The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  Nor knelt down before the Lion and spoke as if to her knees, not her husband. “I don’t want you to go, but it’s for the best. You do the work at the trial that I would do if I could. The public statement is beyond me, in any venue. And I may be useful yet in helping take care of Rain. If Liir and Candle are ever recognized, if they’re accosted in any way, I’ll be able to stand in for Rain. She is my niece, after all.”

  “I know,” said Brrr. “She is closer to you than I am.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Nor, “and furthermore it isn’t true. No one is closer to me than you are. But she’s in greater peril. She will be grown one day. She may be safe sooner than we think. We’ll meet up again.”

  Liir took his sister’s hand as he disagreed with her. “Dear friends. While the country is at war, no living citizen is safe. If we choose to find one another again—and we may never have that choice—let’s agree to use the Chancel of the Ladyfish as a mail drop. We can leave notes for one another on paper weighed down by Rain’s favorite stone—that one with the tiny carving of the question mark sporting the head of a horse. Agreed?”

  They all nodded. In this treacherous land, the chapel seemed as safe a rendezvous point as any other.

  “It’s time to go,” said Liir.

  “Check anytime a Goose flies overhead,” said Iskinaary to the Lion. “If I lose my bowels in your direction, it’s not personal.” He ducked his head under a wing, pretending to work at a nit, to save face in the face of strong feeling.

  Rain wouldn’t come forward to say good-bye to Little Daffy or to Mr. Boss. And she wouldn’t look at Brrr. But she seemed to understand that there was a need to move on, even if she didn’t understand why. She put her grandmother’s broom on the ground. She set her shell on the ground next to it. She walked forward to the Cowardly Lion. She didn’t stretch her arms for a hug—how does a girl hug a Lion? Her arms lay straight at her side, as if she were a member of a military guard on duty. She sloped forward and she fell woodenly against the Lion’s cheek and mane and brow. She didn’t cry, but leaned upright against his face as he cried for both of them.

  The Judgment of Dorothy

  1.

  By night the Lion and his pair of comrades crossed into Munchkinland without incident. They’d skirted to the north, avoiding Haugaard’s Keep and those aggrieved lake villages. Restwater and the Pine Barrens were behind them. It felt pretty damn good to be pacing a well-maintained stretch of the Yellow Brick Road. The Free State of Munchkinland might be nearing insolvency, but trust little farming people to keep their blue roofing tiles scrubbed clean of birdshit and their tomatoes staked as if they were prize philanthriums.

  “The Munchkinlanders,” said Little Daffy, “call this season of the year Seedtime.”

  “I can see why,” said Brrr. It seemed to belie the anxiety of wartime, to spit in its face, this bounty of Munchkinland. Mile after mile of pasture rilled with green fringe. Paddocks dizzy with birdsong and cloudy with bugs. Meadows patrolled by farmers, by the occasional tiktok contrivance on its wheels and pulleys and traction belts. “A Gillikin abomination in Munchkinlander fields is my partisan sentiment,” said Little Daffy.

  “Machinery in exchange for grain. It’s called free trade,” said Brrr.

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the traditional scarecrow. Any chance we’re going to run into your friend? Might he be heading to rescue Dorothy too?”

  “Doubtful. He had the brains to make a clean break of the matter. Me, I’m too much of a coward.”

  “Mmm,” said Mr. Boss, which was as opinionated as he got these days.

  “No wonder this part of Munchkinland is known as the Corn Basket,” said the Lion. He had only ever seen the scrappier bits, the hardscrabble places that Animals had retreated to a generation or two ago, when Loyal Oz kicked them out of the law and commerce and the tonier echelons of the banks and colleges. Now he saw Animals in the fields, more than he’d expected. True, they were labor rather than management. But it was still work. “Do they comb off anything in the way of sharing the profits?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say,” puffed Little Daffy. “I left Munchkinland years ago, before the infusion of new labor. Why? Are you looking for a farmhand position after we scope out this business about the trial of Dorothy?”

