NOW IT’S TRUE that when I proposed a Quest as the way to demonstrate Brightwater’s status, symbol returned in kind for symbol given, I was completely serious about the idea. I don’t want that misunderstood. No Ozarker takes any formal construct of magic—and a Quest is one of the most rigorous of those—lightly. Like I said, you go tampering and tinkering with an equilibrium as delicate as the system of magic, you’re going to cause radical distortions in places you never even considered would be touched. I was absolutely serious in my choice. And the choice I made had had solid motivations back of it.
Those that wanted to undermine the Confederation could have gone about their task in the most mundane way, you see. They could of simply boycotted meetings, straight out and without concern for who joined them at it. They could of started banging heads in the straightforward physical sense, though the public outrage at that would of backfired on them by the third blow landed—still, they could have. More reasonably, they could of used economic strategies of one kind or another though for those on the wilder continents where self-sufficiency was a long way off yet that might of earned heavy penalties for their populations. But they had not chosen any of those measures, nor yet anything like them. They had made their decision to go at it on the level of magic—and the principle of fighting fire with fire is sufficiently venerable to make the idea of going back at them the same way look perfectly sound. Fighting magic with science has never been handy.
But let’s grant it now and be done with it, the Quest was not all I had available to me, by a long shot. True, they’d flung a gauntlet and made a planetary display of a very special kind; not so much what they actually did—as had been made plain at that first Brightwater Council—but their clear notice as to what they thought they could do if they took the notion. We couldn’t of just let that pass, not and kept our place among the Families as the informal—but only actual—seat of central government for Ozark, It was a dare they’d made, and a contemptuous dare at that, right up to the baby-snatching; and I’d figured that last move was made not so much because they weren’t sure how far they should go, but because I kept dawdling around and not responding, and time was a-wasting. They’d meant to shake me loose from my dawdling, and hanging the baby up in the cedar tree did accomplish that.
But looking back ... looking back and feeling a lot more than the six, seven weeks older I actually was when I at last left Castle Traveller behind me, I could see that I had gone butting my head where it was not necessarily called for. Now that it was all over but the dirty work I began with, and the dirty work I’d piled up along the way, I could see all the other alternatives I had censored right out of my head at the time.
I could have assembled the Magicians, from all three levels, by a full call-up at Brightwater, and made some kind of spectacular display of my competence there; and then sent them all back home to think about that awhile. I could of delegated the whole process to the Magicians of Rank from Marktwain, Oklahomah, and Mizzurah, and let them demonstrate our magical strength to the others, with whatever judicious behind-the-scenes string-pulling that might of required on my part. I could, for the Twelve Corners’ sakes, just of used the comset for a display of our abilities, planet-wide. Or I could of seen to it that one highborn baby in every Kingdom popped into a tree during a Solemn Service at the same identical instant—my Magicians of Rank could have managed that easily, and it would of put the rest on adequate notice that they’d best pull back.
I hadn’t considered, hadn’t even brought up, any of those things.
It was clear to me, as I headed away from Tinaseeh with my ego as bruised as my body, that what I had really wanted had in far too many ways been just what the Grannys were claiming it was as I made my rounds. I had, I guess, wanted to show off, and to do it personally and get full credit; and I had been champing at the bit for an excuse to get away from Brightwater and all the dull routine of my duties there, not to mention the preparations for the Jubilee that others had had to carry on with while I took my vacation. The speed with which I’d gotten underway was the speed of guilt—I had just grabbed at the Quest concept, all loaded with tradition and symbolic significance like it was, for an excuse.
If there’d been any of the Marktwain Grannys present at that meeting in February, they might well have found a way to stop me; I wished mightily now that someone had. But neither my mother nor my grandmother had had a chance against my willfulness, and it was not the way of Patience of Clark to step in and take action unasked.
No, I’d had a dandy idea for getting away from it all for a while, and had gone about it pigheaded as you please, and how it was all to be managed now or at the Jubilee. I surely did not know.
