Read Online The Ozark trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
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invited, and both a Taleteller and a Ballad Singer laid on. I left happy; dulcimerless, but mighty well fed, and my traveling costume fresh from the attentions of Granny Golightly herself—who I’d wager had not bothered to wash or press it but confined her “work” to a Housekeeping Spell—and I went over the next step in my head as Sterling and I headed out.
Castle Airy sat at the southernmost tip of Oklahomah; like Castle Clark it overlooked the sea, but there was a great difference between the tender hills of Kingdom Clark’s seacoast and the hulking sheer cliffs that Castle Airy sat on. Their lands had no beaches; you pulled a boat up into the sucking caves that pitted the lower borders of the looming seacliffs at your own peril. Between the borders of dark and the lands paced off by Daniel Cantrell Airy the 9 th and his five sons in 2127 lay a broad expanse of Wilderness. Technically speaking, it was at least a three-day flight from Castle to Castle, and considering the time involved it was going to be a piece of luck for me that I could by-pass the visit to Castle Smith after all.
I had no intention what soever of spending three full days—much less four—in the air. According to the maps there was an isolated stretch of thick forest roughly mid-Wilderness; once I got beyond the area where people were likely to be around, I intended to SNAP straight to that spot and spend two of my days in a pleasant contemplation of the Wilderness, some long naps that I was badly in need of, and catching up an account book I had dutifully brought with me having to do with trade in supplies for magic and a good two months out of date. I could then fly in on the third day and join the Airys for supper with all as it ought to of been.
Nor need I stay at Castle Airy long; they were loyal there. They were as romantic ... quaint, to put it frankly ... in their loyalty to the Confederation as the Travellers were in their resistance to it. Held a Confederation Day every blessed year on December 12, with speeches and bands and bunting and whatnot, the only one of the Kingdoms to have such an innovation. Stamped the Confederation Seal all over everything, and flew its flag beside the flags of Airy and Ozark at the Castle gate. Any day now I expected them to begin opening souvenir stands or publishing a Confederation Gazette .
Why they were like that, it was hard to say; if we knew why any Family developed as it did rather than in some other fashion, that would be knowledge. I’d put that a sight higher than any of the scientific discoveries that had earned their originators a Bestowing of land in the past ten years. Or past one hundred, for that matter.
I jumped suddenly as a squawker flew by me, drawing a bray of disgust from Sterling and scaring the squawker into a plunge that I thought for a minute might prove fatal to the ugly thing. It was a male, its blue-and-white-speckled comb rigid with tenor and its raucous call twice the volume a female could muster. And I supposed it had lost its eggs, along with its way, or forgotten the difference between up and down, assuming it ever had known it. It surely had no business being two hundred feet up in the air interfering with me and my Mule.
“Never mind the fool thing, Sterling,” I said, and soothed her with a sturdy smack to the shoulder “It’s gone now, and if it doesn’t kill itself it’s headed back to the farm where it belongs.”
The Mule snorted, reminding me of Granny Golightly, who I was well pleased to have behind me this fine morning, and I smacked her once more for good measure. What makes a Mule think a whack on the shoulder is a caress is a mystery, but it appears to be the way of it. Or perhaps they are sickened by lovepats, and look on the thumping as some kind of comradely, Mle -worthy activity. Mules are the only creatures on Ozark that are capable of telepathic communication with a Magician but refuse to have anything to do with the process; their
Castle Airy sat at the southernmost tip of Oklahomah; like Castle Clark it overlooked the sea, but there was a great difference between the tender hills of Kingdom Clark’s seacoast and the hulking sheer cliffs that Castle Airy sat on. Their lands had no beaches; you pulled a boat up into the sucking caves that pitted the lower borders of the looming seacliffs at your own peril. Between the borders of dark and the lands paced off by Daniel Cantrell Airy the 9 th and his five sons in 2127 lay a broad expanse of Wilderness. Technically speaking, it was at least a three-day flight from Castle to Castle, and considering the time involved it was going to be a piece of luck for me that I could by-pass the visit to Castle Smith after all.
I had no intention what soever of spending three full days—much less four—in the air. According to the maps there was an isolated stretch of thick forest roughly mid-Wilderness; once I got beyond the area where people were likely to be around, I intended to SNAP straight to that spot and spend two of my days in a pleasant contemplation of the Wilderness, some long naps that I was badly in need of, and catching up an account book I had dutifully brought with me having to do with trade in supplies for magic and a good two months out of date. I could then fly in on the third day and join the Airys for supper with all as it ought to of been.
Nor need I stay at Castle Airy long; they were loyal there. They were as romantic ... quaint, to put it frankly ... in their loyalty to the Confederation as the Travellers were in their resistance to it. Held a Confederation Day every blessed year on December 12, with speeches and bands and bunting and whatnot, the only one of the Kingdoms to have such an innovation. Stamped the Confederation Seal all over everything, and flew its flag beside the flags of Airy and Ozark at the Castle gate. Any day now I expected them to begin opening souvenir stands or publishing a Confederation Gazette .
Why they were like that, it was hard to say; if we knew why any Family developed as it did rather than in some other fashion, that would be knowledge. I’d put that a sight higher than any of the scientific discoveries that had earned their originators a Bestowing of land in the past ten years. Or past one hundred, for that matter.
I jumped suddenly as a squawker flew by me, drawing a bray of disgust from Sterling and scaring the squawker into a plunge that I thought for a minute might prove fatal to the ugly thing. It was a male, its blue-and-white-speckled comb rigid with tenor and its raucous call twice the volume a female could muster. And I supposed it had lost its eggs, along with its way, or forgotten the difference between up and down, assuming it ever had known it. It surely had no business being two hundred feet up in the air interfering with me and my Mule.
“Never mind the fool thing, Sterling,” I said, and soothed her with a sturdy smack to the shoulder “It’s gone now, and if it doesn’t kill itself it’s headed back to the farm where it belongs.”
The Mule snorted, reminding me of Granny Golightly, who I was well pleased to have behind me this fine morning, and I smacked her once more for good measure. What makes a Mule think a whack on the shoulder is a caress is a mystery, but it appears to be the way of it. Or perhaps they are sickened by lovepats, and look on the thumping as some kind of comradely, Mle -worthy activity. Mules are the only creatures on Ozark that are capable of telepathic communication with a Magician but refuse to have anything to do with the process; their
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