Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 1

TWELVE FAIR KINGDOMS.

Suzette Haden Elgin.

CHAPTER ONE.

I should have known that something was very wrong when the Mules started flying erratically. I was misled a bit, I suppose, because there were no actual crashes, just upset stomachs. The ordinary person on the street blamed it on turbulence; and considering what they understood of the way the system worked, that was as reasonable a conclusion as any other. However, I had full access to cla.s.sified material, and I knew perfectly well that it was magic, not aerodynamics, that kept the Mules flying. And magic at the level of skill necessary to fly a bulky creature like a Mule was not likely to suffer any because of a little disturbance in the air. You take a look at a Mule sometime; it surely isn't built for flight.

Even someone who's gone no farther in magic than Common Sense Level knows that the harmony of the universe is a mighty frail and delicately balanced equilibrium, and that you can't go tampering with any part of it without affecting everything else. A child knows that. So that when whatever-it-was started, with its first symptoms being Mules that made their riders throw up, I should of known that something st.u.r.dy was tugging hard at the Universal Web.

I was busy, let's grant me that. I was occupied with the upcoming Grand Jubilee of the Confederation of Continents. Any meeting that it doesn't happen but once every five hundred years-you tend to pay it considerable attention. One of our freighters had had engine trouble off the coast of Oklahomah, and that was interfering with our supply deliveries. I was trying to run a sizable Castle with a staff that bordered, that spring, on the mediocre, and trying to find fit replacements before the big to-do. And there were three Grannys taken to their beds in my kingdom, afflicted with what they claimed was epizootics and what I knew was congenital cantankerousness, and that was disrupting the regular conduct of everyday affairs more than was convenient.

So... faced with a lot of little crises and one on the way to being a big one, what did I do? Well, I went to some meetings. I went to half a dozen. I fussed at the Castle staff, and I managed to get me in an Economist who showed some promise of being able to make the rest of them shape up. I hired a new Fiddler, and I bought a whole team of speckledy Mules that I'd had my eye on for a while. I visited the "ailing" Grannys, with a box of hard candy for each, and paid them elaborate compliments that they saw right through but enjoyed just the same. And I went to church.

I was in church the morning that Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th, firstborn son of Vine of Motley and Halliday Joseph McDaniels the 14th, was kidnapped, right in broad daylight... when the man came through the churchdoor on a scruffy rented Mule, right in the middle of a Solemn Service-right in the middle, mind you, of a prayer!-and rode that Mule straight down the aisle. He s.n.a.t.c.hed Terrence Merryweather in his sleeping basket from between his parents, and he flew right up over the Reverend's head and out through the only stained gla.s.s window he could count on to iris-Mule, basket, blankets, baby, and all, before any of us could do more than gape. February the 21st, that was; I was there, and it was that humiliating, I'm not likely to forget it. The McDaniels were guests of Castle Bright.w.a.ter, and under our protection, and for sure should of been safe in our church. And now here was their baby kidnapped!

Although it is possible that kidnapping may not be precisely the word in this particular instance. You have a kidnapping, generally there's somebody missing, and a ransom note, and whatnot. In this case, the Reverend shouted an AAAAmen! and we all rushed out the churchdoor; and there, hanging from the highest of the three cedar trees in the churchyard in a life-support bubble, was Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th, sucking on his toe to show how undisturbed he was by it all. And the Rent-a-Mule chewing on the crossclover against the church wall, under the overhang. There was no sign of its rider, who could make a claim to speed if to nothing else.

We could see the baby just fine, though we couldn't hear him. And we knew he was safe in the bubble, and all his needs attended to indefinitely. But he might as well of been in the Wilderness Lands of Tinaseeh for all the good that did us-we didn't dare touch him.

