Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks by Suzette Haden Elgin Page B

standing beside her all by myself ... trying things. Hoping I’d jog something loose, find the right thread accidentally. Because whatever it is that she is for, that is still intact. That’s still there, if I could only get at it.”
    “How do you know that? How can you possibly know?”
    He raised his eyebrows at that, and he admonished her to think. After all, he pointed out, she had a reputation for wisdom as well as wickedness. And, goaded like that and held in the fierceness of his eyes wanting to get back at her for the way she’d spoken to him, she saw it.
    “Ah,” she breathed, “you’re right! Otherwise, if it were other wise, she’d be like someone in true coma ... she’d be curled tight and wasting away and— “
    “And all the rest of it. Yes. And she’s not. She looks exactly as she looked the hour we did our work, and that can mean only one thing—all that is left of the energy of magic is concentrated there in her, keeping her from ever changing.”
    Something in his tone caught her attention, and she looked at him close, and marveled at the way of the world. Revelation followed upon revelation.
    “You hate her,” she said. “She’s your own kin, grew up here under this roof playing on your knee and riding piggyback on your shoulders—and you hate her worse than sin! Why?”
    Veritas Truebreed squared his shoulders, and he met her eyes, but he said not one word. No one not a Magician of Rank was ever going to know the answer to that question, not from his lips. Not ever.
    “It must have been hard,” murmured Troublesome. “All those years, pretending to be helpful ... playing at being loyal.”
    “It was.”
     
    Troublesome went back down into the Castle, her breath making little white puffs in the air, and she found Grannys Hazelbide and Gableframe, and told them.
    “It seems,” she wound it up, “that you went through all of this and gave up the last of your treasure things—not to mention a certain amount of discommodance on my part—all for nothing. It’s a shame.”
    “No,” said Granny Gableframe firmly. “It wasn’t for nothing, young woman. In no sense of the word. We traded an ignorance big as this Castle for a whole pot of knowledge, bubbling and simmering this minute. I’d say as it was a fair trade. We’re not out of it, mind you, not by many a mile, but we at least know how we came to be where we are.”
    “Knowledge,” said Granny Hazelbide, “is for using. Now we have some, the problem is how we put it to use. And for that. Troublesome, we don’t need you. No call whatsoever to keep you from your homeplace any longer, and we’re grateful to you for what you’ve done, however much it sticks in my craw to say it. We’re beholden to you.”
    “Hazelbide, you exaggerate,” said Granny Gableframe.
    “You know any other living soul on this earth as would of done what Troublesome did?” demanded Granny Hazelbide. “Gone off in the cold and damp in a leaky boat with a bribed crew, on what was ninety-nine-to-one a wild goose chase? Gone off and chanced being stranded forever in a wilderness, dying all alone in some Kintucky briartangle? Just because we asked her to, and no other compensation offered?”
    “Flumdiddle!” said Gableframe. “The fact you raised Troublesome’s addled your brain— which it can’t tolerate much of, I might add. That’s her own sister as lies in there, and it’s her own people as are suffering. She had as much to gain from this as any of us, and more than some, and I’ll be benastied before I’ll say we’re beholden to Troublesome of Brightwater! The idea !”
    “One more time, Gableframe,” said Granny Hazelbide, tight-lipped. “Just one more time, I’ll tell you ... Troublesome has no natural feelings. Responsible could die this minute, putrify right there on her bed, and her sister’s only complaint’d be the smell. And that goes for every sick baby and hungry tadling and suffering human on the face of this