The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

The memory, like ice forming, was slow to arrive. In the end, Glinda said,

  Sweet and sure the lilacs bloom,

  And the heather, and the broom.

  Every mouse and mole rejoices

  When the sparrows raise their voices.

  “That’s not a prayer, that’s a nursery rhyme, and you’ve got it all wrong,” snapped Murthy.

  “God bless us, every one. Except you,” said Glinda.

  20.

  The weather remained clear but stifling. Glinda and Miss Murth were allowed to sit in the parlor daily and play cards in the presence of four armed men. Rain was called once or twice for her lessons.

  “Can you read enough to find out what’s happening?” Glinda whispered before Rain left. “Snoop a bit?”

  Rain rolled her eyes and didn’t answer.

  On the third night of the intolerable situation, Rain waited until lights were out. Then she interrupted Glinda’s continuing attempt at devotional doggerel by saying, “The teaching man was called away while we was doing our letter writing and no one else was in the room. Somefin was happening so I creeped to the door and then snucked out. I went round by the barns. No one saw me.”

  “Entirely too dangerous. Don’t do that again or I’ll slap you. What did you see?”

  “That weren’t no thunder we hear at nights. It’s dragons in the dairy barns up the slope.”

  Glinda sat straight up in the dark.

  “It’s true. They got dragons for them boats I think. I heard Cherrystone yelling at someone for treating one of ’em beasties wrong. The lad got his foot crushed and they had to cut it off. Dame Doctor Vutters is living there now, like us. In the shed with the mattocks and grub hoes and stuff. It’s her surgery.”

  “Dragons!” Miss Murth sounded as if she would have wept had she been less desiccated. “Lurline preserve us!”

  “They’re big as houses,” said the girl, “and they glint gold even in the shadows. But they stink and they spit and strike out like catses.” She pounced a forearm and made the cry of a shrike.

  Glinda plumped her pillows up in the dark. “It’s beginning to make sense. Why we’ve been crowded into a room that faces only east. And why they burned down the fields around here. They don’t want news of the dragons getting out to the Munchkinlanders.”

  “And why Cherrystone was so angry after that puppet show, with the dragon in the lake!” said Murth excitedly.

  “I thought you weren’t watching. You were supposed to be minding the girl.”

  “We peeked. So put us in prison.”

  “We’re already there.” Glinda bit her lip. “I assume they’re flying dragons—I’ve never seen a dragon, so I don’t know if there are other varieties. Do they have wings, Rain?”

  “Like great sloppy tents. When they stretches ’em, they goes to the ceilings of the barns! They disturb the pigeons, who poop on ’em. Then they eats the pigeons.”

  “Perhaps this makes sense of the vessel designs as well,” added Murth. “Those stumpy masts, and the odd twin prows. They may not be entirely sailboats, but boats to be pulled by dragons in harness. The dragon may slot between the double-breasted prow.”

  “How ingenious.”

  Glinda knew she had to get to the Grimmerie again, but she didn’t dare do it with Miss Murth hovering about. Rain was taciturn to the world, but Miss Murth might gabble if cornered. “Rain,” said Glinda, “I think we’d better cancel your reading lessons now. The point has been made. You are not incapable of learning your letters.”

  Rain’s mouth made an O. “But I’m nearly reading, real reading! Cherrystone keeps bringing me old papers and training me up on them, and I’m getting the hang of it.”

  It was as if the ice Glinda could form in a glass of wine had begun to cloud the blood in her veins. “What pages are those?”

  “I can’t say. Old magicks, I think, but I can’t get ’em yet.”

  So he knew who she was. Pure peril now and no mistake.

  “Not another word,” said Glinda, “it’s sleepytime. If you blather any more I shall subject you to more nursery verses.”

  The room fell silent, and soon Murth was snoring, and Rain’s breath had silenced to below the level of hearing. But Glinda did not sleep.

  The next day she requested an audience with Cherrystone. He didn’t reply until late in the day, and said he’d be up to see her at sunset. Through the intermediary, she asked for permission to allow Rain and Miss Murth to take the air in the herb garden—which she knew was sufficiently hidden from both barns and lakeside not to alarm the Menaciers—so that she and Cherrystone could have some privacy in her room. This he allowed, said his emissary.

