I DON’T MIND saying that it went well, though it’s bragging, for it’s no more than the plain truth. My leavetaking may have had an unseemly abruptness due to my hightailing out of there before my common sense (or somebody else’s) could stop me, but my homecoming went off as slick as I could possibly have desired it. And the rough edges I well knew were there didn’t so much as show their shadows on the surface that was available for examination to others.
I timed it so as to fly in to Castle Brightwater right at the end of breakfast on a sunny April morning. And the last ten miles I rode Sterling along the winding roads of the Kingdom, between the hedges of butter-yellow forsythia newly in bloom, and the fields of fruit trees covered with blossoms thick as snowflakes. Every blade of grass and every new leaf and bud was that perfect green that comes only in April, and that was what the Brightwater green was meant to stand for (and never quite matched). And although the people didn’t cheer me—we didn’t hold with such display on Marktwain, and hadn’t for hundreds of years—I knew they were glad to see me coming back. I knew by the smiles on their faces and the fact that they were out in the fields working in their Sundy best, and this not Sundy. I kept my own face straight and pretended not to notice ... in fact, I worked at really not noticing, seeing as how if I arrived at Castle Brightwater puffed up with anything that a sharp eye could spot as pride the family would be on me like carrion birds on a new-dead squawker; and I’d come out of it blistered.
Nobody came out to meet me, which was reasonable enough. I wasn’t company here, I lived here, and I had to whistle for a stablemaid to come take Sterling off my hands. Then I stopped and indulged myself, just for a minute, since nobody seemed to be looking. I never would of imagined I could be so glad just to be home.
Ours was the first Castle built, and the Castle proper is not one of the shelters the Twelve Families set up when The Ship landed and they were new to this planet. The one the Brightwaters built was made of logs that can’t match Tinaseeh iroowood even halfway for durability, but have kept well enough under cover, and it sits within the front courtyard of the Castle as a constant reminder—lest we should ever forget—of our humble beginnings here. It had seven bedrooms round a common room; and forty-four Brightwaters—men, women, and children, and one fine hound that had quickly died—slept and ate and passed their very limited leisure time under that wooden roof.
When I was at home I hardly saw the loghouse, I was so accustomed to it, but it was new to my eyes this morning, and I let them linger on it, glad it was still there for the children of all the Twelve Families to visit and play at living in.
And then I turned my eyes to the Castle itself, and it pleasured me, too. It was perfectly square, and a modest but satisfactory two stories high. It had twelve towers; one at each corner, one at the center of each wall, one on either side of the front doors, and two extra in the front wall for fancy. The Brightwater flag flew from every one of the tower roofs, and I noticed that someone had polished the brass weathervane (an Old Earth rooster that was one of the few material things granted space in The Ship that could only be called a luxury), and that it turned briskly in the wind at the top of the tower spire where it had been fastened more than nine hundred years ago. I smiled; they’d claim that was done for spring cleaning, but I knew better—we were a good week away from spring cleaning time. It was done to welcome me home.
I knocked at the Castle doors, and they slid apart without a sound to let me in; someone had oiled them, too, for there’d been a grating scrape to them when I rode out in February. The Castle Housekeeper stood there casually watching three servingmaids polish the same banister over and over again, and she looked up as I stepped under the doorbeam and pretended to be surprised.
“Well, if it’s not Miss Responsible,” she said. “Good morning to you, miss.”
“Good morning to you. Sally of Lewis,” I said, and I greeted each of the servingmaids by name as well, including the one whose apron had a grease spot, for which there was no excuse in my front Hall. “I’m home,” I said.
“We see you are,” said Sally of Lewis. “And we’re glad— it’s been a long time.”
It had been that; nearly eight weeks, and at that I’d made a bit better time than I’d deserved.
“The Family’s still having breakfast, miss,” said Sally of Lewis. “They’re just finishing the coffee and there’s still hot cornbread on me table. The cooks happened to make extra this morning.”
