Suzette Haden Elgin - Ozark Fantasy 03 - And Then There'll Be Fireworks

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CHAPTER 1

The child struggled under his hands; and he blamed it

not at aD. The sight of the Long Whip rising and falling

on the naked hack of ten-year-old Avalon of Wommack

made his own stomach chum. Avalon was a slight and

scrawny child, narrow of shoulder, the copper Wom-

mack hair gone dark now with the swift-pouring sweat

of her agony and clinging in a drenched coil along one

frail shoulder blade. Something about the nape of her

neck, where a babyish curl nestled all alone, tore at him

worse than the blood.

"Look you well," hissed Eustace Laddercane Trav-

eller the 4th through clenched teeth, holding his

youngest son's head as every parent in Traveller King-

dom had learned it must be done. Not just the iron grip

that kept the small head from turning away, but the lit-

tle finger of each hand jabbed cruelly into the comers of

the child's eyes, drawing the eyelids back taut against

any possible hint of their closing.

It hurt, of course; but not so much as the smack of

that Whip would hurt, should one of the College of

Deacons see the child avoiding its present duty: to

watch the public whipping of Avalon of Wommack.

And one day this boy he held so tightly now would per-

form the same service for the babe that swelled his

And Then There'U Be Firework

mothers belly this very moment, as his older children

held their younger brothers and sisters all around him.

His wife had not been spared, either, though Eustace

Laddercane had requested it; her time was very near,

and it a tenth child—mis whipping was enough to set

off her labor and see his tenth-bom arrive in the public

square. But the Tutor had been absolutely adamant

about it. Should that happen, he'd told him, it would be

a blessing for the newbom, its first sight in this world

one guaranteed to further its moral education and set it

on the Straight path for life.

Should that happen, thought the father, he'd blind

the babe with his own two thumbs before he'd let that

be its first sight of the world ... the Holy One grant

that it not happen.

Avalon of Wommack was well shielded from any lust-

ful eyes. The Whipping Cloth hung foursquare from its

hooks above her head to her bare feet, with only the nar-

row space cut away at the back to allow the Whip room.

But it did nothing to shield her screams. Eustace Lad-

dercane hoped they hurt the ears of the Magicians of

Rank that stood one at each comer of the cloth, twelve

inches between them and their pitiful victim.

The whipping itself, now—no man could have done

that, though not one had courage enough to stop it It

was Granny Leeward of Castle Traveller, her that was

the own mother of the Castle Master, that wielded the

Long Whip.

She'd explained Avalon of Wommack's grievous sins

to them all carefully before she began me chastisement,

looking all around her with those measuring eyes, count-

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

ing. She knew precisely how many people should be

there on the walkway that bordered the square, did the

Granny. Ninety-one excused by the College of Deacons

for illness near unto death, a sign of sure wicked-

ness in those ninety and one; and seven hundred

thirteen that left to be counted. Eustace Laddercane

was certain mat Granny Leeward was able to count each

and every one of the seven hundred thirteen, and would

have known if even one had been missing. They lined

up by household and by height, the tallest at the back.

There still was not room for all of them within the

Castle walls, and it had been necessary to lay out this

whipping ground outside, burning away every last sprig

and blade of growing life, grading it flat as the top of a

table, anchoring down the board walkway that bordered

it with spokes of ironwood hammered into chinks

blasted out of the Tinaseeh rock. But that was chang-

ing. The people of Tinaseeh, they were dying with a ter-

rifying speed, ten and twenty and more now in a single

day . . . soon they'd be able to take their Whipping

Cloth inside one of the courtyards, right into Roebuck

. . . might could be soon they'd have ample space in

the Castle Great Hall itself, and be hard put to it to find

anybody left to whip.

Avalon of Wommack had sinned doubly. First she

had sinned against the cause that bid the Chosen Peo-

ple of Tinaseeh repopulate this land, to replace the

dying who by their very deaths had revealed the vileness

or their souls. Avalon's father had brought her home a

husband, a man of seventeen, and Avalon not only had

not welcomed her bridegroom tenderly and obediently

And Then There S Be Firewwh

as was expected o( her, not only refused to go wiBingly

to the marriage bed where this male twice her size and

near twice her age might do her the favor of placing his

seed in her womb—Avalon had tried to hide herself

away. They had dragged her from a granary, half

suffocated already on the grain and on her terror. De-

spite the fact. Granny Leeward had hammered the point

home, that Avalon's womb had been through two full

cycles. And secondly, there was the additional fact that

Avalon of Wommack was a Two. and a female whose

name came to the numeral two was intended by destiny

to be passive and submissive and weak. The giri had also

sinned against her Naming.

