The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  Glinda grabbed the hands, both hands, even tighter. “I am going to magick you back,” she said between gritted teeth. “Ama Clutch, you do as I say! I’m still your employer and your better, and you have to obey me! Now listen to this spell and behave yourself!”

  The Ama’s teeth gnashed, the eyes rolled, and the chin twisted knobbily, as if trying to impale some invisible demon in the air above her bed. Glinda’s eyes shut and her jaw worked, and a thread of sound, syllables incoherent even to herself, came spooling out from her blanched lips. “Hope you don’t explode her like a sandwich,” muttered Elphaba.

  Glinda ignored this. She hummed and worked, she rocked and panted. Ama Clutch’s eyelids moved so frantically over the closed eyes that it looked as if her eye sockets were chewing her own eyes. “Magicordium senssus ovinda clenx,” Glinda concluded out loud, “and if that doesn’t do it, I give up; even the smells and bells of a full kit wouldn’t help, I think.”

  On the straw pallet Ama Clutch fell back. A little blood ran from the outer edge of each eye. But the wild turning motion of the focus had shuttered itself down. “Oh my dear,” she murmured, “so you’re all right then, or am I dead now?”

  “Not yet,” said Glinda. “Yes, dear Ama, yes, I’m fine. But sweetheart, I think you’re going.”

  “Of course I am, the Wind is here, can’t you hear it?” Ama Clutch said. “No matter. Oh there’s Elphie, too. Good-bye, my ducks. Stay out of the Wind until the time is right or you’ll be blown in the wrong direction.”

  Glinda said, “Ama Clutch, I have something to say to you—I have to make my apology—”

  But Elphaba leaned forward, cutting Glinda off from Ama Clutch’s line of sight, and said, “Ama Clutch, before you go, tell us who killed Doctor Dillamond.”

  “Surely you know that,” Ama Clutch said.

  “Make us sure,” Elphaba said.

  “Well, I saw it, I mean nearly. It had just happened and the knife was still there”—Ama Clutch worked for breath—“smeared with blood that hadn’t had a chance to dry.”

  “What did you see? This is important.”

  “I saw the knife in the air, I saw the Wind come to take Doctor Dillamond away, I saw the clockwork turn and the Goat’s time stop.”

  “It was Grommetik, wasn’t it,” Elphaba murmured, trying to get the old woman to speak the words.

  “Well, that’s what I’m saying, duckie,” said Ama Clutch.

  “And did it see you, did it turn on you?” cried Glinda. “Did that make you ill, Ama Clutch?”

  “It was my time to be ill,” said Ama Clutch gently, “so I couldn’t complain. And it is my time to die, so leave me be. Just hold my hand, dear.”

  “But the fault is mine—” began Glinda.

  “You would do me more good if you hushed, sweet Galinda, my duck,” said Ama Clutch gently, and patted Glinda’s hand. Then she closed her eyes and breathed in and out a couple of times. They sat there in a silence that seemed peculiarly servant-class-Gillikinese, though it was hard, later on, to explain why. Outside, Madame Morrible moved up and down the floorboards, pacing. Then they imagined they heard a Wind, or an echo of a Wind, and Ama Clutch was gone, and the overly subordinate pillowcase took a small spill of human juice from the edge of her slackened mouth.

  6

  The funeral was modest, a love-her-and-shove-her affair. Glinda’s close friends attended, filling two pews, and in the second tier of the chapel a flock of Amas made a professional coterie. The rest of the chapel was empty.

  After the corpse in its winding sheet slid along the oiled chute to the furnace, the mourners and colleagues retired to Madame Morrible’s private parlor, where she proved to have sanctioned no expense in the refreshments. The tea was ancient stock, stale as sawdust, the biscuits were hard, and there was no saffron cream or tamorna marmalade. Glinda said reprovingly to the Head, “Not even a small bowl of cream?” and Madame Morrible answered, “My girl, I try to protect my charges from the worst of the food shortages by judicious shopping and by going without myself, but I am not wholly responsible for your ignorance. If only people would obey the Wizard absolutely, there would be abundance. Don’t you realize that conditions verge on famine and cows are dying of starvation two hundred miles from here? This makes saffron cream very dear in the market.” Glinda began to move away, but Madame Morrible reached out a raft of cushiony, bulbous, bejeweled fingers. The touch made Glinda’s blood run cold. “I should like to see you, and Miss Nessarose, and Miss Elphaba,” said the Head. “After the guests leave. Please wait behind.”

