by Lisa Fiedler
With frantic eyes, Glinda considered her surroundings—behind her were the dense trees of the Woebegone; ahead, the clearing and the lake.
As she struggled to come up with a plan, a violent shiver ran through her. It was clear that the temperature had plummeted in the short time since Locasta had been captured. In fact, it was so cold that she could see the shallow edges of the lake frosting over with a thin layer of ice.
A thought came to her, but she would have to act quickly.
Placing herself in front of the Lurcher, she waved her arms in the air to get its attention. When it stared down at her, she thought her heart might stop. But she did not run.
Reaching down, the Lurcher slapped at her with a giant twiggy finger, but she was ready for it and ducked, backing up toward the lake, one step, then two, until her boot heels touched the edge. When the beast made a second grab, Glinda turned and dove deep into the icy water. Her lungs seized in her chest, the cold bit at her like razor teeth, and the huge green fronds that grew up from the muddy floor swayed and swirled, whooshing around her face, wrapping themselves in her hair. If she became entangled in the plants, she would drown.
If she didn’t freeze first.
Kicking as hard as she could, she broke the surface, breathing in frosty gulps of snowy air, treading the frigid water.
The Lurcher spun out a wiry vine to capture her, but Glinda dove. When she splashed up again, she taunted, “What’s the matter, b-b-beast? D-d-don’t you know how to s-s-swim?”
The Lurcher grunted. Icicles now hung from its face like translucent fangs.
“What’s to be s-s-scared of?” Glinda jeered through trembling blue lips. “It’s n-n-not over your head!” Quaking with the cold, she rolled onto her belly and began to swim toward the opposite shore with long, furious strokes; her wrinkling fingers sliced into the water, which was thickening to ice.
Enraged by her insults, the Lurcher gave chase, stomping into the lake, where its giant feet sank instantly into the soft bottom and took root; the depth of the mud made it impossible for it to free itself.
Exactly as Glinda had hoped.
But what she hadn’t planned on was the swiftness with which the lake would freeze.
The undercurrent caused by the beast’s struggle tugged at Glinda, pulling her down. Blue-blackness surrounded her; a slow descent into the watery chill. Above, the clear surface was hardening to an opaque ceiling of ice. The moment she felt her toes squish into the muck of the lake bottom, something wrapped around her ankle in a slick, leafy embrace. Another frond encircled her waist.
And lifted her!
The water plants were carrying her back up, pushing her higher and higher until she broke through and her knees found the safety of the frozen surface.
She saw the enormous Lurcher trapped from the waist down in the unyielding ice. Glinda could hear the sickening crunch as stems and stalks broke away, spinning on the wind into the pearly expanse of sky.
The shoot that held Locasta turned brittle and brown, and she dropped to the ice with a thud. Slipping and sliding, Glinda scrambled across the ice to take hold of Locasta’s tunic; teeth chattering, fingers burning with cold, she dragged her to the bank. Together, they squinted into the whirling whiteness and watched the falling snow bury the Lurcher.
Then, as quickly as it had blown up, the wind died down, calming to a mere breeze. The snow ceased to fall, but for one last glistening flake, which wafted down from the now-placid sky to land softly on the tip of Glinda’s nose.
It was over.
Locasta grinned, shaking the icy coating from her hair. “You knew he’d get stuck,” she said, impressed. “Good thinking.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Glinda muttered, eyeing her dripping-wet school dress. In her pocket, Haley Poppet was soggy but safe.
“Well, you saved my life. So thank you.”
“You saved mine,” Glinda reminded her.
“Then we’re even.” Locasta grinned. “And at least now I can boast that I’ve seen the Wards of Lurl in action.”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” said Glinda, rubbing the chill from her fingers, “but if their goal was to stop the Lurchers, they could have accomplished that with no more than a good frost.”
Locasta shrugged. “When it comes to weather conditions, the Wards tend to favor excess. Floods, droughts, twisters.”
“Who—or what—exactly are the Wards of Lurl?”