That, the Granny had said, was the greater sin of the

two. A young girl, modest and timid as was fully appro-

priate, might be leniently treated for fearing the wed-

ding bed and the inevitable childbed that followed it.

She might well of had only a token stroke or two of the

Long Whip for that, provided she went then and did

her duty ever after.

But to rebel against her Naming was not just to rebel

against Jeremiah Thomas Traveller's orders to many

and be fruitful, the orders of a mere man. It was rebel-

lion against the path laid out for her by the Holy One; a

fearsome evil, a defying of the divine law.

And so the number of lashes had been set at twice

twelve. A memorable number. Eustace Laddercane re-

membered only one other unfortunate to earn so high a

number as that, and that time it had been for stealing

food from the common stores and gorging on it And

And Then There U Be Fireworks

that time the Whip had fallen on the broad back of a

man full grown.

The Long Whip whistled through the air—stroke sev-

enteen. The Magicians of Rank put themselves to the

trouble of calling out the number each time for the

watchers, that they might not lose track and think that

surely it had to be almost over.

At his side he felt a long shudder take his wife's body,

and he dared a quick look, sure it was the birth pains,

but she knew his thought as soon as he did, and without

turning her head she murmured to bim not to take

foolish chances, that she was all right All right, she said,

but for the whipping-

Avalon of Wommack did not scream again after the

nineteenth stroke, but Granny Leeward took care not to

leave the people wondering what was the point of laying

five more strokes on a body already dead.

"Praise be," said the Granny solemnly. "The house-

hold of this youngun can go tranquil to its beds this

night Avalon of Wommack has paid in full the debt of

her wickedness, and she stands now in eternal bliss,

smiling and singing at the right hand of the Holy One

Almighty. Praise bel"

The Magicians of Rank raised their long shears as one

man and cut the loops that held the Whipping Cloth to

the hooks, and there was nothing then to see but a pile

of bloody linen, very nearly Hat, upon the stained

ground.

Somebod/s child, walking the edge of hysteria,

screamed out over and over: "Where did Avalon of

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

Wommack go? Where is she?" And there was the ring-

ing smack of a full blow across that child's face as its

mother moved desperately to offer up a penalty before

the College of Deacons could prescribe one.

And Granny Leeward's voice rose strong and sure—

and why not, seeing as how she was little more than

sixty and mighty young for a Granny—leading them in

the hymn that had been chosen to end this particular

whipping. It was seemly; its title was "Divine Pain,

Willingly Endured." Except that Avalon of Wommack

had not been willing.

The members of the College of Deacons moved

along the walkway, their arms folded gravely over their

chests, watching and listening for any sign of somebody

singing with anything less than righteous enthusiasm. It

was, after all, an occasion tor celebration, what with

Avalon of Wommack's eternal bliss and her family's

tranquillity and all; and the College of Deacons was

fully prepared to see to it that a suitable explanation was

provided for anybody present that couldn't understand

that on their own.

The little ones sang their hearts out, and the older

ones sighed and released their grips upon the small

heads just a mite. The children knew already; sing, sing

loud, and sing joyful. Make a joyful noise . . . they

knew. Or there'd be a smaller version of the Long Whip

waiting at home, and the mother assigned a specific

number of strokes to be laid on, by the Deacon that'd

spotted the wavering voice. It made for hearty music.

Eustace Laddercane Traveller the ^th believed, really

believed, in the Holy One Almighty. And there had not

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

been a whipping yet that he had not raised his own

voice in the closing hymn, almost roaring out the words,

waiting for the divine wrath to reach the limit of Its en-

durance and strike Granny Leeward dead before his

eyes. It had not happened yet, but his faith that it

would was a rock on which he stood, and a comfort to

him in the nights when often he dreamed it was a child

of his loins that cringed and screamed and twisted under

the strokes of the Whip.

"It went well, to my mind," said Nathan Overholt

Traveller the loist. "No faintings, no foolishness, and

no punishments to pass out afterward—all very satis-

factory."

