Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks (11 page)

“You explain,” she said. “
Right
quick.”

“When we realized what we’d done,” said the man, making vague hopeless gestures, “we tried right away to undo it. The Mules weren’t making more than about ten miles an hour by then, some of the boats were a knot or two faster, whatever was left of the energy that had been fueling the system was winding down fast ... but since it had taken all nine of us to put Responsible into pseudocoma we had a feeling it would take all nine to get her back out again. We all got here; and since you were yammering about the difficulties of your jaunt to Kintucky, allow me to observe that there was nothing easy about
that
—but we did get here somehow. And in the dead of night we stood round her bed and we did everything we knew, and made up a sizable amount of stuff that had never been tried before ... and we kept at it until there was barely time for some of us to get out before people saw us leaving. Whether everyone got back home again, I don’t know ... and I’m not sure I care. But we
did try
, Troublesome.”

“And what happened?”

“And nothing happened. The only difference between pseudocoma and real coma is that the victim of pseudocoma does not deteriorate physically or mentally. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same—and we did a good job of it. Oh yes; that’s a downright magnificent pseudocoma we put her into. She went right on just as she was.”

“Do you understand it?” Troublesome asked gravely.

“No, of course we don’t understand it, curse your insolence for asking! We
ought
to understand it ... do you have to rub my nose in it? Does that give you pleasure?”

“That’s my sister,” she reminded him. It was no time to make her ritual speech about having no human feelings.

“And the hope of the world.”

To her amazement, she saw that there were tears on his cheeks, running in rivulets down into his beard; it wouldn’t do to let him know she saw that, and she devoted her attention to watching a seabird wheeling above them. It must have gone demented, too, she thought absently.

“We were so careful,” he mourned beside her. “One thousand years of being
so careful.
Keeping the population small, so that there was always abundance. Balancing every substance that went into the soil and the water and the air, and every substance that came out, to guard its purity. We made a paradise ... no crime, no war, no disease, no crowding, no hunger, no— “

“I remember, Veritas Truebreed,” Troublesome cut him off. “I was up on a mountaintop a good deal of the time, but I do remember. And I’d rather hear explanations than memorial services, if you don’t mind.”

“We have some guesses.”

“Guesses? What kind of guesses?”

He didn’t answer her, and she turned to look at him, tears or no tears.

“I said, what
kind
of guesses?”

“They ought, by rights, to be secret ...”

“Oh, hogwallow, you fool man! Secrets, at a time like this!”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said, “and I’m too tired to care any more ... and nobody’d believe you even if you weren’t too mean to tell, so what does it matter? We assume—just assume, mind you, we’ve no proof—that there was something about Responsible that was essential to the functioning of magic. She had no
powers
, of course, beyond those of any other female; don’t misunderstand me.”

“You’re a liar, Veritas—I told you I had the whole story from that poor piece of work at Castle Wommack, and he had a few words to say about Responsible’s powers; seems as how he mightily disliked being subjected to them.”

“Even on Old Earth,” said the Magician of Rank stiffly, “in the times of utter ignorance of magic, there were rare individuals capable of mindspeech—as there were rare individuals seven feet tall. Your sister is a freak, as those were freaks, with no knowledge or control of her abilities. But she is something else, something ... a catalyst, perhaps? Somehow, whatever she was, taking her out of the system of magic brought it to a full stop. And pseudocoma
takes
magic—you can’t put someone into it, nor take them out of it, with solar energy or electrical energy or any other kind. By the time we realized what had happened, there was no energy left—without her—for us to use to cancel the coma. So far as I know, that’s the way of it. And if you could get all nine of us together in her bedroom again, which I doubt, since the ships aren’t sailing and the Mules aren’t flying, it would be the same as it was. Just the same as it was ... “

“You were fools,” said Troublesome. “Plain fools.”

That long groan again ... it was getting boring, especially since he was in no pain.

“You were, you know,” she said, happy to twist the knife.