“Seriously?” Locasta stopped brushing the snow from her shoulders. “Do you even live here? You don’t know anything about Oz at all.”
“I know only what my mother taught me,” Glinda admitted. “I can’t begin to imagine what your mother taught you, but—”
“My mother taught me nothing!” Locasta hurled back. “Because my mother was taken away by the Wicked Warrior Witch, Marada of the North, when I was small and Thruff was a tiny little baby wrapped in a purple blanket. My father’s gone too, in case you were wondering, but I don’t know where. He was a miner who worked all day and all night in a deep, dark pit to feed me and my brother and our five older sisters. Oh, did I mention that Marada took them, too?”
Glinda dropped her eyes to her boots in the swiftly melting snow. “No,” she said. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Well, she did!”
A gentle breeze fluttered up, blowing the last of the cold from the air and lifting the damp ringlets from Locasta’s face. And then:
“I beg your pardon. . . .”
Both girls spun in the direction of the muffled voice and found that it had come from deep within a snowdrift—a snowdrift with two stocking feet sticking out of it!
“I require a bit of assistance,” said the voice.
They dropped to the ground and dug until they had freed a boy from the snowy trap. He scrambled to his feet and stood before them, looking dazed. He, like the girls, must have been caught unawares by the storm.
“Thank you for digging me out.”
“You’re welcome,” said Glinda.
The boy’s gaze moved beyond them to the lake, where the top of the vine creature’s head stuck out of a giant drift, gray-brown now and shriveled. While he studied the Lurcher, Glinda studied him. He looked to be about her age, and he wore a fine suit of clothes, similar to the sort the boys at Professor Mendacium’s wore for formal class assemblies: breeches snug at the knees, and a satin waistcoat over a shirt with ruffled cuffs and collar. His calves were clad in white stockings, but his shoes, it seemed, had been lost in the squall. Glinda imagined his poor toes must be frostbitten.
She slid a quick glance at Locasta, who was also looking the boy over. His dark hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a leather cord, but a few stray locks had come loose from the binding. Overall Glinda sensed great intelligence and humor in the lad.
When he turned his attention from the frozen vine beast to Glinda, she thought she saw a jolt of recognition in his eyes. But that was impossible, since he was clearly not a Quadling. His eyes moved to the purple-haired Gillikin, where they lingered for a long moment.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Quadling Country,” Glinda replied, at the same time that Locasta said, “Oz.”
“Oz,” the boy repeated, turning slowly in a circle, his shoeless feet squishing in the slush as his eyes drank in the wondrousness of the Woebegone. Then, with a triumphant cheer, he began jumping up and down and laughing with unabashed glee.
“I knew I would find it,” he cried out.
“I’ve heard about people jumping for joy,” Locasta whispered to Glinda. “But I’ve never actually seen it happen. Certainly not in Gillikin Country.”
“He is awfully happy to be here,” Glinda observed.
“Hah!” said Locasta. “I’m sure when he hears about the Wicked Witches, he’ll want to go right back to wherever he came from.”
Locasta allowed him another moment of celebration, then cleared her throat loudly. “I am Locasta of Gillikin Country
,” she said. “And this Quadling child is Gondola Gap-Toothia.”
“It’s Glinda!” Glinda ground out. “Gavaria.”
The boy offered a courtly bow to each young lady in turn. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance,” he pronounced. “I am Benjamin Clay, lately of the New York colony. You may call me Ben.”
Locasta raised an eyebrow. “Where is this New York you speak of?”
Ben laughed and shook his head. “It is in the newborn country of America, which is in a world called Earth.”
“Oh,” said Glinda, feeling foolish, because she’d never heard of any of those places. “Have you come here for a reason?”
“Not one that I’m aware of,” Ben answered. “But it’s exciting just the same.”
“You can come with us to the Makewright’s lodge,” Locasta announced. “If the Wards have sent you, then you must be honorable. Or at least not dangerous.”
As if in agreement with Locasta’s assessment, a loud squawk came from high in a nearby tree.
