Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms (2 page)

“Well,
now that we’re thoroughly disgraced in front of the whole world,”
sighed my grandmother, “what do we propose to do about it?”

“This is
not
the first manifestation of something cockeyed,” said Jubal Brooks. “You
know
that, Responsible.”

“There
was the milk,” my grandmother agreed. “Four Mundy’s in a row now it’s
been sour straight from the goat. I assume you don’t find that normal,
granddaughter.”

“And there was the thing with the mirrors,” said Emmalyn. “It
frightened
me, my mirror shattering in my hand like that.”

I
expect it did frighten her, too; everything else did. I was hoping she
wouldn’t notice the spiderweb. She was a sorry excuse for a woman; on
the other hand, we couldn’t of gotten Patience of Clark without taking
the sister, too, and all in all it had been a bargain worth making.

Patience
was sitting with her left little finger tapping her bottom lip, a
gesture she made when she was waiting for a hole to come by in the
conversation, and I turned to her and made the hole.

“Patience, you wanted to say something?”

“I was thinking of the streetsigns,” she said.

“The streetsigns?”

“Echo in here,” said my mother, always useful.

“I’m sorry. Patience,” I said. “I hadn’t heard that there was anything happening with streetsigns.”

“All over the city,” said my uncle Donald Patrick. “Don’t you pay any attention to anything?”

“Well? What’s been happening to them? Floating in the air? Whirling around? Exploding? What?”

Patience
laughed softly, and the sun shone in through the windows and made the
spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose look like sprinkled
brown sugar. I was very fond of Patience of Clark.

“They
read backwards,” she said. “The sign that should say ‘River Street’ ...
it says’Teerts Revir’” She spelled it out for me to make that deal;
though the tongue does not bend too badly to “Teerts Revir”

“Well,
that
.” I said, “is downright silly.”

“It’s all silly,” said Patience, “and that is why I was laughing. It’s all ridiculous.”

Emmalyn,
whose freckles just ran together and looked like she hadn’t bothered to
wash, allowed as how she might very well have been cut when her mirror
shattered, and that was not silly.

I
looked at them all, and I waited. My uncles, pulling at their short
black beards the way men always do in meetings. My mother, trying to
keep her mind—such as it was—on the discussion. My grandmother, just
biding her time till she could get back to her embroidery. And the
sisters—Emmalyn watching Patience, and Patience watching some inner
source of we-know-not-what that had served us very well in many a
crisis.

Not a one of them
mentioned the Mules, though I gave them two full minutes. And that
meant one of three things: they had not noticed the phenomenon, or they
did not realize that it was of any importance, or they had some reason
for behaving as if one of the first two were the case. I wondered, but
I didn’t have time for finding out in any roundabout fashion.

“I
agree,” I said at once the two minutes were up, “it’s all silly. Even
the minors. Not a soul was harmed by any one of the mirrors that
broke—including you, Emmalyn. Anybody can smell soured milk quick
enough not to drink it, and the other six days of the week it’s been
fine. And as for the streetsigns, which I’m embarrassed I didn’t know
about them but there it is—I didn’t—that’s silliest of all.”

“Just mischief,” said Jubal, putting on the period. “Until today.”

My
mother flared her perfect nostrils, like a high-bred Mule but a lot
more attractive. “What makes you think, Jubal Brooks,” she demanded,
“that today’s kidnapping—which is a matter of major importance—is
connected in any way with all these baby tricks of milk and mirrors?”

“
And
streetsigns,” said Emmalyn of Clark. Naturally.

“Jubal’s quite right,” I said, before Thorn of Guthrie could turn on Emmalyn. “And I call for Council.”

There
was a silence that told me I’d reached them, and Emmalyn looked
thoroughly put out. Council meant there’d be no jokes, and no family
bickering, and no pause in deliberation for coffee or cakes or ak or
anything else till a conclusion was come to and a course agreed upon.