“Sterling,” I said, looking down on the Ocean of Remembrances just before we SNAPPED over all that boring endless water, “I’ve been a blamed fool. And I only hope I’ve learned enough from it to pay me back.”
She brayed at me twice, and slid sideways in a truly spectacular wobble that set me grabbing the straps and fighting for control of my stomach. They were still at it ... and I smacked her hard on the shoulder, and held fast, and swallowed bile, and got out of there.
I had a better understanding now of the lay of things, Castle to Castle, there was that. I had a picture of sorts, thanks to the Gentle, of the trouble brewing on Arkansaw and where that might yet lead. I’d had a first look at my own personal nemesis, foretold these nine years, and had gotten away from him intact but for my pride, this time. And every one of the Families, excepting the Smiths, had had a chance to deal with me directly on its own turf. I suppose that would do for a short list.
I was also tired, and ten pounds thinner; and had been mauled about pretty extensively, and had maybe ignored a Skerry sighting because I hadn’t wanted to bother with it. I had allowed myself to be trapped by a passel of Travellers, like a child, and had no way of knowing what action they might take against me at the Jubilee with the new knowledge they had, and their determination to make good use of it. And my original task, the Goal of my Quest—bringing home the exact name of the traitor or traitors—that still had to be done.
I’ve mentioned pride before; I have it in abundance. It was one thing to admit to myself that Granny Golightly had had the right of it and I’d just taken off because I wanted to gallivant. It was one thing to admit that my fancy triumphant symbolic Quest had been more a series of accidents and misfires than anything else, when it hadn’t been plain boring. Lying to your own self is a sure way to go to hell in a handbasket, and the time had come to ‘fess up. But that was to my own self. I was not about to go back to Castle Brightwater; march into me halls and say—to Jubal and Emmalyn’s great satisfaction, and my mother’s—”Well, youall were right. It was a silly thing to do in the first place, and I’m worse off than I was before I left. Begging your pardon.” Oh no! Bruised ego, bruised spirit, bruised body, all the blacks-and-blues of me notwithstanding, I would arrive home with an appearance of having won this one, come what may. Come what may.
And that was why I was now coming in over Castle Airy, instead of heading for home. Airy was a Castle of women, used to cosseting women and always willing to cosset one more, and I intended to take full advantage of that. I was going to let Charity of Guthrie and her daughters and nieces and cousins, and her three resident Grannys, feed me up and make over me and listen to my troubles and spoil me generally until I had accomplished what I’d set out to accomplish and could go on home in a state of sufficient dignity to at least fool Emmalyn of Clark and Thom of Guthrie.
It was possible, if you were traveling by Mule, to fly into Castle Airy through a great arch cut in its front wall over the sea for that express purpose. I slowed Sterling and we moved in through the opening and down onto the easy-arced ramp at its base, me with a wary hand on the Mule’s bridle against another of those wobbles, and straight into the sidecourt of the Castle where the stables were.
A stableman came forward to see to the Mule and greet me, and I slid gratefully down from Sterling’s back onto the flagstones of me court, and stood there a minute to brace myself.
. “You weren’t expected, Miss Responsible,” said the stableman. “and you arrived a bit sudden. I sent a servingmaid as soon as I saw you coming in over the water; to tell the ladies; somebody should be here directly to take you to the Missus.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your courtesy.”
“You took tired, miss,” he said, and I admitted that I was tired—but not how tired.
“It’s been a long trip,” I told him. “A lot of flying and a lot of company behavior, which is worse. A day or two’ll right me. You take my Mule on, if you will, and see to her; I’ll wait right here.”
He gave me a long considering look, and stood his ground.
“Believe I’ll wait until somebody comes for you,” he said. “I don’t care that much for the look of your eyes, nor your peakedy face, and Charity of Guthrie’d put me back to peeling roots in the kitchen if I went on off and you fainted or some such trick. Your Mule’ll keep awhile.”