The other three nodded, and agreed that it had gone

well enough.

"Well enough, perhaps." That was Feebus Timothy

Traveller the 6th, youngest of the Magicians of Rank on

Tinaseeh. "But the child ought not to have died."

The two Fanon brothers, Sheridan Pike the 2$th and

Luke Nathaniel the i9th, looked at each other. There

were times when they wondered about Feebus Timothy,

finding him a tad soft, wondering if there wasn't a slight

taint of Airy blood there somewhere to account for what

came near at times to romantic notions. Times when

they felt he'd profit from a stroke or two of the Long

Whip himself. He sorely needed toughening up.

"There is no room on Tinaseeh for a disobedient

child," said Nathan Overholt harshly. "The subject is

closed."

"There was a time," persisted Feebus Timothy,

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

"when we could have saved her, any one of us, no mat-

ter how many lashes she had taken."

"There was a time," said Sheridan Pike reasonably,

"when we could cause the Mules to fly and carry us on

their backs, and a time when the winds and the rains

and the tides obeyed us. And that was that time, and it

is gone. We deal now with this time."

The mention of the powers they had lost silenced

them all. It was not something you got used to. Once

you had been someone whose fingers could make a cas-

ual move or two and a cancer would shrivel and disap-

pear inside the sick one's body, leaving no trace behind.

Once you had been someone that could SNAP through

space, moving from the Wilderness Lands of Tinaseeh,

across the vastness of the Oceans of Remembrances and

of Storms, to land less than a second later in the court-

yard of any of the twelve Castles of the planet Ozark.

Once you had been someone who saw to it that the rain

fell only when and where it was needed, and that the

harvests were always bountiful, and that the snow fell

only deep enough and often enough to be an amuse-

ment for the children and a change for their elders . . .

once.

Now, on the other hand, it was as Sheridan Pike had

said. Now they had to deal with this time. Four Magi-

cians of Rank, their tides as hollow as their stomachs

and their gaunt faces, garbed in a black grown shiny

with wear, and their only power now the power of fear.

It was a painful comedown, for they had been truly

mighty.

Luke Nathaniel Farson had been picking idly at his

And Then Therell Be Fireworks

front teeth with his thumbnail, a maddening little noise

in the silence; and then he stopped, just before they

could demand for him to, and asked: "Do you suppose

it's true, that rumor about the Yallerhounds?"

"Luke Nathaniel!" Even Feebus Timothy got in on

the outrage.

"I don't know," mused the other man. "They're hun-

gry. We're hungry, here at the Castle . . . think of the

people in the town. A Yallerhound, or a giant cavecat,

that's a sizable quantity of meat. And though it's true I

can't think of any of the men with strength enough left

to take a cavecat, you know as well as I do that a boy of

three could catch a Yallerhound. AH you have to do is

call the creature, and it will come to you."

"Nobody," said Sheridan Pike, "nobody at afl.^ would

eat a Yallerhound. They would starve first."

"They will, then/' said Luke Nathaniel "Those that

haven't already.*'

"Change the subject/' ordered Sheridan Pike flatly.

"Can't any of you think of something that's not intoler-

able to talk about? You've lost your magic powers, but I

wasn't aware that you'd lost your minds as well."

"Well," said Feebus Timothy, "we could discuss to-

day's scheduled urgent and significant meeting. That's

not intolerable, just useless, and silly, and stupid."

"Your sarcasm is very little help. Cousin/' said Sheri-

dan Pike.

"All right, then, 111 ask seriously. What is on today's

agenda?"

"A discussion of the situation."

"Again?" Feebus Timothy was serious now, serious

And Then There's. Be Fireworks

and Habbergasted. "Whatever for? We have had nine

hundred and ninety-nine 'discussions of the situation'

and we have yet to arrive at a single—"

Sheridan Pike cut him off. "Jeremiah Thomas Trav-

eller is Master of this Castle, master of the four of us,

son of Granny Leeward, and representative of the Holy

One upon this earth. If he says we are to discuss the sit-

uation yet one more time—or one hundred more times

—then we will discuss it"

Feebus Timothy snorted, "The only thing in all that

that impresses me. Cousin, is the claim that he's Lee-

ward's son. That I believe, it being a matter of record;

and that I'm impressed by. As for the rest of it ... if

you'll pardon a phrase from the fonnspeech . . .

cowflop."

