A Fiery Friendship

by Lisa Fiedler

  “Nothing,” said Glinda. Glancing upward, she saw that the domed ceiling had returned and the night sky was once again outside where it belonged.

  “It seems the moon will be bright enough to travel by tonight,” said Ben.

  Glinda’s thumb found the empty hollow of the sword’s pommel. “Good,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to rest until we’ve retrieved the red beryl and put that stone in the sword.”

  “The stone in the sword,” mused Ben. “Where I come from, there is a famous legend about a sword in a stone.” Guiding Glinda out of the Reliquary, he smiled. “I must say, I am finding your adventure to be far more exciting.”

  36

  LILIES

  The invisible slope took them down the side of the plateau, and the Road of Red Cobble met them at the bottom. Elucida’s gift of moonlight turned the green pastures of the Centerlands a silvery blue.

  Shade and Ben walked side by side, while Locasta galloped ahead. Glinda shuffled along behind them, quietly gathering her thoughts.

  In the cool of the night, she tried to take comfort in the sounds that days ago would have been strange to her, but were now as familiar as the thrum of her own heartbeat—the soothing swish of Shade’s cloak, the muffled thud of Ben’s boots, and the haunting-sweet lilt of Locasta’s humming.

  But the sight of her mother and herself surrounded by the Witches under a future moon was simply too disturbing. The more she thought about it, the more tense she became. She could feel her shoulders tightening, and her mouth turning downward into a scowl.

  Glinda was so focused on the vision that she didn’t notice Locasta had stopped walking; she crashed right into her, sending her sprawling across the red cobblestones.

  “Hey!” said Locasta. “Watch where you’re going.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Glinda snapped. “You’re the one who stopped for no reason at all!”

  “I had a reason!” Locasta shot back, scrambling to her feet. “I needed to buckle my boot strap!”

  Glinda pushed past her and kept walking.

  “The least you can do is apologize!” Locasta shouted, coming up behind her.

  Glinda pressed her lips together and said nothing. In her mind, she saw her mother wrapping her arms protectively around her, her eyes wide with terror.

  “What is wrong with you?” Locasta demanded. “Did you suddenly forget all those fancy manners you learned at Madam Mud Bucket’s School for Featherheads?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me!” Glinda hurled back. “What’s wrong with you? Besides everything!” The shrieking of the Moon Fairy as she fell into the Witches’ grasping hands rang in Glinda’s ears.

  “Glinda,” Locasta said in a warning tone, “I don’t know what happened back there in those ruins, but—”

  “That’s right, you don’t know!” Glinda roared. “You don’t know anything, except how to roll your eyes and boss people around and cause trouble! You don’t even know what really happened to your brother, do you? No wonder he ran away!”

  Ben let out a low whistle. Shade dipped her chin into the collar of her cape.

  Locasta’s purple eyes had gone cold. For a long moment they remained locked on Glinda. Then she turned and took off, stomping along the red stones as they hurried to press themselves up from the ground to accommodate her.

  The others ran after her. Not until she’d trudged through the tangled underbrush of the border and returned to the outskirts of Quadling Country did they catch up to her. She was curled on a patch of the red road with her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving.

  “Locasta,” Ben said, “I’m sure Glinda didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “I’m not crying about what she said,” Locasta muttered. “I just . . . I twisted my ankle on a loose stone and it hurts.”

  But there were no loose stones on the Road of Red Cobble, and everyone knew it.

  Shade and Ben turned to Glinda, but she was still so overwhelmed by the vision that even their disappointed faces could not coax an apology out of her. “We’ll rest here for the night,” she decided coolly. “And take up the journey at daybreak.”

  Shade sighed and unclasped her cloak, arranging it over Locasta like a blanket. Ben offered her the Makewright’s knapsack to use as a pillow.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” Shade whispered to Glinda, shaking her head.

  Glinda frowned. “You don’t understand.”

  “We might have,” said Ben. “If you’d just trusted us enough to tell us what was bothering you.”