I didn’t argue with him—he meant well—and we stood there in silence, me not being up to polite conversation and him not seeming to mind, until a young woman came hurrying toward us from a side coridor with Charity of Guthrie herself right behind her.
Charity took one look at me, wrapped her arms round me, and rocked me like a baby.
“Poor child,” she said, “you’re worn clear out. You’re the color of spoiled goat-cheese and not much more appealing- looking. What in the world have you been doing to yourself?”
“I should of sent you a message I was coming,” I said, all muffled against the burgundy front of her dress. (And I would have, too, if I hadn’t known I could shave a bit off my traveling time by not letting people know precisely when I was taking off and landing.)
“Never you mind that,” she said, “I’m glad you came, and no warning needed. It’ll be a cold day in a mighty hot place when this Castle can’t put up one scrawny girlchild on short notice. You’re welcome here any time.” And she hugged me close again, bless her; and bless her some more. I can’t remember when I’ve needed hugging worse.
She sent the man off with Sterling into the usual racket the Mules made greeting one another, told the servingmaid that had come with her to take my things up to the guestchamber I’d had before, and led me straight up to her own sitting room where she settled me in a rocker, with a quilt over my feet and a mug of strong hot coffee in my hand.
The Grannys came drifting in, then, one by one, and the daughters, and we soon had a roomful. And the Grannys lost no time.
“Well, youngun, how’d it go?” said Granny Heatherknit; she was senior here, at one hundred and eleven. “Your famous Quest, I mean ... did you do enough damage to satisfy your craving?”
Charity of Guthrie’s lips tightened, but I looked at her hard over my coffee and she made no move to call them off. We both knew this had to be gotten through sooner or laid; and it might as well be sooner
“Went well enough,” I said judiciously. “Well enough— considering.”
“Considering?”
“Considering that not a one of you helped me in any way whatsoever,” I said. Bedamned if I’d count that squawker egg out in the Wilderness; Granny Golightly had owed me that one.
“Not a one of who?” said Forthright. “Not a one of what?”
“Not a one of you Grannys,” I retorted. “Near thirty of you there are here on this planet—”
“Twenty-nine, child, twenty-nine!” said Granny Heatherknit.
“Nearly thirty,” I insisted, “and you did not one thing to help me the whole time I was gone.”
“For which,” said Granny Flyswift, jabbing the air in front of her with her knitting needles, “for which there are three good and sufficient reasons! One—this was your own tomfool idea, and none of ours, and none of our advice asked before you set out on it, hot out of here like a Mule with a burr under its tail! Two—you know the conditions on a Quest ... adventures aplenty required and supposed to be unpleasant, or it doesn’t count—and Granny Golightly herself reminded you of that in case it’d slipped your mind? And three—the best way for any child to learn that a flame’ll burn him is to let him stick his finger in it; that makes for remembrance.”
“Yes, ma’am, Granny Flyswift,” I said. I had it all coming.
“Now what did you learn that’s useful to anybody but your stubborn self, missy?” demanded Granny Heatherknit again.
Charity’s daughter Caroline-Ann, sitting on a windowseat with her skirts drawn up and her legs tucked under, asked if that couldn’t wait till I’d had some supper. She was twelve years old, and a lot like her mother
“No-sir,” said Granny Heatherknit. “She’s still able to sing for that supper, and I’m right interested in her tune.”
“Well,” I said, “I learned that a girl of sixteen as can put her hair up in a figure-eight and knows all the modem dances should not be called a child or treated like one.”
The Grannys peered at each other and snickered; and I wondered what foul task they had poor Silverweb of McDaniels doing that very minute.
“And, I learned that a giant cavecat stinks, in more ways than one. I learned that broken ribs are as inconvenient the second time as the first, and that where everybody’s trying to keep the corks in their homebrew nobody has much time for the export trade.”
“So far, so accurate,” said Granny Heatherknit. “Go on.”
“I learned that being licked to death is nasty.”
“No argument with that.”