  Well, he wasn’t. He’d done his share of farmwork on pocket handkerchief farms to the south. Barely subsistence enterprises. He’d hauled manure and brought in spattery little crops. He’d been paid in last winter’s carrots and he’d been loaned a flea-infused blanket to sleep under. No one had talked to him for seven years, and that had been fine with him. But had central Munchkinland always been so prosperous? He hadn’t noticed. Too distracted by self-loathing.

  With every mile Little Daffy grew more cocky. She’d been born, she told them, up near the terminus of the Yellow Brick Road—Center Munch. From a family of farmers, of course. One of four or five siblings whose names she couldn’t now recall. She’d only traveled the Yellow Brick Road once before, when she was a teenager starting as a student nurse in Bright Lettins. “It was hardly more than a hamlet back then,” she said, “at the head of a tributary of the Munchkin River. I can’t wait to see it gussied up as a capital city.”

  “It won’t look like the EC, anyway,” said the Lion. “This place is so different from Loyal Oz. I wonder that Munchkinlanders were ever willing to be ruled by the Emerald City.”

  Little Daffy replied, “Nessarose Thropp rose to prominence by exploiting a provincial identity that Munchkinlanders had always felt, but suppressed. We never trusted Loyal Ozians even before the secession. We’re not like you.”

  “Well, I’m an Animal,” said Brrr, “but I take your point.”

  “I’m not like me anymore, either,” said the dwarf.

  “And it’s not just the height thing,” said Little Daffy. “Lots of Munchkinlanders are tall as other Ozians.”

  “Lots of us are taller inside our trousers than outside,” said her husband.

  “Shut up, you,” said Little Daffy, but lovingly. At least he was verbal.

  A few days later they approached the new capital over a series of low bridges spanning irrigation canals. Something of the feel of a holiday park for families, thought Brrr. Bright Lettins wasn’t gleaming and garish, like the Emerald City, nor ancient and stuffed with character, like Shiz, the capital of Gillikin. But it ornamented the landscape with its own brand of Munchkin confidence. From this approach, the effect at a distance was of a huddle of children’s building blocks: roofs of scalloped tile, blue or plum. Entering the city, the travelers found buildings made of stone-covered stucco painted in shades of grey and sand. Many structures were joined by arches over the street, creating a series of outdoor chambers, squares funneling into allées debouching into piazzas. Pleasing, welcoming.

  And clean? Gutters ran under iron grills next to the coping in the streets, carrying away ordure of every variety. Windows clearer than mountain ice. The buildings ran to three and a half stories, by diktat apparently, though since they were Munchkin stories they weren’t very high.

  “Where do taller people and Animals stay?” asked Brrr.

  “Not here,” was the answer they got from chatelaine and inn master alike. After a while someone directed them to an Animal hostelry in a shabbier neighborhood. Reportedly the only place where Animals and humans could find rooms under the same roof, with a sign outside that read A STABLE HOME. The entrance for taller people and Animals was supplied at a side door marked OTHERS. “Well, I’ve been waiting almost four decades to decide who and what I am, and I’ve finally stumbled upon the answer,” said Brrr. “I’m an Other. But how are we going to pay?”

  Little Daffy dug from some hidey-purse under her aprons a clutch of folded notes. “Whoa, have you been peddling poppy dust behind our backs?” asked Brrr when he caught sight of the wad.

  “Before I left the mauntery several years ago, I dashed to its treasury,” she said. “I guessed that
Sister Petty Cash abandoned her stash as she and the others were fleeing for their lives. I’ve never had the need to spend it yet.”

  “Isn’t that theft?”

  “I consider it back wages for thirty years of sacrifice.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  The innkeeper was a dejected widow fallen on hard times. Taking in lodgers out of need. She resented them from the start. But rent was rent. “Your old fellow needs a rest,” she said to Little Daffy as she glanced over at where Mr. Boss was propped against a wall. “He’s not from around here. Sick, is he?”

  “He’s a dwarf. He comes like that,” said Little Daffy. “It’s been a long trip. We’ll be grateful to take our key and find our room.”

  “You two are just up the stairs. Next to my room, so I can keep an eye on you should you get up to anything.”