  He arrived on time, looking more worn than before.

  “You’ve finally beaten my resistance,” she told him. “Here I am, General, entertaining you in all but the very bed in which I sleep.”

  “I apologize for the inconvenience.” He had grown more courtly and more distant. “How may I be of service?”

  “I need to know about Puggles.”

  He looked confused.

  “Po Understar. Puggles. My butler.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, he is hanging on. He’s recovered consciousness, somewhat, but not his language.”

  “What does Dame Doctor Vutters say?”

  “A broken spine.”

  And to think he might have left with the others had she not required a butler.

  “General, I would like to talk with the doctor, and to see the patient.”

  “I’ve dismissed the doctor. She’s done all that can be done, she says.”

  “Where is Puggles?”

  “He’s been made a chamber in a closet under one of the staircases.”

  Glinda stood and began to walk toward the door. Cherrystone stood and said, “I can’t allow this.”

  “Then stop me forcibly. You ought to enjoy that.” She brushed past him, angry, alert, sensitized to her earlobes and toes. He didn’t touch her.

  She swept past the Menaciers in the next room with their rapiers raised. “Gentlemen,” she said. Behind her, Cherrystone must be signaling that she be allowed to pass.

  She hadn’t known there was a cupboard under the west staircase. It reeked of rising damp. Mouse droppings dotted the unpainted floor. Puggles was swathed in a crude overshirt and his knees were exposed. He didn’t move to cover them when he saw her. He did see her—she was sure of that, by the tracking of his eyes—but he couldn’t move his hands. Or he no longer cared about whether he was exposing his knees to his superior.

  “Oh, Puggles,” she whispered. She sat right on his bed and took his fingers in hers. Clammy and lifeless, but not cold. “Can you tell me anything about what happened? Can you talk?”

  He blinked. The skin at his lower eyelids pouched, shadowy grey.

  “I know you were behaving in proper service. I shall see you are tended to as you deserve, to the best of my ability. I want you to know that.” She swallowed. “Po. Po Understar. Do you understand?”

  There was no way of knowing if he did. She sat there, stroking the top of his hand, and then left him. Her escort returned her to her room. At least she was alone for a moment, for Murth and Rain were still enjoying the herb garden. She should have gone to join them, but ten minutes of solitude was bliss itself.

  She took up the Grimmerie and hoped, with the success of her little exercise in ice generation, that it might relent and allow her access to other pages, other spells, but as usual it kept its own counsel. She wanted to throw it out the window, but knew better.

  After lunch, when Glinda was having a little lie-down with the shades drawn, Rain flapping a palmetto fan to keep the flies away and provide some breeze, a knock came at the door. One of the Menaciers handed Miss Murth a letter from Cherrystone to Lady Glinda. “I’ll look at it later, Murth,” said Glinda, and she drifted off into a troubled rest. For a moment, or ten, she was back in Shiz, darting up some alley of flowering quinces, racing Elphaba to the fountain at the back of
the quad. Elphaba was glowing with the effort—glowing emerald!—and Glinda, in her dream, was almost absent to herself, caught up in admiring her friend. It happened so seldom, vacating the prison of one’s limited apprehensions. Even dreams seemed ego-heavy, she thought as she was waking. But oh, to see Elphaba, even in dreams, is both reward and punishment, for it reminds me of my loss.

  “Where’s Murth? I mean Miss Murth?” she asked Rain.

  “Dunno.”

  Thunder came up—real thunder, not dragon cry—and the long delayed cloudburst pummeled the house. Rain leaped to help Glinda slam the windows closed. She hoped someone downstairs would remember to shutter the windows to protect the parquetry, but with Murth called away and Puggles incapacitated, the floor would probably be drenched and need refitting in the fall. Damn damn damn.

  They played cards. The rain continued.

  As long as Miss Murth was taking her time, they checked the Grimmerie. Again Rain could open it while Glinda could not, but as usual they could turn to no other page than the one that the Grimmerie seemed inclined to let them see.

  By teatime Glinda suffered the throes of a snit gunning to become a rage. “I am expected to do everything around here?” she said to Rain.

