Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
“Hmmmmm,” he said, by way of response, and fooled around with his beard some. And then “hmmmm” again.
Troublesome gave him a measuring glance, and cleared her throat. “If it’s your gallantry as is causing you pain, Lewis Motley, you can set that aside. The Grannys already told me Responsible lost her maidenhead during the Jubilee, and seeing as how you were there at the time and footloose, and seeing as how you are the most spectacular example of manflesh
I
ever laid eyes on, I do believe I can add up two and two and come out with four. And if I already know you were bedding my sister, we can perhaps just acknowledge that and move on to something more significant.”
Lewis Motley cleared
his
throat, and blessed the fates that had put this female on Brightwater and him clear across an ocean away from her.
“Well?” she asked him. “Does that simplify matters for you some?”
“It does,” he began, and was much gratified that the servingmaid came in just then with the bread and the coffee and gave him a chance to collect himself.
“Yes,” he said again, when he’d got his breath back. He took a drink of the coffee and made a face; it wasn’t much more than troubled water, weak the way they made it to stretch the last of the beans, and grain added in with a liberal hand. “That was abrupt, but it did ease my mind. I wouldn’t have felt justified in telling you that, but if you know it already we’ve cleared the air. Now what
exactly
is the question the Grannys think I know the answer to? Because I warn you, Troublesome of Brightwater—I doubt it.”
Over her shoulder he saw the flash of a long robe in the hall, through the door the servingmaid had left decently open instead of shut tight as she’d been shocked to find it, and he called out for his sister to join them. He knew the look of that robe, though he wasn’t aware it was exactly the color of his eyes, by a frayed place at the back of the hem that came from too many hours spent on Muleback. It would be useful to have his sister here as a buffer between himself and Troublesome, now the indelicate part of the conversation was past; furthermore, he enjoyed showing her off.
“Jewel!” he called to her. “We’ve got company—come see!”
“Company?” She stepped in the door, one hand on the sill, the long sweep of her sleeve falling almost to the floor. “Are you wasting my time with foolishness again, Lewis Motley?”
Troublesome gasped, and clapped both hands to her mouth, and through her fingers she said, “Jewel of Wommack, I declare I never in all this world would of known you!”
The grave eyes of a woman grown looked back at her, that had been a child’s eyes so short a time ago, calm, and possessed of a natural authority. The copper hair was hidden away completely under the wimple, and most of the face as well, but Jewel was all the more beautiful for the mystery the Teacher’s habit lent her. For the first time she could remember, Troublesome of Brightwater was uncomfortably aware that she herself could do with a change of clothes and a tidy-up.
“Troublesome of Brightwater,” said the Teacher, the first of all the Teachers. “I never thought to see you again, and now here you are ... What brings you here?”
“She’s just about to set me a question,” said her brother. “Sent here by the Grannys of Marktwain assembled, on a mountaintop no less, for that precise purpose. You sit down with us, sister mine, and have a cup of this terrible coffee, and if I can’t answer that question perhaps you can help me a tad.
“It has to do with Responsible of Brightwater,” he added, as if it were an afterthought of an afterthought, and he watched Jewel’s lashes drop to shield her eyes as she took the third chair and poured her coffee.
“The Grannys know full well,” said Troublesome, seeing no reason to waste time, “that the magic they were able to do was done on mighty puny power. But they were sure enough they were right to put this expedition of one together, and sure enough to convince me to try it. Jewel of Wommack, they are of the opinion that your brother knows how it came about that Responsible of Brightwater has been in a sleep like unto death these past two years. And if he knows that, they believe, it just might could be he’ll also know how she can be waked up.”
She looked at the man, in a silence so thick she could have stirred it with her coffee spoon, and then at his sister, and her heart sank.
“Ah, Dozens!” she said despairingly. “Dozens! You didn’t even
know
, did you? I can tell, just looking at you! Without the comsets, and Kintucky out here on the edge of nowhere, and no travelers anymore ... I suppose nobody on Kintucky knows. Ah, the waste of all this! Bloody Bleeding
Dozens!