  “What’s your name so I can call it out during wild sex?” asked Mr. Boss. Grumpiness made him come to life.

  “You won’t need my name. I’m in business only until the troubles are over. I don’t leave the establishment untended. Now I’ll thank you to avoid monkey business while in this hostel.”

  “I’ll call you Dame Hostile,” said Mr. Boss, grinning to show his tobacco-stained smile.

  “I’ll be happy to help you sweep up. I can remove splinters, bake a little,” said Little Daffy hastily. “We’ll be ideal guests, believe me.”

  “You,” said the chatelaine to the Lion, “your room is out back. Down the alley. Don’t brush your mane in the public rooms, I have allergies.”

  Ah, little has changed for the Animals, thought Brrr. His room, though separate and sparely fitted, was clean enough.

  The next day, market day in Bright Lettins. The central district was packed dense with stalls and shoppers. Plenty indeed—mounds of baby squash, punnets of spring berries like pucklegem and queen’s beads. Lettuces so new and tender you could hold the leaves up to the light and see through them. Despite the abundance, however, the haggling was fierce. Voices raised on both sides, vendor and housewife. “No spare coin to be had in this crowd,” murmured Little Daffy. One furious merchant upended a cart of his own pricey white asparagus tips and let his pig eat them rather than sell them for the pittance that had been proferred. The pig sported the only satisfied smirk Brrr saw all morning.

  The newcomers settled for elevenses at a café, hoping to overhear something useful. Farmers muttered over the weather, the prices, the progress of the war. Words were said about General Jinjuria, the peasant warrior, and about Mombey, the head of the government. Little Daffy ordered tea and beer and river prawns in tarragon. They ate in silence, listening for all they were worth.

  “They’ll never starve us out,” said one old bearded fellow with a prosthetic ear made of tin. “They can siphon all the water they want from our precious Restwater, but as long as our farms are upstream of the lake, we’ll not go short of water and so we won’t go short of food.”

  “We should dam the Munchkin River and dry out the lake,” said the waitress, settling down with her own beer.

  “We couldn’t drain that lake any way shy of a miracle. It’s fed by runoff of the Great Kells,” someone argued. “That’s part of the rationale for the EC requisitioning the water in the first place.”

  “How is this Jinjuria holding the EC forces at Haugaard’s Keep?” asked Brrr. The Munchkinlander locals glanced at one another. Maybe, thought Brrr, Animals don’t talk across café tables to humans they didn’t know socially.

  “The Lion asked you a question,” said Little Daffy. “Nicely.”

  The old man looked suspicious of their ignorance. He stroked his taffy-colored beard, combing it with his fingers. “Jinjuria, she could have held on to Haugaard’s Keep, you know that. It’s almost impregnable. Slitted windows high up, and a pair of moated entrances. With their superior numbers the EC Messiars swarmed up the lakeside of the keep, see, and General Jinjuria’s forces put on a handsome show of repelling them—but only as a lure. Soon as the assailants had gained the ramparts on ladders and arrow-slung ropes, Jinjuria set in motion the quick retreat she’d planned. The bulk of our forces that had held Haugaard’s Keep retreated on the land side, burning the wooden decking on the moat entrance as they went. Not everyone made it out, of course, and the heads of our patriot martyrs were bowled down into the moat for several weeks afterward and bobbed there like muskmelons. But Jinjuria’s strategy worked. She boxed up the Emerald City high command, General Cherrystone as they call him, and the cream of his forces too. She can’t starve him out, as she can’t prevent supplies from arriving on the lakeside, by flotillas of this sort or that. But she can prevent him from leaving by land. And if he left by lake—well, that would be a retreat, pure and simple. No, she’s got him cornered, like a cat playing with a larder mouse.”

  “Brilliant.” Little Daffy’s eyes glowed with pride.

  “It’s a stalemate, no pretending otherwise,” said the garrulous one among the locals. “Where have you lot been, that this is all news to you?”

  “Doing missionary work,” said Little Daffy quickly, before Brrr could falter or fudge. “Is Mombey here?”