  “We’re nabbed for a lecture,” whispered Glinda to the Thropp sisters. “We have to be yelled at.”

  “Not a word about what Ama Clutch said—or that she came back,” said Elphaba urgently. “Got that, Nessa? Nanny?”

  They all nodded. Boq and Avaric, making their good-byes, said that the group was reconvening at the pub in the Regent’s Parade. The girls agreed to meet them there after their interview with the Head. They would manage a more honest memorial service for Ama Clutch at the Peach and Kidneys.

  When the small crowd had dispersed, only Grommetik clearing away the cups and crumbs, Madame Morrible herself banked up the fire—a gesture of chumminess lost on no one—and sent Grommetik away. “Later, thingy,” she said, “later. Go lubricate yourself in some closet somewhere.” Grommetik wheeled away with, if it was possible, an offended air. Elphaba had to repress an urge to kick it with the tip of her stout black walking boot.

  “You too, Nanny,” Madame Morrible said. “A little break from your labors.”

  “Oh no,” Nanny said. “Nanny doesn’t leave her Nessa.”

  “Yes Nanny does. Her sister is perfectly capable of caring for her,” said the Head. “Aren’t you, Miss Elphaba? The very soul of charity.”

  Elphaba opened her mouth—the word soul always provoked her, Glinda knew—but closed it again. She made a wincing nod toward the door. Without a word, Nanny got up to leave, but before the door closed behind her Nanny said, “It’s not my place to complain, but really: no cream? At a funeral?”

  “Help,” said Madame Morrible when the door closed, but Glinda wasn’t sure if this was a criticism of servants or a bid for sympathy. The Head rallied herself by arranging her skirts and the vents and braids of her smart parlor jacket. In orangey copper sequins she looked like a huge, upholstered, upended goldfish goddess. How ever did she get to be Head? Glinda wondered.

  “Now that Ama Clutch has gone to ash, we shall, nay, we must move bravely on,” Madame Morrible began. “My girls, may I first ask you to recount the sad story of her last words. It is essential therapy in your recovery from grief.”

  The girls didn’t look at one another. Glinda, in this situation the spokesperson, took a breath and said, “Oh, she spewed nonsense to the last.”

  “No surprise, the dotty old thing,” said Madame Morrible, “but what nonsense?”

  “We couldn’t make it out,” said Glinda.

  “I had wondered if she talked about the death of the Goat.”

  Glinda said, “Oh the Goat? Well I could hardly tell—”

  “I suspected that, in her deranged condition, she might return to that critical moment. The dying often try to make sense, at the last possible moment, of the puzzles of their lives. Useless effort, of course. No doubt Ama Clutch was puzzled by what she came across, the Goat’s body, the blood. And Grommetik.”

  “Oh?” said Glinda faintly. The sisters beside her were careful not to stir.

  “That terrible morning I was up early—at my spiritual meditations—and I noticed the light in Doctor Dillamond’s lab. So I sent Grommetik over with a cheering pot of tea for the old Goat. Grommetik found the Animal slumped over a broken lens; he’d apparently stumbled and severed his own jugular vein. Such a sad accident, born of academic zeal (not to say hubris) and a pitiful lack of common sense. Rest, we all need rest, the brightest of us need our rest. Grommetik in its confusion felt for a pulse—none to be found—and I
surmise that is just when Ama Clutch arrived. To see dear Grommetik splashed with the spurts of a strong circulatory pulse. Ama Clutch arrived out of nowhere and none of her business, I might add, but let’s not malign the dead, shall we?”

  Glinda gulped back new tears, and did not mention that Ama Clutch had mentioned seeing something unusual the evening before, and had wandered out to check.

  “I did always think that the shock of all that blood might have been the final straw that sent Ama Clutch pitching back into her ailment. Incidentally, you see why I dismissed Grommetik just now. It’s still very sensitive and suspects, I believe, that Ama Clutch thought it responsible for the Goat’s slaughter.”