It was amazing. I found that not only was I anxious for some Brightwater cornbread and butter, I was even anxious to see my mother. I believed I was even anxious to see Emmalyn of Clark, and I couldn’t remember that idea ever passing through my mind before. I had clearly been away too long and was going weak in the head.
I went down the corridors to the room at the back of the Castle where we liked to have breakfast and supper both. It looked out on a wide field mat was a riot of wildflowers in the spring and a riot of scarlet and golden leaves in the fall, and through which there flowed a quite respectable creek that you could catch glimpses of from the windows. That creek had been First Granny’s only condition for choice of the Brightwater land. “I don’t care what else it has or hasn’t,” she’d declared. “Volcanoes, canyons, banana trees, swamps, anything you fancy—but it has got to have a creek or I won’t build even an outbuilding on it. Keep that in mind!”
“Well, Responsible,” they all said as I went in the door. And various other equally original greetings. Gnumy Hazelbide settled for “Decided to come back, did you?” and a full-scale Granny glare.
“Sit down. Responsible,” said Patience of Clark, “and help yourself to the cornbread. Unless you want to change first, of course,”
I looked down at myself, at the black velvet corselet and the silver-and-gold embroidery and the scariet leather gloves, and all the rest of it. “No,” I said, “I’ll have my breakfast first. And then I plan to take all this off, and burn it.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” said Granny Hazelbide, dropping her silverware with a clatter onto her plate. “Waste not, want not, young woman—you think money grows on trees? You’ll take that truck off and give it in to the staff for cleaning and storing away proper; and then next time you take a notion to play the fool you’ll already have your fool outfit to hand. But spare us your spurs, please—they clank, and furthermore, they’ll scratch the floorboards. And take off your gloves; they’ll be all over Mule.”
Emmalyn of Clark told me what a pretty outfit it was, and how much she admired it, and how she had thought of that as I left but hadn’t had a chance to express her admiration, and I thanked her politely.
“I think, personally,” said Thom of Guthrie, “that it is a tad Too Much.”
“A tad!” exclaimed Granny Hazelbide. “Why, she looks like a circus, or a—”
I interrupted with considerable haste, remembering how I’d reacted the last time I’d heard the word I was reasonably sure she was just about to use.
“Dear Granny Hazelbide,” I said, sitting down and reaching for the hot cornbread and the butter; “you weren’t here to advise me when I left, you see, you were ailing. I left in something of a hurry, and I did the best I could.”
“Hmmmph,” said Granny, “your ‘best’ is pretty puny, Responsible. And I am scandalized that either your mother or your grandmother let you leave this Castle looking like a—” Well, there was clearly no hope for it.
“Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller said I looked like a whore,” I said blandly. If the word had to be used I might as well do it myself and spare my sensibilities as best I could.
“Shows what she knows,” muttered Granny Hazelbide instantly, just as if she hadn’t had the exact same word on the tip of her fibbing tongue. “Had her way, you’d have gone on Quest in a black nightgown and a bonnet, I reckon.”
“I expect I would,” I said. “I expect.”
The same crew was there that had been at the meeting in February; except that Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater the llth sat beside Ruth of Motley, and the Granny was present. My mother looked a vision, as always, in a gown the exact color of the forsythia bushes; and she brought up the subject at hand without preliminary, as always.
“Well,” she said, “did you find out who we owe for our sour milk? And all the rest of it? And did you find out who put that baby up in the cedar tree? I am of the opinion, myself, that the McDaniels are growing somewhat more than just tired of camping under that tree and watching their baby through a life- support bubble, and I rather imagine that if you could see your way clear to do something about that they’d be properly grateful. Not that I’d want to hurry your breakfast, of course.”
Prick, prick, prick ... that was Thom of Guthrie. Prick you here and when you jumped, stick you somewhere else. ‘ “Mother,” I said, “I learned everything I went to find out, and a good deal more I never suspected, and we can take care of the baby matter in just a minute. I do intend to finish my breakfast.”
