The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “I like this one,” said Candle in her soft, bruised voice. Her hand reached out to touch a star-shaped protrusion humping along with others in a welter of runes. For all Liir knew, this row of roughs was only the pattern-block of an anonymous instructor of ancient carving. He didn’t care. He had an aversion to magic, implied or actual.

  “Me too,” said Rain, “but this better.” She chose from a protected cubby a small freestanding stone Liir had never noticed. He neared to look over her shoulder. About the size of a breviary, the display side was polished smooth as milk pudding. In it was carved something impossibly small and delicate. Liir couldn’t imagine the human hand that might manage such particularity, nor the instrument that such a hand might use. A relief of a vaguely animal-shaped creature. A sort of snouted feather, a legless head of a pony erect on a curved spine or tail. An inch high, no more. “What is it?” asked Rain.

  “I don’t know,” said Candle.

  “Pure fancy, I suspect,” said Liir, trying out the pedagogical function of fatherliness. “Nothing living can stand upright without at least two legs.”

  “A tree can. What’s this?” The girl pointed to another shape carved into the lintel, a protrusion too peculiar for Liir to compare to anything else.

  “An accident of the artist’s adze? Or maybe it was once something remarkable, but wind and rain took away its character over time. So now it’s just a mystery.”

  “Wind and rain?”

  “They blow from the west, clear cross the hall, or from the south. Sometimes—once a year—a storm with tiny teeth of salty sand, which rub at these carvings.”

  “I never knowed of storms that could change off the face of a creature.” Rain looked surprised at the idea of the ravage of the world. “How many storms was it?”

  “Hundreds of years of storms,” Candle answered her. “More years than I could count. We’ve only been here a handful of years, and the damage was done when we arrived. Nothing’s changed since we got here, but the sand comes and settles. I brush it off with feathers when the great wind subsides.”

  Rain made her fingers like feathers, brushing, brushing. “What is this place?”

  “It’s your home,” said Candle, and extended her hand to touch Rain’s hand—to cover it as Rain had covered the star shape.

  This was a venture too bold. “I got no home,” said Rain, and pulled away and walked into the dark doorway that led to the stairs and the catacomb apartments in which Candle and Liir had hid, and lived, through the time it had taken seven rainstorms to deposit seven skins of sand upon the evaporating stone.

  3.

  Just before they’d met Muhlama yesterday, Ilianora had cried out to the Lion that Rain had no fear. Rain had heard this, and she knew it was wrong. She had plenty of fear, all right. For instance, she didn’t trust these two new people in their hilltop hideaway. The man was possessed by something aggravated, something with the intensity of hornets. He tried to disguise it, but she could see. The woman was no calmer, even though she looked like a Quadling, and Rain’s exposure to Quadlings in Ovvels had led her to consider them kindly and placid. Up till now.

  I’ll have no part of this, she thought, though she knew she had little choice.

  She found Brrr downstairs, pacing in and out of stone doorways, checking out the lodgings. “Time was I might have expected the sheets turned down and a chocolate bourbonette placed upon the pillow,” he said. “But since there are no sheets or pillows, I suppose hoping for a chocolate bourbonette is a waste of energy. Rain, where should we sleep?”

  “Far away from here.”

  “Tiss toss, somebody’s cross. What’s gotten under your skin?”

  “En’t nothing under my skin but my underskin.” She threw herself down on the floor, purposefully hard so she could bang her coccyx and try out a cuss. Tay twisted its head at her, confused.

  Brrr had learned enough not to take the bait. He said nothing.

  “How long are we here? When are we going?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t yet really understand where we’ve arrived. Shall we go help with food, and see what we can learn?”

  “I can’t learn anything.”

  Brrr decided to consider morbid self-loathing something of an advance in the consolidation of Rain’s character. “Well, if you’re enjoying a little hissy-mood, why don’t you come along and find more to disapprove of upstairs?”

  “You can leave me here to die.” She stretched out on her back and put an arm over her head. She made an unconvincing corpse, though Brrr knew that with enough practice—sixty, seventy years on—she’d get it right.

