The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  Out of Oz begins a few months after the close of A Lion Among Men.

  Charting the Wicked Years Chronologically

  “Oh, as to time, well, no one in Oz ticks off tocks very systematically.” Each dot or upstroke represents a year … more or less.

  WICKED

  OUT OF OZ

  The story begins six months after the end of A LION AMONG MEN.

  Liir is about 30; Rain is 7 or 8, give or take.

  Maps

  THE CITY OF SHIZ, GILLIKIN

  THE EMERALD CITY

  Significant Families of Oz

  Key

  = marriage (~) romance sans wedlock

  THE HOUSE OF OZMA

  —The Emerald City—

  THE THROPPS OF MUNCHKINLAND

  —Colwen Grounds in Munchkinland—

  THE UPLANDS OF GILLIKIN

  —Frottica in northwest Gillikin—

  THE TIGELAARS, ARJIKI CHIEFTAINS OF THE VINKUS

  —Kiamo Ko on the slopes of Knobblehead Pike, the Great Kells of the Vinkus—

  A Brief Outline of the Throne Ministers of Oz

  Augmented with notes about selected incidents of interest to students of modern history.

  THE OZMA YEARS

  • The matrilineal House of Ozma established.

  The Ozma line descends from a Gillikinese clan. The Ozma line claims legitimacy through a purported divine relationship with Lurlina, fabled creatrix of Oz. Depending on the argument, historians recognize between forty and fifty legitimate Ozmas and their regents.

  • The last Ozma, Ozma Tippetarius, is born of Ozma the Bilious.

  Ozma the Bilious expires through an accident involving rat poisoning in the risotto. Her consort, Pastorius, becomes Ozma Regent during the minority of Ozma Tippetarius.

  • Pastorius rules over central Oz.

  The Ozma Regent renames the hamlet known as Nubbly Meadows, near the ancient burial ground of Open Tombs, as the Emerald City (EC). Declares the EC as the capital of united Oz.

  • The Great Drought begins.

  • By balloon, Oscar Zoroaster Diggs arrives in the Emerald City.

  Diggs successfully mounts a Palace coup d’état. Pastorius is murdered, and the infant Ozma Tippetarius disappears. She is presumed slain, perhaps in Southstairs Prison (built over the Open Tombs), though an evergreen rumor claims she lies enchanted in a cave awaiting her return at Oz’s darkest hour. Diggs becomes known as the Wizard of Oz.

  THE WIZARDIC YEARS

  • The Emerald City renovation is completed.

  • The Wizard of Oz orders construction of the Yellow Brick Road.

  This serves as a highway for the armies of the EC and aids in the collection of local taxes from previously independent populations, especially in Quadling Country and on the eastern flanks of the Great Kells of the Vinkus.

  • Animal Adverse laws enacted. (The “Animal Courtesy” acts.)

  Social unrest deriving from the Great Drought promotes an atmosphere of scapegoating and hysterical patriotism.

  • Munchkinland secedes from Loyal Oz.

  Under the rule of Nessarose Thropp, Eminence of Munchkinland, the secession of the Free State of Munchkinland is conducted with a minimum of bloodshed. The “breadbasket of Oz” maintains an uneasy trade relationship with Loyal Oz.

  • Nessarose Thropp dies.

  The arrival in Oz of a visitor, a Dorothy Gale of Canzizz (sometimes transcribed as “Canzuss” or “Kanziz”), results in the death of the Eminence. Though rumor suggests her sister, Elphaba Thropp, will return to Munchkinland to mount a more aggressive campaign against the EC than Nessarose ever did, such predictions prove baseless.

  • Elphaba Thropp is vanquished.

  The so-called Wicked Witch of the West, one-time agitator, now recluse, is subdued by the powerful Dorothy Gale.

  • The Wizard of Oz abdicates the throne.

  The Wizard has held power for almost forty years. The causes of his departure remain a matter of speculation.

  THE TWIN INTERREGNUMS

  • Lady Glinda Chuffrey, neé Upland, is briefly installed as Throne Minister.

  The Animal Adverse laws are revoked, to little effect; Animals remain skeptical of their chances of being reintegrated into human society in Oz. Many refuse to return to Loyal Oz from Munchkinland, where they have taken refuge.

