Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
“Nevertheless,” said Thorn of Guthrie, “it’s a purely disgraceful hour for her to be still in that bed! If you say she’s overworked, I’ll take your word for it, but she could at least get up and sit in a chair. She’s fourteen, Granny, not fifty; she’d make it through the day.”
“Fifteen,” said the Granny, staring hard at Responsible’s mother. “Fifteen years old on the eleventh of May-which it happens to be, this very day.”
Ruth of Motley frowned at her daughter-in-law, and exchanged looks with Granny Hazelbide, and then she asked: “Thorn of Guthrie, did you forget that child’s birthday again?”
“Third year in a row,” observed the Granny.
“May have done,” snapped Thorn, with a high flush on her cheeks that only rnade her more beautiful.
“I notice she always remembers
yours.”
“It makes no smallest nevermind to Responsible, and you know it,” Thorn told them both. “Why you nag me about it when she’s got no natural affections whatsoever, I cannot imagine, and I don’t choose to listen to any such trivial clatter on a day like this, thank you very much all the same.”
“Well,” mused Granny Hazelbide, pursing her lips, “I suppose as a woman reaches your age her memory does begin to suffer a tad, Thorn. No doubt Responsible knows that-and as you say, it won’t worry her a mite.
Not
a mite!”
The Missus of Castle Brightwater drew an exasperated breath, and the high flush flared higher still, but she was not about to take bait that obvious.
“
I
think,” she declared, “that she should get up. And that’s my last word on the subject.”
“I’m pleased to hear you say so,” answered the Granny, “seeing as how you’ve already said too many and some left over. You leave the girl alone; the staff’s seeing to clearing up after that mob we had in here, and that’s what we pay ‘em for. No reason Responsible should be doing
any
thing. For sure she’s not missing anything in the way of inspiring conversation.”
“Since it’s her birthday,” said Ruth of Motley pleasantly, “I’ll side with you, Granny.”
“You might just as well-because I’m letting nobody near her till she’s slept out, and that’s all there is to it. The load on that child’s back is going to be mighty heavy from here on out, and I’m glad she’s not having to think about it for a little while.”
Thorn of Guthrie tightened her lips, but she held her peace, and only the speed with which her stylus scribbled at the diary page betrayed her.
As it happened, Responsible was not asleep. She was awake, and had been since a little past one; but she was not brimming with energy. She felt like she’d been drowned in honey and then had it harden round her-that would be the ebonygrass Granny’d put in the potion. It was rare stuff, and saved in the ordinary run of things for people that’d been through some hellish kind of experience. The little Bridgewraith’s mother and daddy, for example-it would of been appropriate to potion them with ebonygrass, and Responsible hoped somebody had thought to do it.
She lay there, determined to move, thinking every minute she would move, and only sinking deeper into the languor that held her fast. Her conscience would never have brought her out of it alone; what finally did it, right around four in the afternoon, was the hunger gnawing at her stomach and the leftover taste of the potion. Her mouth put her in mind of the cavecat’s den she’d spent some unanticipated and unpleasant time in back a few months, and that did at last drive her in search of her toothbrush.
When she’d first waked up, just for a second, she’d thought “Fourth Day of the Jubilee!” . . . Just for a moment she’d forgotten the shambles things were in. It would have been wonderful; just imagine, if things had gone the other way, if the delegates had told the Travellers and the Smiths to take their “free men and sovereign states” hogwash and throw it into the Ocean of Storms. There’d of been a party at Brightwater this night to end all parties; she’d set aside a quantity of strawberry wine, that’s price would of fixed every comset in the Castle, against just such an outcome. Now they’d be able to put it down in the cellars as an investment; not likely it would get any less expensive. Perhaps King Delldon Mallard of Castle Smith would buy it off of Brightwater for his state dinners.