“We didn’t
realize
,” he protested. “We had no idea that she mattered that way ...” And if someone had told them, he thought to himself, if they’d been warned, it would have changed nothing. They wouldn’t have believed it. They had hated Responsible of Brightwater so much, and they had so welcomed a legitimate opportunity to punish her for humiliating them, he knew that no amount of warning could have held them back.

“You do not know the hours,” he said slowly, “the countless hours I have spent standing beside her all by myself ... trying things. Hoping I’d jog something loose, find the right thread accidentally. Because whatever it is that she is for,
that
is still intact.
That’s
still there, if I could only get at it.”

“How do you know that? How can you possibly know?”

He raised his eyebrows at that, and he admonished her to think. After all, he pointed out, she had a reputation for wisdom as well as wickedness. And, goaded like that and held in the fierceness of his eyes wanting to get back at her for the way she’d spoken to him, she saw it.

“Ah,” she breathed, “you’re right! Otherwise, if it were
other
wise, she’d be like someone in true coma ... she’d be curled tight and wasting away and— “

“And all the rest of it. Yes. And she’s not. She looks exactly as she looked the hour we did our work, and that can mean only one thing—all that is left of the energy of magic is concentrated there in her, keeping her from ever changing.”

Something in his tone caught her attention, and she looked at him close, and marveled at the way of the world. Revelation followed upon revelation.

“You hate her,” she said. “She’s your own kin, grew up here under this roof playing on your knee and riding piggyback on your shoulders—and you hate her worse than sin! Why?”

Veritas Truebreed squared his shoulders, and he met her eyes, but he said not one word. No one not a Magician of Rank was ever going to know the answer to that question, not from his lips. Not ever.

“It must have been hard,” murmured Troublesome. “All those years, pretending to be helpful ... playing at being loyal.”

“It was.”

Troublesome went back down into the Castle, her breath making little white puffs in the air, and she found Grannys Hazelbide and Gableframe, and told them.

“It seems,” she wound it up, “that you went through all of this and gave up the last of your treasure things—not to mention a certain amount of discommodance on
my
part—all for nothing. It’s a shame.”

“No,” said Granny Gableframe firmly. “It wasn’t for nothing, young woman. In
no
sense of the word. We traded an ignorance big as this Castle for a whole
pot
of knowledge, bubbling and simmering this minute. I’d say as it was a fair trade. We’re not out of it, mind you, not by many a mile, but we at least know how we came to be where we are.”

“Knowledge,” said Granny Hazelbide, “is for using. Now we have some, the problem is how we put it to use. And for that. Troublesome, we don’t need you. No call whatsoever to keep you from your homeplace any longer, and we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done, however much it sticks in my craw to say it. We’re beholden to you.”

“Hazelbide, you exaggerate,” said Granny Gableframe.

“You know any other living soul on this earth as would of done what Troublesome did?” demanded Granny Hazelbide. “Gone off in the cold and damp in a leaky boat with a bribed crew, on what was ninety-nine-to-one a wild goose chase? Gone off and chanced being stranded forever in a wilderness, dying all alone in some Kintucky briartangle? Just because we asked her to, and no other compensation offered?”

“Flumdiddle!” said Gableframe. “The fact you raised Troublesome’s addled your brain—
which
it can’t tolerate much of, I might add. That’s her own sister as lies in there, and it’s her own people as are suffering. She had as much to gain from this as any of us, and more than some, and I’ll be benastied before I’ll say we’re beholden to Troublesome of Brightwater! The
idea
!”

“One more time, Gableframe,” said Granny Hazelbide, tight-lipped. “Just
one more
time, I’ll tell you ... Troublesome has no natural feelings. Responsible could die this minute, putrify right there on her bed, and her sister’s only complaint’d be the smell. And that goes for every sick baby and hungry tadling and suffering human on the face of this world, you have my word on it. If
she
helped us, we’re beholden. You care to be benastied as well, that’s your choice.”