“There you are!” said Ben. With a frenzied ruffling of feathers, a tremendous bird swooped down to land gracefully on Ben’s outstretched arm. He gave the creature a pat on his regal white head. “I call him Liberty.”
“And I wish you’d stop!” These words were spoken in an emphatic baritone—by the bird. “I’m sorry to tell you, Benjamin, but I have always resented that name.”
Ben’s eyes went round. “Liberty, did you just . . . speak?”
“I did,” said the bird. “And believe me, it’s been a long time coming!”
The next thing Glinda knew, the boy from New York, with an expression of genuine shock upon his face, had collapsed in the snow.
Liberty let out a sassy chirrup, which Glinda strongly suspected was laughter, and Locasta dropped to the ground for a second time to dig Benjamin Clay out of the snowdrift.
As Locasta dug, Glinda gazed across the clearing where the Makewright’s cabin stood, ramshackle and forlorn.
Suddenly it was the only place in the world she wanted to be.
19
THE ELEMENTALS AND THE WICKEDS
Aphidina could not get the taste of the slug out of her mouth.
Nor could she purge the sting of Mombi from her guts. How dastardly and impolite of that Krumbic demon to inhabit a Witch’s body without an invitation.
But it had always been this way. Mombi cared nothing for the comfort of the Four whom she herself had Wickedly nurtured to Magical maturity.
After her distasteful encounter with the Good Sorceress Gavaria, the Harvester, in an effort to soothe her anxious mind and aching innards, had gone out to walk the palace grounds and admire all the things that grew from the soil she herself had enchanted. Ordinarily, the sight of such tainted beauty cheered her.
But not today. Today was ugly and exhausting and overgrown with weedy thoughts that seemed to grow denser and more poisonous the more she tried not to think them. For example, the fact that she owed not only her power but her Magic to Mombi. That was a debt she would be forced to pay for all eternity. Although, if the Elemental Fairy of Fire had his way, Aphidina’s “eternity” might be brought to a close far sooner than she ever expected.
As she strolled the front garden, the Witch took some dark joy in the sight of the Field Waif scarecrows that had been brought back in the wagon. Eventually, they would be delivered to the Perilous Pasture and mounted on sticks, but for now they lay in a lifeless pile beside Bog’s reflecting pool. The boy in blue—whose eyes she had hoped to sow in her flower garden—had escaped the bounty hunter, which angered her immensely. But that was a fit she could pitch at another time. Today she had the missing Fire Fairy and the Grand Adept’s missing brat to fret over.
As the scents of chrysanthemum and honeysuckle washed over her, Aphidina’s mind trailed backward like pollen on the wind to her earliest memories. She possessed no pleasant girlhood recollections or tender feelings of being small and sweet and vulnerable. She, and the three others like her, had been collected (and by “collected,” what she actually meant was “stolen”) by Mombi long before they had time to learn sweetness, or anything else.
Aphidina shivered with the sudden need to recall the part of her history she had not lived—to remember it just as it had been told to her, the part that had come long before she even existed but was entirely responsible for making her what she was.
And although it was a pathetic beginning to be sure, it was her beginning, and it gave her solace even as it caused her skin to crawl.
Because it all began with a disgusting thing called love. . . .
The world called Earth, where the Primal Fairies embarked upon their existence, had given way to a new kind of being. Humans, they humbly called themselves, and because the Fairies loved them and wanted them to be happy, they chose to bequeath that world to them and all of their descendants.
On the day before the first tomorrow, the Primal Fairies took their leave to bring forth a new home.
Lurline, Queen of the Primal ones, was named the Architect of Worlds, and was elected to oversee the flurry of creation. To do this, she borrowed from Earth four essential graces. One was Water. One was Air. One was Fire. And the last was a piece of the Earth itself. Lurline commanded these elements to transcend their inanimate natures and become the Elemental Fairies and proclaimed them Ember, the Fairy of Fire; Poole, the Fairy of Water; Ria, the Fairy of the Air; and Terra, the Fairy of Lurl.
