Out of Oz

by Gregory Maguire

  Brrr had hardly finished the bio when Nipp entered the chamber. Among the taller of Munchkinlanders, he wore a conical hat whose brim was sprightly with felt balls. He flung the hat onto the top of a coat stand, to a spatter of applause. That he could land it like a horseshoe, Brrr deduced, was proof of his capacity to serve with a steady hand. Then Nipp took the bench. It was supplied with the traditional gavel, the bell, a slate on which messages could be scrawled for private viewing in case the magistrate didn’t want to be overheard, and a small pile of ham sandwiches under a net to keep off the flies. Behind him two grammar school students were ready with fans made of blue ostrich plumes in case it became too warm.

  “Citizens of Munchkinland,” Nipp began, in a voice quavery with age but strengthening by the sentence, “we are here to keep our big mouths shut and to listen. To listen to what is presented. Anyone in Neale House who makes a fuss or disrupts our attention to the proceedings shall be taken out and fined, or shot, or put in the stocks. Which this time of year are very uncomfortable what with mosquito season just beginning. Are there any questions?—then let us continue. I predict this trial will last a week—perhaps two. Those who can’t tolerate the heat should stay at home. Babies are not allowed. If there is a fire don’t everyone scream ‘Fire!’ all at once—it’s terribly muddling and only makes people nervous. Should I feel the need to call additional witnesses I shall do so and I hereforth declare that for this trial there is no right of resistance—if you’re in the room, you’re considered fair game for service. Furthermore if you’re not in the room and you are required you shall be apprehended by deputized mobs and escorted here whether you like it or not. Tell your friends and neighbors. If you are wanted and you’re on holiday up at Mossmere or someplace, you shall be sent to prison when you return for taking a holiday thoughtlessly. Are there any questions—speak up—no questions—I see—then let us begin by my presenting the barristers and the jurors.”

  “This isn’t going to take two weeks,” whispered Brrr to Little Daffy, who was sitting in a chair on the end of her aisle.

  Nipp introduced the envoy for the prosecution, a part-time barrister whose regular job was being a professional mourner. Dame Fegg. She emerged from a curtained doorway dressed in something that looked to Brrr as if it had been cut down from a choir robe—about five minutes earlier, without benefit of a seamstress. She was still putting pins in her hair as she came through. A no-nonsense middle-aged farm frau with pockets beneath her eyes deep enough to hold tokens for an EC omnibus. “Yoiks,” muttered Brrr.

  The envoy for the defense was introduced next, a certain Temper Bailey, who turned out to be a brown Fever Owl. “They couldn’t spring for a human?” muttered Little Daffy. “Guess this is what is called an open-and-shut case.”

  “Animals still draw lower salaries, I bet,” replied Brrr.

  The Owl flew to a perch and rotated his head on his neck, all the way round. Not an unusual gesture for an Owl, but unsettling in a court of law; accusatory, somehow, of them all, even the spectators. Temper Bailey then nodded to Dame Fegg, but she was applying some sort of liquid paint to her nails and didn’t return the obeisance.

  Only when the jurors had been seated did the magistrate seem to notice that the room was sparsely populated. He stood on his toes and regarded the audience with disdain, as if it were they who were skiving off. “The Eminence suggests this is a trial of interest to all Munchkinlanders,” said Nipp. “I need hardly mention that without the unprovoked invasion by Dorothy a generation ago, we wouldn’t be in the position of defending Restwater from the Emerald City. The Eminence of that day, Miss Nessarose Thropp, would likely still be ensconced in Colwen Grounds. Or else she and her consort would have brought forth a new Eminence to take her place.”

  A rude titter, quickly suppressed. Enough of the crowd was old enough to recall that Nessarose had not been thronged with suitors. She had died without benefit of spouse or spawn.

  “When are we going to see Dorothy?” asked Temper Bailey. Brrr would have guessed that the defense might have had a chance to question his client before opening ceremonies, but it seemed the government was running this trial on the cheap.