She spat into her basin, getting rid of the taste of the ebonygrass but not the taste that the thought of the Smiths brought to her mouth. Bitter, it was. And bitterest of all was the thought that nagged at her, that if she’d stayed home till the Jubilee and passed her time at her magic-instead of taking off on that fool Quest all around the Kingdoms-she might well have discovered what the Smiths were intending. She was
supposed
to find out such things, and make provisions to deal with them, she bore the label for that. But she’d had no slightest inkling.
Which she rather expected could mean only one thing. The Smiths had been truly, genuinely, wholeheartedly convinced that what they were up to was
not wrong. How
they’d managed that was a marvel to her, but given the awesome depths of their stupidity, might could be any kind of nonsense was possible for them.
They surely had not been backward about turning up in their gaudy array before all the Kingdoms assembled, not any one of them, so far as she could tell. Ignorance, like innocence, was a powerful talisman.
And then there was the memory, rankling at her day and night, of how she’d sat still for it without a murmur when she’d gotten the letter from Dorothy of Smith saying it wouldn’t be convenient for Responsible to visit Castle Smith on her Quest. It was just that she’d counted on Granny Gableframe to keep things in at least rough order, and the idea of a Magician of Rank actually turning magic against a Granny had never entered her head. It was an unnatural idea, like a Mule playing a fiddle; if it
had
entered her head no doubt she’d of thrown it right back out again.
“Things,” she said to her own face in the bathroom mirror, “things are entirely
out of hand
on this planet!”
And what was she to do about it? She doubted sleeping all day was a productive way of tackling the problem.
There were times when she wondered if it wouldn’t have been an easier row to hoe if it’d been runaway technology she had to deal with instead of runaway magic. They’d been so careful about the technology. No robots, not even in the fields and the mines where robots could do the work far more efficiently than human beings ever could hope to. No nuclear
any
thing; she doubted there were more than a score of human beings besides herself who even knew the word. No chemicals in the food or on the soil, no synthetics . . . Without Housekeeping Spells to smooth the heavy wools and linens they wore, the women of Ozark would of spent many hours with their irons. And they’d thought long and hard before they allowed electricity, according to the Teaching Stories, deciding finally that it was a natural thing with its roots in the lightning-and even so, the Travellers wouldn’t use it. Not in their Castle, not in their Kingdom. They’d had to move clear to Tinaseeh to escape its taint, and they’d done it with a grim enthusiasm -and believed that it was magic that powered their comsets.
She smiled, remembering the way the Traveller delegation had behaved about the switches that turned things on in Castle Brightwater; she’d seen a mother smack her tadling’s fingers for touching one, like he’d put his hand into goat droppings.
No, they were pure as pure, using the power of sun and wind and water and plain old-fashioned muscle-and magic. Which was where the trouble lay. Magic. Common Sense Level, available to everybody unless they just plain weren’t interested, same as the times tables and the alphabet were. Middle Level, for the ambitious, or those as didn’t care to be overdependent on the Grannys. Granny Magic, for the Grannys only; Hifalutin Magic, for the Magicians. And for the Magicians of Rank, the highest level-the Formalisms & Transformations. Power there and to spare-at least you could turn a robot
off!
She decided she hadn’t the courage to send down for tea at this hour of the day; it was twenty minutes till time for supper. She pulled on a plain blue dress, left her feet bare to irritate her mother, and padded on down the halls and stairways to the kitchen. She could ask for coffee, anyway.
“Evening, Miss Responsible,” said the women when they saw her, and a servingmaid smiled and said she was pleased to see her looking rested.
“Thank you, Shandra of Clark--ladies. Do you suppose I could have a cup of your coffee?”
They settled her at the big kitchen table with a mug of coffee strong enough to make the spoon stand up straight in it, and she began to feel that she might be able to face the Family for supper after all. She’d rather far have stayed in the kitchen, or eaten in the staff’s own diningroom-but that was for tadlings. And she was going on fifteen.
At which point in her musings, the Senior Servingmaid set down a long narrow basket in front of her and said, “For you, Miss Responsible, from all of us, and many happy returns,” and she realized that she’d stopped going on fifteen and gotten there.
