by Lisa Fiedler
When Glinda closed the cover, the book disappeared.
Her eyes went next to the map, which depicted the four enemy countries of Oz surrounding the mysterious Centerlands. It was not etched on paper, like the maps Glinda had seen at school (all of Quadling, only of Quadling), for this one was fashioned of the finest fabric and thread, and was embroidered in painstaking detail—mountains, valleys, rivers, and roads. It was a marvel of both needlecraft and cartography, and she knew instinctively that this was her mother’s handiwork.
Quadling was stitched entirely in shades of red, and in the appropriate locations Tilda had added tiny outlines of Aphidina’s famed Perilous Pasture and the Woebegone Wilderness. To the east, in brilliant blue, was Munchkin Country, which featured at its easternmost edge a crag identified as MOUNT MUNCH. The base of this tall hill abutted a vast, dull area called THE DEADLY SANDY DESERT. The name made Glinda shudder.
Winkie Country in the west was sewn in bright sunny yellows, except for a wide area of dull brownish gold labeled THE WINKIE WASTELAND. And finally, in the North was Gillikin, in bright purple thread. Pretty as the color was, there was an air of gloom about the place. The topography consisted mostly of mines and collieries.
“We never studied anything like this in Why Girls Never Need Trouble Themselves with Geography class,” said Glinda. “It’s a magnificent map.” Her fingers traced the beautiful compass rose, stitched into the precise center. A tiny amethyst stone had been sewn into the heart of its star.
“Thank you,” said Tilda. “But look again. Look deeper.”
Glinda returned her gaze to the map and gasped when the rendering of Gillikin began to shimmer. The map seemed to be deepening, taking on dimension, as the flawless purple stitches loosened and pulled apart to reveal a maze of catacomb-like caverns—the mines. And below these was yet another stratum, a whole world hidden under the mines. A layer of Oz beneath Oz, winding and wending endlessly, it seemed, far deeper than even the fathomless mine shafts of Gillikin.
“Truly amazing,” Glinda breathed. “What does it mean?”
“It means that nothing is ever only what its surface reveals,” said Tilda. Then she pushed aside the map, and as she did so, it vanished in a pale sparkle of smoke.
Now she picked up the cards and shuffled the deck. Then she dealt them out in a perfect semicircle. Glinda was surprised to see that they were all face cards. The artwork, tinted in rich jewel tones, was masterful, detailed, and yet somehow whimsical.
“Look closely at these cards,” Tilda instructed. “But don’t just look . . . see. Secure them in the depths of your recollection, so that you may call upon their secrets whenever you have need of them. Do you see them, Glinda?”
Glinda nodded, for indeed, her memory seemed to be widening and deepening like a puddle during a heavy rain. More astonishing was the fact that, as Glinda gazed at the faces on the cards, she was certain the cards were gazing back.
“The Arc of Heroes,” said Tilda, indicating the curved row of cards. “All those pictured here have served the Magical history of Oz. To them we owe our thanks and our allegiance. Study them carefully, take them into your heart.”
Glinda’s eyes went to the first card in the arc. THE KING UNITER. Confident and proud, he was drawn tricked out for battle in gleaming armor.
And then . . . he wasn’t. His Silver Gauntlets, Shoes, Chainmail, and Masked Helmet were suddenly gone from the illustration, as if some unseen hand had simply blotted them away. Glinda felt a stab of panic to see the king left so vulnerable.
“King Oz,” said Tilda, bowing her head reverently. “He is the strength of our past, and she is the hope of our future.”
Glinda moved to the image on the second card, which was identified in flowing script to be A QUEEN ASCENDING. But depicted upon the card was not a grown-up, rather a very small child dressed in a simple green frock. She had burnished golden hair and eyes that twinkled like two large emeralds. Her lips were pink, like tourmaline gems, pouty now but promising to bestow smiles soon enough.
Suddenly the vibrant illustration began to fade, its colors paling, its outlines vanishing until it was just a pencil-gray ghost of itself. At the same time, from deep within the pulpy fibers of the card stock a new picture slowly began to rise up—a queen ascending! This new image passed through the original, borrowing a curve here, absorbing bits of color there, and what emerged was a drawing of the same girl, just slightly older, in a regal gown of snowy white. On a banner beneath her feet were written these words: THE RICHES OF CONTENTMENT.