  Nipp made his first ruling, not with a gavel but with a bell. “I am dismissing all parties until tomorrow morning. Come back with your relatives and friends. Tell them that La Mombey herself will be here to introduce the accused. If this hall isn’t filled to capacity word will get back to the Emerald City that Munchkinlanders have lost all public spirit. Do as I say, in the name of justice.”

  “I should think he meant ‘in the name of public relations,’ ” said Brrr.

  “I heard that, you,” said Nipp. “I’ll brook no backtalk from the floor, especially from an Animal. Dismissed.”

  As might have been expected, the next day saw the gallery nearly full. Munchkins en masse. Perhaps Nipp’s refusing to bring out Dorothy for the introductory session had whetted appetites. At any rate, it was a good time of the summer for a trial. Harvest was still six weeks out. Among a bunch of farm people come to town for the fun, Brrr and Little Daffy and Mr. Boss, brandishing their tickets, took their places. Little Daffy was equipped with a sack of muffins and fruit and a thermos of potato brandy in case things got dull. A couple of teenage scowlawags nearby played a game of Hangman using the word DOROTHY as the clue.

  Nipp marched in followed by Dame Fegg and Temper Bailey. The Owl had been slip-covered with a tunic not unlike Dame Fegg’s. It made him look like a tea cosy with an owl head. He winced at the laughter of the crowd. Everyone settled down when Nipp clapped the gavel on its stand and introduced the Eminence of Munchkinland, La Mombey. “And rise, you dolts. This isn’t one of your talent shows!”

  The crowd obliged as a pair of Chimpanzees in livery swung open the double doors at the back of the bench. The Eminence flooded into the room in another tidal barrage of silks, these flowered, white petals against maroon. Brrr studied her face. It seemed different. Less chiseled, more delicate, even fragile. And the hair on her head, in a chignon so crisp it might have been a crown, looked darker, spikier. But he didn’t dare mutter in her presence. She looked full of sorrowful dignity. He found himself lowering his head just for a moment in the presence of something he couldn’t name. Self-possession, if nothing else.

  “We are Munchkinlanders,” she told the crowd. Her voice was like honey coating the knife. “We are hospitable to all, even those who arrive on our homeland to spite us and murder us. I ask you to extend the courtesy of our traditions to the accused, Dorothy Gale. I beg to remind you that there is no statute of limitations where crimes against the heart are concerned. If we must convict the accused, let us convict her justly. If we choose to decide she is not guilty of the charges of murder, let us not harbor thoughts of malfeasance when she is liberated.” Mombey turned to the five jurors, who stood to one side. They were all unrepentently human. “You five are the eyes and ears of Munchkinland, and you must be the heart and soul of justice. Bring Dorothy to trial with merciful dispatch. Whatever you recommend to the magistrate will be taken under deepest consideration, but it is his conclusion that we will follow. You are here as advisors only. And the public is here not to second-guess the proceedings but to witness them, so that they can tell their children and their grandchildren that justice is alive in Oz.

  “For his services to our country, today I elevate our former Prime Minister to the peerage. Henceforth he shall be Lord Nipp of Dragon Cupboard. Let the constabulary bring forth the alien.”

  La Mombey retired behind the doors through which she’d emerged, as if to be seen in the same room as the accused would constitute an affront to her dignity. Only when the Chimpanzees had closed the double doors with a click did Brrr notice a trapdoor to one side. The Chimpanzees put their overknuckled paws to the ring, and together they pulled it up. Then they retreated to the far side of the pen. The Lion leaned forward to catch a glimpse of Dorothy again, after all this time.

  4.

  As she
emerged, clumsily, reaching for a hand to help her up the ladder, though there was no one to stretch out such a hand, the Lion realized he’d been thinking of Dorothy as about ten years old. Just about the age Rain was now, more or less. A few other assumptions followed, nearly simultaneously.

  His affection for Rain was related to his memory of Dorothy.

  He hadn’t ever done much for Dorothy except provide a few laughs and some companionship on the road.

  He’d done no better for Rain, yet he felt more implicated in Rain’s future than he had in Dorothy’s. Was this age and maturity on his part? Or sentimentality?

  Or was it that Rain was less competent than Dorothy had been at that age? Needed him more?