Oh, we had Magicians there skilled enough to put an end to that bubble and float the baby down to his daddy's arms without ruffling one bright red hair on his little head. If we hadn't had them, we could of gotten them in a hurry. It wasn't that; it was a matter of diagnosis. We had no way, you see, of knowing just what kind of magic was on the forcefield holding that bubble up in the tree and keeping it active. Might of been no problem at all, just a bit of Granny Magic. Ought to of been, if the man doing it couldn't afford but a Rent-a-Mule. And then it might of been that the mangy thing was meant to make us think that, and it might of been that if we so much as jiggled that baby we'd blow the whole churchyard-AND the baby -across the county line. We're not much for taking chances with babies, I'm proud to say, and we weren't about to be hasty. The way to do it was to find the Magician that'd set the Spell, or whatever it was, and make it clear that we intended to know, come h.e.l.l or high water, and keep on making it clear till we got told. Until then, that baby would just have to stay in the cedar tree with the squirrels and the chitterbirds and the yellowjays. Vine of Motley carried on a good deal, doing her family no credit at all, but she was only thirteen and it her first baby, and allowances were made. Besides, I wasn't all that proud of my own self and my own family at that moment.

Five suspicious continental delegations I had coming to Castle Bright.w.a.ter in less than three months, to celebrate the Grand Jubilee of a confederation they didn't trust much more now than they had two hundred years ago. Every one of them suspecting a plot behind every door and under every bedstead and seeing Spells in the coffee cups and underneath their saddles and, for all I knew, in their armpits. And I was proposing that they'd all be safe here- when I couldn't keep one little innocent pointy-headed baby safe in my own church on a Solemn Day? It strained the limits of the imagination somewhat more than somewhat, and there was no way of keeping it quiet. They'd be having picnics under the tree where that baby hung in his pretty bubble and beaming the festivities out on the comsets before suppertime, or my name wasn't Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter. In the excitement we left the Solemn Service unfinished, and it took three Spells and a Charm to clear that up later on, not to mention the poor Reverend going through the service again to an empty church reeking mightily of garlic and asafetida. But the clear imperative right then was a family meeting; and we moved in as orderly a fas.h.i.+on as was possible (given the behavior of Vine of Motley) back to the Castle, where I turned all the out-family over to the staff to feed and cosset and called everyone else at once to the Meetingroom.

The table in the Meetingroom was dusty, and I distinctly saw a spiderweb in a far window, giving me yet another clue to the competency of my staff and strongly tempting me to waste a Housekeeping Spell or two-which would of been most unbecoming, but I never could abide dirt, even loose dirt-and I waved everybody to their chairs. Which they took after brus.h.i.+ng more dust with great ostentation off the chair seats, drat them all for their eagerness to dot every "i" and cross every "t" when it was my competence in question, and I called the roll.

My mother was there, Thorn of Guthrie, forty-four years old and not looking more than thirty of those, which wasn't even decent; I do not approve of my mother. I said "Thorn of Guthrie" and she said "Here" and we left it at that. My uncles, Donald Patrick Bright.w.a.ter the 133rd-time we dropped that name awhile, we'd wear it out- and Jubal Brooks Bright.w.a.ter the 31st. Jubal's wife, Emmalyn of Clark, poor puny thing, she was there; and Donald's wife, Patience of Clark, Emmalyn's sister. And my grandmother, Ruth of Motley, not yet a Granny, since Jonathan Cardwell Bright-water the 12th showed no signs of leaving this world for all he was 109 years old... and it was said that he still troubled Ruth of Motley in the nights and scandalized the servingmaids in the chamber next to theirs. And I could believe it. We could of used him that day, since his head was as clear as his body was said to be hearty, but he was off somewhere trying to trade a set of Charms he'd worked out for a single Spell he'd been wanting to get hold of at least the last five years... and the lady that Spell belonged to not about to pa.s.s it on to him, if he spent five more.

As it was, that meant only seven of us in Meeting, not nearly enough for proper discussion or voting, and you would of thought that on a Solemn Day, and with guests in the Castle, there'd of been more of us in our proper places. I was put out about the whole thing, and my mother did not scruple to point that out.