  “Well, I’m going to sleep here. I think this room is kind of cozy. I like how a little natural light comes in through that slit. I bet you can see stars on a cloudless night, inching by.” She didn’t look. “But while there’s work to be done for supper, it’s cowardly to shirk down here. So now I’m going above. You can do as you like.”

  “I know that.”

  He had to suppress a smile. A vexed Rain was slightly more coherent: there was more of her on display. He knew she’d follow eventually.

  Back outside, in a summer kitchen beyond the nave of the sacred fishy lady, Liir and Candle were scrubbing some turnips. A rusty kettle hanging on a hook bubbled, a rich onion broth. Ilianora—Brrr couldn’t yet think of her as Nor, which was how Liir addressed her—was mashing carrots with a pestle. Little Daffy and Mr. Boss were collecting from the compartments of the Clock anything that might be of use. Scissors, forks, banged-up pewter plates. Dried herbs. Candle’s eyes went wide and delighted at the sight of oregano and pumperfleck.

  Brrr was no better at dicing cubes of salted grite than he was at the preparation of radish roses. His arthritic paws were devoid of opposable anythings. Settling to take some of the evening wind onto his jowls, he closed his eyes to listen to the murmur of human malcontent. It was comfortingly so like his own.

  When Rain cried out, because splashed by moiling soup—so she’d emerged, no surprise there—Brrr opened his eyes. They focused to pick out a statue of an iron goose framed in a collapsing archway of unpruned peony hedge.

  The bush was past its prime. Like the rest of us, he guessed. Then the statue kinked a leg and spoke.

  “None of my business, of course, but have you paid any attention to the question of whether or not your dinner guests are being followed?” He appeared to be addressing the peonies, since one could not tell on whom his glazed eye was fixing.

  “We’ll get to that,” said Liir to the Goose. “We’ll talk after we eat. If you’re so concerned, launch yourself and take a loop around once or twice. Settle your mind about it.”

  “Couldn’t be bothered to exercise myself. The moment your incarceration arrives, I take to wing with a song in my breast and the old heave-ho.”

  “Ever the optimist,” Candle said to the newcomers, shrugging. “This is Iskinaary. Liir’s familiar.”

  “Not as familiar as all that,” protested the Goose.

  “I never knew a Bird to shelter with humans,” said Brrr.

  “I never knew a Lion to mind his own business,” snapped the Goose.

  “Don’t let the Goose vex you,” said Liir. “We haven’t had company for so long, he’s forgotten how to be cordial.”

  “You’ve forgotten how to be suspicious,” complained the Goose. “These vagabonds come creaking like the Walking Dust of St. Satalin’s Graveyard and you don’t worry it’s the opening salvo of an ambush attempt?”

  “Muhlama has promised to stalk the perimeter tonight before she slinks away in the morning,” soothed Liir. “No need to ginger up the atmosphere, Iskinaary. This feast has been postponed for too long. You were there when the little girl was born. You can manage to be glad she’s back. No?”

  “This is all my fault. I saw the Clock from the air, we sent Muhlama to investigate since she was passing through. I’m sorry I opened my mouth. But the girl is trouble, Liir, and dragging trouble in her wake. Mark my word
s. And I’m not crazy about the otter.” At Liir’s lowered brow, the Goose hurried on, “Not that I mind, of course. I love trouble. The spice of life and proud progenetrix of all progress, yes yes. Don’t mind me.”

  “I think someone’s being sentimental,” suggested Liir. “We’ve never had reason to see how a Goose gets sentimental before. High emotion is nothing to be ashamed of, you know.”

  “We have a Cowardly Lion and a Sentimental Goose, is that it? No thank you,” said Iskinaary. “I’m not interested in the position.” He curled his neck like the hoop of an iron rail marking out the edge of an ornamental border and he nipped viciously at his breast. “I’ll dine alone on my own nits, thank you.”

  The humans sat cross-legged on a blanket. Under the circumstances Little Daffy offered a brief grace in a general sense, addressed to Sender. The slop was good as well as plentiful. Brrr ate with his tongue rather than a spoon. He was getting too old to fuss with a spoon at every meal. Rain sulked and wouldn’t touch a bite.

