(eng) Pamela Dean by The Dubious Hills

Author:The Dubious Hills [Hills, The Dubious]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Who are the other two?” said Mally.

“Now that, I cannot tell you,” said Oonan.

“Why? Whom will it break?”

Oonan shrugged. Mally looked at him over her lamp. A few early insects came and danced around the light. Arry considered Oonan, his nerves and his joints and the pathways of his blood. Mally was considering others of his pathways. Arry thought, carefully, over what Halver had said to her. Not much, she realized; she had cut his speech short, perhaps. She thought over what he had said to both of them, to her and Oonan. Frances knew, he had said, although what he said she knew was not really in her province.

“Oonan,” said Arry. “It’s my mother. It’s my mother, isn’t it?”

“And your father,” said Mally, still looking at Oonan. “Wherefore he would not tell you.”

“Oonan,” said Arry.

Oonan looked at her. “I thought they would come tonight,” he said.

“Halver would tell them not to,” said Mally.

“I have to talk to them,” said Arry. There is another hurt, she thought, an entire other world of hurt, and this is it, I am in it. “I have to talk to them at once,” she said, as if she were telling somebody to apply pressure to a wound.

“I let Halver go,” said Oonan. “They could be anywhere on the mountain, Arry, or anywhere for miles around. Wolves run fast and far, Derry says.”

“I don’t think you can talk to them until they want you to,” said Mally. “They may have their reasons.”

“What if they do want to and Halver won’t let them?”

“There are two of them,” said Mally reflectively.

“Halver is larger,” said Oonan.

“Is he really?” said Mally. “Frances is taller than he is and Bec is wider.”

They looked at one another again. Finally Mally said, “So Halver makes a better wolf.”

“Are you surprised?” said Oonan.

And Mally said, “No.”

Arry gave up trying to think about Halver. I never wondered, she thought, I never wondered where they were. They were just gone; I wished they weren’t gone. Why didn’t I wonder?

“We’ll think of a way to thwart Halver, so they may come to you if you wish it,” said Oonan. “Now you should sleep.”

“Now,” said Arry, out of her aching throat, “we should consider what’s to be done—about all of it.”

“Not here,” said Oonan. “Grel says this kind of sky and air mean rain.”

Mally glanced around at her own front door, but said nothing.

“We’d best return to my house,” said Oonan. “There’s nobody there to wake up. Unless you’re worried, Arry.”

“Leaving Con to her own devices should worry anybody,” said Mally. “If we sit in your kitchen, Arry, and speak quietly?”

“But no blushful Hippocrene, I beg you,” said Oonan.

They all laughed, a little hollowly, and walked along to Arry’s house.

“Waterpale has a town hall,” said Oonan, “where anybody may consult at any hour and wake only the dogs. It has pillars carved with roses, and a spring in the courtyard. Sune says so; so did Frances.”

“Waterpale is larger,” said Mally, “and full of stone-workers. Frances said that, too.

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