She considered how she might use this command audience to her own advantage: Sarima, the safety of Frex, the fate of Fiyero. “I agree,” she concluded. “I will meet him.” And, despite herself, she was glad for a moment that Nessarose’s magicked shoes were safely out of the vicinity.
As the vesper bells rang, the Witch was summoned from her room by a Munchkinlander maid. “You will have to submit to a search,” said the Wizard’s emissary, meeting her in an antechamber. “You must understand the protocol here.”
She concentrated on her fury as she was probed and prodded by the officers who ringed the waiting area. “What is this?” they said when they found the page of the Grimmerie in her pocket.
“Oh that,” she said, thinking fast. “His Highness will want to see that.”
“You can bring nothing in with you,” they told her, and they took the page from her.
“By my bloodlines, I can reinstate the office of the Eminent Thropp tonight and have your leader arrested,” she called after them. “Do not tell me what I can and cannot do in this house.”
They paid her no mind and ushered her into a small chamber, bare but for a couple of upholstered chairs set upon a flowery carpet. Along the baseboards, dust mice rolled in the draft.
“His Highness, the Emperor Wizard of Oz,” said an attendant, and withdrew. For a minute the Witch sat alone. Then the Wizard walked into the room.
He was without disguise, a plain-looking older man wearing a high-collared shirt and a greatcoat, with a watch and fob hanging from a waistcoat pocket. His head was pink and mottled, and tufts of hair stuck out above his ears. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and sat down, motioning the Witch to sit, too. She did not sit.
“How do you do,” he said.
“What do you want with me,” she answered.
“There are two things,” he said. “There is what I had come here to say to you, and then there is the matter of what you bring to my attention.”
“You talk to me,” she said, “for I have nothing to say to you.”
“There is no point in beating around the bush,” he said. “I would like to know your intentions about your position as the last Eminence.”
“Had I any intention,” she said, “it would be none of your business.”
“Ah, alas, it is my business, for reunification is under way,” said the Wizard, “even as we speak. I understand that Lady Glinda, bless her well-meaning foolishness, has sensibly evacuated both the unfortunate girl and the totemic shoes from the district, which should make annexation less troublesome. I should like to have those shoes in my possession, to prevent their giving you ideas. So you see, I need to know your intentions in the matter. You were not, I take it, in warm sympathy with your sister’s style of religious tyranny, but I hope you do not intend to set up shop here. If you do, we must strike a little bargain—something I was never able to do with your sister.”
“There is little for me here,” said the Witch, “and I am not suited to govern anyone, not even myself, it seems.”
“Besides, there’s the small matter of the army at—is it Red Windmill?—the town below Kiamo Ko.”
“So that’s why they’ve been there all these years,” said the Witch.
“To keep you in check,” he said. “An expense, but there you are.”
“To spite you, I should reclaim the title of Eminence,” said the Witch. “But I care little for these foolish people. What the Munchkinlanders do now is of no interest to me. As long as my father is left unharmed. If that is all—”
“There is the other matter,” he said. His manner became more lively. “You brought a page with you. I wonder where you got it?”
“That is mine and your people have no right to it.”
“What I want is to know where you got it, and where I can find the rest.”
“What will you give me if I tell you?”
“What could you want from me?”
This was why she had agreed to meet him. She drew a deep breath, and said, “To know if Sarima, Dowager Princess of the Arjikis, is still alive. And where I might find her, and how I might negotiate her freedom.”
The Wizard smiled. “How all things work together. Now isn’t it interesting that I could guess of your concern.” He waved a hand. Unseen attendants outside the open door ushered in a dwarf in clean white trousers and tunic.
No, it wasn’t a dwarf, she saw; it was a young woman crouching. Chains sewn into the collar of her tunic ran through her clothes to her ankles, keeping her bent over; the chains were only two or three feet long. The Witch had to peer to see for sure that it was Nor. She would be sixteen by now, or seventeen. The age that Elphie had been when she went up to Crage Hall at Shiz.
“Nor,” said the Witch, “Nor, are you there?”
Nor’s knees were filthy and her fingers curled around the links of her bondage. Her hair was cut short, and welts were visible beneath the patchy tresses. She tossed her head as if listening to music, but she would not shift her gaze toward Elphaba.
“Nor, it’s Auntie Witch. I’ve come to bargain for your release, at last,” said the Witch, improvising.
But the Wizard motioned the unseen attendants to usher Nor out of sight. “I’m afraid that is not possible,” he said. “She is my protection from you, you see.”
“The others?” said the Witch. “I must know.”
“Everything is undocumented,” said the Wizard, “but I believe Sarima and her sisters are all dead.”
The Witch’s breath caught in her chest. The last hopes of forgiveness gone! . . . but the Wizard was continuing. “Perhaps some underling who had no authority in the matter had an appetite for a bloodbath. It’s so hard to get reliable help in the armed forces.”
“Irji?” said the Witch, gripping her elbows.
“Now he had to die,” said the Wizard apologetically. “He was the next in line to be Prince, wasn’t he?”
“Tell me it was not brutal,” said the Witch. “Oh, tell me so!”
