, from the
doorway. “I’ll return them as soon as I can.”

“
Nobody else needs them,” said
Mally.

Arry went home, made a pot of peppermint tea, and
sat down in the chair nearest the window. She started with the
scrolls first; they would be the oldest, and this made her nervous.
She wanted them read and back in their box and the box hidden
before Con got home.

She read three stories, by the end of which the
teapot was empty, the white cat was on her lap, the black cat was
under the chair, and her mind was muddled.

The stories all began, “Once upon a time,” and none
of them said where any of their events happened. One was about a
little boy and girl whose mother died, after which their father
married a woman who hated them and finally sent them off into the
woods to be lost and starve, only they came upon a house made of
honeycake, in which there lived a witch who tried to fatten them
up and cook them, only they tricked her and put her into the oven
instead. The story didn’t say if they had eaten her.

The second one was about a girl whose mother had
died, after which her father married a woman with two daughters,
all of whom were ugly and cruel and made the girl do all the work
of the house, only a fairy came and helped her go to a dance, where
the prince of some country fell in love with her, traced her
through a shoe she left behind, and after refusing to take either
of her stepsisters, carried her off and married her. Nobody in this
story, it seemed, had anybody to tell them what hurt, or the
stepmother and stepsisters would never have cut off bits of their
feet so the girl’s shoe would fit them.

The third story was about a girl whose beautiful
mother died and whose stepmother gave her a poisoned apple.

Arry put the book down. “Who
says
so?” she
said.

Mally? No, Mally had only given her the books. Sune
might not even have read them, and in any case Sune hadn’t said
anything to Arry about any of this, ever. Who
would
say
such things? This wasn’t knowledge: it must be history. Stories,
Mally had said; stories that would help. Arry had asked her, might
it hurt Con that their parents were gone; and Mally had handed her
these uncatalogued and incomprehensible narrations.

It had hurt all these children that their mothers
died, because the new mothers were cruel to them. And what were
their fathers doing, thought Arry irritably. She sat up straight,
and the white cat complained and jumped to the floor. Was she the
new mother? Was
she
cruel?

Arry got up, quickly. Con and Beldi would say she
was, if there was nothing for them to eat when they came back from
school, which they would do very soon, even if they played in every
mud puddle between Halver’s house and here. She had been reading
for a long time. Having put the scrolls carefully away and hidden
the box in her bed, she made more tea and rummaged about, thinking
of honeycake. Then she went down into the cellar and got out some
of the dried apples.

When Con and Beldi came in, she watched them
narrowly. They were both muddy and windblown, especially Beldi.
She ought to cut his hair. Con shrieked happily at the apples and
splashed four slices into her cup of tea so they could swell up.
Beldi asked if there were any bread, and settled for oatcake. If
anybody was hurting at the moment, thought Arry, it wasn’t Con.
Beldi looked as if his head might hurt, but it didn’t.

“
When are you coming to school
again?” said Con with her mouth full. “Zia says—”

“
I don’t know,” said Arry. She
might as well ask them. “Am I cruel?”

“
Very,” said Con, promptly. “You
never make us any pudding.”

“
Who says that’s—”

“
She made some six days ago,” said
Beldi, spitting out an apple seed.

“
Didn’t have enough raisins,” said
Con.

Arry tried again. “Who says that’s—”

“
That’s not cruel,” said
Beldi.

“
What is, then?”

“
Making you do all the work would
be,” said Arry, without thinking.

Con’s whole face clouded over. “I
did
do it
when I wasn’t
old!”

Not cruel, thought Arry, just stupid. And what was
the difference, when pain was the outcome either way? She thought
about telling Con that Mally said she might be a wizard when she
grew up. No. “What did you learn about today?” she said.

“
I hate learning,” said Con. “I
like knowing.”

“
Be glad you don’t live in the
Hidden Land,” said Arry, rather desperately. “They have to learn
everything. They don’t know anything.”

“
Who says so?”

“
Sune.”

“
Oh, well.”

“
Con.”

“
But it just means she read
it.”

“
Somebody has to,” said
Beldi.

Arry added, “Mother used to say just the same. You
remember.”

Nobody said anything more. Beldi scooped the last of
the apples out of the bowl Arry had put them in. He had made it
last year and seemed to feel that this gave him rights in anything
it contained. “I was thinking,” he said.

“
What about?” said Arry, faintly.
Mally had never said Beldi didn’t think, but he had certainly never
mentioned doing it before.

“
Did you wonder about what you
were going to know before you knew it?”

“
Yes.”

“
Were you right?”

“
Not really. I wanted to be like
Oonan, just before I found out. Before that I thought of lots of
things.”

“
So you were almost
right?”

“
Well—”

“
I’ve just been thinking, maybe
I’ll be like Sune.”

“
What do we need two for?”
demanded Con.

“
You be quiet,” said
Beldi.

She was, probably from sheer astonishment. Arry
said, “Would you like that?”

“
I like to read.”

“
You can do that
anyway.”

“
Yes, but it’s very
muddling.”

“
It certainly is,” said Arry,
feelingly.

“
I’d like to be sure of what I
read.”

“
Even when you’re
wrong?”

“
Well—”

“
I’m never going to be wrong,”
said Con, slurping the last of her tea and sliding out of her
chair. “Where are the cats,” she yelled, and ran back
outside.

Beldi followed her with the last of the oatcake.
Arry put her head in her hands and thought Con was probably right.
Then she laughed, but not very heartily.