Glistening and filled with light and poetry, the Elemental Fairies set to work. Terra carved out valleys and burst into mountains. Poole trickled into streams and begot rivers, which swelled into oceans. Ria filled the sky with motion and called it wind.
But the birth of a world is large work, and sadly, as with any ambitious endeavor, there was unforeseen and unavoidable waste: the unfelt heat from the fires, the breezes that did not blow, the water that went stagnant, and the stone and sediment that were not reliable enough to form sturdy Lurlian ground all understood that they were unwanted and as such felt slighted and ashamed. Shame soon hardened to fury, then hatred. And because it is the nature of a thing to be the enemy of that which has forgotten it, the waste turned itself to Wickedness, and thus was born the one true threat to peace, the one great adversary of Good.
Because Lurlia was a gentle place, the Wickedness could not find a single Fairy willing to harbor it. And so the waste burrowed deep into the realm and waited, wrapped in its own misery, for another forgotten thing to come for it.
And another forgotten thing did; tens of thousands of sunsets and moonrises had colored the sky before the Shadow arrived, but when she did, she felt the anger of the waste and knew that she could use it to her advantage. She collected four beings—all of whom were young and frightened and forgotten as well—and she tempted them with promises of power, if only they would obey.
And because they had nothing to lose, they agreed.
From the depths of the waste where Wickedness grew thickest, the Shadow gathered up as much evil and enmity as she could hold in her hands, and with it she anointed the four frightened ones, making of them a great dark power, and in so doing making them the sworn and eternal enemies of the Elementals who had unknowingly supplied the source of their Magical prowess.
Aphidina was initiated by Fire, Marada by Lurl, Daspina by Water, and Ava Munch by Wind.
These were the ones the Shadow named Wicked, and there were only four.
Only, but enough.
20
THE MAKEWRIGHT’S CABIN
The door to the Makewright’s lodge swung open even before Locasta reached for the handle; she motioned for Glinda to enter first. Ben left Liberty on a low-hanging branch; then he and Locasta followed Glinda inside.
The moment she set foot upon the wide, gleaming planks of the floor, Glinda was overcome with a sense of welcome.
Welcome, and Magic.
It was a humble place, this home to the old Maker’s craft, where promise and possibility expressed themselve
s in gears and cogs, hinges and nails. Wood shavings lay curled on the floor like the letters of a proud man’s signature. Glinda smelled candle wax, and hickory smoke. A deeper breath detected scents of sawdust, tree sap, and warm clay.
“It’s probably been empty for ages,” Locasta explained. “Maybe longer. Since the Magical Embargo at least. It’s a secret to all but the Foursworn and therefore very safe.”
The old Makewright’s furnishings were spare, but inviting. Against a far wall stood a bed with four unadorned posts; this was covered with a lightweight patchwork quilt, and although Glinda understood that it had not been slept in for quite some time, she thought perhaps the downy pillow bore a slight indentation at the center, as if someone had lain his head peacefully upon it just the night before.
Most impressive was the long trestle table that dominated the center of the space. Plain and unpolished, its battered surface held a truly mystifying array of tools and instruments, only a small number of which Glinda could identify.
She wandered across the room, where a nightstand held a pile of well-worn books. To her amazement, one of these was the selfsame book of Magic her mother had produced from the mysterious chest, the book that had disappeared from Glinda’s hands.
“What exactly is a Makewright?” asked Ben.
“One who fashions and creates ordinary objects and imbues them with a Magical purpose,” Locasta said. She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you have Magic where you come from?”
Ben laughed. “Hardly. Although”—he shrugged—“sometimes I feel as if we used to have it. Sometimes I can feel it shouting from under the rocks and between the raindrops.” He blushed. “That sounds mad, I suppose.”
Locasta shook her head.
“Sometimes I’ll hold an object in my hand,” Ben went on. “A garden trowel or the plunger of a butter churn, and suddenly I’m overcome with the sense that the object is waiting for me to do something, to give it something it doesn’t have but wants. Ability, perhaps. Or life.”