“She is Princess Ozma,” Tilda explained. “The manifestation of the Oz spirit in its female form, for balance in the land comes only when both male and female are trusted to guide and govern in turn.”
Glinda couldn’t help smiling at the princess on the card; she felt as though she’d just made a friend.
“Hurry,” Tilda coaxed.
Glinda quickly memorized the next three cards in the arc, but when she came to the sixth, she had to pause. Its beauty took her breath away.
The card bore the name LIGHT OF NIGHT. Here was a Fairy all silvery and long-limbed, the legendary Princess Elucida, who ruled the moon. She had a playful face with high cheekbones and upward-tilted eyes the color of midnight, framed by sleek black hair cropped to her pert chin. Glinda gave a little yelp when Elucida’s delicate wings began to flutter, producing a gentle breeze.
Glinda studied the seventh card: THE PRIESTESS MYSTERIOUS. The drawing was of a Fairy of advanced years who wore a stern expression but whose eyes hinted at a kind spirit and unfathomable depths of wisdom. In sketching her, the artist had manipulated dimension so skillfully that the Priestess Mysterious appeared to have been drawn not upon the surface of the card, but just beneath it. Glinda had to squint to appreciate the details of the sword the priestess held high above her head. Its hilt was adorned with glittering jewels.
The final card in the neatly dealt arc featured a bearded man in ragged attire—THE LONELY TRAVELER.
“I show these to you,” said Tilda, “because in this life we must play the hand we are dealt.” She indicated the bowed formation of the cards. “Remember, a hero’s path is neither straight nor simple.”
Then she gathered up the beautiful cards and tossed them into the air. They wafted downward, briefly taking on the shape and color of maple leaves as they fell; Glinda reached for them, but before she could catch one, they had vanished.
A sound in the distance—the thunder of hoofbeats—had Tilda leaping to her feet.
She removed the gemstone pendant from her own neck and draped it around Glinda’s. The stone was brilliant and berrylike; Glinda knew it to be a red beryl, rare and precious. Her fingers clutched the stone as if by their own volition.
“You cannot begin to imagine what a treasure you have in your grasp,” Tilda whispered. “See how prettily it’s been cut, how the facets shine like fire? Do you see the gleam contained within its depths?”
“Yes,” said Glinda, hastily reaching to remove the chain. “But it’s far too valuable for me. I shouldn’t be the one to wear it.”
Tilda took hold of Glinda’s wrists. “You are the one who must wear it,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument, “until this treasure can be secured in its rightful place.”
Glinda swallowed hard and let the pendant drop back into place around her neck.
Just then a horrible rushing noise filled the sky above the house, and a fluttering of darkness pressed itself against the windows. Through the slender gap in the drawn drapes, Glinda saw pairs of flashing eyes, thrashing talons, and ferociously snapping beaks.
“Birds?” cried Glinda, clutching her mother as the swarm flung itself at the window glass. “What are they doing?”
“Spying for the Witches,” said Tilda. “The Wickeds enchant the more menacing breeds—vultures, hawks, ravens—and use them to learn secrets. Say nothing more, just listen.” Tilda lowered her voice to a whisper as tears welled in her eyes. “This is the day a mo
ther dreads more than any other. The day her child must step away from innocence and learn that the world contains dark corners and treacherous cliffs. But if you look for it, there is also friendship and loyalty to be found; true hearts and mingled minds, and those determined to see Goodness triumph.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Glinda sobbed, grabbing Haley Poppet from the table and using her cottony face to wipe the tears from her own cheeks.
Tilda went to the parlor window and threw the curtains open. Outside, the avian commotion was growing more furious. Hundreds of pointed bills were now pecking at the fragile windowpanes. It was a wild, Wicked rhythm. Not a beat, but a beating. Chinks and fissures, like a thousand colorless scars, began to appear in the glass.
“Mother, they’re breaking the windows!”
Calmly, Tilda aimed her hand toward the shattering glass, made a graceful movement with her fingers, and said simply, “Destruction, no; instruction, yes.”