"You talk a good line," said Luke Nathaniel Farson.

"But I have yet to see you do more than talk."

Sheridan Pike moved smoothly to cover the charged

silence, and observed that another discussion was not

necessarily a waste of time.

"Each time we meet," he said, "there is the possi-

bility that we will hit upon something we have over-

looked before, colleagues. Somewhere there is a clue to

be found, if only we were wise enough to spot it"

"The clue you seek," retorted Feebus Timothy, "lies

in pseudocoma on a narrow bed at Castle Brightwater.

Where we put her, we wise Magicians of Rank, these

sixteen months past"

"Nonsense!"

"Not nonsense," said Nathan Overholt, knowing he

plowed ground already furrowed to exhaustion, but too

And Then There'U Be Fireworks

tired to care, "not nonsense at all. Feebus Timothy is

somewhat confused, and somewhat overdramatic, but

the facts of the matter are obvious. While Responsible

or Brightwater went about her interfering and infuriat-

ing business on this planet, we were truly Magicians,

with the power of Formalisms & Transformations at our

command. From the moment we laid her in pseudo-

coma on that bed my cousin refers to so poetically, our

power began to wane . . . and now it is gone. Entirely^

completely, wholly gone. Magic is gone . . . and on

Tinaseeh we have no science. The question is: why?"

"We have no science because we never needed it,"

said Sheridan Pike disgustedly. "Magic was a great deal

faster than science ever hoped to be, and far more

efficient"

"No, no ... that was not my question! And you

know it, don't you?"

"Of course I know it!"

"Then stop playing the fool!"

"He is not playing the fool," said Luke Nathaniel

wearily, "he is just cross, like the rest of us. And we have

considered that question so many times already."

"Magic/' said Nathan Overholt, "is a great web, a

great web in always changing equilibrium. Touch it any-

where, change it anyhow, and you affect the whole.

When we removed Responsible of Brightwater from

that web-"

"We haven't removed her. She's in better health than

any of us. In pseudocoma you don't need to eat"

"In a sense," Nathan Overholt went on, "we removed

her. We changed her from an active principle to a pas-

And Then There'll Be Fireworks

sive one . . . and yet she is a female. How can a female

represent an active principle?"

"Granny Leeward is exceedingly 'active' with the

Long Whip/' observed Luke Nathaniel. "And she is fe-

male."

^She is not a principle—she is only an item."

Feebus Timothy longed to lay his head, still aching

from the screams or Avalon of Wommack, down on the

table, right then and there, and go to sleep. They had

been over it And over it The difference between an

item and a principle. The difference between substi-

tution of a null term and substitution of a specified

term. The degree of shift in an equation sufficient to de-

stroy its reversibility—or restore it And over and over

. . . what role had Responsible of Brightwater, a girt of

fifteen like any other girl of fifteen to the eye, played in

that equation, such that the cancellation of her input

had been enough to destroy the entire system?

There were never any answers. That she had known a

little magic, some of it more advanced than was suitable

for a female or even legal, they all knew. The four of

them had been present when Responsible fell into

Granny Leeward's trap and changed the old woman's

black fan into a handful of rotting jet-black mushrooms

before their astonished eyes. Jeremiah Thomas Traveller

had been mightily impressed by that, as the Granny had

intended him to be.

But they were Magicians of Rank. It was a Trans-

formation, certainly, and the girl should not have been

able to do it, but it was trivial. It was a baby trick, such

as any one of them might have done—in a less ugly way

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

—to entertain guests at a celebration of some kind. It

was probable that it had been as much blind luck as

skill, and mostly the product of the girl's rage; for she

had lain in torment while they watched her and mocked

her misery, suffering from the girt of Andersen's Dis-

ease, die deathdance fever that Granny Leeward had or-

dered them to impose as punishment for her scandalous

behavior. And she'd shown no sign of any talent for

things magical but that one . . . nor had she been able

to stand against them when the nine Magicians of

Rank had chosen to impose pseudocoma upon her or

during the months that had dragged by since. If there

was something special about her, why had she not

leaped up from that bed and laughed at them and put

all of them into pseudocoma?

It was hopeless.

"It's hopeless," he said aloud. "Hopeless."