"Mighty nervy of you, Responsible," she said, in that voice of hers, "being cross with everybody else for what is plainly your own fault." I could of said Yes-Mother, since she despises that, but I had more pressing matters to think of than annoying my mother. She'd never make a Granny; she was too quick with that tongue and not able to put it under rein when the circ.u.mstances called for it, and at her age she had no excuse. She'd be a flippant wench at eighty-five, still stuck in her magic at Common Sense Level, like a child. Lucky she was that she was beautiful, since men have no more sense than to be distracted by such things, and Thorn was that. She had the Guthrie hair, ma.s.ses of it, exactly the color of bittersweet chocolate and so alive it clung to your fingers (and to everything else, so that you spent half your life picking Guthrie hair off of any surface you cared to examine, but we'll let that pa.s.s). And she had the Guthrie bones... a face shaped like a heart, and great green eyes in it over cheekbones high arched like the curve of a bird's wing flying, and the long throat that melted into perfect shoulders... And oh, those b.r.e.a.s.t.s of hers! Three children she'd suckled till they walked, and those b.r.e.a.s.t.s looked as maiden as mine. She was well named, was Thorn of Guthrie, and many of us had felt the sharp point of her since she stepped under the door-beam of Castle Bright.w.a.ter thirty-one years ago. I have always suspected that those Guthrie bones made her womb an uncomfortable place to lie, giving her a way to poke at you even before you first breathed the air of the world, but that's a speculation I've kept to myself. I hope.

"Well, now that we're thoroughly disgraced in front of the whole world," sighed my grandmother, "what do we propose to do about it?"

"This is not the first manifestation of something c.o.c.keyed," said Jubal Brooks. "You know that, Responsible.""There was the milk," my grandmother agreed. "Four Mundy's in a row now it's been sour straight from the goat. I a.s.sume you don't find that normal, granddaughter."

"And there was the thing with the mirrors," said Emmalyn. "It

frightened me, my mirror shattering in my hand like that."I expect it did frighten her, too; everything else did. I was hoping she wouldn't notice the spiderweb. She was a sorry excuse for a woman; on the other hand, we couldn't of gotten Patience of Clark without taking the sister, too, and all in all it had been a bargain worth making.

Patience was sitting with her left little finger tapping her bottom lip,

a gesture she made when she was waiting for a hole to come by in the conversation, and I turned to her and made the hole.

"Patience, you wanted to say something?"

"I was thinking of the streetsigns," she said.

"The streetsigns?"

"Echo in here," said my mother, always useful.

"I'm sorry, Patience," I said. "I hadn't heard that there was anything happening with streetsigns."

"All over the city," said my uncle Donald Patrick. "Don't you pay

any attention to anything?"

"Well? What's been happening to them? Floating in the air?

Whirling around? Exploding? What?"

Patience laughed softly, and the sun shone in through the windows and made the spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose look like sprinkled brown sugar. I was very fond of Patience of Clark.

"They read backwards," she said. "The sign that should say 'River Street'... it says 'Teerts Revir.'" She spelled it out for me to make that clear, though the tongue does not bend too badly to 'Teerts

Revir.'"Well, that," I said, "is downright silly.""It's all silly," said Patience, "and that is why I was laughing. It's all ridiculous."

Emmalyn, whose freckles just ran together and looked like she

hadn't bothered to wash, allowed as how she might very well have been cut when her mirror shattered, and that was not silly.

I looked at them all, and I waited. My uncles, pulling at their short

black beards the way men always do in meetings. My mother, trying to keep her mind-such as it was-on the discussion. My grandmother, just biding her time till she could get back to her embroidery. And the sisters-Emmalyn watching Patience, and Patience watching some inner source of we-know-not-what that had served us very well in many a crisis.

Not a one of them mentioned the Mules, though I gave them two full minutes. And that meant one of three things: they had not noticed the phenomenon, or they did not realize that it was of any importance, or they had some reason for behaving as if one of the first two were the case. I wondered, but I didn't have time for finding out in any roundabout fas.h.i.+on.

"I agree," I said at once the two minutes were up, "it's all silly.

Even the mirrors. Not a soul was harmed by any one of the mirrors that broke-including you, Emmalyn. Anybody can smell soured milk quick enough not to drink it, and the other six days of the week it's been fine. And as for the streetsigns, which I'm embarra.s.sed I didn't know about them but there it is-I didn't-that's silliest of

all."

"Just mischief," said Jubal, putting on the period. "Until today."