Troublesome chuckled, and Granny Hazelbide said: “See there?”

They were sitting there together, the two old women rocking quick and hard to show their irritation, and Troublesome still grinning, when the Mules began to bray in the stables, and Granny Gableframe said, “There’s somebody coming—listen to that racket!”

“Probably Lewis Motley Wommack the 33
^rd
,” observed Granny Hazelbide. “Swam all the way here for penance, and crawled the rest of the way when he ran out of water,”

“For sure it’s a strange Mule to bring all that on,” said Granny Hazelbide. “That’s all we need now, when we should be setting our minds to how to use what we’ve learned—company. Botheration!”

“Don’t you get awfully tired of that?” asked Troublesome.

“Tired of what?”

“The formspeech. Having to go ‘botheration’ and ‘I swan’ and ‘flumdiddle’ and ‘mark my word’ and all the rest of it. Do you keep it up when you’re all by yourselves and nobody around to say, ‘
Eek!
I heard a Granny talking normal talk like anybody else’?”

The Grannys drew themselves up in outrage, right together like they’d practiced it, and Troublesome chuckled some more. There was nothing more fun to tease than a Granny.

“Troublesome of Brightwater,” said Granny Hazelbide stiffly, “just you go and see who’s come—or
what’s
come, might could be that’s more near the mark! I wish to goodness it
would
be young Wommack, I’d pull every hair of his beard out one at a time ... but well not be that lucky, it’ll be somebody useless, or worse. You’ve had your thanks, missy, and we’ve had your sass, and now we’re even—make your young bones useful and see what’s come to pass.”

But Troublesome didn’t have a chance to more than straighten up from her chair before a knock came at the door; and when they called, “Come in!” it was a servingmaid of Brightwater and an Attendant from Castle McDaniels, the latter looking as if he’d fall over if you blew on him.

“I’m here,” he blurted out, “with a message for Miss Troublesome. Law, but I was scared to death she’d be gone before I got here ... Miss Troublesome, I’m pleasured to see you.”

“First time in her life she ever heard
that!
” said the two Grannys together, and Troublesome allowed that it was, and the young man hurried to explain himself.

“I don’t mean as how I’m happy to see
her
,” he said hastily, stumbling into the doorframe and causing the servingmaid to put a sturdy hand to his elbow to help him out. “Don’t misunderstand me; it’s that I’m happy to see she’s not
gone
yet. If you see what I mean.”

“The distinction’s a mite subtle,” said Granny Gableframe, “But we won’t hold it against you, whatever it might mean, seeing as how it’s clear you’ve had a hard ride and a long one and can scarcely stand on your feet, much less orate and do declamations. What are you after with Troublesome of Brightwater, young man?”

“Message from Castle McDaniels, ma’am,” he said, bobbing his head. “And it’s urgent.”

“Then de
liver
it,” snapped Troublesome, running out of patience. “
Before
you fall over. It’ll be more practical that way, by a good deal. And don’t mumble. When I get urgent messages brought in to me at a last gasp like this I like them to be turned over with
clarity
.”

“Troublesome!” Granny Hazelbide was fairly quivering. “
Will
you not tease the poor young man, for all our sakes!”

“Oh, that’s all right. Granny Hazelbide,” said the Attendant from McDaniels, trying not to lean on the servingmaid. “I’ve been warned about her already, at some length. Missus McDaniels, her that was Anne of Brightwater, she talked to me about Miss Troublesome for it must of been a good hour and a half. I expected horns and a tail on her, if you want to know the truth of it.”

And Troublesome chuckled some more. For a day that had begun with spoiled food and bad water and a crew of sick and surly men on a leaky boat, this one was turning out to have its good parts.

“Well, then,” she said. “You’ve seen me, and you’re disappointed I don’t live up to your expectations. That’s clear. Now pass on the message, and you can be on your way and get some rest. Just speak right up.”