“I learned that just about anything propped up in the moonlight and painted the right color is sufficient to turn a guilty head. I learned that one continent can hold two very small birds, and only one of them have gumption enough to fly. I learned that just because a Granny isn’t using the old formspeech doesn’t mean her garlic won’t work.”
“She’s only fifty-nine,” snorted Granny Flyswift. “Give her time, she’ll outgrow her notions.”
“She did very well,” I told the old woman. “Very well indeed.”
And I went on. “I learned that a Family truly set on a curse can bring one down on them. And, last of all, I learned that a person can’t knit with both hands tied together.”
“Think not?” said Flyswift.
“Well, I surely couldn’t.”
Granny Heatherknit scrunched up her eyebrows over her glasses—which she didn’t need and doubtful she ever would— and I could see her counting.
“You left out Castle Purdy,” she said. “What happened there?”
“There’s what I will tell,” I answered, “and there’s what I won’t.” (And about the Gentle coming to see me—I wouldn’t).
“Hmmmph,” said Granny Heatherknit. “That might be the most important piece of all.”
“None of it,” said Caroline-Ann of Airy sadly, “meant anything to me. As usual.”
To my surprise, Granny Heatherknit turned to her and spoke almost gently; that girl must have a way with her.
“Caroline-Ann.” said the Granny, “if you keep in mind that what Responsible of Brightwater’s doing is trying to see how much she can not tell—despite being asked most politely— you’ll understand why you found her remarks on the murky side. She’s riddling, can’t you hear that?”
“It didn’t rhyme,” said Caroline-Ann. “I never recognize riddles when they don’t rhyme.”
“Well, take the list she gave you and rhyme it, then,” said Granny Heatherknit. “Set it to a tune for us, Caroline- Ann ... good exercise for you, and we’ll have something new for tale-telling makings.”
“Granny Heatherknit, that would be hard!” objected Caroline-Ami, and that seemed to me accurate. “You don’t mean I have to?”
“Think you should,” said the Granny, and the other two nodded their agreement.
“Pheew!” said one of the huddle of girls on the floor below the sill where Caroline-Ann was. “Glad it’s you and not me, Caroline-Ann!”
“Easy rhymes,” said Granny Flyswift calmly. “Cat. Rib. Bird. Knit. Suchlike. You can manage that, Caroline-Ann; we give you three days, and then we’ll hear it.”
“Oh, blast!”
Caroline-Ann sat up straight and dropped her legs over the sill, careful not to kick anybody. “Naturally I had to open my mouth with three Grannys in the room! Botheration!”
I felt sorry for her; but I needn’t have; it took her only half an hour to do the task set, and we had the song from her right after supper that night. It went like this:
CAROLINE-ANN’S SONG
A girl of sixteen as can put up her hair
in a figure-eight knot, and can do it alone, and can dance through the figure-eights smartly as well— that girl is no child, but a woman full grown!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater:
That’s what I learned.
The smell of a cavecat is ranker than bile, and a cavecat’s attentions are close to its chest, and a cavecat that moves a mysterious mile
has a second rank odor that’s risky at best!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
A rib as is broken will ravage your breath, and the second time round it will ravage your pride, and it’s cold comfort knowing while choking to death that none of the damage shows on the outside!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater.
That’s what I learned.
A cellar of homebrew with corks to be set and a hot spell ahead as makes setting them hard
keeps a family home from the market and road,
keeps a family corked to its Hall and its yard!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
A Yallerhound’s neither a hound nor a dog,
it’s a bag full of water with a topcoat of hair;
it will drown you in slobber for the sake of pure love,
let the Yallerhound owner think well and beware!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
A chair in the moonlight all painted with gold
is easily taken for royalty’s throne, and a conscience that’s guilty can easily see a scepter and crown in a rock and a bone!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
Two little pretty birds sharing one nest,
hidden away in the littlest tree;
one has a leash on and sorrows to know it, and envies the other that dares to fly free!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
A Granny should cackle and gabble and nag, and twist her tongue round to the formspeech and motions, but garlic still wards if she knows her craft right, and as she adds years she’ll no doubt drop her notions!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
A Family as goes through its days set on gloom, talking of curses and harping of fate, eyes to the past and determined to suffer,
will get what it asks for served up on its plate!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater,
That’s what I learned.