”
Lewis Motley was so taken aback he couldn’t have spoken a word, or moved, but Jewel of Wommack reached over and took the other woman’s hand in both of hers.
“Tell us,” she said, in the voice that every Teacher was trained to use, or sent to do research and keep out of the classrooms if she couldn’t. It was a voice that could not be disobeyed because it left no possible space for disobedience.
“My sister,” said Troublesome, and because the exhaustion in her face frightened both the Wommacks, Lewis Motley shouted again for a servingmaid and demanded the last of their whiskey, “just into summertime, after the Jubilee, fell into a kind of sleep. Or a coma ... To look at her, you would think she was dead, but she has no sickness, and the name Veritas Truebreed Motley puts to it is
pseudocoma
. Just a sleep that does not end and cannot, so far as we’ve been able to tell, be ended. And since the day it began, everything has gone from bad to worse on Marktwain and Oklahomah; we hear there is
war
on Arkansaw. What may be going on in the rest of the world nobody knows ... or even if there is a rest of the world any longer. Since the trouble started with whatever happened to my sister, the Grannys are convinced that there’s a connection there—that if we could wake Responsible there would be hope for Ozark again. And they were certain—certain sure! —that Lewis Motley Wommack had the key to it ... Law, but they’re going to be in a state over this, and I don’t blame them, I don’t blame them one least bit!”
“Just a minute, Troublesome,” said Jewel.
“If Lewis Motley Wommack didn’t even know about this,” insisted Troublesome, “then the Grannys have made a mistake to end all mistakes, and a minute—nor a dozen minutes—won’t change that.”
The servingmaid came running with the whiskey, and Jewel poured it out with a level hand and passed Troublesome of Brightwater the glass.
“You drink that,” she said calmly. “And then, let’s us
ask
him. Before we decide to speak of mistakes and waste and the end of the world, let’s just ask him. Might could be he knows more man you think he knows, provided the questions are put to him properly.”
Lewis Motley had his whole face buried in his hands, and they could see the muscles of his arms straining under the cloth of his sleeves.
“Never mind throwing chairs, dear brother,” warned Jewel emphatically, keeping a wary eye on him. “This is not the time nor the place.”
“
Curse them!
”
The bellow shook the lamp hanging above their heads, and although neither Troublesome nor Jewel jumped, they both had to grip their chairs not to.
“Curse them all, the
idiots!
I never had any such thing in mind—they must all have been crazy! Oh, it I could only get my hands on them, it I could just— “
Troublesome looked at Jewel of Wommack. “He knows something,” she said, over the din. “He knows something after all.”
“He knows everything, from the sound of his conniption fit,” said Jewel coldly. “Now it’s just a matter of getting it out of him ... once he’s worn himself out. Talk of
women
having hysterics!”
“I’ve been a damned fool,” said her brother.
“Not for the first time, nor yet the hundred and first.”
“But this time is exceptional.”
“Then the sooner it’s admitted to, the sooner well know if it can be mended. I suggest you tell us what you’ve gone and done, Lewis Motley.”
“Can I have some of that whiskey?”
“You can
not
. That’s for medicine, and precious little we have left of it! There’s nothing wrong with you but temper, and if you haven’t died of temper before this you won’t die of it today. Just speak up.”
Lewis Motley sighed a long sigh, and began. “Your sister,” he said to Troublesome, “was causing me a good deal of ...misery.”
Troublesome was dumbfounded.
“Misery? In what way, causing you misery? She was clear back on Marktwain, you were all the way over here on Kintucky.”
“I hesitate to say it of her.”
“Say it!” commanded Troublesome.
“Your sister would not grant me privacy of mind,” he said then, and the words fell, quaint and formal, in the stillness of the room.
“Lewis Motley,” said Jewel simply, “you are either mocking us or you are stalling for time, and whichever one it is, it’s not to be borne.”
“No, I am not!” he protested. “Responsible of Brightwater
mind
spoke me” —she had gone far beyond just mindspeech, but he would not talk of that before two women, even to defend his actions— “every day, day after day after day, till I was nearly mad with it. I would be sitting working, I would be eating, I’d be seeing to a problem in the stables, I’d be talking as I am now, with one of the Family ... and suddenly she was there, in my mind.” He shuddered. “There’ve been many females that tried to tag along after me, but they had at least the decency to do it in the flesh, where a person could see them and have a fair chance at getting away. Not Responsible of Brightwater! Oh no—not that one.