  As they settled in for the night, Glinda wondered if she should tell the others what had set her nerves on edge and caused her to behave as she had. She decided against it; the sight of herself and her mother encircled by the Witches would just worry them. There was no point in frightening her friends, when she was already frightened enough for all of them.

  She removed her sword from her sash, sticking it upright in the soft dirt, where she could reach it quickly if need be. Feathertop promptly perched atop the handle, tucked his head under his wing, and fell asleep.

  Watching the moonlight play upon the jewels of the handle, Glinda imagined the same moon casting pools of silver light upon the Arc of Heroes in the Reliquary.

  And on Aphidina, enjoying a luxurious night’s sleep under the same moon, dreaming her Wicked dreams.

  Dream on, Aphidina, Witch of the South, Glinda thought. For this night’s dream shall be your last. Then, swallowing her pride, she turned and whispered to Locasta, “Good night.”

  Locasta grumbled something sharp and angry that Glinda couldn’t quite make out; that, she figured, was for the best. Drifting into a fitful sleep, she was unaware of the cobblestones shimmying and dipping beneath her, slipping swiftly and soundlessly away.

  When the first rays of sun kissed the horizon pink, Glinda awoke to find Locasta already up and pacing in the dirt.

  “Locasta,” she ventured softly, “I’m sorry for what I said about Thruff. It was awful of me to—”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Please, let me explain. I was upset because—”

  “I’m not interested in your explanations,” Locasta barked, her strides kicking up trails of red dust. “I just want to get this quest over with so I can go home to Gillikin and you can go back to playing with dolls.”

  Ben sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Are you two arguing already?” he asked through a yawn. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”

  “It’s up enough for us to set out,” said Locasta. “So let’s go. The sooner we get to Quadling to smite the Witch, the sooner I can stop listening to Glinda.”

  Shade looked as if she might say something to encourage a truce, but the frown on Locasta’s face seemed to change her mind.

  “Why can’t you just accept my apology?” Glinda snarled.

  “Why can’t you just shut up?” Locasta stamped her foot and a small cloud of dirt rose up, stinging Glinda’s eyes.

  “Hey—” she began. And then she realized.

  Locasta had stamped her foot in the dirt. Not on the red road.

  Shade noticed it too. “Arguing! It’s the arguing!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Locasta, whirling away from Glinda.

  “That’s the quirk,” cried Shade. “The road doesn’t want you to quarrel. Whenever you do, it disappears.”

  Glinda knew that Shade, whose presence made them four—count by four, at peace once more—was right. Just as Ben had been the one to set the statues free, Shade had recognized that peace would keep the road from vanishing!

  Locasta rolled her eyes. “That’s the most ridicu—”

  Before Locasta could utter another argumentative word, Glinda jumped up to clap a hand over her mouth. Then she looked down at the soil in the hope that the road would return. But where the cobblestones should have been, a manic profusion of flowers was sprouting up around her feet. Large pink-and-white trumpet blossoms were growing quickly enough to reach her knees.

/>   Lilies, she thought, breathing deeply.

  “What’s with the flowers?” asked Ben, for it seemed as if hundreds more had bloomed in the time it had taken him to ask that question.

  “I’ve never seen lilies grow so quickly,” Glinda noted, removing her hand from Locasta’s mouth. “Or so many all in one place. A most unusual type. I never saw their like before, not even in Horticultural Expressionism.”

  “The last thing I’m in the mood for is a gardening lecture,” Locasta huffed, shuffling away from the impromptu flower patch. “Now let’s get going.”

  As Ben shouldered his knapsack, Shade plucked her cloak from the ground and swung it around her shoulders, prepared to march.

  But the scent of the unusual blooms was so pleasing that all Glinda wanted to do was revel in it. “What’s your hurry?” she asked, rubbing her cheek against the velvety petals. “Let’s just linger here for a bit and talk.”

  Feathertop tilted his white head. “I was under the impression that there was a degree of urgency to this quest.”