  When they were done, Candle suggested that she and Rain might take a knife to the peonies and cut some to arrange on the shell altar. Tay slunk after, docile as an old family collie. After they’d wandered away, Liir ventured softly, “Before they come back, in case it’s upsetting to Candle, can anyone tell me about Rain?”

  “She’s a bothersome girl, more trouble than she’s worth,” said Mr. Boss. He’d hardly spoken since they arrived. Well, observed Brrr, ever since the Clock took its tumble, Mr. Boss has gone very silent indeed.

  Liir’s fixation on the girl seemed to annoy the dwarf, who continued, “What you see when you look at Rain is all there is. You can’t get milk from a salamander. I want to know what’s going on down there.” He swept his hand skyward to the north and east. “We’ve spent a year with Quadlings who wouldn’t know a current event if it rolled over and squashed their granny. I can see you’ve removed yourself from the cocktail party circuit, but you must hear something in your aerie up here, if you have an assortment of winged foreign correspondents. What’s the news out of Oz?”

  “Since when?” asked Liir.

  “When we left Munchkinland more than a year ago,” replied Mr. Boss, “Lady Glinda was confined to Mockbeggar Hall. Her country estate on Restwater, as you may know. An army of Loyal Oz had gotten halfway up the lake, heading inland, but its armada was destroyed by a spot of magic. A dragon escaped and flew south, we think, and that’s the last we heard for certain.”

  Some bad memory there, thought Brrr, seeing Liir pale at the mention of the beast. Evenly enough, though, Liir replied, “We’ve seen or heard no sign of any dragon.”

  The dwarf snorted. “Yes, Lord Limp in the Lap, but what about the armies bucking about Restwater?”

  “We came here to get out of the path of armies.”

  The Goose suddenly snapped to life again and hissed at Liir. “You’ve invited them to stay the night and you’re suddenly above gossip? Has the arrival of that child mischiefed your mind? Listen, little man,” he told the dwarf, “the last we heard, General Cherrystone had taken the lake, even storming Haugaard’s Keep. The Munchkinlanders cleverly vacated their stronghold so they could isolate and contain Cherrystone once he took it. They have him holed up there. He retains lake access but he can’t move farther inland toward Bright Lettins, the new capital. Some fortresses are harder to quit than they are to breach.”

  The dwarf said, “Smart. And…?”

  The Goose went on. “Tit for tat, the Munchkinlanders have formed an alliance with the Glikkuns to their north, and appropriated the emerald mines in the Scalps. Easy enough to defend those mountain passes. And the Glikkuns have cut the rail line into Loyal Oz. You can hardly be surprised. They’ve been taken advantage of by the Emerald City for decades. It’s all stupefyingly predictable. The Glikkuns, those trolls, are natural allies to the stumpy Munchkinlander folk.”

  “You should talk,” said Little Daffy. “You’re not any taller than I am.”

  “Who’s leading the Munchkinland government?” asked Brrr, to keep the conversation civil, and also to find out.

  The Goose gargled and hootled. “Liir himself would be eligible for Eminence in Munchkinland, should he ever claim the seat. His aunt, the so-called Wicked Witch of the East, having been the last Eminent Thropp.”

  Liir shrugged. “Not interested in the job. Anyway, I’ve changed my name to Liir Ko, so maybe I’m not eligible.”

  “Since the Emperor of Oz, Shell Thropp, was Nessarose’s younger brother,” said the Goose, “it’s on the basis of a blood claim to the position of Eminence of Munchkinland that the Emperor validates his invasion. You’d pass muster too, Liir.”

  “But names,” said Brrr. “Who’s holding Munchkinland together?”

  “To the north, the Glikkun alliance is managed by a mangy old troll-woman named Sakkali Oafish,” replied Iskinaary.

  Brrr closed his eyes. He remembered Sakkali Oafish. The Massacre at Traum, for which he’d earned his sobriquet as the Cowardly Lion. The one thing about a social indignity was that, like several of the nastier rashes, it was never completely cured, and could flare up at a moment’s notice.

  “In Munchkinland proper,” the Goose continued, “the mastermind is an old witch named Mombey.”

  “That’s not a Munchkinlander name,” scoffed Little Daffy.