“Youall spoil me,” she said, and it was true. They did. For all they had to take from her in the way of scolding about the dust on the furniture and the polish not being high enough on the floors and too much salt in the cornbread-they spoiled her all the same.
“Open it, miss,” said the Castle Housekeeper, that somebody’d just brought in to see the event. “Go on, now.”
The basket was new woven, with a handsome
R
worked right into the lid, and two strong handles, and she’d of been satisfied just to have that for her birthday gift; she looked up at them, surprised.
“Open it!”
She lifted off the lid and looked inside, and saw why the basket had had to be such a big one and needed a braced bottom. Inside was a little dulcimer, like the one she’d lost on her Quest, dropping it right off the Mule’s back into the ocean-only much prettier. It had inlays of shell all along the sounding boards, three hearts and a rose with two leaves to it. Her old one had been just plain wood.
“The basket won’t do to keep it in, Miss Responsible,” said the Housekeeper apologetically. “We had to tip it to get it in there just for the giving. But I expect you’ll find a use for a big basket like that all the same, and we wanted you to have both.”
Responsible smiled at them, and turned red, and wished she could think of something to say. People being nice to her was too rare for her to have developed any skills in dealing with it; it always took her aback and left her foolish.
And even more, she wished that she could sing decently, but there was no use wishing that. Might as well wish for wings. She settled for taking the instrument out of the basket, laying it across her lap, and playing them three verses of the easiest song she knew.
“Ah, it has a sweet tone!” she said, then, while they clappedspoiling her some more-and laid it to her cheek. “I thank you . . . so much.”
“It pleasured us to do it,” they said, and then the Housekeeper spoke up on the subject of what Thorn of Guthrie would do to them if supper was late to the table, and they scurried around the kitchen while Responsible sat and glowed at them.
“Sally of Lewis,” she asked the Housekeeper, “just how did youall know I wanted another dulcimer?”
“The way you’d treasured that one the Granny had made for you when you were a little bit of a thing? And then losing it like you did? Why, miss, it didn’t take all that much brains to puzzle it out that you’d be yearning after another one. It’s small, but then so was your lost one. We did wonder about that. Might could be you’d rather of had a proper one, instead of a child’s. But you were so fond of the other one. . .”
“You did just right,” Responsible assured her. “I couldn’t manage a bigger one. It’s beautiful, and I love you one and all for thinking of me. It must have taken a precious long time to make it -and the basket, too.”
“We all worked at it, miss,” said Sally of Lewis. “It went fast that way.”
“Bless your hearts,” said Responsible.
“We’ll need more than our hearts blessed,” the Housekeeper told her, “if you don’t get yourself on in to supper. They’ll be waiting on you.”
“Law! I’d forgotten all about it!” Responsible touched all the hands she could reach, tucked her dulcimer under one arm and the basket under the other, changed her mind and hid the dulcimer away in the basket again while Sally of Lewis fretted, and hightailed it for the diningroom.
And then as she went out the door the woman called after her suddenly, “Oh, miss!”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t want to forget . . . one of the stablemen was up here not thirty minutes ago, saying as how that Mule of yours is acting up.”
“Acting up, Sally of Lewis?” Responsible turned back and leaned against the doorframe. “He have any idea what was wrong with the creature?”
“No, miss-he’d had the Granny down to look at it; and he told me the Granny said you were to go see to the Mule yourself, after supper. I expect you’d best ask
her
what the trouble is.”
Responsible nodded slowly, thinking, and stared at the floor.
“Is something wrong, miss? You look right peaked to me-and you’re about to crush that basket.”
“It’s the potion Granny gave me last night,” said Responsible quickly. “That and lying in bed this whole day long.”
“I know what you mean-nothing makes a person feel more like leftovers than lying all day abed doing nothing. You go on in and get a good meal under your ribs, you’ll feel better.”