The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “The thorns will scrape your scalp and you’ll bleed into the dessert.”

  “It could only help. I’m ready to descend. Will you carry my parasol?”

  “You’ve not been paying attention, Mum. We’re not allowed out of the house anymore.”

  “No? I’ll take it up with Traper if the moment arrives. Don’t wait up, Miss Murth. I can see myself to bed.”

  “I’m sure you can.” Miss Murth pursed her lips so hard they looked broken.

  The General arrived on time in a suit of ivory sartorials Glinda hadn’t seen before. Crimson braid. He was as vain as she; he’d checked the colors of the prettibells, or he’d had Zackers check. She felt eclipsed in her ash satin with the double-backed sparstitch in chrome and salmon.

  Zackers had done the job as Puggles had directed. The table was laid correctly enough, and an occasional table had been arranged to one side for the parking of domed serving dishes and beakers of wine. Next to it, eyes trained forward, stood Zackers. He was all in black like a maître d’ in a midrange lunchery in Bankers’ Court in Shiz. His pimples matched the roses nicely too.

  He pulled out the chairs and poured the wine. He offered Lady Glinda a fan, as the humidity had risen during the day and there was no breeze off the water. She felt more gluey than dewy after her afternoon imprisoned in the furnace of ovens and hobs. But Cherrystone looked sticky, too, which was some comfort.

  Betraying their convention, she plunged into a discussion of government policy. “Traper. With my staff ever more circumscribed—we’ll get to that—I feel the need of understanding the larger picture. I’ve been thinking about this campaign of the Emperor to annex Restwater for Loyal Oz. It was being bruited about even during the Wizard’s time, don’t deny it, and my own ministers used to try to get me to consider military action. But in the years since I left off being Throne Minister—”

  “—and took up cooking. Delicious,” he muttered, through a mouthful of penance. She knew it. The gum-rubber little cutlets lay drowned in puddles of grainy sauce that tasted, somehow, violent.

  “—I have rather lost the thread of the rationale of this conquest. The western Vinkus isn’t arable due to the aridity of the plains, I know, and the slope of the Great Kells in the Eastern Vinkus makes plowing impossible. Quadling Country is a stew of mud and marshgrass. My own dear Gillikin Country—though forested, lightly hilled, with such a soft climate—features soil more conducive to manufacturing than to farming. So much iron in it. But three-quarters of the grain we all require annually grows in Munchkinland. Why would Loyal Oz want to annex Restwater? Doesn’t it threaten the agricultural base of the source of Oz’s food supply? What if Munchkinland embargoes its sale of wheat and other crops? The EC would starve. And the rich farmers of Munchkinland might see their bank balances dip, but they wouldn’t go hungry. They have what they need. They can hold out.”

  “Glinda, you’re the sweetest peach in the fruit bowl, but I don’t believe you understand the aquifers in Oz and their effect on riparian systems.” Cherrystone took several lettuce leaves with his fingers and dumped them on the tablecloth. He mounded up one leaf higher than the other. “Look. The Great Kells of the Vinkus over here, right? And the lower Madeleines over here. Emerald City between them.” (He put a radish, with its single-fringe dome, in the middle.) “And the three great rivers? Let’s see.” Several of the longer green beans. “The Vinkus, like so. The Gillikin River. Munchkin River. More or less. Do you see?”

  “Yes, and that little woggle-bug on the radish is the emperor of all it can survey. Traper, I did attend primary school.” Did his knee touch hers under the table? In the act of leaning forward as if captivated, she grazed his knee glancingly and then shifted her leg away, just in case. “Go on.”

  “The Gillikin River, though long, is shallow. The river water leaches easily into the landscape. Gillikin is the Oz of which the poet speaks—‘land of green abandon, land of endless leaf.’ The river makes Gillikin into the kind of pretty picture of Oz that I expect to think of on my deathbed.”

  “How absurd. I shall be thinking of my portfolio, and if I’ve adequately kept dividends from grasping hands. Go on.”

