I left the farm not long afterward, able to do very little after night fell and, truth be told, somewhat stumped as to a next step. I thought that some sleep might help, so I returned to the boarding house in which I stayed nearby in Winkie Country. That part of Oz was still strange to me, raised as I was in Quadling Country. But the queen had asked for the best, and word reached her that it was me. I won’t say that I wasn’t pleased to hear this, for I took pride in my accomplishments, but it also made me nervous and I feared being shown to be a fraud.
These thoughts continued to rattle around my head – my fears, my pride, my frustration at being unable to solve the problem before me – until I found sleep at last. When I awoke, early the next morning, I returned to Mr. P’s farm and bent down to the task once more.
My process was simple. Because I had the powder to aid growth, I had planted the seeds in batches, two at a time. One would be a test group, the other a normal group to compare it to. As each pair of batches matured, another would be a few days behind it and so forth. This allowed me to try out different techniques and theories as to what might be causing this.
The first thing I ruled out was infestation. For one, there were no signs of critters on or in the pumpkins. However, this being Oz, I didn’t trust my eyes alone, and so borrowed a pair of magnifying spectacles. But the only insects afflicting the crop were the flies hovering over the rotten pumpkins on the other side of the field. Every so often I would find a specimen that had been punctured or torn – the growth powder sometimes accelerated things too much - and my hands would punch through the rotten rind, into the maggot-strewn interior. I was used to critters of all kinds – snakes and worms and crickets and toads – but this challenged even my resolve.
Not all the rotten pumpkins lay at the other end of the field, though. Those that Mr. P took for his heads, no matter how short a time he wore them, he buried, in a plot of land adjacent to the pumpkin fields. In the last few months the number of graves had increased severely so that it looked like the graveyard of a small town, much like the town I grew up in. Looking at that field of buried heads made me think of my parents and how much I missed them. Their graves lay far away in Quadling Country.
If critters weren’t to blame, I thought, it might be the soil. So I planted some other crops beside the pumpkins – some squash, some beets, some cucumbers. All turned out fine. It was only the pumpkins that seemed to be affected.
It stymied me. As I tended the current crop, they looked good to my critical eye, plump and glossy, heavy to the hand. It seemed only when they were picked that they started to deteriorate, turning to mush within weeks. Once, Mr. P had told me, a head would last months for him. Possibly up to a year if well cared for. Some property in his body, or perhaps the force that animated it, kept them hardy. But recently, it was weeks, if that. The last had only endured for nine days. I thought about what it might be like if I had to change my head every week and I wondered how I could function.
“How’s it coming?” came Mr. P’s voice from behind me.
I bent over the pumpkins, running my fingers across the creases. “I’m making progress,” I said. “But not as much as I would like.”
The voice came closer. “I feel better today,” he said. “The new head seems to help.”
I nodded, unable to face him. I couldn’t overcome the thought that I was letting him down. That I was failing him.
“Thank you for helping me,” he said. “I know you’re doing your best.”
I bowed my head.
“No. Really,” he said. “Please.” I stood up and turned to face him.
And almost screamed.
One of Mr P’s eyes sunk low on his pumpkin face, as if flowing down, as if made of wax. The other jaunted at an unusual angle, casting that side of the face in a demonic light. That eyebrow was high and menacing. The other was a deep, crude gash in the face. The nose was a mere slit, the mouth a vicious sneer tearing across the lower curve of the pumpkin.
“What is it?” he said, stumbling back.
I shook my head, unable, unwilling to speak the words.
I swallowed, trying to suppress my horror, to spare his feelings, but I was apparently ineffective, for he ran off, his wooden limbs pumping to put as much distance between us as possible.
When he was gone, I turned and collapsed among the pumpkins, running my fingers through the dirt to console myself, inhaling the earthy, mineral scent. My tears watered the soil, partially from fear, and partially from the knowledge that I had hurt my employer.
The day’s activities, like every day, left half moons of dirt beneath my fingernails. Some days the combination of soil and pumpkin pulp left a reddish cast like blood, and I was once again reminded of my parents.
They died when I was barely a woman, though I had already spent long years toiling in the garden. A disease swept through the Quadling countryside, a red disease like everything in that place. I was spared, but my parents bore the full brunt of it, stiffening and reddening until they looked like radishes laid out in bed. They, like the others stricken with the disease, were taken to the graveyard and buried. There were memorial services and solemn vigils, but none of these did anything to soothe the ache that sprouted and bloomed through me in those long weeks.
Only one thing could. I did what came naturally, drawing out seeds I had long saved and nurtured for a garden of my own. These I planted and watered and watched for the first shoots from the earth. When they appeared, I watered and cared for them until the others in the town recognized what it was I had done.
By then, it was far too late to stop it, and green vines and leaves spread throughout the town graveyard, strong and verdant, striving to escape the dark gravity of the earth. Soon, the graveyard bloomed with flowers and with thick fruit - cucumbers and tomatoes, peas, beans, and strawberries. All of these shone red on the vines, as most crops in our land did. The townsfolk gathered, and talked of rooting it, of pulling all the plants up or setting fire to them. But in the end, they left them. They feared disturbing the dead, their loved ones entangled, embraced by the reaching, yearning roots. So they left it there, a dark, red garden the likes of which no one had ever seen and none would again.