  • The Scarecrow replaces Glinda as Throne Minister.

  The Scarecrow, a figure of uncertain provenance, is often assumed to have been installed as Throne Minister by Palace apparatchiks sympathetic to Shell Thropp, the youngest of the three Thropp siblings. The Scarecrow proves a weak figurehead—a straw man, figuratively as well as literally—though his elevation allows Shell Thropp to avoid having to challenge the popular Lady Glinda for the leadership. The Scarecrow’s whereabouts following the end of his abbreviated realm are never revealed.

  Some historians hold that the Scarecrow serving as Throne Minister is not the same Scarecrow who befriended Dorothy, though this assertion is based on circumstantial evidence.

  THE EMPEROR APOSTLE

  • Shell Thropp installs himself as Throne Minister of Oz.

  Shell claims rights of ascendancy through an adroit manipulation of Palace power brokers. He styles himself an “Emperor Apostle” by dint of formidable piety and sacred election.

  In retaliation for a sortie into Loyal Oz by a band of Munchkinlander guerrillas, Shell authorizes the invasion of Munchkinland for the purpose of appropriating Restwater, Oz’s biggest lake.

  PROLOGUE

  Out of Oz

  It would take Dorothy Gale and her relatives three days to reach the mountains by train from Kansas, the conductor told them.

  No matter what the schoolteacher had said about Galileo, Copernicus, and those other spoilsports, any cockamamie theory that the world was round remained refuted by the geometrical instrument of a rattling train applied to the spare facts of a prairie. Dorothy watched eagles and hawks careering too high to cast shadows, she watched the returning larks and bluebirds, and she wondered what they knew about the shape of the world, and if they would ever tell her.

  Then the Rockies began to ice up along the spring horizon beyond the shoot-’em-up town of Denver. Uncle Henry had never seen such a sight. He declared himself bewilligered at their height. “They surely do remind me of the Great Kells of Oz,” agreed Dorothy, “though the Kells looked less bossy, somehow.” She tried to ignore the glance Uncle Henry shared with Aunt Em.

  Some of the passes being snowed over, even in early April, the train made slower progress than the timetable had promised. Aunt Em fretted that their hotel room would be given away. Uncle Henry replied with an attempt at savoir faire. “I’ll wire ahead at the next opportunity, Em. Hush yourself and enjoy the nation.”

  What a charade, that they were accustomed to taking fancified holidays. They had little extra money for emergencies, Dorothy knew. They were spending their savings.

  The train chuffed along valleys noisy with rushing waters, inched across trestles as if testing them for purchase. It lollygagged up slopes. One cloudy afternoon it maneuvered through so many switchbacks that the travelers lost all notion of east and west. In her seat, Dorothy hummed a little. Once she thought she saw a castle on a ridge, but it was only a tricky rock formation.

  “But I never before saw a rock that looked like a castle,” said Aunt Em brightly.

  You never saw a castle, thought Dorothy, and tried not to be disappointed.

  They worried their way through Nevada and its brownish springtime and at last came down into Californ-eye-ay through a napland of orchards and vineyards. When the train paused outside Sacramento to take on tinder, Dorothy saw a white peacock strutting along next to the tracks like a general surveying his troops. It paused at her window and fanned out its impossible stitchery. She could have sworn it was a White Peacock and that it would speak. But Toto began to yap out the open window, and the Bird kept its own counsel.

  Finally the
train shrugged and chuffed into San Francisco, a city so big and filthy and confounding that Uncle Henry dared to murmur, “This beats your old Emerald City, I’ll warrant.”

  “Henry,” said his wife. “Pursed lips are kind lips.”

  They found their hotel. The clerk was nice enough, a clean young man whose lips weren’t so much pursed as rubied. He forgave their delay but could no longer supply them with a room only one flight up, as they’d been promised. Aunt Em refused to try Mr. Otis’s hydraulic elevator so they had to climb five flights. They carried their own bags to avoid having to tip.

  That night they ate Kaiser rolls they’d bought at the train station. All the next day they stayed in the hotel’s penitentially severe room, as Aunt Em recovered from the taxation to her nerves caused by the swaying of railway cars. She could not tolerate being left alone in a hotel chamber on their first day, not when it felt as if the whole building was rocking and bucking as the train had done.