  “The Munchkin River is the longest, but the Munchkins have hundreds of years of experience in irrigation by canal and aqueduct. You’ve seen them?”

  “Of course I have. Don’t patronize me. Cross-ditching, they call it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Score for her. “The point is, Munchkinlanders use their water wisely—upstream. They bleed it all along its length. So the Munchkin River, like the Gillikin, gives little more than lip service to Restwater as it debouches therein. And the EC to the north long ago overwhelmed the United Gillikin Canal Company’s capacity to supply it. Here’s my main point, Glinda. Your lovely lake called Restwater is replenished daily by the water that courses down from the snowy peaks and wintry ice packs of the Great Kells. Every single peak of which looms solidly in Loyal Oz. The shortest but the healthiest, the fiercest, the wettest of the rivers of Oz is the Vinkus. And as it runs between banks of hard fleckstone ten thousand years old, it doesn’t leach into and make fertile the parched land. Indeed, the flat through which it passes is known as the Disappointments. The land is poor and affords farmers little more than a sullen, resentful crop of whatever is planted.”

  “I always thought the Disappointments was the name of some sort of old-age hostelry.”

  He wasn’t amused. “No, the mighty Vinkus River, all that runoff of the Great Kells, pours without subtraction into Restwater. I’m sure you’ve circumnavigated this broad lake and seen the Vinkus tumbling over those rounded stones—the Giant’s Toes, they call it—delivering Oz’s best water to the Free State of Munchkinland. Our enemy.”

  He picked up the Vinkus River and took a chomp. “We have every reason to claim Restwater. For one thing, the Munchkins don’t use it for their farming. For another, the water in it is ours. Damn, this is a good meal, Glinda. You’re going to qualify as a chef before I get your parlor maid to crack the code of the written language, I fear.”

  “I meant to ask. How is she doing?”

  “She’s a spiky little thing, she is. I don’t know how much she has upstairs, frankly. She’s too quiet for me to guess. But she does attend. Maybe it’s just lack of other diversion.”

  “Well, she used to be allowed to run in the meadows leading up to the Pine Barrens when she was released from duties. You’ve cut down the range of all of us, Traper.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to be cutting it some more.”

  “Have another cutlet. How do you like the wine?”

  “I’m going to have to move a few men into part of your suite.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. I’m afraid they’re up there shifting furniture as we speak.”

  “Traper. Really. We can’t tolerate this abuse. Will you have me snuggling in the same bed with Puggles and Miss Murth?”

  “You could release one of them. You may have to.”

  “You haven’t tried the mashed bickory root.”

  He took a long sip of his wine. “I wish we didn’t have to fuss over this, Glinda. It isn’t to my liking, you know. The mission has other ambitions that take priority over mine and yours. But I had accepted the assignment hoping that our paths might cross, and in an agreeable way.”

  “You have a wife and children.”

  “Grown children,” he said.

  As if that made a difference. But then how would she know? “By crowding me into tenement conditions in my own home, you expect to win my affection? I fear the bickory root is overmashed, by the way; I’d avoid it. Or oversomething.”

  “Oversalted,” he proposed. “Well, winning hearts comes second. My commission from the Emperor comes first, and I’m required to carry out his instructions completely.”

  “How is Shell, anyway? And who is he, these days. Do you know, I’ve rarely met him? Elphaba didn’t mention him much when we were together at Shiz—he�
�s four or five years her junior, I believe, and who remembers their families when they go up to college? As a former Throne Minister I did attend his installation, as was only fitting. But Chuffrey had a spoiled spleen or something, and I had to rush off, so in fact we didn’t speak. Shell hasn’t been one to come seeking advice of former Throne Ministers. Doesn’t so much as send me a greeting card at Lurlinemas.”

  “Oh, he’s a deeply devout unionist. Lurlinism and paganism are as one to him. Do you know there’s almost no public celebration of Lurlinemas in the Emerald City anymore?”

  “Another reason to keep to my country villa. Is the wine too warm?”

  “Ah, it’s nice.” He drained his glass. “But yes, it’s a little warm.”

