Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms (29 page)

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
out
raged!

“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 3
^rd
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!