A person whose hands are tied tight at her back, a person who’s bound like a goat to a spit, a person in such a predicament can’t
neither gather nor sow, neither broider nor knit!
That’s what I learned, said the daughter of Brightwater;
That’s what I learned.
And there was a nice pre-verse to it, too, for times when there might be those singing back and forth:
What did you learn as you flew out so fine, splendid on Muleback, dressed like a queen?
What did you learn, daughter of Brightwater?
Tell us the wonderful things that you’ve seen!
I could see how, throwing that in every time a verse came round, you could use up a good part of an evening with that song. And I was especially impressed with Caroline-Ann’s solution to the fact that there’s no way anybody can sing my awkward name. It was a fine song, every syllable and note in its proper place, and it added a certain respectability to my Quest, which was why the Grannys had demanded it, of course. I expected to hear a good deal in future of this daughter of Airy.
I passed two blissful days being mothered by Charity, and teased by her Grannys, and generally catching my breath, and by the end of the third day I felt able to face my role in this world once again. I was grateful to Castle Airy for that, because I had arrived in a sorry condition. And I kept humming Caroline-Ann’s song.
And then on the third night, I set about catching myself a serpent. Or serpents, as the case might be.
I waited until all the Castle was sound asleep, and then I took my three baths: one hot, one cold, and one of herbs. I pulled my lawn gown through the small gold ring and saw that it passed without wrinkle or raveling to show for the trip, and I slipped it over my head. I put my black velvet ribbon around my neck, and braided my hair. I set wards and double-wards, which took some time; the guestchamber I was in had three doors and eight windows, and there had to be a pentacle at every one of them, and a double one at the corridor door where the Grannys might pass in their night-prowls.
It was past midnight before I was finally able to climb up into the center of my bed, set a pentacle round me with white sand from my shammybag, and take what was needful out of my pouch.
A bowl of clearest crystal, exactly the size of my closed fist, crystal so clear you had to look twice to see it was there. A vial of water from the desert spring on Marktwain that was holy to Skerrys, Gentles, and Ozarkers, and exactly twelve drops of that water poured into the bottom of the tiny bowl- My shammybags—one full of sand, one of fresh herbs, one of dried herbs, one of talismans. My gold chain, and my gold ring. Everything else I needed was inside my head.
I laid them all out around me within easy reach, and I crossed my legs and sat up straight, and realized that in no way was I tired any longer. Youth does have its compensations.
Now—we should see what we should see!
The needed Formalism was an Insertion Transformation; I wanted a name where I had a null term now, and I wanted more than just “Traveller” to fill that null.
I set down the Structural Index in a double row of herbs, and the Structural Change I laid right underneath it. I set the bowl of desert water in the space of the null term, and I made the double-barred arrow with my hands above the water
“Let there be,” I said over the whole, “a name, sub-N; and let there be a filling of the null term, sub-T; and let there be no alteration of the underlying structure, sub-S!”
The whole of it looked correct, but I checked it over one more time, for rigor— and then I closed it off with the symbol #.
I watched the water closely while it dimmed and clouded and bubbled, and finally cleared again. And then I jumped like a child stuck with a pin!
I’d expected a Traveller, naturally (and maybe half a dozen more of them, one for every time I repeated the Transformation, since I could change only one term at a time); and I had for sure expected to see a man! Despite the mention that Silverweb of McDaniels was husky enough, if properly clothed, to pass for a man and fly a Rent-a-Mule through a church, I’d been convinced no female was behind any of this.
But the face that looked up at me from the water; no bigger than my thumbnail but clear in every smallest detail, and certainly clear in its utter terror; belonged to none of the Travellers and to no man ... It was Una of Clark.