The others looked at him, suddenly caught by the

nuance of his voice. He was young, and he was inexpe-

rienced, but he had been a skilled Magician of Rank.

Now they detected something ... a note of petulance.

Petulance?

Nathan Overholt Traveller reached over abruptly and

laid his hand on the younger man's forehead and swore

a broad word.

"He's burning up with fever!" he said. "One of you

get the Granny, and tell her to lose no time coming

down here!"

It had been bound to happen sooner or later.

Sickness, the Master of this Castle had been telling ev-

eryone, sickness and death, were nothing more than the

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

marks of wickedness and sin made visible in the flesh.

Only the Holy One culling the rotten fruit from the

crop and leaving the sound and the wholesome behind.

It made an entertaining sermon, and perhaps dulled

grief for some . . . after all, if those that suffered and

died deserved their fate, then what was there to grieve

over?

But the Magicians of Rank had been uneasy, listen-

ing. For if one of them, one of the Magicians of Rank,

one of the Family, were to fall sick or, the Twelve Gates

forbid, to die—how was that to be explained? The ur-

gency of preventing that had provided them with a

shaky justification for the extra rations they shared in se-

cret in the Castle, while tadlings cried with hunger in

the houses of the town. Eggs, they had been eating . . .

it was safe to assume that no one else on Tinaseeh had

seen an egg in six months or more, much less eaten one.

And now this? It must not happen.

"Why call the Granny?" demanded one of the

others, and Nathan Overholt took time from rubbing

the temples of his brother's head to give him a look of

contempt

"We have no magic now, you benastied fool," he

spat, beside himself with worry, and his elegant manners

and speech forgotten for once, "and no medicine either.

We have nothing—except what the Grannys know. The

ancient simples. The herbs and teas and potions and

plasters of the times before magic, the Holy One have

mercy on us all! Now get her!"

"Nathan Overholt-'

"You think," shouted Nathan, "you think that if one

And Then ThereU Be Fireworks

of us falls to a fever we will be able to stand on the

whipping ground and convince the people of Tinaseeh

that we order that Whip laid on out of our own inno-

cence of all sin? You think that Granny Leeward would

scruple to set that Long Whip to your back, or to mine,

<f that seemed necessary to further the cause of the Cho-

sen People? Dozens, man, don't you realize that if

Feebus Timothy has it we may all be in the same fix,

whatever it is—and it could be anything? Now go!"

He went around behind his brother and clasped the

young man's head in his hands, closing his eyes, concen-

trating fiercely. It was an act he knew to be only super-

stition. But perhaps. Perhaps there was still some frag-

ment of healing in it. He could not do nothing at all.

He had no desire to die like Avalon of Wommack had

died; nor did he want to leam how many strokes of the

Long Whip it would take to kill a strong man in

reasonably good condition.

CHAPTER 2

Mount Troublesome was not much, as mountains go; it

peaked at a fad past four thousand feet, and it hadn't a

glacier or a crevasse to its name. On the other hand,

though it didn't live up to the "Mount" part, it more

than made up for that in its fidelity to the "Trouble-

some" part It missed no smallest opportunity for ra-

vines to get stuck in and caves to get lost in and vast

duckets to be scratched ragged in; and it was abun-

dantly generous in poisonous ivies and creepers winding

along the ground and up around the trees to hang down

and smack you in the face. Springs were everywhere,

trickling along under matted undergrowth that looked

solid as a stable roof, till you set foot on it and sank in

icy water up to your knees. There were waterfalls'

enough to go around, pretty white water gushing over

sheer rock faces into pools circled by ferns and near-

wfllows. The pools were tempting to the eye, and might

of been pleasant-feeling, but you waded them at your

peril and the pleasure of dozens of small ferocious yel-

low snakes with ingeniously notched teeth. It did hap-

pen to be a fact that Mount Troublesome was the tallest

thing on the entire continent of Marktwain.

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摘要：

CHAPTER1Thechildstruggledunderhishands;andheblameditnotataD.ThesightoftheLongWhiprisingandfallingonthenakedhackoften-year-oldAvalonofWommackmadehisownstomachchum.Avalonwasaslightandscrawnychild,narrowofshoulder,thecopperWom-mackhairgonedarknowwiththeswift-pouringsweatofheragonyandclinginginadrenched...

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