  “Would you like some ice in your refill?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  She got up. “Zackers, allow me. And if you don’t mind, I have some private business with the General. If you would repair to the portico, I’ll signal when we need you.”

  Zackers stood his ground. “I don’t think I can see you from there, Lady Glinda. The rosebushes are too high.”

  “I know, aren’t they wonderful? A banner year for roses.”

  She raised an eyebrow at Cherrystone, who dismissed Zackers with a flutter of fingers. “And how are your prettibells faring in this lush warm weather?” the General continued.

  Glinda almost replied, My what? but she caught herself. “Goodness, what with entertaining myself through cookery education, I have hardly a moment to check on them. There are some over there in the weeds. Aren’t they special.”

  “You cook as if by magic,” he said.

  “Don’t I wish.” She reached for the wine, a rather smoothly turned-over mountain antimerguese imported from the Ugubezi. “I picked up all my best recipes through my sisters in séance.”

  “You’re joking.”

  She smiled over her shoulder. A roll of evening thunder unsettled itself some distance away. She made slow work of pouring the wine, and her whisper was so low she could hardly hear herself. “Traversa psammyad, unicular artica articasta,” she muttered.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Reciting ingredients in my head, that’s how I train myself. How do you manage to teach my girl anything? She’s too silent to rattle off her alphabet.” Traversa psammyad, unicular artica articasta. She circled her palm over the pale wine in the goblet. Had she ever learned anything from Miss Grayling back in Shiz?

  Cherrystone mused aloud. “I wonder why the girl wants to learn to read. A domestic won’t have any prospects. Particularly as she has no family. Is that what I understand?”

  She squared her shoulders. Traversa psammyad…

  A little ice forming a coin on the surface of the wine. She swirled faster. The ice packed itself into a white lump, split in two. Two white lumps a little larger than lumps of sugar.

  “Your wine, sir.” She handed it to him as if she were the domestic. She was so proud of herself she was glowing. Cherrystone misread the expression.

  “Either you’ve slipped a love potion in here, or you’ve poisoned it.”

  “Neither. And to show you, I’ll sip myself. To your health.” Scandalously she took a sip of the newly chilled wine. Heavenly. She returned him the glass and she lowered her gaze to her plate. The food was heinous, mushy and parched by turns. But the ice was perfect. She had learned to cook.

  At the end of the meal, most of the crawberry fool having been abandonded in its dishes, Cherrystone escorted her through the rose garden and around the corner of the south porch. There they discovered Puggles in a broken heap on the gravel. He seemed to be dead.

  19.

  But he wasn’t dead. After Zackers and a few others had carried him into the reception room, where men on cots had leapt up to provide him a bed, Glinda saw that he was still breathing. “You have a physician among your men,” she said to Cherrystone. “If not, there’s a doctor in Haventhur who will come to Mockbeggar, assuming you promise her safe passage here and back again. Though I hardly know if I can rely on your word.”

  “I assure you, Lady Glinda, whatever happened will prove to have been an accident.” In front of his men he returned to formality in addressing her. But she hardly cared about that now. She put her hand on Puggles’s forehead as if feeling a servant were part of her routine. She had no idea what to think about how his forehead felt, though. It felt like a parsnip, which until this week she had never felt, either.

  She refused an escort upstairs and took her leave of Cherrystone without ceremony. The evening had ended badly—horribly, for poor Puggles—but not without some small reward. She had used a spell to draw winter upon the water. A baby step, to be sure. But that wine had been nicely chilled by her work.

  Her step hastened as she realized that if men had been in her private chambers rearranging her furniture, someone might have removed the books from her shelves. Luckily, soldiers seemed uninterested in books. The little library had been lifted intact and installed in her bedroom.

  Miss Murth and Rain were huddled together on a settee. Miss Murth’s face had been wet but was now dry as if permanently. Her grim strength had an aspect of fleckstone about it.

  “This is a furniture warehouse,” said Glinda. One could get about the room by climbing on top of the wardrobe, dressers, chairs. A cat would love this room, leap up and never descend again. But there was hardly enough floor space to do her daily kick-ups to keep her bottom pert. “We can’t live like this. Murthy, what happened?”