Una, the silent domestic daughter of Clark, the doting mother of five with the amazingly slim waist ... whose husband was a Traveller. Whose husband wore the Traveller black despite all his years in his father-in-law’s cheerful Castle.
I never, never would have suspected her. Never! She had seemed to me the dullest woman I’d come across on this planet, up to and including the gawkiest and rawest servingmaid just decided to try her luck in a Castle and still not sure where the doors were. And she had fooled me. Fooled me pure and simple!
“Una of Clark!” I said over the water; a couple of times, “Una of Clark?” Had it been Sterling looking out at me, I could not of been more astonished.
Then I tensed—fooling me that well, she might have other skills equally foolsome. If the water began to boil in that crystal bowl again, or cloud over, I wanted to be ready to set a new Transformation on it before she got away from me. But the minutes passed, with only the sound of my heart beating loud in the room, and there was no change—only the tiny, so tiny, shivering figure in the water; and very gradually I had all of her, not just her face.
You can’t speak, of course, when you’re trapped in blessed springwater by a Transformation, nor can you move. I appeared to have her at my mercy, and I had the rest of the night to decide what to do about that. Which was not so much time; the clock had just struck two.
I was not precisely free in this; I could go just so far and no farther. Murder’s murder; whether you do it with a hatchet or a Transformation, and it’s not allowed. It would have tidied things up, and I will admit it even crossed my mind, though that shocks me, because I was so put out; but it could not be done. A Deletion Transformation to remove Una of Clark from the matrix of this universe was certainly possible, but it would violate the primary constraint on all magic: it is not allowed, ever, to change the Meaning of things. To do that is the use of magic for evil, and the moral penalties for evil by hatchet are a good deal less severe. They, at least, are administered by people. I’d come within a hair’s breadth of violating that constraint when I tampered with Granny Leeward’s fan, and a very good thing I’d watched the shaping of that nosegay when I lost the rest of my mind; if she’d cared to, she still could of fanned herself with the mushrooms.
Since my choices were pretty rigorously constrained, it didn’t take me long to select among them. At twenty minutes of three I had finished a bounded Movement Transformation, and I faced Una of Clark, dry now in the night wind and back to her standard size, on a narrow rock ledge at the foot of the cliffs where Castle Airy stood. The waves crashed over the rock where we were, and I motioned her to move back into the small cave I’d noted as I flew in that day.
“Don’t you come near me!” she screamed at me, and threw up her hands before her face to shield it. “Don’t you dare!”
“If you drown here, Una of Clark,” I shouted back at her; the wind taking my words and making clattering skeletons out of them, “if you fall into that sea that boils not ten inches from the tip of your dainty white foot, it will be your own fault. And I’ll not be mourning you, you’ll have saved me a great deal of trouble! Get back away from the edge, as I tell you now, and into that cave—move! Get!”
“I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” she whimpered, hunkering down into the wind. “Oh, I don’t dare move ... I’m so afraid!” Drat the woman; I did not really want her to drown, and it looked as though she might. The stone under our feet was like glass, polished by the constant wind and water, and the wind gusting high, and some of the waves were striking us to our knees and more.
“Well, you ought to be afraid,” I countered, “you surely ought! That ocean is as near bottomless as makes no difference, woman, and you’re going into it sure if you don’t pull back!”
I saw her sway as the spray was flung against her ... and fool that she was, she did move—closer to the rim of the ledge.
Law, I had no time for foolishness; I traced the double-barred arrow in the air and Moved her myself, safe into the narrow shelter cut by the water, and I followed her in just inches ahead of a wave that would have had us both sure, not a second to spare.
It was dark in there, and I set a glow around her and around me, so that we could see one another. The roar of the waves was under us and all around us, too, it was everywhere, and with each one the whole mountain seemed to shudder under our feet; but we were safe enough there until the tide rose.
“Witch ... “ she hissed at me ... a serpent she was, right enough ... her teeth chattering, back pressed to the cave wall and her bare feet curled to the curve of the hollowed rock. And she said it once again, a good deal bolder. “Witch!”