“Do
you think that’s really called for, Responsible?” asked my grandmother.
She was doing a large panel at that time, mourningdoves in a field of
violets, as I recall. Not that she’d ever seen a moumingdove. “As Jubal
said, it’s been mischief only so far. And pretty piddling mischief at
that. And there’s no evidence
I
see of a connection between what happened in church today and all that other foolishness.”

“Responsible
sees a connection,” said Patience, “or she would not have called
Council. And the calling is her privilege by rule; I suggest we get on
with it.”

I told them about
the Mules then, and both the uncles left off their beard-pulling and
gave me their attention. Tampering with goats was one thing, tampering
with Mules was quite another: Not that they knew what it meant in terms
of magic, of course—that would not of been suitable, since neither had
ever shown the slightest talent for the profession, and I suppose they
took flying Mules for granted as they did flying birds. But they had
the male fondness for Mules, and they had anyone’s dislike for the idea
of suddenly falling out of the air like a stone, which is where they
could see it might well lead.

“It
has to do, I believe,” said Patience slowly, “with the Jubilee. That’s
coming up fast now, and anybody with the idea of putting it in bad odor
would have to get at it fairly soon and move with some dispatch. I do
believe that’s what this is all about.”

She was right, but they’d listen better if she was doing the talking, so I left it to her.

“Go on,” I said. “Please.”

“I’m
telling you nothing you don’t know already,” she said. “The
Confederation of Continents is not popular, nor likely to be,
especially with the Kingdoms of Purdy, Guthrie, and Farson. And
Tinaseeh is in worse state. The Travellers hate
any
kind of government; they are still so busy just hacking back the
Wilderness that they don’t feel they can spare time for anything else,
and they for sure don’t want the Jubilee. A Jubilee would give a kind
of
endorsement
to the Confederation, and they
are dead set against that. And then there’re all the wishy-washy ones
waiting around to see which way the wind blows.”

“ ‘A thing celebrated is a thing vindicated,’” quoted Ruth of Motley. “They all know that as well as anybody.”

“The
idea,” Patience went on, “would be to make it appear that there’s so
much trouble on the continent of Marktwain ... so much trouble in the
Kingdom of Brightwater specifically ... that it would not really be
safe for the other Families to send their delegations to the Jubilee.”

My
conscience jabbed me, for she was right; and it had been niggling at
the back of my mind for some time. Though I’d managed to ignore it up
to now by worrying about dust on the banisters and coffee for
deliveries for Mizzurah.

Donald
Patrick scooted his chair back and stared at me, and then scooted it up
again, and said damnation to boot, and my grandmother went “Ttch,” with
the tip of her tongue.

“Five years of work it’s cost us,” he said, glaring around the table. “Five years to convince them even to let us
schedule
the Jubilee! Surely all that work can’t be set aside by some spoiled milk and a few smashed mirrors!”

“
Pre
cisely,”
I said, flat as pondwater. “And that is just the point. You see,
youall, how it will look? First, parlor tricks. Then, a kind of
tinkering—nothing serious, just tinkering— with the Mules. And then, to
show that what goes four steps can go twelve, the baby-snatching.
Again, you notice, without any
harm
done.”

“Aw,” said Jubal, “it’s just showing off. A display of power. Like throwing a dead goat into your well.”

“That it is,” I said. “ ‘See what we can do?’ it says ... ‘And think what we
might
do, if we cared to.’
That’s
the message being spread here. Think the Wommacks will fly here from
the coast knowing their Mules may drop out from under them any moment,
to come to the support of our so-called Confederation?”

“Disfederation,” murmured Patience of Clark. “A more accurate term at this point.”

“Patience,” I said, “you hurt me.”

“Howsomever and nevertheless,” she said, “it’s true. And anything but a sure hand now will wreck it all.”