  “There is,” said Locasta, frowning. “Now let’s move it!”

  Glinda ignored her. The lilies had such a friendly look about them, tipping their petals toward her as if they were eager to hear anything she was willing to tell. Bending close to a particularly robust blossom whose leaves trembled with anticipation, she whispered, “Here is a secret for you, lily. I am on my way home to retrieve a very special stone.” She twirled the stem between her thumb and forefinger and gave a careless shrug. “It’s not quite a jewel, but is priceless nonetheless, for contained in its depths is the Elemental Fairy of Fire!”

  “Please come out of there,” Shade begged. “Something isn’t right about those flowers!” She dipped her chin into her collar. “They remind me of something.”

  “Of what?” asked Locasta.

  “Of me!”

  “Enough dawdling,” squawked Feathertop. “Glinda Gavaria, you have far more important things to do than lounge around in a flower bed. Remember?”

  Glinda blinked at the eagle as if she had no idea what he meant. “What could be more important than chatting with these convivial blooms?”

  “The quest!” Ben exclaimed. “The Fire Fairy. Aphidina. Your mother!”

  “Oh, that!” Glinda sighed. “Of course I remember that. In fact, I’m having the most delightful conversation about it with this lily. I was just saying how I needed to fetch the stone from my house in order to—”

  The next thing Glinda knew, Locasta had trounced into the flower bed and was hauling her out. She felt as if she were awaking from a dream. “What in the world was I doing sitting there in those flowers?” she asked.

  “You were talking to them,” Ben informed her. “And what’s stranger is I could swear they were listening to you.”

  With a sigh of relief, Shade pointed down to the fresh length of red road that was erupting from beneath the dirt. “I think this means we should be on our way.”

  Without another word, they set out on the Road of Red Cobble.

  None of them noticed the gust of wind that swept over the lily bed, plucking the pink-and-white petals from their stems and carrying them off to the Witch’s castle.

  37

  HOME AGAIN

  The road seemed to be propelling them even more quickly than usual, as if the cobblestones were as keen as Glinda was to see the business with Aphidina successfully concluded.

  As they drew closer to the heart of Quadling, they found themselves on the road that wound through the Woebegone Wilderness. Around them the scenery became more scarlet. Even the blue of the sky was streaked with garnet clouds. Soon enough the road would deliver her home to find the red beryl pendant. And then they would confront the Witch.

  The Road of Red Cobble brought them to the bustling main street of the village, the same street Glinda had traveled every day for the past six years on her way to Madam Mentir’s.

  Never in trousers, of course, with a sword swinging from her sash. And never under cover of Magic.

  The red road rose ahead and fell behind, winding through town like a secret whispered in the wind. What an unsettling sensation it was for Glinda to be crossing paths with her neighbors, unseen, hearing the fleeting ripple of their conversations as they went about their midday business thoroughly unaware of her presence.

  The shops and houses, with their red-painted shutters and red-stained porches, stood in their same neat lines along the streets. The bakery, the potter’s studio, and the grocer’s stall looked just as they always had, and on the corner, Mr. Blauf’s Wagon Wheelry smelled, as it ever did, of fresh sawdust.

  At the end of the street loomed the old library, with its thatched dormers and heavy plank doors, offering only the books that Aphidina deemed appropriate for Quadling citizens to read. That had not changed; it was just that Glinda understood it now.

  The presence of Aphidina’s soldiers and guards milling around with muskets on their shoulders and broadswords on their hips was as it ever was—the only difference being that now they were looking for Glinda.

  The road wound them uncomfortably close to one hideous plant guard with a horrible traplike appendage growing out of its back; this growth consisted of two enormous oval lobes fringed with stiff hairs, hinged at the soldier’s spine like a vicious, insatiable mouth.

  “The botanists at home call that a Venus flytrap,” said Ben, his face wrinkling with revulsion. “Of course at home, they don’t walk. Or have faces.”