“Well?” she demanded. “Who was it?”
“Can’t tell,” I said, shaking my head with what was intended to look like sincere regret. “I am sorry about that.”
“You can’t tell?” Jubal Brooks and Donald Patrick did that in chorus, both outraged, and my grandparents looked at each other significantly and said nothing.
“Told you she wouldn’t,” said Granny Hazelbide smugly. ‘“She’s ornery; always was, always will be. You’ll get nothing out of her.”
“Not true, Granny,” I answered, “you’ll get a good deal out of me. I will be calling Full Council later ... after supper, Mother, you needn’t think about it now … to tell you about a lot of things that need discussing badly.”
“Your ‘adventures,’ I suppose,” said my grandmother Ruth.
“They were not of my choosing, Grandmother,” I reminded her; “they went with the choice of measure to be taken, all duly voted on by you and everybody there at the time. I’ll take my fair share of blame, but I warn you I’ll not take what’s not coming to me ... and I learned a lot that will need tending to before the Jubilee.”
Patience of Clark looked at me like I’d said a broad word. “Responsible,” she said. “do not say that to me. Do not even suggest that. We’re going under for the third time already in ‘what has to be done before the Jubilee’ ... don’t you make it worse.” And I knew then whose shoulders had taken on the load for me in that part of the field while I’d been gone.
However, Patience meant food to prepare and rooms to clean and suchlike, and training new staff. I was thinking of a promise made to a Gentle in a Purdy guestchamber; and settling the question of whether we should—or could—try for a delayed celebration of the claimed appearance of a Skerry, just in case. And there was the matter of the feuding on Arkansaw to be laid out for them, and just how the rest of the Families might fit in to that, and how that would tend to complicate both the security arrangements and the seating ones.
I would not be taking up with them the matter of what I’d done at Castle Traveller, nor what might be done in advance of the Jubilee to forestall their putting my blunder to use; that I’d have to deal with myself, in private, and I had a feeling in my heart that I knew the answer already. Nothing to be done but wait, and deal with it when it came, I’d wager, though I’d search the timelines as far as my wit and skill would take me, on the off chance. But that would not be on the Council agenda.
Nor would the name of Una of dark. Much good seven years of silence was going to do us if I didn’t observe it myself.
“I found out who was back of all the mischief,” I said calmly, “and that we had the thing hindside to, and I put a stop to it. There’ll be no more wobbly Mules, I promise you. But for the sake of the Families involved, there’ll be no passing on of names, either, from my lips or any others.”
“Families involved ... “ That was Jubal Brooks. “Then there were more than one.”
“In a manner of speaking, Jubal Brooks,” I said. In a manner of speaking. The Travellers for sure—I’d not been wrong in thinking them guilty; without the strokings and whisperings of Gabriel Laddercane Traveller the 34th there’d of been no shenanigans from Una of Clark. She’d of bounced her babies on her knee, and doted on her husband, and died a good woman. And no way of knowing who’d put Gabriel up to that, nor how many long years it might well have been planned. And the Clarks for sure, by reason of Una’s direct hand. But only those two, I thought, only those two. I’d not repeated the Insertion Transformation that night at Castle Airy, to see if any other faces would turn up in my bowl of springwater. I’d been rushed, and I’d been disgusted, and there’d not been either the time or the proper mood. And to make certain sure, I’d be doing that now I was home. I didn’t expect, however, to trap anyone else. If there’d been any other name to babble, Una of Clark would of let it fall, in sheer tenor
“You’re mean not to tell, Responsible,” said Thorn of Guthrie. “But then you were always mean.”
I smiled at my plate, and listened to Granny Hazelbide put her in her place, which she did more than adequately. My mother could not abide being left out of anything, even when it was for her own good and clearly for the general welfare. Granny dressed her both up and down, and she subsided. And when that was over; we all walked down to the churchyard.