  “I’m a parrot,” said Rain from the top of the wardrobe. “Tweetle twee.”

  When the fellow arrived with afternoon tea, Glinda accosted him. “Where is Miss Murth? Find her and tell her to stop gallivanting. She can’t be outside; she’s not allowed. Furthermore, it’s bucketing barrels out there.” She paused. Perhaps Miss Murth was tending to Puggles. Was there a tenderness between them?

  No. Impossible. Not Murth. She wasn’t capable of that fine a feeling, and she wouldn’t inspire it in anyone else, either.

  “Is Miss Murth with Puggles?” she snapped.

  “I’m just doing your tea, Mum,” he said.

  “Are you all imbecilic? Is that a requirement of enlisted men? It’s Lady Glinda!” She was losing it, big time. “Get me Murth!”

  At sundown, when the rain had finally passed over and the heat returned as if the drenching had never happened, Zackers appeared. He had his cap twisted in his hands as if he was paying a social call.

  “What is it, Zackers?”

  “You asked about Murth, Mum, and the General doesn’t understand.”

  “What are you chattering about?”

  “The note that the General sent you just after lunch, Mum.”

  “There was a note,” said Rain helpfully, leaping from wardrobe to the bed like a demented bandit monkey. The bedclothes flew up. “Isn’t it still over there, under the what-chit?”

  A paper folded beneath the decanter of sherry. Glinda hurried to look.

  Lady Glinda,

  I regret the further inconvenience. In pursuance of your request to be allowed to name what member in your service might be released due to mounting pressures upon the household, I would like your recommendation. I would suggest the girl, as she must be of less service to you than your lady-in-waiting. I could use her somehow.

  Cordially,

  General Traper L. Cherrystone,

  Hx. Red., Advanced

  “This makes no sense to me. I did not receive it. I was napping.”

  Zackers looked distinctly uncomfortable. “The General acted upon your suggestion.”

  “I made no suggestion. I was napping, I tell you.”

  He handed her a folded page of her own stationery.

  General:

  Under the circumstances, I shall release Miss Murth.

  Lady Glinda of Mockbeggar Hall

  Arduenna of the Uplands,

  Dame Chuffrey,

  Throne Minister Emerita,

  Honorary Chair of Charities,

  Patron of Saint Glinda’s in the Shale Shallows, etc., etc.

  Murth had brought Glinda’s signature to too fine a facsimile.

  21.

  She went to shove past Zackers as she had done past Cherrystone, but he blocked her way. “En’t allowed, Mum,” he said. “Quarantine.”

  “Quarantine? What are you on about?”

  “That’s what I’m told. You’re confined to your room. Meals will be supplied.”

  “What’s been done with Miss Murth?”

  “I’ve got my orders.” Suddenly his pimples seemed a disguise; he was a man holding on to the scabby shield of youth to use it to his advantage. “You’d be wise to return to your room, Lady Glinda.”

  She fixed as spirited and venomous a look upon him as she could, but even within a moment she softened it. “Zackers. I don’t want to make trouble for you. Send for your commanding officer and we’ll sort this out.”

  “The General has given orders not to be disturbed.”

  So she went into the room and closed the door. Rain had been jumping on the bed, and sat down flump with her legs outstretched. “Where’s Miss Murth gone off to?”

  “Never you mind about that.” She went to the window and threw up the sash. Was there any way to escape? Her own windowsill extended to join a sort of stone rim or lintel, some three inches wide, that ran around the building, connecting all the windows on this level. She could not hope to get a purchase on a ledge that narrow.

  She looked down. A nine-foot drop onto the flat roof of the ballroom below. Even if one could leap or lower one’s self down under cover of darkness, the ballroom was twenty-two feet high, she knew—she’d had the room redone last year. The ballroom stretched out in its own wing, and its windows on three sides opened onto terraces, so fevered dancers could cool themselves by taking the evening air. This meant there were no useful trees growing up near the building, no climbing cypress or espaliered ivy to serve as an escape route.

  “I were a bird, I could just wing the air down,” said Rain, as if reading her thoughts.

  “You won’t move an inch from my side unless I say so. Not one inch. Do you hear me?”