  The crime for which Dorothy was being charged had occurred fifteen, eighteen, twenty years ago. She ought to be a mature woman now, able as needed to explain away or to apologize for the accidents of her youth.

  In her maturity, will she recognize me?

  He held his breath, but his tail thumped on the floor. Agitation, pleasure, and the curiosity that sometimes killed the likes of him and his kin.

  5.

  Dorothy’s head rose farther out of the square in the flooring. She was facing the magistrate, who glared upon her as if he hadn’t seen her before. Maybe she’d been kept sequestered from everyone involved in this trial. Six times Temper Bailey rotated his head on his stem.

  “This is like climbing into the hayloft back in Kansas.” Yes, it was Dorothy’s voice, her real voice, misguidedly cheerful as always. Brrr felt the muffin lurch up his throat. “Still, you’d never see a Kansan owl dressed up in a petticoat!”

  Something stronger than a titter rippled through the hall. Temper Bailey blinked balefully. “Mind your manners,” said Lord Nipp. “That’s your representation.”

  “What a hoot,” Dorothy replied. “Meaning no disrespect, of course.”

  She turned to look at the crowd seated on the floor and in the galleries. Brrr knew himself to be in shadow, as he had crouched down by the wainscoting below where strong sunlight was heaving in through the windows. He doubted that she could see him, at least not at first, and that gave him a chance to study her.

  Either she’d become stunted by her experience in Oz a generation ago or some perverse magic was at work. Yes, she was quite recognizably Dorothy. Those cocoa-bright eyes. The way she led with her shoulders and clavicle. Surely she ought to be middle-aged by now? But she seemed merely a few years older than he remembered her. Taller but hardly leaner. Her baby fat had only begun to reorient itself into incipient womanliness. Her face remained eager and unshuttered even after her latest travails. Proof of Dorothy.

  Lord Nipp banged a gavel, as if to remind himself he was in charge. “Identify yourself. Name, age, origin, and your designs upon us.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough,” said Dorothy. As if she couldn’t decide who to love first, she turned this way and that, toward Temper Bailey, who inched away on his perch, and then to Lord Nipp, and finally to Dame Fegg. “I’m Dorothy Gale, if you please, from the state of Kansas. The thirty-fourth state in the union, a free state now and proud of it. No slavery to speak of.” She made a clumsy curtsey to a family of Pigs in the second row, one of the few groups of Animals present. “We’re still working out a few wrinkles.”

  “Answer the questions,” said Nipp.

  “Oh yes. Well, I’m sixteen at my last birthday, you know.”

  Nipp scribbled a few marks upon a pad and frowned. “And your intention in returning to Oz after your long absence?”

  “Goodness, there was no intention involved. After what I’d been through, do you think I’d choose to return? I’d have to be mad … well, never mind. The truth is I seem to have no control over my whereabouts. Makes me dangerous to let out on the streets, says Uncle Henry. Or said Uncle Henry.” She teared up a little. “I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

  “What are you cawing about?” asked Dame Fegg. “You haven’t answered the first question posed by the magistrate.”

  “I have no designs in Oz,” said the girl. “Uncle Henry and Aunt Em and I had gone to San Francisco, see, for various family reasons. My mental fitness for marriage among them, to be blunt. We ate funny food and saw sights till we felt like gagging. And then, one morning, oh my word! I took a trip to the roof of my hotel and the whole building began to shake and buckle, and I could hear stones falling and people screaming. For a moment the elevator stopped and everything became dark, and I could detect a bad smell, though maybe that was Toto. My dog. Then the elevator began to move again, sliding faster and faster, and I thought I would smash to my death at the bottom of the chute! It was much the scariest thing that ever happened to me since the twister. The noise grew louder, the air grew thick with powder; a moment later, while in the elevator, I lost my mind for my dog had got away…”

  Brrr had to concede it. She was dotty as ever, but blistering buckets, how people listened to her. They were nearly swaying in time with her rhetoric.

  “The earth began to quake, for goodness’ sake; I knew I’d made a big mistake when the cage began to shake…”

  “A little restraint in the theatrics,” said the magistrate.