Vine of Motley and Halliday Joseph McDaniels the 14th did cheer as they saw us coming, and I could see their point. Eight weeks camped under that tree must have been wearisome, even in the sort of luxury accommodations they’d provided for themselves. And I could well believe that Vine of Motley’s arms itched to hold her own baby, instead of the servingmaid’s she’d nursed these past two months. In her place I’d of been impatient, too, and I was glad I hadn’t waited to change my clothes after all.
“Hurry up,” I told the Magician of Rank that had joined us in some haste at the Castle back doors. He was called Veritas Truebreed Motley the 4th, a name some found overly fancy— which accounted for its only coming round four times in all these years—but there was no quarrel with his skill. Once I’d assured him that whatever held that baby couldn’t be anything much more complicated or dangerous than Granny Magic, and clumsily done at that, he didn’t waste either time or energy. At fifty-three going on fifty-four he was a sure and experienced man with his Formalisms & Transformations, and he made no fuss whatever over bringing Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th down to his parents. He didn’t even bother with herbs; he just scuffed a few cedar needles into suitable patterns, flicked his fingers with the supple ease of long practice, and the baby floated right down to his daddy, gurgling and cooing and obviously without so much as a heat rash to mar his perfection.
“Oh, Halliday Joseph McDaniels, do give him to me!” cried Vine of Motley. “Please let me have him!”
“Certainly, darlin’,” said Halliday Joseph, grinning so I feared he’d crack his face. And he passed the child over to Vine of Motley and took the servingmaid’s baby in exchange.
She popped up instantly and relieved him of that burden, and I made a mental note that she was to be rewarded handsomely for her part in all of this. Discreetly, but handsomely. Her name was Flag of Airy, for the Ozarit iris that looked quite a lot like me pictures we had from Earth; and she was, as I recalled, just on fifteen, and wife of an Attendant that was a Clark by birth. I thought that a small Bestowing of an acre or two of farmland would not be out of place, and I’d have it seen to. Two months was a long time to watch your own child suckled at another woman’s breasts, and to know that your first task when you had it back—if you had it back, because she would not of been human if she hadn’t worried that something might go wrong— would be weaning that babe to a cup. No, a couple of acres to put a small house on would not strain Brightwater, though the land we still had to give away was almost gone—this was a time that justified parting with it, even beyond the Family proper. And Flag of Airy would be pleased to be the lady of a house instead of a servant in Castle Brightwater. It wouldn’t make it up to her completely for what she’d sacrificed, I didn’t suppose; having no baby myself I was a poor judge. But it seemed to me it ought to lessen the ache a little.
Happy! We were for sure happy that day. The McDaniels insisted on packing up and heading for home at once (they didn’t say “before something else happens” but no doubt they were thinking it), and nobody there that wouldn’t of done the same in their place, though we protested politely. But the rest of us were in no mood for any kind of labor. The air was golden, the cedar sighed over us, and the churchyard was a credit to its Maker with white and yellow and purple violets, sod young daisies, and all the spring Sowers of Earth that had, praise be, taken to the soil of Ozaric without so much as a dapple to their leaves to show strain. There’d be plenty of work to do later, after supper; it would be a long Council, and we’d all come out of it sobered, even with me keeping back the worst of it.
For the moment, though, we weren’t worrying about that or anything else. I set aside my corselet and cape, my boots and gloves—carefully, under the sharp eyes of Granny Hazelbide—and rolled up my puffed and beomamented sleeves to feel the warm sun on my arms. We sent for a picnic from the Castle. And we lay all through that day under the cedars (I had to send the Lewises a note thanking them, I thought, while I was tying up loose ends ... I had not known how much I loved those three cedars they’d nurtured in our churchyard until I lay there lazy under them and saw them with fresh eyes); and we talked of minor things. The children ran wild and wore themselves into stupors before it was time to head home for supper, playing circle games and tag and hide-and-seek and Little Sally Waters all over the churchyard, and wading in the creek while their mothers scolded halfheartedly and turned a blind eye and deaf ear most of the time.
