The Dubious Hills

The Dubious Hills Read Free Page A

Book: The Dubious Hills Read Free
Author: Pamela Dean
Tags: Magic, cats, wolves, Quotations
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When will I get to say
something?” said Con.
    “ When you’re ten.”
    Con glowered.
    “ Halver says.”
    “ I really hate this, Arry,” said
Con crossly. “Why can’t we keep our magic until we get our
knowledge?”
    “ Halver says, so we can play for a
little between our first responsibility and our last.”
    Con seemed to consider this for a moment and then
shrug it off as foolish. She said, “Can’t Oonan fix it?” Oonan
looked amused. “No, my puppy, I can’t fix it, because it is not
broken. It is what happens.”
    “ But I hate it!”
    Oonan said again, “It’s what happens.” He looked
rather helpless.
    “ Con,” said Arry, “you and Beldi
run along to school. You’ll
really
hate what Gnosi Halver
says to you if you’re late.”
    “ What about you?” said
Beldi.
    “ Tell him I am conferring with
Oonan and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
    “ Wish I were fourteen,” said
Beldi.
    “ No you don’t. Go on,
now.”
    They departed, leaving the door open. A damp,
green-smelling breeze came in from outside. Oonan sat down, with a
tremendous thump for such a thin person, in a tall carved chair,
and waved at the other one. Arry’s mother had made those chairs,
and her father had bought white cloth from the traders of
Wormsreign and dyed it red and sewn and stuffed the cushions. The
cushions were a little faded, and furry each on its right front
corner where Oonan’s and everybody else’s cats scratched them. The
chairs had darkened a little from their first pale pine-color, but
were otherwise just the same.
    Arry sat down on the floor, almost in the damp spot
left by the puddle of milk. “Did you lose more sheep, Oonan?”
    “ Just the two,” said Oonan. “Wim
says we can afford so many, or even three times so many. But I hate
it.” His slight smile commiserated Con and mocked himself all at
once.
    “ Is Con really
unbroken?”
    “ Entirely.”
    “ But why does she
hurt?”
    “ What?” said Oonan, with extreme
sharpness. “Did she say her hand hurt?”
    “ No, I don’t mean that. But
doesn’t it seem to you that her hating what is happening must be a
hurt also?”
    “ If you say so, Arry, then it is
so.”
    “ But a hurt is a breaking, and if
you say Con is not broken and I say she does hurt, then
what?”
    Oonan leaned his bright head back against the red
cushion of the chair and closed his eyes. “I’m older than you are,”
he said, “but pain has precedence. Might we ask Gnosi?”
    “ I’ll talk to him after school,”
said Arry.
    “ Good,” said Oonan, without
opening his eyes. “Your head hurts,” said Arry. “Take some
almond-water.” Willow-bark tea would be better, but Oonan wouldn’t
drink it.
    “ I will,” said Oonan. Still
without moving, he added, “I’m going to watch with the sheep
tonight.”
    “ Do you want me to
come?”
    “ Can you bear it?”
    “ Can you?”
    Oonan sat up with a jerk and glared at her. “This
isn’t a spelling game.”
    “ I didn’t mean it that
way.”
    “ I suppose you didn’t. Mally says
people who perceive pain always talk oddly. I should have
remembered. Meet me here at twilight, then.”
    Arry got up, shook out a foot that had fallen
asleep, and went out.
    The sky was the faint color of Oonan’s eyes. The new
green of the Dubious Hills was as flat as one of Beldi’s paintings.
The grazing sheep were as still as stones. Mally said it was a late
spring. It was certainly cold yet, and the leaves on the
thornbushes and the small trees beside the stream were as little as
the ears of a squirrel. Arry stood still on Oonan’s worn slate
doorstep. Nobody had had to tell her that the sky was the color of
Oonan’s eyes, that the grass in this odd light looked like Beldi’s
paint or that the sheep looked like the rocks that were everywhere
on the hillsides. She had thought of it; but she didn’t know it as
she knew that Oonan’s head and Beldi’s lip and Con’s skinned
fingers meant pain. She had thought of

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