We
sat there silent, though Emmalyn fidgeted some, because it wasn’t
anything to be serene about. Marktwain, Oklahomah, and probably
Mizzurah, agreed on the need for the Confederation of Continents; and
their Kingdoms were willing to back it as best they could. But the
whole bulk of Aricansaw lay between Marktwain and Mizzurah, and the
Ocean of Storms between all of us and either Kintucky or Tinaseeh; and
the three loyal continents all put together were not the size of
Tinaseeh. Since the day the Twelve Families first landed on this planet
in 2021, since the moment foot was set on this land and it was named
Ozark in the hope it would prove a homeworld to our people, those of us
who preferred not to remain trapped forever in the twenty-first century
had been in the minority.

The
Twelve Families had seen, on Old Earth, what the centralization of a
government could mean. They had seen war and waste and wickedness
beyond description, though the descriptions handed down to us were
enough to this day to keep children in Granny Schools awake in the long
nights of winter, shivering more with nightmare than with the cold.
Twelve Kingdoms, we had. And at least four of them ready to leap up
every time a dirty puddle appeared on a street corner and shout that
this was but the first sign, the first step, toward the wallowing in
degradation that came when the individual allowed theirselves to be
swallowed up
(they always said “swallowed up,” playing on the hatred every Ozarker had for being closed in on any side, much less
all
of them) by a central government ... And several more were in honesty uncommitted, ready to move either way.

I
ran them by in my mind, one by one. Castle Purdy, Castle Guthrie,
Castle Parson, Castle Traveller—dead set against the Confederation and
anxious to grab any opportunity to tear the poor frail thing apart and
go to isolation for everything but trade and marriage. Castles Smith,
Airy, Clark, and McDaniels, and Castles Lewis and Motley of Mizzurah,
all with us—but perhaps only Castle Airy really ready, or able, to put
any
strength
behind us. It was hard to know.
When the Confederation met at Castle Brightwater, one month now in
every four—to the bitter complaints of Purdy, Guthrie, Parson, and
Traveller about the expense and vile waste and the frivolousness of it
all—those six voted very carefully indeed. That is, when we could
manage to bring anything to a vote. Only Castles Airy and Lewis had
ever made a move that went three points past neutrality, and that
rarely. As for Castle Wommack, who knew where they stood? One delegate
they sent to the meetings, grudgingly, against the other Castles’
delegations of four each and full staff; and the Wommack delegate came
without so much as a secretary or Attendant, and spent most of his time
abstaining. We were seven to five for the Confederation—maybe. Maybe we
were but two against ten, with six of the ten playing lip service but
ready to bolt at the first sign of anything that smelled like real
conflict.

My mother made a rare concession: she addressed me by term of kinship.

“Daughter,” she said, making me raise my eyebrows at the unexpected mode of address, “what do you think we ought to do?”

“Ask
Jubal,” said foolish Emmalyn, and I suppose Patience kicked her, under
the table. Patience always sat next to Emmalyn for that specific
purpose. Ask Jubal, indeed.

“
Think
now before you speak,” said Ruth of Motley. “It won’t do to answer this
carelessly and get caught out, Responsible. You give it careful
thought.” She had finally forgotten about her embroidery and joined us,
and I was glad of it.

“I
think,” I said slowly, “that things are not so far out of hand that
they cannot be stopped. Vine of Motley is crying herself into hiccups
up in the guestchambers at this very moment, and no doubt feels herself
mighty abused, but that baby is safer where he is than in her arms.
Signs and mirrors and milk make no national catastrophe, and Mules that
behave like they’d been drinking bad whiskey are not yet a disaster.
The point is to stop it
now
, before it goes one step further. The next step might not be mischief.”

“What
is called for,” said my grandmother; nodding her head, “is a show of
competence; that would serve the purpose. Something that would
demonstrate that the Brightwaters are capable of keeping the
delegations, and all their kin, and all their staffs, safe here for the
Jubilee.”

“I sometimes
wonder if it’s worth it,” sighed Donald Patrick. “I sometimes think it
might be best to let them go on and dissolve the Confederation and all
be
boones if that’s their determined mind! The energy we put into all this, the
time
, the
money
... Do you know what Brightwater spent in food and drink alone at the last quarterly meeting?”