  “You weren’t gone half an hour, Lady Glinda, before they beefed their way through the door. General’s orders, they said. They locked us in this room till they’d cleared out. Puggles tried to stop them, but they’d have none of it. There were almost a dozen of them, and all young men, showing no respect for a man of his age. They took him up the stairs to the parapet to get him out of the way. I don’t know what happened next. They told me he broke away and fell over the balustrade. Dreadful liars, the lot of them. What will become of us?”

  “You will have to sleep on the settee. Rain, can you settle down?”

  But Rain had become a cat. She had climbed up a chest of drawers and crossed on top of the escritoire and scrabbled aboard the wardrobe. “I can sleep up here!” she crowed. For her, this was fun. Well, Glinda thought, perhaps it felt to her like having a family. Which is less fun than is generally acknowledged in the popular press.

  “You’ll do no such thing. Get down from there. You’ll be the next one to bash your skull.”

  Murth fussed. “Oh, Mum, is that what happened to Puggles?”

  “He’s alive, at least he was when I left him. I don’t know his condition. I think they’re sending for Dame Doctor Vutters.”

  Rain said, “Did your supper get all et up?”

  “How kind of you to remember.” Under the circumstances, Glinda was touched. “It was as well received as I might have hoped for.”

  Murth set her straight. “She means, is there any left. We didn’t get a meal, what with the invasion of the furniture snatchers.”

  “I’ll see to it at once.” The queen of the kitchen now, she sallied forth from her room. But in her large salon she was stopped by four soldiers in dress habillard. They carried rapiers, ceremonial but sharp. None of them was Zackers.

  “Curfew, Lady Glinda,” said one. “Apologies from the General.”

  “But I’m peckish. I’m off to collect myself a little pick-me-up.”

  “We’re here to be of service.”

  “Nonsense. What, are you going to remove the night soil as well? Sing us to sleep if we have a bad dream? Boys. Out of my way.”

  “Orders, Lady Glinda. We’ll dispatch to the commissary for what you need. Will bread and cheese do?”

  “Rye brisks. And milk. I have a child, don’t you know.” And how odd to make that statement. “I have a lady companion as well. So a bottle of savorsuckle brandy while you’re at it.”

  Returning to her room, she fel
t defeated. When the door closed behind her, Rain and Miss Murth glanced up with eyes like sunken puddings. (For the rest of Glinda’s life, would everything look like spoiled food? A sad commentary.) She had nothing to say. But thunder outside the house, nearer this time, said it for her. “Let’s open the curtains and raise a window. The air is stuffy in here with the three of us. At least two of us ought to have bathed more recently, had we known we’d be lodging together.”

  She directed Miss Murth to the sash, and in doing so realized that they’d been crowded into a room with windows that looked only in one direction—east. Glinda had always preferred sleeping in a room served by the sunrise, but now that she was exiled from other chambers, she had no view of the front gardens, and none of Restwater except the distances toward Haugaard’s Keep. A flotilla sailing in from the Gillikin River and western Restwater could be approaching the boathouses and she’d never see them till they passed—or arrived.

  “Thunder, but no sign of rain,” said Miss Murth. “The night is cloudless.”

  “This is what fun is like,” said Rain, almost to herself.

  “Get in your nightdress,” snapped Glinda.

  “It’s in my trunk. Up in the attics, where I sleeps.”

  “You’ll have to borrow something of mine. Miss Murth, find her a camisole. Something.”

  After a light supper that was rather like a picnic—they all sat on Glinda’s bed and got crumbs everywhere—they made their good nights and Miss Murth blew out the candle.

  “Miss Murth. Are there evening prayers for a child?”

  “Lady Glinda,” said Murthy through the dark, “you never assigned me the task of raising this child. Give her whatever childhood prayers you remember. My own prayers are private ones.”

  “I know, you’re praying for my immediate death, by my own hand, food poisoning myself. Very well. Rain, here is what we said in the Pertha Hills, when my mother would tuck me in.”