As soon as the words were spoken, Glinda thought she saw one of the fractures forming a word; a word written in her mother’s elegant hand: Fire.
On a second glance, it was gone.
“Remember what you spoke of this morning,” Tilda continued. “About thinking for yourself? You were right. The time has come for you to put your faith in your own ideas; allow them to burn as brightly as fire. For the only manner of thought that can truly last is independent.” She looked into Glinda’s terrified face and repeated the last word slowly, drawing out each syllable for emphasis. “In . . . de . . . pen . . . dent.”
The birds fought harder, pecking, flapping, screeching. Glinda saw more words breaking across the shattering surface of the windowpanes: Thought. Last. Independent.
A crow cawed; the shrill call of a falcon pierced the air.
“Enough!” said Tilda, pressing her hands to her ears. In a brittle singsong she began to recite:
“From evil you’ve come, be deaf, be dumb!
To evil you’ll go, but naught you’ll know!”
Removing her hands from her ears, she pointed to the window. With a flick of her finger, the birds went silent and motionless—utterly still. “The spell will not last more than a minute,” Tilda explained. “Wicked Magic of this caliber is difficult to thwart.”
In the street, a horse whinnied.
Glinda dashed to the front window and looked out, pressing her palms to the shattered panes and peering through the veil of halted feathers.
Her heart froze. A wagon drawn by four colossal horses came barreling down the street and slammed to a stop in front of the house.
The sight of the driver tore a scream from her throat. His very existence was an impossibility, and yet there he was: a hulking beast of muck and mud, of gaseous marsh vapors and clots of slime. Growing out of his head was a reedy tangle of dead grass and long, lashing cat-o’-nine-tails. Dirty rivulets dribbled from him, splattering and oozing. It was clear that this brute had not been born or even built; he had been dredged from the foul sucking bottom of some stinking swamp.
“Bog?” choked Glinda.
“Aphidina’s bounty hunter,” Tilda confirmed. “He is going to take me away from here. And I am going to let him.”
“No!” Glinda’s chest began to heave. She pulled her hands from the window and felt her palms tingling where the broken glass had pressed against her tender skin. Outside, the muck monster was seeping down from the driver’s box.
Glinda ran to her mother and threw her arms around her waist. “Can’t you stop him? What’s a little more Magic at this stage? Turn him into a wedge of cheese. Or make us fly!”
Tilda shook her head. “This may be my only chance to discover who this fifth Witch is and what she is planning. I need to get inside that castle.”
“What good is learning the fifth Witch’s designs, if you will be trapped in some awful dungeon . . . or worse?”
“I am deciding to go in,” said Tilda, “and I have decided that I will come out. I would not allow myself to be captured if I was not certain that I could allow myself to be rescued.”
Even in her frantic state Glinda could not help but think that her mother’s attitude hovered somewhere between arrogance and recklessness. “How can you be so abundantly certain?”
Tilda smiled. “Because, my darling child . . . you are going to save me.”
13
BOGGED
Glinda was positive she’d misunderstood. “I’m going to save you?”
“Yes. And to do that you must first go to Maud, the old Seamstress. You will find her in her cottage on the outskirts of Quadling. Do you remember the way?”
“I . . . I think so. I just follow the Road of Yellow Brick. Right?”
Tilda nodded. “Get to Maud and tell her I have been arrested by Aphidina. She will know what to do.”
Nudging Glinda to arm’s length, Tilda made sure the pendant was secure around her neck. Then she snatched Haley Poppet from the table and pressed the rag doll into Glinda’s grasp. “Take good care of her,” she whispered, though whether to Glinda or to the poppet, it was hard to discern.
Shouts rang out from the front walk. A horse snorted and stamped its giant hoof.
“Glinda,” said Tilda in a level voice. “You must leave here. Now! Go out the back door and run as fast as you can.”
But her words were lost in the thunderous noise of Bog’s approach as the beast pounded up the front steps; one kick from his mud-formed legs shattered the door into jagged planks. As he stepped over the rubble and into the house, the last flame of the hearth fire sparked, flashing off the stone at Glinda’s throat and blinding Bog with its brilliance.
