Ozark Trilogy 3: And Then There'll Be Fireworks Read Online Free

Responsible had been struck down, while the power of magic was waning but not yet exhausted, the Grannys had managed to learn two small pieces of information. They’d read tea leaves, they’d swung their golden rings on long black threads, they’d stared into springwater till their eyes were red and weeping, night after night. And back at them had come two scraps.
    The reason behind the trouble, the reason behind Responsible’s deathlike interminable sleep, was “an important man.” That had come first, and after much labor, and had irritated them considerably. Then there had been the search for that man’s location in this world, holding the golden rings over the maps, holding their breaths as well, waiting for one ring to begin its telltale swinging and circling. All atremble like they were, it took a sharp eye to tell when the movement was of its own self and when it was just the doings of a Granny that’s hand was no longer steady.
    And then there’d been argument. The Spells were so little use by then, the movement of the rings so near no movement at all, and so ambiguous—was it Tinaseeh or was it Kintucky? All of a week they’d nattered over that, half for one and half for the other, knowing that if they made the wrong choice there’d be no second chance. There weren’t resources enough for trying twice, for one thing. And for another, if anything was to be done it had to be done swiftly; there was nothing in the way of extra resources of time , either.
    Grannys Gableframe, Whifflebee, and Edging had been strong for Tinaseeh, swearing it was Jeremiah Thomas Traveller that was the “important man.” Did he not, after all, rule that continent with a fist of iron, and hadn’t he always? And hadn’t he always hated Responsible of Brightwater and everything she stood for?
    “Hmmph,” said Granny Cobbledrayke of Castle McDaniels, “it’s not Jeremiah Thomas as rules Tinsaseeh, it’s his mother, her that took Leeward as her Granny Name and is about as much like a leeward side in a storm as a lizard’s like a bellybutton. Don’t give me Jeremiah Thomas Traveller for an ‘important man’—he’s a mama’s boy, and always was.”
    She, and the rest of the Marktwain Grannys, had been set on Kintucky, and Castle Wommack. Hadn’t Responsible herself, they argued, run away from Castle Wommack—her that wasn’t afraid of anything living or dead—run away , rather than face Lewis Motley Wommack? And wasn’t it Lewis Motley Wommack that now governed all of Kintucky?
    “He is barely twenty-one years old— wouldn’t be, not quite yet,” Gableframe protested. “A boy yet, last time we saw him! Here for the Jubilee, remember? With his little sister Jewel set to tag around after him and keep him out of mischief? How can that one be the ‘important man,’ I ask you?”
    “He is important on Kintucky,” said Sherryjake.
    “Well, we don’t know how that came to be,” grumbled the others. “We don’t know atall. Way our magic was working in those last months, for all we know the messages we got were plain scrambled ... might could be Jacob Donahue Wommack the 23 rd ’s still hale and hearty and Master of that Castle and the whole tale about it being Lewis Motley in charge is no more than a puckerwrinkle in a puny Spell. Who’d be fool enough to put a wild colt like that one in charge of a Kingdom? Now I ask you ...”
    But the time had come when the decision had to be made; and for want of anything better to base it on they’d deferred to Granny Hazelbide, seeing as it was Hazelbide had had the raising of Responsible of Brightwater and knew her best of any of them.
    Now, fighting the thorns and the vines and the poison weeds, keeping a sharp eye for the false earth over running water, making a hardscrabble way up through a drizzle that threatened to be a rain and praying they’d find at least an overhang to shelter them through this night, they hoped they’d decided rightly. Everything rode on