“The Paraffin Necklace,” admitted the Wizard. “Well, it was a public affair. A statement needed to be made. There now, against my better judgment, I have told you what you wanted to know. Now it is your turn. Where can I find the book that this page is from?” The Wizard took the paper out of his pocket and pressed it out onto his lap. His hands were trembling. He looked at the page. “A spell for the Administration of Dragons,” he said, wonderingly.
“Is that what it is?” she said, surprised. “I could not be sure.”
“Of course. You must have a hard time making this out,” he said. “You see, it does not come from this world. It comes from my world.”
He was mad, obsessed with other worlds. Like her father.
“You are not telling the truth,” said the Witch, hoping she was right.
“Oh, what care I for the truth,” he said, “but I am truthful, as it happens.”
“Why would you want that?” said the Witch, trying to buy some time, trying to figure out how she could barter for Nor’s life. “I don’t even know what it is. I don’t believe you do either.”
“I do,” he said. “This is an ancient manuscript of magic, generated in a world far away from this one. It was long thought to be merely legendary, or else destroyed in the dark onslaughts of the northern invaders. It had been removed from our world for safety by a wizard more capable than I. It is why I came to Oz in the first place,” he continued, almost talking to himself, as old men are prone to do. “Madame Blavatsky located it in a crystal ball, and I made the appropriate sacrifices and—arrangements—to travel here forty years ago. I was a young man, full of ardor and failure. I had not intended to rule a country here, but just to find this document and return it to its own world, and to study its secrets there.”
“What kind of sacrifices?” she said. “You do not stint from murder here.”
“Murder is a word used by the sanctimonious,” he said. “It is an expedient expression with which they condemn any courageous
action beyond their ken. What I did, what I do, cannot be murder. For, coming from another world, I cannot be held accountable to the silly conventions of a naive civilization. I am beyond that lisping childish recital of wrongs and rights.” His eyes did not burn as he spoke; they were sunk behind veils of cold blue detachment.
“If I give the Grimmerie to you, will you go?” she said. “Give me Nor and take your brand of evil and leave us alone at last?”
“I am too old to travel now,” he said, “and why should I give up what I have worked for all these years?”
“Because I will use this book and destroy you with it if you don’t,” she said.
“You cannot read it,” he said. “You are of Oz and you cannot do such a thing.”
“I can read more of it than you suspect,” she said. “I do not know what it all means. I have seen pages about unleashing the hidden energies of matter. I have seen pages about tampering with the orderly flow of time. I have seen disquisitions about weapons too vile to use, about how to poison water, about how to breed a more docile population. There are diagrams of weapons of torture. Though the drawings and the words seem misty to my eyes, I can continue to learn. I am not too old.”
“Those are ideas of great interest to our times,” he said, though he seemed surprised that she had taken in as much as she had.
“Not to me,” she said. “You have done enough already. If I give it to you, will you surrender Nor to me?”
“You should not trust my promise,” he said, sighing. “Really, my child.” But he continued to stare at the page she had handed over to him. “One might learn how to subjugate a dragon to one’s own purposes,” he mused, and flipped the page over to read what was on the back.
“Please,” she said. “I think I have never begged for anything before in my life. But I beg of you. It is not right that you should be here. Assuming for a moment you can sometimes tell the truth—go back to that other world, go anywhere, just leave the throne. Leave us alone. Take the book with you, do with it what you will. Let me accomplish at least this in my life.”
“In exchange for my telling you about the kith and kin of your beloved Fiyero, you are to tell me where this book is,” he reminded her.
“Well, I won’t,” she answered. “I have revised my offer. Give me Nor, and I will get you the Grimmerie. The book is already hidden so deeply that you will never find it. You have not the skill.” She hoped she was being persuasive.
He stood and pocketed the page. “I shall not have you executed,” he said. “At least, not at this audience. I will have that book, for here or for there. You cannot bind me to a promise, I am beyond being bound by words. I will think of what you have said. But meanwhile, I will keep my young slave-girl at my side. For she is my defense against your anger.”
“Give her to me!” said the Witch. “Now, now, now: Act like a man, not like a mountebank! Give her to me and I will send you that book!”
“It is for others to bargain,” said the Wizard. Rather than sounding offended, he seemed merely depressed, as if he were talking to himself instead of to her. “I do not bargain. But I do think. I will wait and see how the reunification with Munchkinland goes, and if you do not interfere, I may be kindly disposed to think about what you have said. But I do not bargain.”
The Witch breathed in deeply. “I have met you before, you know,” she said. “You once granted me an interview in the Throne Room, when I was a schoolgirl from Shiz.”
“Is that so?” he said. “Oh, of course—you must have been one of the darling girls of Madame Morrible. That wonderful aid and helpmeet. In her dotage now, but in her heyday, what she taught me about breaking the spirits of willful young girls! No doubt, like the rest, you were taken with her?”
“She tried to recruit me to serve some master. Was it you?”