  Dorothy was eager to go and see what she could see, but they wouldn’t let her walk out alone. “A city is not a prairie,” Aunt Em proclaimed through the damp washcloth laid from forehead to chin. “No place for a compromised girl without a scrap of city wits.”

  The spring air wafting through the open window next morning revived Aunt Em. All these flights up, it smelled of lilacs and hair oil and horse manure and hot sourdough loaves. Encouraged, the flatlanders ventured outdoors. Dorothy carried Toto in a wicker basket, for old times’ sake. They strolled up to the carriage entrance of the famous Palace Hotel and pretended they were waiting for a friend so they could catch a glimpse of sinful excess. What an accomplished offhand manner they showed, sneaking sideways glances through the open doors at the potted ferns, the swags of rust-red velvet drapery, the polished doorknobs. Also the glinting necklaces and earrings and cuff links, and gentlemen’s shirts starched so clean it hurt the eye to look. “Smart enough,” said Aunt Em, “for suchlike who feel the need to preen in public.” She was agog and dismissive at once, thought Dorothy, a considerable achievement for a plain-minded woman.

  “The Palace Hotel is all very well,” said Dorothy at lunch—a frankfurter and a sumptuous orange from a stall near Union Square—“but the Palace of the Emperor in the Emerald City is just as grand—”

  “I shall be ill.” Aunt Em, going pale. “I shall be ill, Dorothy, if after all we have mortgaged on this expedition you insist on seeing San Francisco by comparing it to some imagined otherworld. I shall be quite, quite ill.”

  “I mean nothing by it,” said Dorothy. “Please, I’ll be still. It’s true I’ve never seen anything like most of this.”

  “The world is wonderful enough without your having to invent an alternative,” said Uncle Henry. A tired man by now, not a well man either, and stretched to put things baldly while there was time. “Who is going to take you in marriage, Dorothy, if you’ve already given yourself over to delusions and visions?”

  “Snares of the wicked one.” Aunt Em, spitting an orange seed into the street. “We have been kind, Dorothy, and we have been patient. We have sat silent and we have spoken out. You must put the corrupting nightmare of Oz behind you. Close it behind a door and never speak of it again. Or you will find yourself locked within it. Alone. We aren’t going to live forever, and you must learn to manage in the real world.”

  “I should imagine I’m too young to be thinking of marriage.”

  “You are already sixteen,” snapped her aunt. “I was married at seventeen.”

  Uncle Henry’s eyes glinted merrily and he mouthed across his wife’s head at Dorothy: Too young.

  Dorothy knew they had her best interests at heart. And it was true that since her delivery from Oz six years ago, she had proved a rare creature, a freak of nature. Her uncle and aunt didn’t know what to make of her. When she had appeared on the horizon, crossing the prairie by foot—shoeless but clutching Toto—long enough after Uncle Henry and Aunt Em’s home had been carried away that they’d built themselves a replacement—her return was reckoned a statistical impossibility. Who rides the winds in a twister and lives to tell about it? Though Kansans set store on the notion of revelation, they are skeptical when asked to accept any whole-cloth gospel not measurable by brass tacks they’ve walloped into the dry goods counter themselves. So upon her return, Dorothy had been greeted not as a ghost or an angel, neither blessed by the Lord nor saved by a secret pact she must have made with the Evil One. Just tetched, concluded the good folks of the district. Tetched in the big fat head.

  The local schoolchildren who had often before given Dorothy a wide berth now made irrevocable their policy of shunning her. They were unanimous but wordless about it. They were after all Christians.

  She’d learned to keep Oz to herself, more or less; of course things slipped out. But she didn’t want to be figured as peculiar. She’d taken up singing on the way home from the schoolhouse as a way to disguise the fact that no one would walk with her. And now that she was done with school, it seemed there were no neighbors who might tolerate her company long enough to find her marriageable. So Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were making this last-ditch effort to prove that the workaday world of the Lord God Almighty was plenty rich and wonderful enough to satisfy Dorothy’s curiosity for marvels. She didn’t need to keep inventing impossible nonsense. She keeps on yammering about that fever dream of Oz and she’ll be an old spinster with no one to warble to but the bones of Toto.

