The Ozark trilogy Read Free

on with it.”
    I told them about the Mules then, and both the uncles left off their beard-pulling and gave me their attention. Tampering with goats was one thing, tampering with Mules was quite another: Not that they knew what it meant in terms of magic, of course—that would not of been suitable, since neither had ever shown the slightest talent for the profession, and I suppose they took flying Mules for granted as they did flying birds. But they had the male fondness for Mules, and they had anyone’s dislike for the idea of suddenly falling out of the air like a stone, which is where they could see it might well lead.
    “It has to do, I believe,” said Patience slowly, “with the Jubilee. That’s coming up fast now, and anybody with the idea of putting it in bad odor would have to get at it fairly soon and move with some dispatch. I do believe that’s what this is all about.”
    She was right, but they’d listen better if she was doing the talking, so I left it to her.
    “Go on,” I said. “Please.”
    “I’m telling you nothing you don’t know already,” she said. “The Confederation of Continents is not popular, nor likely to be, especially with the Kingdoms of Purdy, Guthrie, and Farson. And Tinaseeh is in worse state. The Travellers hate any kind of government; they are still so busy just hacking back the Wilderness that they don’t feel they can spare time for anything else, and they for sure don’t want the Jubilee. A Jubilee would give a kind of endorsement to the Confederation, and they are dead set against that. And then there’re all the wishy-washy ones waiting around to see which way the wind blows.”
    “ ‘A thing celebrated is a thing vindicated,’” quoted Ruth of Motley. “They all know that as well as anybody.”
    “The idea,” Patience went on, “would be to make it appear that there’s so much trouble on the continent of Marktwain ... so much trouble in the Kingdom of Brightwater specifically ... that it would not really be safe for the other Families to send their delegations to the Jubilee.”
    My conscience jabbed me, for she was right; and it had been niggling at the back of my mind for some time. Though I’d managed to ignore it up to now by worrying about dust on the banisters and coffee for deliveries for Mizzurah.
    Donald Patrick scooted his chair back and stared at me, and then scooted it up again, and said damnation to boot, and my grandmother went “Ttch,” with the tip of her tongue.
    “Five years of work it’s cost us,” he said, glaring around the table. “Five years to convince them even to let us schedule the Jubilee! Surely all that work can’t be set aside by some spoiled milk and a few smashed mirrors!”
    “ Pre cisely,” I said, flat as pondwater. “And that is just the point. You see, youall, how it will look? First, parlor tricks. Then, a kind of tinkering—nothing serious, just tinkering— with the Mules. And then, to show that what goes four steps can go twelve, the baby-snatching. Again, you notice, without any harm done.”
    “Aw,” said Jubal, “it’s just showing off. A display of power. Like throwing a dead goat into your well.”
    “That it is,” I said. “ ‘See what we can do?’ it says ... ‘And think what we might do, if we cared to.’ That’s the message being spread here. Think the Wommacks will fly here from the coast knowing their Mules may drop out from under them any moment, to come to the support of our so-called Confederation?”
    “Disfederation,” murmured Patience of Clark. “A more accurate term at this point.”
    “Patience,” I said, “you hurt me.”
    “Howsomever and nevertheless,” she said, “it’s true. And anything but a sure hand now will wreck it all.”
    We sat there silent, though Emmalyn fidgeted some, because it wasn’t anything to be serene about. Marktwain, Oklahomah, and probably Mizzurah, agreed on the need for the Confederation of Continents; and their Kingdoms were willing