“Nonsense,” I said. “I’m nothing of the kind.”
“Oh,” she said, “you’re not a witch? Reckon you didn’t snatch me out of my bed and trap me first in some ... some noplace ... where I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, but your wicked face over me as big as all the sky, and your eyes boring down on me, each of them big as a Castle gate ... and then you brought me here, you SNAPPED me here! Think I don’t know that’s the only way you could drag a decent woman halfway round a continent through the night from her husband’s side?”
“Oh, stop it,” I said, and sat down on the bare rock in pure disgust. I had been prepared to feel some challenge here, maybe some respect for my opponent, but I was just plain disgusted. She was the one responsible for what had been happening to the milk and the mirrors and the streetsigns, all right—the spring water does not lie, nor do the Transformations fail. But the interference with the flight of the Mules? Just as I’d been too slow to see that when I should of seen it right off, I’d misunderstood it completely when I finally got to it, and gone to an awful lot of unnecessary trouble as a result of my blindness.
“Here I thought the reason that everything was just barely over the bounds of half-done was cleverness,” I said crossly, wishing I dared smack her face and knowing the thought was shameful. “Here I thought that just making the Mules wobble a tad instead of making them crash was a way of showing your finesse, and a way of hinting at what dread things you might do if you chose to! You realize dial? And all along, all this miserable long time, Una of Clark, it was just that you aren’t very good at what you do! All along, with your piddling little tricks, you’ve been doing the very best you could, haven’t you? Why, we had the whole damned thing clean backwards! Damn!”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” she spat at me, and she had me there.
And then she hid her face against her shoulder and screamed into the darkness, over and over that same foolish word— “Witch! Witch! Witch!”—until I was nearly distracted. I suppose that was what Gabriel Laddercane Traveller the 34th had used against her; all through the nights of their marriage, lying beside her in their bed, whispering while he stroked her thighs and that slim waist, convincing her to tackle magic far beyond what she was trained in or fit for or had any legal right to even think of. If he’d truly convinced her that she was doing battle against witchcraft when she raised her weak hand against me ... it did not excuse her; but I could see how he might have used that as a levee. Especially with her far gone in the sickness of Romantic Love; it would of served his needs well, and paid him for his long exile from his father’s house, and explained why he’d put up with it over these long years instead of taking her away. The threads that ran to this night were sticky ones, and they clung.
“Well, now, what am I going to do with you?” I asked her; and myself, out loud. “What am I going to do about you, Una of Clark?”
I’d lost all taste for harming her; she was only pathetic; but she couldn’t be allowed to go on with her mischief, bungling as it was, all the same. Nor could she be allowed to go back and talk about any of this, and I was by no means sure she had brains enough to see that.
“Una?” I said sharply. “Una of Clark? You look at me!”
“No! You’ll turn me into something horrible if I do!”
Turn her into something horrible? What did she think she’d done to herself?
“Look at me, you foolish, silly woman!”
She lifted her head then, and her eyes were like two huge flat fish in her white face. Most unappealing.
“Una, what did you think you were trying to do?” I asked her “Maybe if you tell me that I’ll be able to see my way.”
To my astonishment, she raised her hands beside her face, spread her fingers wide as they would stretch, and recited straight at me—
ASS.
BEDPOLE.
CHAMBERPOT.
DEAD OF THE NIGHT.
EGG-ROTTEN BIRD DUNG.
FISTFULS OF MEALY WORMS.
NIGHT OF THE DEAD.
POTCHAMBER.
POLEBED.
ASS.
I was flabbergasted. As nasty a Charm as I’d heard anywhere, and bold as brass about it, terrified as she was. But no elegance. No style! And put together all cockeyed to boot.
I’d seen six-year-old girls do a sight better than that, and without anything nasty in it to help them along, either.
I said:
AIR.
BALSAM.
CINNAMON.
DENY ME NAUGHT.