  “When I came to,” she continued, less sonorously, “I found myself in the elevator cage half buried in a landslide. When people dug me out I assumed they would be San Franciscans. But just my luck. Imagine: a tribe of little people! Again! At first I thought I’d discovered yet another tiresome country, but eventually someone called Sakkali Oafish told me I was in Oz. So you see, your honor, I had no designs at all, except to have a nice holiday and maybe buy some lace for my hope chest, in the off chance any fellow ever gets interested in me.” She looked with big eyes across the room again. “I don’t think my prospects for a husband are terribly strong, not at this particular point in time.”

  “First things first,” said Lord Nipp. “Dorothy Gale, you are charged with crimes against Munchkinland. Crimes of the most grievous sort because they conflate aggression against the state with assault against individuals. You are charged with the murder of Nessarose Thropp, the onetime Eminent Thropp and de facto governor of Munchkinland. Also with the murder of her sister, Elphaba Thropp of Kiamo Ko, though originally of Munchkinland.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty big plate of sauerkraut, if you ask me,” said Dorothy. “I never murdered a soul. Do you think I was navigating that house from Kansas, back in the day?”

  “It is my first duty to make sure you understand the seriousness of the charges brought against you. If convicted, you could be put to death.”

  The girl opened her eyes wider than usual. “Everyone in Oz is far too nice to do a nasty thing like that to an accidental immigrant.”

  “I must ask you to restrict your remarks to answering the questions. I don’t know what experience of legal proceedings you might have gained in your tenure in Kanziz—quite a bit, I would suspect, as you seem to career about wreaking mayhem—but here in Oz we maintain a certain decorum in court. This goes for those unwrapping sandwiches in the gallery. If you must arrive with lunch, make sure it is wrapped in cloth so it doesn’t make so much noise when you bring it out!”

  “I understand the charges,” said Dorothy, “but I’m sure when I explain the circumstances you’ll see that this is all a dreadful misunderstanding. And certainly there will be witnesses to testify in my defense? You’ve arranged for character witnesses, at the least? I did have some friends here, once upon a time.”

  “We’ve had to pull this trial together rather quickly.”

  “Then perhaps we should postpone this little charade until we’ve all gotten ourselves prepared adequately.” Dorothy could still say the most inappropriate things and get away with them, thought Brrr.

  “The job is put to us by the Eminent Mombey. These are desperate times for Munchkinland. We will perform our duties as best we can under the circumstances.”

  “Are you saying there’s no one here who remembers me?” Doro
thy turned and looked out at the crowd again, shading her eyes against the sloping sunlight. “Can you call for a show of hands, Lord Nipp?”

  “You don’t get to decide how we proceed. You’re the accused.”

  “I should like to request that Dorothy’s idea be acted upon,” ventured Temper Bailey. “Before we proceed, may we see if anyone present has direct knowledge of the Matter of Dorothy?”

  “Very well,” said the magistrate. “If among us there is anyone who has ever laid eyes on this Dorothy Gale before today, you are ordered to rise.”

  This was why they had come to Munchkinland, after all. His heart not quite in his throat—somewhere south of the esophagus, it felt—the Lion stood up. A murmur of Munchkinlanders caused Dorothy to turn toward his side of the chamber.

  “Oh, I don’t believe it!” she cried. “I knew someone would come. I had hoped it would be the Scarecrow, but even so.”

  “Approach the bench,” said Nipp.

  Brrr did, trying not to sashay. It was still sometimes a problem in public. “I am Brrr. I come with several other names. Popularly known as the Cowardly Lion in some circles, I’m afraid, but there’s nothing I can do about that. When in Gillikin I’m sometimes addressed as Sir Brrr, Namory of Traum.”

  “That’s Loyal Oz,” said Nipp. “Cuts no mustard here, Lion.”

  “I was elevated by Lady Glinda when she was Throne Minister,” said the Lion. “I don’t require the honorific. I’m just trying to be sure you don’t accuse me of concealing pertinent facts. I’m probably wanted for sedition by the Emerald City for having jumped bail after a spot of legal trouble on that side of the border.”