I managed to tie down tight again in that comer of my mind reserved for the awful my encounter with the young uncle at Castle Wommack. That I would look at when the Jubilee was over; unless, the Skies help us all, he came to the Jubilee. Stuff that away, Responsible, I told myself hastily; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and if it happened I’d have to deal with it then. I wasn’t going to let it spoil my homecoming day, not that nor any of me rest of it. Not this one day.
“Glad to see you appreciate your homeplace, missy,” said my Granny, giving me a wicked dig in the ribs to be sure I was paying attention. “Grass wasn’t quite as green as you thought it’d be elsewhere, eh?”
“Don’t torment me. Granny Hazelbide,” I pleaded with her “I’m so comfortable ... and so glad to be here! Leave me in peace.”
“Leave you in peace?”
“Please, Granny Hazelbide. Pretty please.”
“Think you deserve peace, young lady?” she demanded.
“No. Granny, I doubt I deserve it atall,” I said frankly “I just asked for it—I didn’t say I had it coming to me.”
She chuckled. And patted my knee.
“All right, then,” she said. “Long as you’re staying honest with your poor old Granny.”
She didn’t believe I was honest for a minute, nor did I, but it appeared she was willing to call temporary truce. I closed my eyes. so full of my undeserved bliss that I couldn’t hold any more, and took a nap. That at least, considering the way I’d been having to spend my nights, I had earned.
(A TEACHING STORY)
A very long time ago, and much farther away than you might think, there were Twelve Families, all living on a world called Earth—and they were purely disgusted.
Earth, it’s said, had been green and gold and beautiful—a gardenplace and a homeplace. But the people that lived there had neglected it and abused it, year after weary year, till it was entirely spoiled, till it was a ruin and a wreck and a pitiful, pitiful sight.
The water was dirty and the air was foul; the creatures all were sorry and warped and twisted. They say the fish that swam the creeks and rivers had become so strange that a person couldn’t even look at them, let alone eat them.
And then the people, they say, began to grow twisted, too. Not in their bodies—though living where they did that was no doubt ahead of them—but in their minds and in their hearts. No person could be trusted in those times. Hurting, they say, was done for the pleasure of hurting. And the things that were done in those days, we are told, one human hand against another; do not bear repeating.
The Twelve Families, they were a patient people. They had lived a long time on Earth, keeping themselves to themselves, cherishing their homes and their kind, and they waited as long as they could. But the day came, the day came, when First Granny said, “Enough’s enough, and this is too much!” And everyone looked around at the patheticness of it all, and they agreed with her
And so, in the year Two Thousand and Twelve—as was fitting—the Twelve Families took The Ship and left Earth together, and went in search of a new homeworld. It had to be a place enough like Earth so that they could fit there; and it had to be hidden away enough so that they could keep themselves to themselves forever and ever more. And they took with them just as little as they possibly could from Earth, with First Granny and the Captain standing right in the door of The Ship, they say, throwing things out as fast as people carried them in.
“The less of that trash goes with us,” said First Granny, paying no mind to the complaints and the caterwauling, “the less likely we are to have to do this every time we turn around.” (By which she meant every two thousand years or so.)
And it would appear that she was right, because a thousand years have gone by, and here we are still, and mightily satisfied with our lot.
And what may have become of Earth we do not know; and the less thought about that the better for us all.
(A TEACHING STORY)
A very long time ago, and a good deal closer by than you might think, the Twelve Families and the Captain and First Granny turned their attention to bringing The Ship down for landfall nice and easy. Just nice and easy!
Made no nevermind that the fuel was almost all gone in The Ship’s engines. Made no nevermind that through near nine years under solar sails spread round The Ship like petals of a great lily to gather the solar winds, that fuel somehow had changed. They still had to get down.
“Fool stuff’s clabbered,” said First Granny with total contempt, tapping the toe of her high-topped high-heeled pointy-toed black patent leather shoes.
“Fuel can’t clabber,” the Captain told her politely. “It’s not even liquid to start with, ma’am—begging your pardon.”