Instead, they made me leave. And though I missed it, the garden I helped create, I knew that in some small way, a part of my parents lived again through it. I had done my part, the rest was up to the elements.
When I saw Mr. P again, a towel wrapped around his head leaving only narrow gaps for his eyes and one for his mouth.
“Mr. P,” I said. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said. “I saw myself. I don’t know what I was doing when I carved this one. It looked fine to me. But I don’t want to abandon it just yet. So far it’s fine, and I don’t want to switch so quickly.”
“I understand,” I said, looking at my nails. “I’ll get back to work right away.”
“Linnaea,” he said, tugging on the lower end of towel.
“Yes, boss?” I said.
His mismatched eyes bored into me.
“Never mind,” he said, and turned away. “Carry on.” He waved one gloved hand in the air.
I returned to my work. Having ruled out the soil and infestation, I considered the pumpkins themselves. Most of Mr. P’s crop had come from seeds harvested from his earlier batches, which accounted for the yellowish, almost golden quality of the pumpkins. But I had brought some Quadling seeds with me as well, which now dotted the field with a darker, reddish orange than the original. All fell victim to the rot, with similar timelines. So the seeds were not to blame either.
That meant the situation was more complex. Either a combination of factors, or something beyond the normal difficulties of farming.
I considered magical causes. Mr. P was highly respected, a close companion of the queen. Afflicting him in this way would be dangerous, but at the same time, it could be a way to strike at Ozma.
I walked over to Mr. P’s pumpkin-shaped house and knocked on t
he door.
“Come in,” he called.
I entered. The boss was slumped over the table, the towel loosened around his head. In one of his hands he held a bottle of dark glass and he was pouring liquid, a little at a time, into his crooked mouth. He swiveled his head slightly so he could look at me out of one eye.
“Yes?”
“I just…I wanted to ask you a question,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Do you know of anyone who might be trying to harm you? Who might be doing this on purpose?”
He poured some more of the liquid into his mouth and I caught a whiff of alcohol. I wondered where it went. The only thing I could think was that the small amount was absorbed into the flesh of his head.
“I can’t…I can’t think of anyone,” he said. “I have no enemies.”
“But Ozma…”
“There are other ways someone could reach her,” Mr. P said, now slurring his words.
“Why are you drinking?” I said.
He looked at the bottle in his hand.
“I should be grateful for the life that I have,” he said. “And I am. But this…” he waved at his wrapped-up head, “makes that life less bearable. I think differently now. And things look strange to me. I have odd thoughts. I can’t bear to go outside and be among other people. You’re the only person I’ve seen in weeks.”
I moved a step closer to him.
“I get very lonely,” he said.
I sat down opposite him across the table. My hand, dirt-stained and calloused, rested scant inches from his.
“I tried to make a companion for myself once,” he said, softly. “When the loneliness became too great. I commissioned a Winkie carpenter to make her body – a much finer one than I have, certainly – and I planned to give her a head like mine, though perhaps crafted with greater care. Only the Powder of Life, which gave me my vital spark, and also the Sawhorse and the Gump, was all gone long ago and the magician who made it had committed suicide by jumping off the side of a mountain.”
“I searched for another magician to help me, hard because magic has been outlawed for all except Ozma and Glinda. But eventually I found one, hiding in a swamp, practicing his craft there. He gave me Powder of Life in exchange for some valuables I had – a jeweled belt, and a bracelet of gold, both gifts of my mother.”
“But couldn’t she have helped you?” I interrupted. “Since she can practice magic.”
“She knew nothing of this,” he said. “She still doesn’t. I wanted it to be private. Personal.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“Do you?” he said. “Well, I had the body, and I selected my finest pumpkin and carved her face myself. You may well wonder why I didn’t get a famous artist to do it, but the truth is that I wanted to have that connection. It may not have been the most beautiful face ever carved, but it pleased me and that’s all that mattered.”
I nodded again. “So what happened?”
He bowed his toweled head, then poured more of the drink into his mouth.
“I laid her out in my bed, dressed in a nice yellow sundress decorated with daisies. And she was so beautiful, lying there. And I sprinkled…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I sprinkled the powder on her.”
I was almost holding my breath at the story.
“Did it work?”
He raised his head. “In a way. It brought her to life, her limbs started moving almost immediately, but,” he took another gulp of the alcohol, “she had no sense in her. She was alive, but without any thought, without any brains. Mindless.”
I said nothing, not knowing what to say.
“You can’t imagine what it was like to see her, to see this beautiful creature, thrashing around without purpose, without any understanding of what was happening or where she was. She…she attacked me. Savagely. I ran to escape her. Outside into the pumpkin field, and she ran after me. I was only able to stop her by…by hitting her. With a shovel. She fell down, but still thrashed. So I grabbed an axe and I cut at her arms and legs, splintering the fine, sanded wood, ripping her yellow dress and cutting the pumpkin from her head. Then, when it was all done and she had stopped moving, I dragged the pieces to the graveyard and buried them beneath the ground.”
