Read Online The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean - Free Book Online Page B

baby kicked her again, and she caught her
breath. “This one doesn’t want to me think,” she said. “Also—you
can make a bigger order out of stories of the same type. Mally gave
you stories about children whose parents left. With them you can
make a pattern.”
    “ I don’t know how to do
that.”
    “ Mustn’t Mally know you can do
it?”
    “ Oh,” said Arry.
    “ Must she?” said Oonan.
    “ Oh, not necessarily, I suppose,”
said Sune, irritably. Once again, the source of her irritation was
not the baby, not her stomach or her feet or her back. It seemed to
be Oonan.
    Arry got up. Oonan said, “Sune, in the intervals of
being pummelled, might you see what the books say about wolves? In
especial their more strange behaviors with regard to approaching
people and with regard to things they choose not to eat?”
    “ Did you lose some sheep?” said
Sune.
    “ Two,” said Oonan.
    “ The lambs?”
    “ No, they left the
lambs.”
    “ I’ll look as soon as I finish
this spinning. If young Knot’s to have a blanket to receive her, I
must be busy.”
    “ We’ll leave you to it,” said
Oonan.
    “ If you need other clothes,” said
Arry, “you could have some of Con’s.” Since there won’t be any more
babies in this family any time soon, she added silently.
    Sune smiled. “I’ll come and look at them tomorrow
after school, shall I? I can bring your stories back then,
too.”
    “ Yes, do,” said Arry, and they
thanked Sune for the tea and went outside. The wind pounced on them
hard. It had blown some of the clouds away and stretched the rest
across the sky like rags on a loom to make a rug. A blue and white
and gray rug like that would be pretty, thought Arry. But how do I
know that? Do I know it?
    “ What now?” said Oonan.
    “ I expect I should go to
school.”
    “ Or to sleep.”
    “ School’s easier.”
    “ Go, then. I’ll talk to you after
Sune’s told me about the wolves.”
    “ Or if you think of anything about
Con.”
    “ Well, yes,” said
Oonan.
    He turned and went back down the hill, past Sune’s
little stone house and into the willows, his jacket flapping in
the wind and his red hair blown straight backward. Arry looked
after him until the wind made her eyes tear. Then she turned around
and stood with the wind at her back, looking up at Halver’s house.
She could go see Mally and ask if Mally thought she was good at
making patterns.
    Or she could try making some and see how far she
got. She hadn’t read all the stories yet, either. But what of the
ones she had?
    “ It was the mothers that left,”
she said, to the mud and the rough pink speckled rocks and the
tentative green around them. “And the fathers found new mothers
and they were all cruel.” But her father had gone first, and her
mother after him; nobody had gone and brought Arry home, she had
been home already, she was one of the children. She shivered inside
her jacket, the jacket her father had made. Was the cruel mother
coming? But who should choose her?
    She thought she could guess what Mally would say
about her talent at making patterns. Mally said school could teach
you most things. She walked up the hill through the mud and went
into the school.
    Tiln and Jony and Beldi were in a corner with the
maps. Beldi must have mastered the second form of memory, to have
been allowed to study with those two. He must be growing up. He
looked small beside the older children, stocky and short like his
father. Tiln and Jony were tall for their ages, and thin. Tiln’s
hair was as white as Mally’s, and he had Mally’s round face. Jony
had her father Jonat’s long thin one, with large eyes and nose.
They both had Jonat’s greeny-dark skin. Jony had his dark hair,
too.
    Arry stood in the doorway, wondering if she should
catch Halver’s eye. He was in the corner opposite Beldi’s, with Con
and Zia and Tany, writing something on the big slate. His pencil
squeaked. Arry decided to talk to him later, and went on over to
her