  They rode cable cars. “Nothing like these in all of Oz!” said Dorothy as the cars bit their way upslope, tooth by tooth, and then plunged down.

  They went to the Fisherman’s Wharf. Dorothy had never seen the ocean before; nor had Uncle Henry or Aunt Em. The man who sold them hanks of fried fish wrapped in twists of newspaper remarked that this wasn’t the ocean, just the bay. To see the ocean they’d need to go farther west, to the Presidio, or to Golden Gate Park.

  For its prettier name, they headed to Golden Gate Park. A policeman told them that when the long swell of greenery was being laid out, the city hadn’t yet expanded west past Divisadero Street, and anything beyond had been known by squatters and locals as the Outside Lands. “Oh?” said Dorothy, with brightening interest.

  “That’s where you’ll find the ocean.”

  They made their way to the edge of the continent first by carriage and then on foot, but the world’s edge proved disappointingly muffled in fog. The ocean was a sham. They could see no farther out into the supposed Pacific Ocean than they’d been able to look across the San Francisco Bay. And it was colder, a stiff wind tossing up briny air. The gulls keened, biblical prophets practicing jeremiad, knowing more than they would let on. Aunt Em caught a sniffle, so they couldn’t stay and wait to see if the fog would lift. The clammy saltiness disagreed with her—and she with it, she did declare.

  That night, as Aunt Em was repairing to her bed, Uncle Henry wheedled from his wife a permission to take Dorothy out on the town. He hired a trap to bring Dorothy into a district called Chinatown. Dorothy wanted so badly to tell Uncle Henry that this is what it felt like to be in Oz—this otherness, this weird but convincing reality—that she bit a bruise in the side of her mouth, trying not to speak. Toto looked wary, as if the residents on doorsills were sizing him up to see how many Chinese relatives he might feed.

  After a number of false starts, Uncle Henry located a restaurant where other God-fearing white people seemed comfortable entering, and a few were even safely leaving, which was a good sign. So they went inside.

  A staid woman at a counter nodded at them. Her unmoving features looked carved in beef aspic. When she slipped off her stool to show Henry to a table, Dorothy saw that she was tiny. Tiny and stout and wrapped round with shiny red silk. She only came up to Dorothy’s lowest rib. To prevent her from saying A Munchkin! Uncle Henry said to Dorothy, with his eyes, No.

  They ate a spicy, peculiar meal, very wet, full of moist grit. They wouldn’t know how to describe any of it to Aunt Em when they went back, and they were gla
d she wasn’t there. She would have swooned with the mystery of it. They liked it, though Uncle Henry chewed with the front of his lips clenched and the sides puckered open for air in case he changed his mind midbite.

  “Where are these people from? Why are they here?” asked Dorothy in a whisper, pushing a chopstick into her basket so Toto could have something to gnaw.

  “They’re furriners from China, which is across the world,” said Uncle Henry. “They came to build the railroad that we traveled on, and they stayed to open laundries and restaurants.”

  “Why didn’t they ever come to Kansas?”

  “They must be too smart.”

  They both laughed at this, turning red. Dorothy could see that Uncle Henry loved her. It wasn’t his fault she seemed out of her mind.

  “Uncle Henry,” said Dorothy before they had finished the grassy tea, “I know you’ve nearly poorhoused yourself to bring me here. I know why you and Aunt Em have done it. You want to show me the world and distract me with reality. It’s a good strategy and a mighty sound ambition. I shall try to repay you for your kindness to me by keeping my mouth shut about Oz.”

  “Your sainted Aunt Em chooses to keep mum about it, Dorothy, but she knows you’ve had an experience few can match. However you managed to survive from the time the twister snatched our house away until the time you returned from the wilderness—whatever you scrabbled to find and eat that might have caused this weakness in your head—you nonetheless did manage. No one back home expected we’d ever find your corpse, let alone meet up again with your cheery optimistic self. You’re some pioneer, Dorothy. Every minute of your life is its own real miracle. Don’t deny it by fastening upon the temptation of some tomfoolery.”