Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 2

stared at me, shaking her head and biting her lower lip so as not to laugh.

"Well, Anne?"

"Oh, I'm sure you've good reasons," she said, "and I have sense enough not to want to know what they are. But I'll wager not a single Granny saw you leave in that getup, or more than your boots and your gloves would be rosy red."

I chuckled; I expected she was right.

"Welcome, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," said Anne then, "and how long are we to have the misery of your company?"

Plainer and plainer speech.

"Can you put me up for twenty-four hours, sweet cousin?"

"In the style you're decked out for?"

"If you mean must there be dancing in the streets, Anne, no, I'll

spare you that."

"What, then? You didn't just 'drop in' on your way to buy a spool of thread somewhere."

Anne pulled her chair near the fire, folded her arms across her chest,

fixed her attention on me, and waited.

"I, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," I recited, "am touring the Twelve Castles of Ozark, Castle by Castle, in preparation for the Grand Jubilee of the Confederation. Which is-as you'll remember -to

be convened at Castle Bright.w.a.ter on the eighth day of this May.

And I begin here, dear cousin, to do you honor."

"And because Castle McDaniels is closest."

"And," I capped it, "because a person has to begin somewhere.

There is one advantage; if I start with you, then it follows that you're first done with me."

"Ah, yes," she sighed, "there is that."

She leaned back in her chair and sighed again, and I tried to keep my spurs from making holes in her upholstery.

"What's required?" she asked me.

"One party," I said. "A very small one. In honor of my tour, you know. In honor of my Quest."

"In honor of the Pickles."

"The Pickles? Anne!"On Earth, we are told in the Teaching Stories, there was a food called pickles, made out of some other food called cuc.u.mbers. On this world, Pickles are small flat squishy round green things, and they bite. They certainly are not good to eat, even in brine, and we grant them a capital letter to keep the kids mindful not to step on them barefoot.

"Well," said Anne of Bright.w.a.ter, "it's just as sensible."

"It would be just as well," I said, "not to mention the Pickles in your

invitations.""Responsible, dear Cousin Responsible, I despise parties! I always have despised them, and you know it. Why don't you be too tired, instead?"

The fire crackled in the fireplace, and a nasty wind howled round

the Castle walls, and I knit my brows and glared at her until she sighed one more time and went away to give the necessary orders.

My mention as she stepped into the hall that she'd best expect a comset film crew did nothing for her expression, but she went on; and I got myself out of my spurs and hung them over a corner of her mantel.

There could be no treason here-and that was what all this foolishness in fact amounted to, of course, plain treason-not in Castle McDaniels. The Bright.w.a.ters and the McDaniels had been closer than the sea and its sh.o.r.e ever since First Landing, and if there was anyone in this Castle who was not kin to me by birth or by marriage, or tied to me by favors given and received, it was some ninny such as stood guardmaid. Nevertheless, a Quest was a Quest, and it had to be done according to the rules. I had had a boring flight, tooling along through the air and waving to pa.s.sing birds; and I would have a boring supper with Anne's boring husband, and then we would all have a boring party and be boringly exhausted in the morning. And then before lunch I would be able to take my leave for Castle Purdy.

At which point a thought struck me, and I pulled my map from my pocket and unfolded it. Upper right-hand corner of the pliofilm, the small continent Marktwain, with the Outward Deeps off its coasts to the east. To the south of Marktwain, Oklahomah, a tad bigger. To the west, and dwarfing both, the continent of Arkansaw, with little Mizzurah almost up against its western coast and sheltered some from the Ocean of Storms by its overhang to the north. Then across the Ocean of Storms, in the northwest corner of my map, was Kintucky, big as Oklahomah but with only the Wommacks to manage the whole of it. And last of all, filling the southwest corner, the huge bulk of Tinaseeh, the only one of our continents to have an inland sea, and its Wilderness Lands alone as big as either Kintucky or Oklahomah. And the empty Ocean of Remembrances, filling all the southeast corner.

True, the most obvious route, and the one I had described to the arguesome Jubal, was straight over to Arkansaw. But Arkansaw was shared by Castles Purdy and Guthrie and Farson. And those were three of the most likely to have something to hide from me and require an investment of my time.

An alternative that might save me time in the long run would be to fly straight on south to Castle Clark on Oklahomah, and make a quick circuit of Castles Smith and Airy, both of which-along with Clark-were loyal to the Confederation. I could maybe do the entire continent in eight, nine days, counting one to a Castle for the required ceremonial stopover, before I moved on to Arkansaw and more reasonable sources of trouble.

The McDaniels children found me poring over my map and gathered round to look over my shoulder, all nine of them. The room shrank around me; not a one of them that was not a typical McDaniels, big and stocky and broad-shouldered (and if female, broad-hipped as well). It got very crowded in that room.

"This is a nice map you've got," said one of the younger of the herd, a boy called Nicholas Fairtower McDaniels the somethingth -I could not remember the what-th there for a minute. The 55th? No; the 56th. I was embarra.s.sed; if there is one thing expected of us it is knowing people's names, and this boy was a second cousin of mine.

"What are you looking for, Responsible? It's a nice map, like

Nicholas says, but there's a lot on it."

"She's looking for the kidnapper-" said the very littlest, and instantly clapped both hands over his mouth. "I forgot," he said around his fingers.

Either Anne or their father then had threatened them with dire events if they mentioned that baby; still, it was a McDaniels baby, and it was not surprising that they'd be interested. Manners were hard to get the hang of.