  “It’s hard to believe we Quadlings thought we’d been spared the tyranny that ruled the other countries of Oz,” Glinda said glumly. “Now that I know it was all a lie, I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”

  “Well, you were probably too distracted by all those ruffles on your pinafore,” Locasta joked. “The important thing is that you know now. And you’re taking action.”

  They tramped on until the bustle of the town gave way to the quieter lanes of the Gavarias’ neighborhood; soon the road brought them to the gate at Glinda’s front walk. She stood quietly, staring at the splintered planks that remained of the front door.

  “Interesting,” said Shade.

  “What’s interesting?” asked Ben.

  Shade pointed downward. “Road’s still here. It hasn’t gone back into the dirt.”

  “She’s right,” said Ben. “It usually goes underground the minute it brings us to our destination.” He wiggled his toes in the Makewright’s boots. “Maybe it thinks we need to be protected a bit longer.”

  “Protected from what?” asked Locasta. “No one’s about. There aren’t even any guards posted at Glinda’s door.”

  “Also interesting,” Shade murmured. “Maybe best not to go inside.”

  “I have to find the stone,” Glinda pointed out. “So you three wait out here. I’m going in.”

  As she spoke, the road did something it’d never done before: it began to vibrate beneath Glinda’s feet, pulsing, as if in warning.

  “Well, that’s new,” said Ben. “Perhaps you should delay going in until we’ve considered the situation more closely.”

  “What’s to consider?” Locasta challenged. “Just because Aphidina hasn’t posted guards yet doesn’t mean she’s not planning to. I say she goes in while she still can. I say we all go in!”

  “No,” said Glinda. “Just me.” But when she lifted her foot off the road, the cobblestones pulsed with even greater force.

  She drew her foot back sharply, just as three armed soldiers came thundering through the place where the front door once had been. “Plundering is thirsty work,” said one, admiring the silver candlesticks in his grasp. One of his fellow guards was clutching Tilda’s favorite porcelain teapot like a prize.

  The guards stomped down the walk. When they stopped at the gate, one came nose-to-nose with Ben; another was close enough to reach out and pinch Locasta if he could have seen her standing there.

  The tallest of the three turned to the one changeling among them, who se
emed to be on the verge of transforming into a fat, prickly cactus. His face was the dull green of a desert plant, sprouting sharp yellow spines.

  “You stay here,” the tall one barked, poking a finger into the changeling’s chest.

  “Witch’s orders,” said the third, who had fleshy jowls and a bristle of brassy red hair poking out from the brim of his tricorn hat. “Someone must stay behind and keep watch.” He pinched a petal from the cactus flower that was the changeling soldier’s ear, and the cactus winced.

  “Watch for what?”

  “For the Grand Adept’s offspring, you stupid succulent,” the tall soldier hissed. “A daughter, ’bout this high, red hair, green eyes. Goes by the name of Flindo. Or Plindum.”

  “Glinda,” said the third distastefully.

  The cactus soldier turned and clambered back up the walkway to stand guard on the front steps.

  The other two marched off in the direction of the tavern.

  “That was close,” said Ben. “Glinda, are you all right?”

  Glinda shook her head. Because the sight of those soldiers in their scarlet coats and shining boots had filled her with a heart-wrenching realization:

  It’s over.

  The thought turned her cold inside. By their own admission, these soldiers had plundered the house!

  “We’ve failed,” she said, her voice sounding frayed around the edges. “They must have found the red beryl stone on the floor. Any idiot could have spotted it.”

  “Maybe not those idiots,” Locasta said.

  Ben dragged a hand through his hair. “Then we’ll just have to find another way to destroy the Witch.”

  “There is no other way!” Glinda exclaimed. “We can’t destroy Aphidina without the Fairy. And if we can’t destroy Aphidina, we can’t save my mother.”

  She watched the cactus soldier pluck one of the pointy spines that jutted out from his forehead and use it to pick several gnats out of his teeth.

  “I’m going inside,” Glinda announced. “Even if the stone is gone, I just want to stand in the spot where I last spoke to my mother.”