My mother flared her perfect nostrils, like a high-bred Mule but a

lot more attractive. "What makes you think, Jubal Brooks," she demanded, "that today's kidnapping-which is a matter of major importance-is connected in any way with all these baby tricks of milk and mirrors?"

"And streetsigns," said Emmalyn of Clark. Naturally.

"Jubal's quite right," I said, before Thorn of Guthrie could turn on Emmalyn. "And I call for Council."

There was a silence that told me I'd reached them, and Emmalyn

looked thoroughly put out. Council meant there'd be no jokes, and no family bickering, and no pause in deliberation for coffee or cakes or ale or anything else till a conclusion was come to and a course agreed upon.

"Do you think that's really called for, Responsible?" asked my grandmother. She was doing a large panel at that time, mourning-doves in a field of violets, as I recall. Not that she'd ever seen a mourningdove. "As Jubal said, it's been mischief only so far, and pretty piddling mischief at that. And there's no evidence I see of a connection between what happened in church today and all that other foolishness."

"Responsible sees a connection," said Patience, "or she would not have called Council. And the calling is her privilege by rule; I suggest we get on with it."

I told them about the Mules then, and both the uncles left off their

beard-pulling and gave me their attention. Tampering with goats was one thing, tampering with Mules was quite another. Not that they knew what it meant in terms of magic, of course-that would not of been suitable, since neither had ever shown the slightest talent for the profession, and I suppose they took flying Mules for granted as they did flying birds. But they had the male fondness for Mules, and they had anyone's dislike for the idea of suddenly falling out of the air like a stone, which is where they could see it might well lead.

"It has to do, I believe," said Patience slowly, "with the Jubilee. That's coming up fast now, and anybody with the idea of putting it in bad odor would have to get at it fairly soon and move with some dispatch. I do believe that's what this is all about."

She was right, but they'd listen better if she was doing the talking, so I left it to her.

"Go on " I said. "Please." "I'm telling you nothing you don't know already," she said. "The Confederation of Continents is not popular, nor likely to be, especially with the Kingdoms of Purdy, Guthrie, and Farson. And Tinaseeh is in worse state. The Travellers hate any kind of government; they are still so busy just hacking back the Wilderness that they don't feel they can spare time for anything else, and they for sure don't want the Jubilee. A Jubilee would give a kind of endors.e.m.e.nt to the Confederation, and they are dead set against that. And then there're all the wishy-washy ones waiting around to see which way the wind blows."

"'A thing celebrated is a thing vindicated,'" quoted Ruth of Motley.

"They all know that as well as anybody." "The idea," Patience went on, "would be to make it appear that there's so much trouble on the continent of Marktwain... so much trouble in the Kingdom of Bright.w.a.ter specifically... that it would not really be safe for the other Families to send their delegations to the Jubilee." My conscience jabbed me, for she was right; and it had been niggling at the back of my mind for some time, though I'd managed to ignore it up to now by worrying about dust on the banisters and coffee deliveries for Mizzurah.

Donald Patrick scooted his chair back and stared at me, and then scooted it up again, and said d.a.m.nation to boot, and my grandmother went "Ttch," with the tip of her tongue.

"Five years of work it's cost us," he said, glaring around the table. "Five years to convince them even to let us schedule the Jubilee! Surely all that work can't be set aside by some spoiled milk and a few smashed mirrors!"

"Precisely," I said, flat as pondwater. "And that is just the point. You see, youall, how it will look? First, parlor tricks. Then, a kind of tinkering-nothing serious, just tinkering-with the Mules. And then, to show that what goes four steps can go twelve, the baby-s.n.a.t.c.hing. Again, you notice, without any harm done."

"Aw," said Jubal, "it's just showing off. A display of power. Like throwing a dead goat into your well." "That it is," I said. "'See what we can do?' it says... 'And think what we might do, if we cared to.' That's the message being spread here. Think the Wommacks will fly here from the coast knowing their Mules may drop out from under them any moment, to come to the support of our so-called Confederation?"

"Disfederation," murmured Patience of Clark. "A more accurate term at this point."

"Patience," I said, "you hurt me."