  Rain fell asleep almost at once. Perhaps, thought Glinda somewhat guiltily, perhaps she never slept in anyone’s encircling arms before. They spent the night holding each other.

  By morning it was clear that evacuation orders had been given. Breakfast was nothing but tea and slightly stale bread. If they sat very still at the open window, they could hear the sound of the ships being rolled to the launching point. How could they have been kitted out so quickly? Glinda supposed that, under a firm enough manager, three hundred men with time on their hands could achieve quite a lot.

  At noon on this day of lancing summer light, Glinda began to hear the sound of the dragons. Their cry was at once serrated and tuneful. Glissandi of violoncello interrupted by the yowls of cats in heat. Now that Glinda was really and truly imprisoned, her aggressors clearly felt no more need for secrecy. The dragon trainers led the fearsome creatures around the east edge of the house, below the ballroom. A military parade of sorts. Six of them. Perhaps one each to haul the four warships, and an extra dragon at the front and another to the rear, as sentries.

  Fearsome? She thought she might never dream of anything else again. Each one of the foul creatures was ridden by a soldier in leather chaps. Each soldier, equipped with a whip and dirk, looked terrified. Each leaned forward, wrapped obscenely around the neck of his mount, whispering to it. Dragonmasters. She had heard tell of such.

  But the creatures themselves. Rain had told only the glamour part of it. Yes, there were scales that burned in the sun, imbrications of bronze and bruise-purple gold. But a lizardy dankness obtained as well, the stench of the bog. Their skulls were shaped less like horses than like some strange elongated insect. And eyes! She remembered the glowing eyes of the Clock of the Time Dragon. Like genuine eyes, those had gleamed with life, but these actual dragon eyes looked polished, blank, black, deadly. They reflected all, they gave nothing away. “Pull back, lest one of them see you,” said Glinda, but Rain behaved as if she were at the parade of a traveling zoo. Glinda had to hold Rain’s hands to keep her from clapping.

  “Let’s try the book one
more time, shall we?” she said when the dragons had passed. Before they could pull it out, Zackers opened the door without knocking and Cherrystone strode in.

  “I’m taking my leave,” he told her. “Zackers will stay behind to see to your needs. I apologize for the inconveniences, but you can see why we couldn’t allow you the run of your house and the service of your aides.”

  “Why do you not kill me, and save yourself the trouble of abusing my staff?” she said, putting Rain behind her and holding her in place with clamped hands. Nonetheless, she felt Rain peering around her hip.

  “Depending on how the matter unfolds, you may yet come in use. Not to me—to your country. Your liberated staff will have spread the word that you are detained against your wishes. All of western Munchkinland knows that you are locked up here. Should we decide to sue for peace, you are advantageously placed as a loyal Ozian with strong affections for Munchkinland. A former Throne Minister with personal ties to the rebel province. Munchkinlanders would accept you as an emissary of the Emperor. We have arranged it for you to be ready to serve.”

  “What have you done with Murth?”

  He inched forward. In the heat of the impending battle was he going to kiss her at last? But he had in mind something more of a sneer. “Why should you care?” he said. “You don’t even know her first name.”

  She sputtered and thought of slapping him, but that would be too drawing-room farce. He said, “I want to take the girl with me.”

  “I think the phrase is, over my dead body. And since you intend to keep me alive, you may as well go off on your capers. Your days of being a tutor are through, anyway; you’ve got your army to manage. Though I suppose now they’ve become a navy.”

  “I’ll take up the matter when I have completed the mission of the hour. Good afternoon, Lady Glinda.”

  “May you freeze in hell.”

  He gave the briefest of bows, not so much from the waist as from the chin, and turned to leave.

  And the Grimmerie proved as recalcitrant as ever.

  They watched the first of the ships roll into view on the water. Glinda had to admit there was something terrific about the sight. The ships were painted red and gold, from this distance looking like wooden cousins of the dragons. Their sails puffed out; the wind was strong and apparently from the right quarter. Behind the stubby masts Glinda and Rain tracked the movement of those stubby masts against the hills, which helped them mark the acceleration of two, then three ships. The fourth would be coming along.