  Glinda said waveringly, “Madame Morrible, you should know that Ama Clutch had never suffered such a disease as I described to you. I invented it. But I didn’t assign it. I didn’t commit it to her, or her to it.”

  Elphaba looked at Madame Morrible steadily, keeping her interest modest. Nessarose’s eyelashes fluttered. If Madame Morrible knew Glinda’s news already, her face didn’t give her away. She looked as placid as a tethered rowboat. “Well, this only lends weight to my observations,” she allowed. “There is an imaginative, even a prophetic power in your pointed little society skull, Miss Glinda.”

  The Head stood, her skirts rustling, wind through a field of wheat. “What I say now I say in strictest confidence. I expect my girls to obey my command. Are we agreed?” She seemed to take their stunned silence as assent. She looked down on them. That’s why she seems so like a fish, Glinda suddenly thought. She hardly ever blinks.

  “By an authority vested in me that is too high to be named, I have been charged with a crucial task,” said the Head. “A task essential to the internal security of Oz. I have been working to fulfill this task for some years, and the time is right, and the goods are at my disposal.” She scrutinized them. They were the goods.

  “You will not repeat what you hear in this room,” she said. “You will not want to, you will not choose to, and you will not be able to. I am wrapping each one of you in a binding cocoon as regards this very sensitive material. No”—she held up a hand at Elphaba’s protest—“no you have no right to object. The deed is already done and you must listen and be open to what I say.”

  Glinda tried to examine herself to see if she felt wrapped, or bound, or spell-chilled. But she only felt frightened and young, which may be close to the same thing. She glanced at the sisters. Nessarose in her dazzling shoes was back in her chair, nostrils dilating in fright or excitement. Elphaba on the other hand looked as stolid and cross as usual.

  “You live in a little womb here, a tight little nest, girl with girl. Oh I know you have your silly boys on the edge, forgettable things. Good for one thing only and not even reliable at that. But I digress. I must say that you know little or nothing of the state of the nation today. You have no sense of the pitch of unrest to which things have mounted. Setting communities on edge, ethnic groups against one another, bankers against farmers and factories against shopkeepers. Oz is a seething volcano threatening to erupt and burn us in its own poisonous pus.

  “Our Wizard seems strong enough. Ah, but is he? Is he really? He has a grasp of internal politics. He’s no slouch at negotiating rates of exchange with the bloodsuckers of Ev or Jemmicoe or Fliaan. He rules the Emerald City with an industry and an ability that the decaying knob-jawed Ozma line never dreamed of. Without him we’d have been swept away in firestorm, years ago. We can but be grateful. A strong fist does wonders in a rotten situation. Walk softly but carry a bit stick. I see I offend. Well, a man is always good for the public face of power, no?

  “Yes. But things are not always as they seem. And it has been clear for some time that the Wizard’s bag of tricks would not do forever. There are bound to be popular uprisings—the stupid, senseless kind, in which strong dumb people enjoy getting killed for the sake of political changes that’ll be rolled back within the decade. Adds such meaning to meaningless lives, don’t you think? One can’t imagine any other reason for it. At any rate, the Wizard needs some agents. He requires a few generals. In the long run. Some people with managing skills. Some people with gumption.

  “In a word, women.

  “I have called you three girls in here. You are not women yet, but the moment is closing in on you, faster than you might think. Despite my opinion as to your behavior, I have had to single you out. There is more in each one of you than meets the eye. Miss Nessarose, being the newest, you are the most hidden to me, but once you outgrow that fetching habit of faith you will display a ferocious authority. Your bodily disorder is of no significance here. Miss Elphaba, you are an isolate, and even in my binding spell you sit there stewing in scorn of every word I say. This is evidence of great internal power and force of will, something I deeply respect even when marshaled against me. You have shown no sign of interest in sorcery and I don’t claim you have any natural aptitude. But your splendid lone-wolf spit and spirit can be harnessed, oh yes it can, and you needn’t live a life of unfulfilled rage. And Miss Glinda: You have surprised yourself with the talents at sorcery you possess. I knew you would. I had hoped your inclinations might rub off on Miss Elphaba, but that they haven’t is only firmer proof of Miss Elphaba’s iron character.