"Howsomever and nevertheless," she said, "it's true. And anything but a sure hand now will wreck it all."

We sat there silent, though Emmalyn fidgeted some, because it wasn't anything to be serene about. Marktwain, Oklahomah, and probably Mizzurah, agreed on the need for the Confederation of Continents; and their Kingdoms were willing to back it as best they could. But the whole bulk of Arkansaw lay between Marktwain and Mizzurah, and the Ocean of Storms between all of us and either Kintucky or Tinaseeh; and the three loyal continents all put together were not the size of Tinaseeh. Since the day the Twelve Families first landed on this planet in 2021, since the moment foot was set on this land and it was named Ozark in the hope it would prove a homeworld to our people, those of us who preferred not to remain trapped forever in the twenty-first century had been in the minority.

The Twelve Families had seen, on Old Earth, what the centralization of a government could mean. They had seen war and waste and wickedness beyond description, though the descriptions handed down to us were enough to this day to keep children in Granny Schools awake in the long nights of winter, s.h.i.+vering more with nightmare than with the cold. Twelve Kingdoms, we had. And at least four of them ready to leap up every time a dirty puddle

appeared on a street corner and shout that this was but the first sign, the first step, toward the wallowing in degradation that came when the individual allowed theirselves to be swallowed up (they always said "swallowed up," playing on the hatred every Ozarker had for being closed in on any side, much less all of them) by a central government... And several more were in honesty uncommitted, ready to move either way.

I ran them by in my mind, one by one. Castle Purdy, Castle Guthrie, Castle Parson, Castle Traveller-dead set against the Confederation and anxious to grab any opportunity to tear the poor frail thing apart and go to isolation for everything but trade and marriage. Castles Smith, Airy, Clark, and McDaniels, and Castles Lewis and Motley of Mizzurah, all with us-but perhaps only Castle Airy really ready, or able, to put any strength behind us. It was hard to know. When the Confederation met at Castle Bright.w.a.ter, one month now in every four-to the bitter complaints of Purdy, Guthrie, Farson, and Traveller about the expense and the waste and the frivolousness of it all-those six voted very carefully indeed. That is, when we could manage to bring anything to a vote. Only Castles Airy and Lewis had ever made a move that went three points past neutrality, and that rarely. As for Castle Wommack, who knew where they stood? One delegate they sent to the meetings, grudgingly, against the other Castles' delegations of four each and full staff; and the Wommack delegate came without so much as a secretary or Attendant, and spent most of his time abstaining. We were seven to five for the Confederation-maybe. Maybe we were but two against ten, with six of the ten playing lip service but ready to bolt at the first sign of anything that smelled like real conflict.

My mother made a rare concession: she addressed me by term of kins.h.i.+p. "Daughter," she said, making me raise my eyebrows at the unexpected mode of address, "what do you think we ought to do?" "Ask Jubal," said foolish Emmalyn, and I suppose Patience kicked her, under the table. Patience always sat next to Emmalyn for that specific purpose. Ask Jubal, indeed. "Think now before you speak," said Ruth of Motley. "It won't do to answer this carelessly and get caught out, Responsible. You give it careful thought." She had finally forgotten about her embroidery and joined us, and I was glad of it "I think," I said slowly, "that things are not so far out of hand that they cannot be stopped. Vine of Motley is crying herself into hiccups up in the guestchambers at this very moment, and no doubt feels herself mighty abused, but that baby is safer where he is than in her arms. Signs and mirrors and milk make no national catastrophe, and Mules that behave like they'd been drinking bad whiskey are not yet a disaster. The point is to stop it now, before it goes one step further. The next step might not be mischief."

"What is called for," said my grandmother, nodding her head, "is a show of competence; that would serve the purpose. Something that would demonstrate that the Bright.w.a.ters are capable of keeping the delegations, and all their kin, and all their staffs, safe here for the Jubilee."

"I sometimes wonder if it's worth it," sighed Donald Patrick. "I sometimes think it might be best to let them go on and dissolve the Confederation and all be boones if that's their determined mind! The energy we put into all this, the time, the money... Do you know what Bright.w.a.ter spent in food and drink alone at the last quarterly meeting?"