Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
(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
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!
“Oh, Great Gates,” said Jewel of Wommack. “I’ll never manage it.”
Her brother looked down at her and grinned.
“Afraid you’ll fall in the water, are you?” he teased. “Tell you what, dear heart, I’ll carry you down the landing ramp.”