“Who can say. We were always hatching some plot or other. She was good fun. She would never be as crude as that”—he pointed to the open door through which crouching Nor could still be seen, humming to herself—“she could manage girl students with much greater finesse!” He was about to leave the room, but he turned back at the door. “You know, now I remember. It was she who warned me about you. She told me you had betrayed her, you had rejected her offers. She was the one who advised me to have you watched. It is because of her that we found out about your little romance with the diamond-skinned prince.”
“No!”
“So you met me before. I had forgotten. In what form did I appear?”
She had to clutch herself to keep from vomiting. “You were a skeleton with lighted bones, dancing in a storm.”
“Oh, yes. That was clever, that was. Were you impressed?”
“Sir,” she said, “I think you are a very bad wizard.”
“And you,” he answered, stung, “are only a caricature of a witch.”
“Wait,” she called as he headed away through the panel, “wait, please. How will I receive your answer?”
“I will send a messenger to you before the year is out,” he said. The panel slammed tightly behind him.
She fell to her knees, her forehead dropping almost to the floor. At her sides her fists clenched. She had no intention of surrendering the Grimmerie to such a monster, ever. If need be she would die to keep it out of his hands. But could she arrange a deception so that he would surrender Nor to her first?
She left a few days later, first making sure that her father was not to be turned out of his room in Colwen Grounds. He did not want to join her in the Vinkus; he was too old to make the journey. Besides, he thought that Shell would come back sooner or later looking for him. The Witch knew that Frex wouldn’t live long, grieving so for Nessarose. She tried to put away her anger at him when she said good-bye for what she suspected was the last time.
As she strode through the forecourt of Colwen Grounds, she crossed paths once again with Glinda. But both women averted their eyes and hurried their feet along their opposing ways. For the Witch, the sky was a huge boulder pressing down on her. For Glinda it was much the same. But Glinda wheeled about, and cried out, “Oh Elphie!”
The Witch did not turn. They never saw each other again.
5
She knew that she couldn’t afford the time to mount a full-scale chase against this Dorothy. Glinda ought to be hiring accomplices to track those shoes down; it was the least she could do, with her money and her connections. Still, the Witch stopped here and there along the Yellow Brick Road, and asked those taking an afternoon tipple at a roadside public house if they had seen a foreign girl in blue and white checks, walking with a small dog. There was some animated discussion as the patrons of the pub struggled to decide whether the green Witch intended the child harm—apparently the child had that rare skill of enchanting strangers—but when they had satisfied themselves that no harm was likely, they responded. Dorothy had come through a few days ago, and it was said that she had spent the night with someone a mile or two down the road, before continuing on. “The well-kept house with the yellow domed roof,” they said, “and the minaret-chimney. You can’t miss it.”
The Witch found it, and she found Boq on a bench in the yard, dandling a baby on his knee.
“You!” he said. “I know why you’re here! Milla, look, who’s here, come quickly! It’s Miss Elphaba, from Crage Hall! In the flesh!”
Milla came, a couple of naked children clutching her apron strings. Flushed from laundry, she lifted her straggling hair out of her eyes and said, “Oh my, and we forgot to dress in our finery today. Look who’s come to laugh at us in our rustic state.”
“Isn’t she something!” said Boq fondly.
Milla had kept her figure, though there were four or five offspring in evidence, and no doubt more out of sight. Boq had gone barrel-chested, and his fine spiky hair had grown prematurely silver, giving him a dignity he had never had as an undergraduate. “We heard about your sister’s death, Elphie,” he said, “and we sent our condolences to your father. We didn’t know where y
ou were. We heard you had come here following Nessie’s ascension to governor of Munchkinland, but we didn’t know where you went back to when you left. It’s good to see you again.”
The sourness that she had felt over Glinda’s betrayal was ameliorated by Boq’s common courtesy and direct speech. She had always liked him, for his passion and for his sense. “You are a sight, you are,” she said.
“Rikla, get up off that stool and let our guest have a seat,” said Milla to one of the children. “And Yellowgage, run to Uncle’s and borrow some rice and onions and yogurt. Hurry now, so I can start a meal.”
“I won’t be staying, Milla, I’m in a hurry,” said the Witch. “Yellowgage, don’t bother. I’d love to spend some time, and catch up on all your news, but I’m trying to locate this girl stranger, who passed by here, someone said, and stayed a night or two.”
Boq shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well, she did that, Elphie. What do you want with her?”
“I want my sister’s shoes. They belong to me.”
Boq seemed as surprised as Glinda had. “You weren’t ever into fancy trappings like society shoes,” he said.
“Yes, well, perhaps I’m about to make my belated debut in Emerald City society at last, and have a coming-out ball.” But she was being tart with Boq, and didn’t want that. “It’s a personal matter, Boq; I want the shoes. My father made them and they’re mine now, and Glinda gave them to this girl without my permission. And woe betide Munchkinland if they fall into the Wizard’s hands. What is she like, this Dorothy?”
“We adored her,” he said. “Plain and straightforward as mustard seed. She shouldn’t have any problems, although it’s a long walk for a child, from here to the Emerald City. But all who see her are bound to help her, I’d say. We sat up till the moon rose, chatting about her home, and Oz, and what she might expect on the road. She hasn’t traveled widely before this.”
The Wicked Years Complete Collection Page 42