Read Online The Ozark trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
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position appears to be that we should mind our own business and leave them to mind theirs, and they maintain that most effectively. You try mindspeech on a Mule—say to let it know there’s a storm ahead and you’d appreciate it taking cover in a hurry—you’ll get yourself a headache that’ll last you three days. There are, among the Teaching Stories, two or three that have to do with young Magicians looking on this situation as a challenge and trying to force a Mute to mindspeech; they’re gory, as Teaching Stories go. Myself, I leave the mind of the Mule strictly alone.
I stopped thinking about Mules and thought about landing, which was going to be possible fairly soon. I hadn’t seen any sign of habitation now for a considerable time, and on Oklahomah there was mighty little to block your view once you got ten feet above the trees. I took one more look at the map to be sure I had my coordinates straight, waited twenty more minutes for good measure, and SNAPPED, to Sterling’s great relief. The less of this formal travel the better, so far as she was concerned, and she didn’t need to use her psibilities to make that plain. Her braying didn’t become exactly musical — that would be overstating the case a tad—but it took on a definite tone of musical intention .
The land below us as the air rippled and cleared was so tangled that I pulled back up to give it another good look; I had no desire to land in a bramble thicket or some such. There was nothing down there but forest, big old trees with their branches all twined and knotted in one among the other and their roots humping out of the ground, and I was hard put to it to see a break where we could set down. It would be dark down there, for sure, and not a likely place to run into anybody, give it that. Then I saw the glint of water to my right, a middle-sized creek by the look of it from where 1 was, and I turned that way. We could head down above the water and make a landing slow to the bank, unless it was thickets all the way to the edge.
I had to try twice before we found a break in the undergrowth—no wonder nor Clarks, nor Smiths, nor Airys had cared to claim any of this stretch. It’d have to have diamonds under it to make it worth fooling with. I finally located a little bend in the creek where it eased back into a kind of tumble of boulders, several of them big enough for a Mule to stand on with a foot or two of space to spare, and I brought Sterling down. Seeing as how I didn’t want to slide into the water and ruin my clothes totally, I brought her to a full stop in the air first and then we stepped sedately onto the nearest flat place. She was good, but she couldn’t land naturally with no room for a run-in.
And then I looked around me, and I was satisfied. There could of been forty people in those woods within ten feet and not one of us would of known the others existed, it was that tangled. Dark! My, but it was dark. We’d come down out of clear skies and a brisk wind and scudding little puffs of cloud, all bright and sparkling; down here it was pure gloom. Very satisfactory.
I had a microviewer with me, and six trashy novels on fiche that I couldn’t of gotten away with taking time to read at home. I could feel my resolve to work on the account book fading away at the very look of this place; it was designed by its Creator for a good read if ever I saw a place that was, and the serious stuff could wait. I would settle in here in this back-of-nowhere and indulge myself while the chance lay there begging to be taken.
I pulled the smaller saddlebag off the Mule’s back and set it down, careful it wouldn’t slide, and set myself down beside it. The first step, even before I led Sterling down to drink (provided she waited for me to do that, which was not anything to lay bets on), was to change my clothes. I was just pulling off one of the last of my complicated garments when I got into trouble I hadn’t anticipated.
Whatever it was
I stopped thinking about Mules and thought about landing, which was going to be possible fairly soon. I hadn’t seen any sign of habitation now for a considerable time, and on Oklahomah there was mighty little to block your view once you got ten feet above the trees. I took one more look at the map to be sure I had my coordinates straight, waited twenty more minutes for good measure, and SNAPPED, to Sterling’s great relief. The less of this formal travel the better, so far as she was concerned, and she didn’t need to use her psibilities to make that plain. Her braying didn’t become exactly musical — that would be overstating the case a tad—but it took on a definite tone of musical intention .
The land below us as the air rippled and cleared was so tangled that I pulled back up to give it another good look; I had no desire to land in a bramble thicket or some such. There was nothing down there but forest, big old trees with their branches all twined and knotted in one among the other and their roots humping out of the ground, and I was hard put to it to see a break where we could set down. It would be dark down there, for sure, and not a likely place to run into anybody, give it that. Then I saw the glint of water to my right, a middle-sized creek by the look of it from where 1 was, and I turned that way. We could head down above the water and make a landing slow to the bank, unless it was thickets all the way to the edge.
I had to try twice before we found a break in the undergrowth—no wonder nor Clarks, nor Smiths, nor Airys had cared to claim any of this stretch. It’d have to have diamonds under it to make it worth fooling with. I finally located a little bend in the creek where it eased back into a kind of tumble of boulders, several of them big enough for a Mule to stand on with a foot or two of space to spare, and I brought Sterling down. Seeing as how I didn’t want to slide into the water and ruin my clothes totally, I brought her to a full stop in the air first and then we stepped sedately onto the nearest flat place. She was good, but she couldn’t land naturally with no room for a run-in.
And then I looked around me, and I was satisfied. There could of been forty people in those woods within ten feet and not one of us would of known the others existed, it was that tangled. Dark! My, but it was dark. We’d come down out of clear skies and a brisk wind and scudding little puffs of cloud, all bright and sparkling; down here it was pure gloom. Very satisfactory.
I had a microviewer with me, and six trashy novels on fiche that I couldn’t of gotten away with taking time to read at home. I could feel my resolve to work on the account book fading away at the very look of this place; it was designed by its Creator for a good read if ever I saw a place that was, and the serious stuff could wait. I would settle in here in this back-of-nowhere and indulge myself while the chance lay there begging to be taken.
I pulled the smaller saddlebag off the Mule’s back and set it down, careful it wouldn’t slide, and set myself down beside it. The first step, even before I led Sterling down to drink (provided she waited for me to do that, which was not anything to lay bets on), was to change my clothes. I was just pulling off one of the last of my complicated garments when I got into trouble I hadn’t anticipated.
Whatever it was
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