  “I see in your eyes you all question my methods. You think, somewhat wildly: Did Horrible Morrible cause that nail to pierce my Ama Clutch’s foot, making me have to room with Elphaba? Did she cause Ama Clutch to come downstairs and find the dead Goat, the better to get her out of the way and require Nanny and thus Nessarose to show up on the scene? How flattering that you even imagine I have such power.”

  The Head paused and came near to blushing, which in her was something like the separating of cream on a flame set too high. “I am a handmaiden at the service of superiors,” she continued, “and my special talent is to encourage talent. In my own small way I have been called to a vocation of education, and here I make my little contributions to history.

  “Now to be specific. I want you to consider your futures. I would like to name you, to baptize you as it were, as a trio of Adepts. In the long run I would like to assign you behind-the-scenes ministerial duties in different parts of the country. I am empowered to do this, remember, by those whose boot straps I am not worthy to lick.” But she looked smug, as if she thought herself quite worthy enough, indeed, of attention from these mysterious forces. “Let us say you will be secret partners of the highest level of government. You will be anonymous ambassadors of peace, helping to restrain the unruly element among our less civilized populations. Nothing is decided yet, of course, and you do have a say in the matter—a say to me, and not to each other nor anyone else, as the spell goes—but I would like you to think about it. I need—eventually—to place an Adept in Gillikin somewhere. Miss Glinda, with your middle-range social position and your transparent ambitions, you can slime your way into ballrooms of margreaves and still be at home in the pigsties. Oh, don’t squirm so, your good blood is only on one side and it’s not a terribly refined strain anyway. The Adept of Gillikin, Miss Glinda? Does it appeal?”

  Glinda could only listen. “Miss Elphaba,” said Madame Morrible, “full of the teenage scorn of inherited position, you are nonetheless the Thropp Third Descending, and your great-grandfather, the Eminent Thropp, is in his dotage. One day you will inherit what is left of Colwen Grounds, that pretentious pile in Nest Hardings, and you could manage to be the Adept of Munchkinland. Your unfortunate skin condition notwithstanding—indeed, perhaps because of it—you have developed a feistiness and an iconoclasm that is just faintly appealing when it doesn’t nauseate. It will come in service. Believe me.

  “And Miss Nessarose,” she went on, “having grown up in Quadling Country, you will want to return there with Nanny. The social situation in Quadling Country is such a mess, what with the decimation of the squelchy froglet population, but it may come back, in small measure, and there should be someone to oversee the ruby mines. We need someone
to look after things in the South. Once you recover from your religious mania, it’ll be a perfect setting. You don’t expect a life of high society anyway, not without arms. After all, how can one dance without arms?

  “As for the Vinkus, we don’t imagine we’ll need an Adept stationed there, at least not in your lifetimes. The master plans eradicate any appreciable population in that godforsaken place.”

  Here the Head paused and looked around. “Oh, girls. I know you are young. I know this grieves you. You mustn’t think of it as a prison sentence, though, but an opportunity. You ask yourselves: How will I grow in a position, albeit a silent one, of prominence and responsibility? How may my talents flourish? How, my dears, how may I help my Oz?”

  Elphaba’s foot twisted, caught the edge of a side table, and a cup and saucer fell to the floor and smashed.

  “You’re so predictable,” said Madame Morrible, sighing. “That’s what makes my job so easy. Now girls, bound as you are to an oath of silence, I bid you to go away and think on what I have said. Please don’t even try to discuss it together as it’ll just give you a headache and cramps. You won’t be able to manage it. Sometime in the next semester I will call each of you in here and you can give me your answer. And if you should choose not to help your country in its hour of need . . .” She clasped her hands in a parody of despair. “Well, you are not the only fish in the sea, are you?”

  The afternoon had turned glowery, with heaps of plum-colored clouds in the north, beyond the bluestone spires and steeples. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since the morning, and the girls kept their shawls pulled close as they walked to the pub. Nanny, shivering in the dirty wind, cried, “And what did the old busybody have to say that I couldn’t be allowed to hear?”

  But there was nothing they could say. Glinda couldn’t even meet the others’ eyes. “We’ll lift a glass of champagne for Ama Clutch,” said Elphaba finally, “when we get to the Peach and Kidneys.”