The monster growled, blinking his popping eyes against the beam. With a mighty roar he tore the pendant from Glinda’s neck and flung it across the room. The chain caught on the stem of the single blooming rose in the pewter vase and sent it clattering to the floor. Buds skittered across the wooden floorboards.
Bog reached with a seeping brown hand to grab Tilda by the front of her dress.
“Tilda Gavaria, you are charged with the treasonous offense of breaking the Magical Embargo.”
Glinda let out a sob and fell to her knees amid the scattered rosebuds.
But Tilda did not deny the charge. Nor did she plead for mercy as the ferocious bounty hunter hauled her out of the house and dragged her down the path.
Glinda scrambled to her feet and ran after them, stumbling over the slate pavers as if she’d only just learned to walk.
By now, many of the vultures and ravens lay dead on the ground beneath the windows, victims of their own fury. Those that had survived awoke from their Magically inflicted stupor and lifted themselves away from the house to circle low overhead. Bog yanked a bulrush from his sludgy scalp and whipped it at the flock, dispersing them in a storm of shining wings and broken beaks.
The bounty hunter’s wagon waited beyond the gate; it was a simple open tumbril cart with narrow benches and low wooden slats for sides. Inside, Glinda noted with horror, were the Field Waifs she’d encountered just that morning, though in Bog’s wagon, they were far less boisterous. In fact, they were silent.
Two of Aphidina’s soldiers flanked the wagon astride dust-colored horses. Though not as hideous as the wagon driver, they were terrifying just the same. One dismounted to tie Tilda’s wrists.
When he was done, Bog hoisted her up and tossed her into the wagon with the other prisoners. Then, without warning, he jerked Glinda off her feet and threw her into the wagon as well.
Tilda’s face went stark white. “You have no warrant for her!” she shouted. “She is innocent. Release her.”
“She tried to blind me,” the swamp monster replied in a splatter of muck. “That is Assault on an Agent of the Witch.”
Glinda’s heart knocked against her chest as she watched Bog glom himself back to the driver’s box. She moved quickly to the side of the wagon, about to throw her leg over.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said on
e of the prisoners—not a Field Waif, rather, a charmingly compact boy with bright blue eyes.
“We’re contained by an enchantment that can only be broken from without, to load the captives in,” he explained, swinging his arm as though to reach beyond the slatted sides. Glinda gasped when his hand connected with an invisible force.
In the driver’s seat, Bog cracked his whip over the backs of the team. “Yah!” he growled. “Yah, yah!”
The wagon lurched; beside it the riders spurred their horses. There was the sound of clacking wheels and the clip-clop of hooves as the wagon pulled away, picking up speed as it went.
Glinda turned frantic eyes to her mother, only to see that Tilda had curled down over her knees and was rocking back and forth in a steady rhythm.
“Mother?” Glinda rasped. “Mother, what are you doing?”
Tilda’s only reply was to chant faintly into her bound hands: “Lead us to wisdom, set us to right . . . Lead us to wisdom, set us to right . . .”
As the wagon bounced and rumbled on, Glinda watched her mother, Tilda Gavaria, Grand Adept of the mysterious Foursworn, retreat into a world of her own.
Glinda crammed herself onto the wagon bench, between the pointy-faced girl and the bile-eyed boy, who both sat stiffly and motionless, staring straight ahead.
Keeping her eyes low, Glinda braced herself for their nasty taunts, but when not a single insult came, she cautiously lifted her gaze to the freckly boy, who was propped listlessly on the opposite bench.
Glinda had to swallow a scream. The boy was no longer a boy at all!
He was as chubby as before, but now his girth consisted not of plump flesh but haphazard clumps of crinkling hay filling out his dirty shirt. The hair poking from his scalp had gone from lank and greasy to dry and strawlike, and his face had flattened into burlap with a splattering of painted-on freckles around his dull, lifeless hand-drawn features.
Whirling to her left, Glinda saw that the same fate had befallen the pointy-faced girl! Mere hours ago she had been a living, breathing, poor-mannered child; now she was a pitiful patchwork things of rags and straw, slumped on the wagon bench. To Glinda’s right the bile-eyed boy bobbed eerily in the wind, his gaze blank, his scribble of a mouth an angry line.