EVERMORE WEEPING.
FOLLOW ME EVERYWHERE.
EVERMORE SLEEPING.
DOUBLE MY WORTH.
CINDERMAN.
BELLTONGUE.
AIR.
“And,” I added, “if you’d like to go on to twelve syllables and back, in twelve sets of rhymed pairs, I’m ready. But do hurry, Una of Clark, because I intend to be in my bed before breakfast.”
By that time, when she began to sob hopelessly, choking and sputtering, I wasn’t surprised. I wondered what her life was going to be like, from this night on; she wasn’t built for a burden like this, and her husband had chosen a poor instrument to break to his evil.
“See where foolish love will lead you?” I said to her sorrowfully. “See where it will lead you, woman? Into folly, into shame, into disgrace ... Why didn’t you tell him to do his own dirt? What would your father and mother say of you, Una of Clark, if they only knew what you have done?”
She only blubbered harder. And I was sick of watching her
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I said, “and I suggest you listen to me more carefully than you’ve been listening to your Reverend these last few years. For I’m not playing with you, and I warn you—I’m no Granny, to just put toads in your bed and rashes under your armpits and keep your cakes from rising. You do understand that?”
“What are you, really?” she hissed at me. “What are you?”
“Nor am I a witch,” I went right on, ignoring that, “for if I were, you would have been at the bottom of that ocean long before this, and you know it very well. If I were a witch, Una of Clark, I’d set a Substitution Transformation. And another woman that looked just like you and talked just like you and walked just like you and moaned in the loving arms of Gabriel Laddereane Traveller just like you would go home from here—but she would not be you. You would be feeding the fishes and she would be only a Substitute, and nobody would ever know.”
“Go ahead, then—you can do it, why don’t you, and leave off torturing me?”
“Because I’m not a witch, I’m a law-abiding well-brought up woman, that you’ve caused a lot more trouble than there’s any excusing you for, that’s why!”
“Then what are you going to do?” she whispered. “Make me ugly? Make me crippled? Oh dear saints, Responsible of Brightwater, what is it going to be?”
“Your mind is a cesspool,” I said, staring at her “A cesspool. Make you ugly and cripple you indeed!”
“Tell me!”
“What I am going to do is set a Binding Spell on you,” I said. “That and nothing more. Seven years, Una of Clark, you’ll say no word about this night or about what you know of me, or about what you’ve done. And seven years, you’ll do no magic you haven’t earned the rank for. You not even a Granny or any chance of ever being one ... I’ll bind you seven years; and then you’re free to do your worst.”
She went limp against the rock; I was glad mere wasn’t any place for her to fall to.
“The reason I’m stopping there,” I went on as I made my preparations, “is because I am not a witch! And because I have no desire to go beyond what’s decent. You’re a woman—and you’re a Clark by birth. I am willing to wager that in seven years you’ll achieve enough wisdom, that when the Spell is at its end you’ll guard your own mouth out of shame and simple decency. I’m willing to take a chance on that.”
And if I was wrong, I could bind her then again, of course;
I’d be on the watch.
She just huddled there and bawled, every other word some stuff about what she was going to tell Gabriel Laddercane, more shame to her, and I got on with my work.
It took me only a little while, and then I Moved her carefully back to Castle Clark, to the bed where—might could be—her husband had not yet even missed her. If he had, that was her problem, and it was up to her to figure out some way to get out of it. I’d done all I was willing to do, and more than she deserved, out of regard for her Family, and pity for her folly, and out of the kind of distaste that comes from dealing with an enemy that’s really no match for your skills. There’s a game called shooting ducks in a barrel—I don’t play it. Never have.
And before the servingmaid tapped on my door with my pot of morning tea, everything was put away. Every sign of the wards and the pentacles swept deal; not a speck of sand from my shammybags on the Airy floor. And I lay there in my plain nightgown with the covers tucked up around my chin, and a smile on my face that suited my pose, like I’d not lifted a finger all that weary night.
Now I could go home.