“And so you did what?” Troublesome held her breath, waiting.
“I sent for the Magicians of Rank, and asked them all to come here on a matter concerning Miss Responsible of Brightwater, which they were willing enough to do, let me tell you; and I told them what she’d done—because she’d gone far, far
past
the bounds of decency—and I asked them to make her stop.
That’s
what I did. But not for the smallest wrinkle of time did I intend anything of the sort you’ve described to me, Troublesome. I meant them to reason with her, threaten her perhaps, set a small Spell on her ... just stop her unspeakable mucking about in
my mind!
Never did I mean them to hurt her ... Jewel, tell her. Little sister, explain to this woman that I never meant them to do her harm.”
Jewel of Wommack nodded, her eyes the color of river ice in late afternoon.
“He is mischief incarnate,” she said slowly, in grave agreement, “but he would not do anybody deliberate harm. He simply does not
think
—he never did. And now, because of his selfish temper, if the Grannys are right we have this dreadful time of trouble all to be laid at my brother’s feet. For all time. Congratulations, to the Wommack Curse!”
Troublesome gnawed at the end of her thick black braid, dust and leaves and all, a gesture Thorn of Guthrie had tried in vain to break her of.
“Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said carefully, “what did Responsible say to you when you asked her to stop it? Did she just refuse, say no, flat out with no explanation? That’s not like her ... not that any of it is like her ... but what did she
say
to you?”
The man’s face went cold and hard, and now it was Jewel’s turn to clap her hands to her mouth, because she suddenly understood, before the answer came.
“I never asked her,” he told them, voice like granite and a face to match. “She was
in
my mind; she knew how it repulsed me ... It would have been a very cold day in a truly hot place before I stooped to beg that vile little—before I stooped to ask Responsible of Brightwater to stop her foul behavior.
Ask
her, indeed—what do you think I am?”
Troublesome stood up and went over to a window, turned her back on him and on the Teacher, and stood staring out into the tangled woods beyond. She was shaking from head to foot, and her teeth gritted to keep them from chattering, in spite of the whiskey, and not until she had it under control did she turn round again, even through the spectacular bout of tongue lashing that Jewel of Wommack turned on Lewis Motley with. He had been told in baroque detail what an utter, despicable, pathetic, unspeakable, pigheaded, stupid, fool
male
he was, with elaborations and codas and emendations to spare, before Troublesome said another word. And when she did speak, her voice was hoarse with rage restrained.
“Lewis Motley Wommack,” she said, “I cannot explain this, and I shan’t try. I have no way of knowing the truth of it; I never knew even that Responsible had the skill of mindspeech. But I swear to you, and I know whereof I speak: my sister would never have knowingly done what you say she did. If she did it, she was bewitched, or mad, or anything else you fancy—but she would not have
done
that. Saving only Granny Graylady, there’s not an Ozarker alive more scrupulous about privacy than my sister. And you ... you never even asked her. You couldn’t
stoop
, to one small question. Lewis Motley, I would not be you and bear the burden of guilt that you will bear. Not for any power in this Universe.”
“I tell you— “ he began, but Jewel’s hand came down hard on his arm and silenced him.
“You’ve told us,” said Troublesome. “You’ve told us all I care to hear from you. You’ve answered the question I came to ask, and the Grannys were right. It took all the Magicians of Rank to put my sister to sleep, apparently; it will no doubt take all of them together now to wake her up.
All
of them; now when the ships are not running the oceans, and the Mules are not flying, and the Magicians of Rank are scattered to the four corners of the world ... four of them somewhere in the wilds of Tinaseeh, if they still breathe. And somehow, we will have to get them all together at Brightwater and have them undo this awful thing. And I’d best get on with it. The crew was half mutinous all the way here. Not a cloud came up they didn’t charge me with having caused it just by being on their leaky old rowboat. I’m not anxious to leave them waiting for me any longer on your coast.”