His head lowered, propped against one wrist. I reached my hand across to his other, slipped my fingers over his worn white glove.
“I never told anyone that before,” he said. “Not even my mother.”
“I understand,” I said. And before I could think about it, and perhaps in an effort to also share something I’d never told anyone, I told him about my parents’ death and the graveyard and the garden I planted on top of it.
He nodded. During his talk and the drinking and listening to me afterward, his towel had come undone and his mismatched features were now revealed. A dribble of the liquor down his open mouth lent him a monstrous appearance, but I kept my face blank.
“There’s more, though,” I said. “The night I left town, I packed up my belongings, preparing to leave. But I snuck back into town, and over to the graveyard. I picked the fruit that grew there – long, glossy red squash and strawberries, whatever I could pick, and I took these with me. As I traveled, I ate them, thinking in some strange way that I was keeping a part of my parents with me. That I had taken something of them out of the town and into myself.”
I sat back, suddenly drained and light.
“Is that wrong?”
“No,” he said, shaking his pumpkin head. “No. I suppose if I could have eaten my companion – I never named her, I couldn’t bear to – I might have.”
I squeezed his hand, happy for the sharing. Then I slipped out of the house and back into the field.
That day brought no new results and this was beginning to worry me. I had gone to Mr. P to help him with his problem, and so far I was no closer than when I started.
Maybe that was why I walked the fields looking for the best pumpkin I could find. This I carefully removed and took with me back to my room at the boarding house. Carefully, with all the skill I could muster, I wielded the knife, carving a face into the pumpkin. I gave it bright, kindly eyes, a strong, patrician nose, and a wide, happy smile.
I lightened it slightly, removing some of the pulp from behind the carved features, but kept a nice, dense seedy section inside. By all accounts, Mr. P relied on the seeds for his brains. When I was done, I looked it, pleased. I could never be accounted an artist, but I was good with carpentry and I’d made many a scarecrow.
The next morning, I arrived early for work, my gift in a reed basket, wrapped in a tablecloth. When Mr. P appeared, stumbling ever so slightly, his head still covered with the towel, I brought the basket to him. Trembling, on shaky feet, I held it out to him, wordlessly.
He took it, tilting his head to one side, and unwrapped it with his gloved hands. When it was uncovered, he had to pull the towel to one side to see what it was. Then he looked up at me.
“I thought…since you had some troubles with the head you have now…,” I swallowed. “I can’t guarantee it will last. Not yet, but…”
“It’s perfect,” Mr. P said. “Absolutely perfect.” He looked at me. “Thank you,” he said.
I smiled and returned to the fields as he carried it into the house to do whatever it was he did to change heads. I found myself wondering what he looked like without a pumpkin on top of his neck. Did he lose his sight when it was taken off? Did he feel that separation?
I continued to work in the fields, trying to gather more information about the blight.
Sometime after midday, I smelled a delicious odor wafting from the house. It was my habit to take a small lunch when I was working, usually a salad or a loaf of fresh bread and farmer’s cheese, but I had become so engrossed in my notes that I’d forgotten. My stomach growled at the smell.
Then Mr. P appeared in the doorway to his house, my pumpkin on his head, looking happy and almost regal. “Come in, Linnaea,” he called.
I did so to find the table laid, and a pie steaming on the tablecloth. “I made it,” he said. “For you. From my old head. Please, sit.”
I took the chair that was offered, noting that the other chair had no place setting. “The rot wasn’t so far advanced that it was no good,” he said. “And I hated to see it go to waste, even with its problems. Plus, I wanted to thank you.”
I sat down and cut a slice and moved it to my plate. Next to it was a bowl of fresh cream that he must have just whipped up. I plopped a dollop on top of the creamy crust. I wanted to ask him to join me - it seemed wrong to enjoy it on my own - but I thought that might seem to strange to him, eating of his own self. He’d always buried his heads before.
I placed the pie into my mouth, chewed and swallowed. It was sweet and earthy, and I dreamt of the taste later that night.
That evening, I brought my notes to Mr. P and we sat across the table again. “Thank you again for the head,” he said. “This one feels better than any I’ve had in recent months. I think better with it, and I haven’t been plagued by any strange thoughts since putting it on.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “I’ve been reviewing the notes I’ve made, and I’ve ruled out a problem with the soil, with the seeds, and with any kind of pests.”
“So what does that leave?” he said.
“I want to do another test,” I said. “I want to try a new pumpkin. One that wasn’t grown on this farm. One grown on another farm.”
“But I have such a wonderful head now,” he said, the disappointment plain in his voice.
“I’m glad you like it, boss, but it won’t last. And I want the next one to be from another farm.”
“I wish you would call me Jack,” he said. “Very well. If you think it’s for the best. But I think that this is the one. I think this one will break the curse. You’ll see.”
I smiled, but I didn’t believe him. It would start fading in about a week or two, then he would need another head.
Shadows of the Emerald City Page 4