6

Con wanted to cut off the heel of her right foot so
she could fit it into a shoe of honeycake and thus always be right
about everything. Arry knew the only way to dissuade her was to
make Oonan explain what going about without a heel was like; but if
she left to get Oonan, Con would go ahead and cut. Beldi was there,
eating a marzipan doorstop shaped like a hedgehog. He wanted the
knife to cut pieces of marzipan off, but wouldn’t promise not to
give it back to Con when he was finished. Arry’s mother came in
from the kitchen with a basket of kittens and said, “Take the knife
with you, Arry.”

Arry picked it up, and Con threw back her head and
howled like a wolf. Arry waited for her mother to make Con shut up,
but her mother only turned around and went into the kitchen again.
The whole back of her was not a person at all, but a huge cookie
made of the honeycake dough rolled flat. Arry started to throw the
knife at her, and dropped it.

It made an appalling clatter that mixed with Con’s
howling. All the kittens started to mew shrilly. Beldi put the
marzipan doorstop over his head. Arry bent for the knife, and
opened her eyes on the darkness of her room. The clattering and
howling were still going on. So was the mewing. Arry put her hand
on Woollycat, who was sitting on her pillow. Woollycat stopped
fussing, which only meant that Arry could hear Sheepnose under the
bed, making the noises that meant there was a large dog taking
liberties with the cats’ property.

The other sounds were outside the room. Arry climbed
out of the bed and dragged her father’s walking-stick from under
it. Then she opened the door of her room. In the center room the
banked fire was a muted red spot; the moon shone through the
windows, except where two white-shirted figures with tousled heads
blocked the light by craning out the back window. Arry sprang
across the room and stared over their heads. The trees were still;
the moonlight followed the paving stones down the black hill and up
the next one. A few puddles glinted faintly. The cold wind blew
Beldi’s hair into Arry’s face.

“
What’s happening?” said
Arry.

Neither one of them so much as started.

“
Isn’t it wolves?” said
Con.

“
What’s the
clattering
?”

“
Milk pans, maybe?” said
Beldi.

“Doubt!”
said Arry, and ran for the door. The day before
Oonan lost his sheep, she had scalded three of the four pans she
owned, put them outside to sun, and forgotten them utterly. They
came from Druogonos and, according to Bec, had cost the earth. She
wrenched the bar aside, flung a furious “Stay here!” over her
shoulder, and pelted around the side of the house. The door banged
behind her: good, they had some sense; more than she did. Sliding
in the cold mud, she plunged to a stop beside the flat rock where
she had left the pans.

They were gone. Looking over the far side of the
rock at her was a wolf. The wolf tilted its head at her. Very
slowly, it lifted its lips away from its teeth. It made no sound,
but all the hair stood up on Arry’s neck and arms. Arry took a slow
step backwards. The wolf s lip crinkled more, and Arry bumped into
somebody small but solid. She swallowed a hysterical exclamation
and breathed,
“Con. Get back in the house this
minute.
”

“
Beldi gets to—”

“Both of you.
Slowly. Quietly. Now.”

The pressure of Con against her legs vanished. Arry
kept her eyes on the wolf. It was looking at her. The rustle and
pad of Con and Beldi’s bare feet on the rocks and dry leaves and
pine needles did not even make it twitch its ears. Maybe they were
too small for dinner; it seemed unlikely. Nor did the wolf look at
her as the cats would look at a bird or a vole. There was
consideration in it, a consideration like Oonan’s, looking at
Beldi’s lip.

It was a very large wolf. Its ears were bigger than
her hand. Oonan would know, if he were here, what the teeth it
still showed her could do; and she knew, all by herself, what they
would feel like. She showed it her own flat, blunt teeth, half
sheep’s, half dog’s, essentially unlike those of any animal she
had seen.

Its tilted head straightened and it uncurled its
lip. Then the wolf stood up and trotted down the hill, tail waving.
Arry thought of the milk pans; then she backed and finally ran. The
door opened before she got there. She skidded inside, and Con
slammed the door and Beldi shot the bolt.

“
Did you get the milk pans?” said
Con.

Arry sat down on the cold floor and began to laugh.
After a moment Beldi started giggling. Con was unimpressed. “It’s
what you went out for, isn’t it? Didn’t they cost the earth?”

“
Indubitably,” said Arry, still
laughing.

“
What’s funny?” said
Con.

“
Nothing, really,” said Arry. “It
was stupid of me to go outside for the milk pans when there was a
wolf out there.”

“
You mean it might hurt
you?”

“
Yes.”

“
And she cost even more than the
earth,” said Beldi.

Arry stared at him. He shrugged.

“Did
you?” said Con, fascinated.

“
So did you,” said Arry. “So did
every one of us.”

“
Who says?”

“
I just know.”

Even in the moonlight she could see Con struggling
with this and deciding not to press it. Con said, “But how does
Beldi know?”

“
I told him.”

“
When?”

“
By laughing.”

“
But it wasn’t funny.”

“
That’s why,” said
Beldi.

It was clear that Con didn’t understand this,
either. Arry wasn’t sure she did herself.

“
Con,” she said. “The next time I
tell you to go into the house, go into the house. Don’t
argue.”

Con scowled. Arry, looking at her, thought for the
first time in all the months they had been without their parents: I
can’t manage this; I don’t know what to do.

“
Let’s go back to bed,” she said,
and went over to close and shutter the windows.