"I am trying to decide," I said, ruffling the boy's hair to show I

didn't intend to take notice of his lapse, "which is the best way to go when I leave in the morning. Like you say, there's a lot of choices." The children hadn't any hesitation at all-zip due west to Arkansaw, as any fool could see. Except for one of them. Her name was Silverweb, and she was fifteen years old and not yet married; perhaps it was her intention to become a Granny without the bother of waiting around to become a widow. She was a handsome strapping young woman, with a pleasant face; she bound her hair back in an intricate figure-eight of yellow braids that I could never of managed, and she carried herself with dignity. I made a mental note to compliment Anne on this daughter-her only daughter- who seemed to me to show promise.

She laid a well-tanned finger that showed she wasn't afraid of a little sun to my map, and traced a different route. Castle Clark, on Oklahomah's northeast corner. Castle Airy, at the southern tip... Oklahomah came very near being a triangle. Then to Castle Smith, in the northwest corner. My choice exactly.

"Do it that way," she said. "Then over to Arkansaw, only an easy morning's ride. And you're at Castle Guthrie." "Faugh, Silverweb," said one of her brothers, "she can't do that at all. You heard Mother-Cousin Responsible is touring all twelve Castles on solemn Quest The way to do it is go straight on to Arkansaw, then Mizzurah, then Kintucky, then Tinaseeh, then end up in Oklahomah, and back to Marktwain."

"If she ever gets out of Tinaseeh," said another. "Horrible old place, Tinaseeh is, and full of things that would as soon eat you alive as look at you."

"Not as horrible as your room!" I moved out of the way so as not to get my costume spoiled, grateful that the map was indestructible, and let them shove and carry on for a bit to get it out of their systems. Silverweb, calm among the turmoil, held fast that it would be just as sensible, and twice as pleasant, and break no rules that she'd ever heard of, if I went the other way round. "But then she's got all that open ocean between Tinaseeh and Oklahomah to fly! Look at it, would you? A person could fly over that and never be heard of again-it must be... three days across? Five? Six?"

"It's got to be done at one end or the other," scoffed his sister. "Better to do it when the worst is over and she can take her time. She'll be plain worn out, by then."

"What makes you think so, Silverweb?" the boy taunted, for all he had to stand on his tiptoes to look her in the eye. "She's Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter, Silverweb, she's not a tourist!"

Silverweb's chin went up and the blue eyes almost closed. She took one step forward and the boy fell back two. Second of nine she was; it couldn't be easy. And the other eight all male... it was enough to const.i.tute a substantial burden.

Silverweb. I added it up in my head-she was a seven. Withdrawal from the world... that went with not marrying... secrets and mystery... that fit the hooded eyes and the intricate figure of her braids. From what I could see, this one was properly named, and living up to it.

As of course she would be. There were no incompetent Grannys on Marktwain to cause trouble with an Improper Naming, as had been known to happen elsewhere from time to time.

I let them squabble, Silverweb winning easily, and relaxed as best I could given the way I was dressed, enjoying the sight of them all if not the sound. I had my route chosen now-as Silver-web had had the wit to lay it out, and it was not designed solely in terms of distances and points of the compa.s.s. I would do quickly the friendly territory of Oklahomah; and in that way I'd have a bit extra where it was less than friendly.

The party was pleasant, more a dance than a party, and a credit to Anne. She'd invited people enough to fill the Castle's smaller ballroom, and had managed to muster a respectable crowd, considering the short notice and a thunderstorm that had already been scheduled and could not of been postponed without distorting the weather for the next three weeks. Anne and I stood in a corner back of the bandstand where the Caller was hollering out the dances, both of us in slight danger from a flying fiddle bow but willing to risk it for the sake of the semi-privacy. I despised parties as much as Anne did, probably more, and I couldn't dance even the simplest dances, much less the complex things they were weaving on the tiles that night in honor of my visit.

"Star in the shallows, flash and swim, Lady to her gentleman and parry to him!"

"Wherever do they learn to do all that?" I marveled.

"Circle has a border to it, touch it and run, m.u.f.fins in the oven till their middles are done!"

"You should of been taught," said Anne. "They had no right to leave you ignorant just because you might of enjoyed yourself." "There wasn't time," I said, which was the plain truth. Plus, I was awkward, always had been.

"Braid a double rosebud, smother it in snow, Swing your partner, and dosey-do!"

"Step on a Pickle in the dark of night, Grab your cross lady, and allemande right!"

"It's not fair," she insisted. "I hear your brother's the best dancer in three counties, and turning all the girls to cream and b.u.t.ter. And I'll wager they saw to it that your sister learned every dance that was worth knowing."

I snorted. "n.o.body ever 'saw to it' that Troublesome did anything, Anne of Bright.w.a.ter. What she wanted to do, she did. What she cared to know about, she learned. Anything else was just so much kiss-your-elbow."

"Sashay down the center, rim around the wall, Single-bind, double-bind, and promenade all!"

I couldn't even understand these calls... dosey-do and promenade-the-hall went by often enough to let me know it was dancing, but the intricacies of it were beyond me. I couldn't decide whether I minded that, either, though on general principles I was not supposed to fall behind on anything that mattered to any sizable proportion of Ozarkers, "sizable" being defined as more than three. It looked to be hot work, and I fanned my face with my blank program in sympathy.

"Young people!" I said, ducking the bow. "They do amaze me."

Anne gave me a sharp look, and I looked her right back and waited.

Whatever she had to say, she'd say it; she'd said enough about my blue-and-silver party dress, which was even more preposterous in

the way of gewgaws and lollydaddles than the one I'd arrived in.

And my high-heeled silver slippers with the pointed toes.

"My daughter, Silverweb," she said to me, and I noticed that she

was talking with her teeth clenched, and spitting out the syllables like she couldn't spare them, "Silverweb, my dear cousin, is a 'young people.'"