“Same thing,” said First Granny, sticking out her chin. “Put it into any frame of circumstance that suits you. Captain Aaron Dunn McDaniels, I don’t mind! It’s spoilt—as fuel—and that’s the same thing as clabbered.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Captain, as was proper. But they still had to get down.
They had never thought it would take them nine years to find a new homeworld enough like Earth to live on, and lonely enough to make neighbors an unlikely occurrence, and having no other thinking creatures unwilling and unable to let them share the land.
All the food was gone, and all the stuff for making more, and nothing was left but the food seeds packed away dormant in their sterile tubes waiting for new dirt. All of the clothes they’d brought with them were worn out and raggedy and getting too thin even for the needs of modesty.
And the animals, the live ones, they were getting what First Granny somberly referred to as That Look. What might be happening to the stores of embryos sleeping in their tubes, no one could say till they were decanted; but it was worrisome.
Going on was out of the question, and had been the last seven days. They had to get down.
First Granny took all the Magicians to the Ship’s Chapel, and they did what they could do. And Captain Aaron Dunn McDaniels took all the crew to the bridge and the engine room, and they did what they could do.
And nobody stinted.
But the fuel failed them just as they saw a green land rush up beneath them—just as they saw it!—and The Ship went crippled into what we now call the Outward Deeps.
Well, what’s meant to be will be, they say, and that appears to be true. For even as the water closed over the dying Ship and First Granny told the children to stop their caterwauling and prepare to meet their Maker with their mouths shut and their eyes open, a wonderful thing happened. Just a wonderful thing!
Forty of them there were, shaped like the great whales of Earth, but that their tails split three ways instead of two. And their color was the royal purple, the purple of majestic sovereignty.
They met The Ship as it fell, rising up in a circle as it sank toward the bottom. And they bore it up on their backs as easy as a man packs a baby, and laid it out in the shallows, where the Captain and the crew could get The Ship’s door open, and everybody could wade right out of there to safety.
They were the Wise Ones, so named by First Granny; and it may be that they live there still in the Outward Deeps. Nobody knows, and nobody needs to know.
And it was during that glad wading to shore just before First Granny set her foot on the land and cried, “Well, the Kingdom’s come at last. praise be!” that the ancient holy book—its name was BIBLE—was lost to the Twelve Families. First Granny, she thought the Captain had it, it seems. And the Captain, he thought First Granny had it. Naturally. And there was a child of three that claimed he’d seen a Wise One swallow it—waterproof, radiationproof, fireproof, crashproof box and all. And for all we know that may be true. For sure it’s never washed up on any coast of Ozark, all these many hundred years.
“Botheration,” First Granny said when they realized it was gone. And the Captain allowed as how he was deeply sorry.
“Well,” said First Granny, “I suppose we’ll just have to Make Do.”
And so we have, ever since.
(A TEACHING STORY)
A very long time ago, and much further away than you might think, when the Twelve Families were preparing to leave Earth, there was a young woman named Rozasharn. Now Rozasham was a Purdy by birth, and it happened that the Purdys had a fine and famous dulcimer. It was of the sweetest fruitwood, and it was cut slim-waisted and curled, and it had inlays of mother-of-pearl in the shapes of hearts and roses and twining vines and little mourning doves. It was purely beautiful, and when they told Rozasharn it had to be left behind, she was outraged. Just outraged!
“Rozasharn,” said First Granny, “we have on The Ship two guitars, two banjos, two dulcimers, two autoharps, two fiddles—which is one too many, if you ask me—two mouth-harps, two mandolins, and a dobro. Each was chosen because the man or woman that played it was the finest player we knew, and it will serve to while away the time, and to be a model for building more such when we land. But that’s enough.” And then she gave Rozasham a curled-lip look and said, “You can’t even carry a tune, Rozasham, let alone play that dulcimer!”
Rozasham yes-ma’amed, but she went away bitter and she wasn’t about to give in. The Purdy dulcimer was the prettiest she’d ever seen, and she intended it to go on The Ship no matter what First Granny said.