  “She’s Gillikinese originally. But as you may have noticed, the Munchkinlander that might serve, won’t.” Again Iskinaary indicated Liir. “And the one that would serve, namely the Emperor, isn’t welcome. So Mombey’s holding things together somehow. Her chief military strategist, who’s kept Cherrystone boxed up in Haugaard’s Keep all year, is a saucy young warrior princess named Jinjuria. General Jinjuria, she calls herself.”

  “Yes, Muhlama told us about her. Well, Munchkinland was ever a stomping ground for strong women,” said Little Daffy. “Nessarose Thropp, this Mombey, this General Jinjuria. You got to hand it to them.”

  “Yes, they’re just as bitter and conniving as men,” said Iskinaary. “They might’ve offered a position to one of the many Animals who took refuge inside their borders all those years ago, back during the Wizard’s pogroms. But noooooo. When women share power, they share power with women.”

  “And you have a problem with that?” Little Daffy picked up a small sharp stone and tossed it up and down.

  The dwarf intervened. “Come on, Husky Honey, remember we’re guests. Not nice to stone our hosts.”

  “This is hardly news,” said Iskinaary, “but Nessarose was no fainting sweetheart, once she took the chair. The way I hear tell it, Elphaba Thropp had her own permanent case of broom rage too. Don’t murder the messenger. I’m just answering the question you posed.”

  Once again Brrr broke in. “Is Lady Glinda free?”

  “The latest gossip,” said the Goose, “is that she was charged with treason against Loyal Oz. For somehow arranging the assault on the armada. As if she could manage that!—she who can’t manage to thread a needle. But if she’s been taken from Mockbeggar I couldn’t say. My circle of informants doesn’t stoop to information of such particularity.”

  “It en’t all her fault.” They hadn’t seen Rain and Candle come back, arms full of satiny white peonies glowing in the fading light. The girl said, “Me and Lady Glinda—we did it together.”

  “Keep marching in the direction you’re going, little girl,” said Iskinaary, “and you’ll hit the banks of Restwater again. If you apologize to General Cherrystone nicely, maybe he’ll only slap you in prison for the rest of your life instead of killing you outright.”

  Ilianora gasped, and Liir bellowed, “Iskinaary! Mind yourself.”

  “Somebody’s got to tell that girl the truth,” snapped the Goose. “Or eventually she’ll put herself in the same kind of danger she’s putting you.” He craned his neck and looked, just for an instant, regal—at least regal for a Goose. He kick-stepped his way across the stones to where Candle and Rain had paused and he stood before them. From
Brrr’s vantage point, his graphite feathers made a sort of silhouette against the white blossoms drooping from Rain’s arms. The Goose all but honked at the girl. “I have no reason to like you, Miss Oziandra Rain, but neither will I let a damaged child waltz into peril because her companions are congenitally foolish.”

  “Well, I don’t like you either,” said Rain, pelting the Goose with her heap of blooms. Unfazed, he poked his bill among them to enjoy the ants crawling in the sweetness. Brrr had to admire his composure.

  Candle hid a small smile of her own by raising her armful of blooms up to her nose.

  4.

  Under their common blanket Liir comforted Candle that evening. “You hover too close, you’ll scare her away,” he murmured. “She feels safe with the Lion. There, there. Hush, don’t let them hear you.”

  “You always said I could see the present,” said Candle, when she could speak. “But I can see nothing about her—my own daughter.”

  Liir smoothed his hand over her silky flank. “Maybe that’s not so surprising. Maybe all parents are blindest to their own offspring.”

  “It isn’t right. It isn’t natural.”

  “Hush. They’ll hear you. Remember—the morning is always brightest after the moonless night.”

  Eventually she fell asleep, if only, he guessed, to escape his platitudes. But it was the best he could do.

  Even at this slight elevation, Highsummer was passing more quickly than in the valley. The dawn revealed a new ruddiness to the greenery. “I want to have a better look at that Clock,” Liir told the dwarf after breakfast. “You’re the chargé d’affaires about that, right?”

  “You could call me the timekeeper,” said Mr. Boss, “only I seem to have lost track of the time. Sure, come along. There’s little to be lost or gained in the Clock’s prophecies anymore.”