Live life without grasping for the magic of it.
Turn back, and find out what that was like; or turn forward, and learn something new.
A mile above anything known, the Girl balanced on the wind’s forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the sea itself, flung up by the turbulent air and sent wheeling away.
FINIS
About that country there’s not much left to say.
Blue sun, far off, a watery vein
in the cloud belt. The solid earth itself
unremarkable: familiar ruins
littered with standing stones our people
had lost the ability to decipher.
How deeply had we slept? Beneath the jellyfish
umbels of evergreens, each one a dream,
and the effervescent stars, strange currents
tugged at our thoughts like tapestries
unraveling into war. All spring
the nightingale perched on the green volcano’s lip.
The rats had abandoned the temples.
My mind was a voyage hungering to happen.
—Todd Hearon, “Atlantis”
… we must learn to live a secondary life in an unmarked world.
—Ron MacLean, “Duck Variations”
Acknowledgments
Thank you, one and all, to the many friends and colleagues who helped one way or the other in the work of getting Out of Oz out on paper.
—Douglas Smith, artist, for the splendid jacket and case, section art, and maps
—David Groff, Betty Levin, Andy Newman, for their close reading and helpful remarks
—William Reiss of John Hawkins and Associates, for the same
—Cassie Jones, Liate Stehlik, Lynn Grady, and other fine people at HarperCollins: Rich Aquan, Ben Bruton, Jessica Deputato, Tavia Kowalchuk, Shawn Nicholls, Lisa Stokes, Nyamekye Waliyaya, Chelsey Emmelhainz, and Lorie Young
—the producers and creators and performers of Wicked the musical, at home and around the world, whose good cheer has become a constant background melody in my life
—Scott Glorioso, Lori Shelly, and Elizabeth Williams in the GM office, for managing crises from technological to overnight posting to accounting, but perhaps especially to Emily Prabhaker, for helping me compose an index and synopsis to the first three books of The Wicked Years, which was an invaluable map and guide as I drove the complicated story to its complicated conclusion
—Todd Hearon and Ron MacLean, for permission to quote from their work at the novel’s close
—Andy and the next generation of Maguire Newmans, for all the life that cannot be found in the pages of novels
Coda
Before you close the cover of the present volume, and allow the writer to sink back into its pages, living both through and beside his characters, let’s grab a last look from the promontory. The next eyes to glance over our horizon will see something else. Something new, prompting a separate issue to propose and explore.
Oz before sunrise. The ancient predawn light makes of the earth below a mystery, and of all those anonymous lives more mysteries still. The tired stars winking out, the smear of cloud dividing the midnight from pale marigold dawn. The sheet of the heavens holds the stage a moment longer, eclipsing earthbound dramas of tedium, resurrection, and despair; of individual aspiration and sacrifice; of national effort and disgrace. A welcome amnesia, our capacity to sleep, to be lost in the dark. Today will shine its spotlights to shame and to honor us soon enough. But all in good time, my pretty. We can wait.
Oz at sunrise. What one makes out, from any height, are the outlines. The steel-cut peaks of the Great Kells, the pudding hills of the Madeleines. The textured outcroppings of Shiz, Bright Lettins, the Emerald City. Ignore the few pixilated dots of gold in the black (early risers—those with ailing relatives, or scholars late at their books, nothing more than that). We see little of human industry and ambition to chart at this hour. This is a roughed-out landscape only coming into life. A map done in smudged pencil, a first draft. Much to be filled in when light arrives. But thank you, Mr. Baum, for leaving the map where I could find it.
Watching the world wake up, dress itself in the dark, take on its daily guise, reminds me of how we fathom human character when we encounter someone at a distance, at a gallop, in the shadows. We get no more than a quick glance at the man on the street, the child in the woods, the witch at the well, the Lion among us. Our initial impression, most often, has to serve.
Still, that first crude glimpse, a clutch of raw hypotheses that can never be soundly clinched or dismissed, is often all we get before we must choose whether to lean forward or to avert our eyes. Slim evidence indeed, but put together with mere hints and echoes of what we have once read, we risk cherishing one another. Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.
To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.
About the Author
GREGORY MAGUIRE is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror, Mirror; and the Wicked Years series, including Wicked, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men. Wicked, now a beloved classic, is the basis for the blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
www.gregorymaguire.com
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Also by Gregory Maguire
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Lost
Mirror Mirror
Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation
Matchless
The Next Queen of Heaven
OTHER BOOKS IN THE WICKED YEARS
Wicked
Son of a Witch
A Lion Among Men
Credits
Cover illustration by Douglas Smith
Copyright
“Duck Variations” © 2010, Ron MacLean
“Atlantis” © 2010, Todd Hearon
OUT OF OZ. Copyright © 2011 by Gregory Maguire.
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