So Rozasharn began to plan her magic. There was a Spell of Invisibility, of course, but that took a lot of work to get going and even more to maintain, and Rozasharn wasn’t sure she was up to it. A Spell of Distraction, on the other hand, was a simpler matter; and she decided to set one of those on the dulcimer, to make it appear it was only her shawl. Rozasham went through her motions and cast the Spell, and found herself a bit embarrassed; she had in her hands a truly splendid shawl, covered with hearts and roses and twining vines and little mourning doves, and that was never going to get past First Granny. “Back up a bit, Rozasharn,” Rozasham told herself, “or you’ll come out of this blistered.”
What she settled on at last was three Spells. The first was to turn the dulcimer itself plain, and that one worked all right. The second was to make the plain dulcimer appear to be a shawl, and that one seemed to be in good shape to the eye, although it was uncomfortable to her shoulders, since she could still feel the pegs and the strings and the edges of the wood; but she considered it her family duty to put up with it. And the third was to take off the other two, and she tried that out, and it worked. Nothing was left but to calculate the weight she had to leave behind so no one would suspect, and that meant leaving buried in her back yard two pairs of shoes and a half-slip she’d never liked anyway, and she made it onto The Ship right under First Granny’s nose, the dulcimer draped round her shoulders and looking for all the world like a plain old shawl. Just like it!
Well, she would of been all right, would Rozasham—if she’d had a little self-control. But when landing time came she just could not resist letting everyone know the trick she’d played, and as she stepped onto the land of Ozark she cast the third Spell and stood there before everybody, holding the famous Purdy dulcimer and looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
First Granny looked her up and she looked her down, and then she looked her up once more to be certain her eyes didn’t deceive her; but she said nary a word. The Captain looked sorrowful, but he didn’t speak either And as the days passed, and the Purdy s settled in and built themselves a homeplace, Rozasham began to feel comfortable.
And then came the morning when the last stick was in place, and the last curtain hung, and the last dish on the shelf, and Rozasharn looked out her front door and there stood First Granny with Macon Desirard Guthrie the 3rd at her right hand; and young Rozasham’s heart very nearly stopped. Macon Desirard Guthrie was no common person, but a man skilled in Formalisms & Transformations. If there was a more handy Magician on Ozark, Rozasham didn’t know who it might be.
“Stand aside, Rozasham,” said First Granny, “and let us come in.”
And Rozasham did that, most promptly, and there she stood while Macon Desirard Guthrie went through his Structural Descriptions and his Structural Indexes and his Rigorous Specifications of Coreference and his Global Constraints and a lot of other things of that kind and caliber; and when he got through there were just three things that a person could do with the Purdys’ fancy dulcimer
You could hang it on a peg on the back wall of a dark closet. You could put it in the bottom of a tight and heavy sack long enough to carry it to some similar peg, should you be required to move.
And you could dust if off, from time to time.
If you tried to do anything else with that dulcimer; such as showing it off to the neighbors, or playing a tune, or even moving it off its peg to peek at it your own self, it came flying out at you like a hunting hawk; and starting in the center of the room it would swoop in bigger and bigger circles, faster and faster ... Wheeeyeeew! Let me tell you, all you could do then was throw yourself on the floor, roll under whatever you’d fit under; and pray it would miss you.
And nobody could put that thing back on its peg but another Magician trained in Formalisms & Transformations.
And that is the tale of the Hying Dulcimer of Castle Purdy, and has something to tell us about being proud of things.
The jump-rope rhyme goes like this:
The Purdys have a dulcimer;
it cannot make a sound; and if you take it off its peg,
it flies around and round!
It’ll hit you in the back of the neck, as it goes flying by,
It’ll hit you in the crook of the back,
it’ll poke you in the eye!
It’ll chase you round the bedroom,
it’ll chase you down the stairs’
And all ‘cause of Rozasham of Purdy as tried to put on airs!