  “Said to be in residence at Colwen Grounds.”

  “And Dorothy?” asked Brrr. “Is she expected soon?”

  They didn’t know what Brrr was talking about. “Dorothy? Her? We won’t see the likes of Dorothy again. Not in this lifetime.”

  “She shows up here for a pint, I charge her triple,” promised the waitress, and bit the farthing Little Daffy was paying with. “She has a lot to answer for, knocking off our lady governor like she did.”

  The old farmer chided the waitress. “You’re not old enough to remember Nessarose Thropp. That Dorothy may have played fast and loose with government figures, but there was quite a bit of singing and dancing back in the day. Folks fell to their knees in thanksgiving for their release from bondage.”

  “Munchkinlanders don’t have too far to fall,” said the waitress, swishing a rag at a table. “Who can even tell when we’re on our knees?”

  “Well, she fell from a great distance, that girl,” insisted the farmer.

  “Wearing a wooden house around her as some sort of defense. A weird cleverness in that child.”

  “She wasn’t all that clever,” said Brrr, realizing too late that neither was he.

  “You have a point of view? Listen—you’re not that Lion? The Cowardly Lion, they called him? One of Dorothy’s lackeys? Say it en’t so.”

  “Not so, I’m afraid,” said Brrr.

  “You have no right to any opinion then.” The other farmers dropped their chins over their steins and frowned across the froth. The atmosphere had a tang to it, like saltpetre. “I think it was you. Wasn’t it? Got her out of here safely before she could be asked to account for herself?”

  “That would be my brother,” said Brrr. “My twin brother, I’m afraid. A luckless sort, but there you have it.” For the first and perhaps the last time in his life, he was glad to have an identical twin he’d never met. “Finish that prawn, Mr. Boss, and we’ll be on our way.”

  2.

  Why don’t the Munchkinlanders sue for peace?” asked the Lion of his cronies. “Sure, they’ve lost Restwater, and it’s an insult and an outrage. But if their agriculture carries on nicely enough upstream, why not make the best of a bad situation and call for an armistice? Give up the lake and get their lives back to normal?”

  They asked around, they gossiped, they eavesdropped. It turned out that supplying the EC with water all those years had been fiscally advantageous to Munchkinland, and the government of the Free State was as reluctant to part with the income stream as with the territory itself.

  The deeper question—why do populations squabble for dominance?—remained unanswered. Native pride, the patriotism of different peoples, seemed jejune to the Lion. Mawkish, embarrassing. Though since he’d grown up without any pride of his own—neither a family tribe nor that pestery, myopic little fuse of self-ad
miration—he no longer expected to understand what motivated others.

  But was it even true that Dorothy had come back to Oz? No one in Bright Lettins seemed to have heard about it. Maybe the rumor of her return had been planted to stir things up, to try to flush the Grimmerie into the open somehow. Or maybe strategists had hoped to flush Liir into the open. In which case, what a relief to have left the great book behind with Liir and his family.

  Maybe Dorothy had taken ill and died before a show trial could commence. Or maybe she was being held incognito until her public humiliation could do the most good, at least in terms of lifting homeland morale.

  The Lion and his friends took to wandering the streets after their morning coffee and cheddar-and-onion butty, ambling and window-shopping and keeping their ears open. Brrr was surprised to see little in the way of a police force. “Is the absence of a civic constabulary a sign of self-confidence?”

  “I bet the Munchkinland defense is all occupied in the apron of land around Haugaard’s Keep,” said Little Daffy. “But who cares? We’re not here to bring down the nation or to save it. We’re just here to help Dorothy if we can. Look, a distress sale at that milliner’s shop.” She came out sporting a bonnet of uncertain charm.

  The dwarf snorted. “We’re looking for Dorothy. You’re looking like you’re wearing a failed dessert.”

  “I love you too,” said Little Daffy, clearly glad to see him returning to form. “Let’s go back to our room and play Tickle My Fancy.”

  “The loud version,” agreed Mr. Boss, cheerily enough. “Give Dame Hostile a little entertainment through the keyhole.”

  “I’ll catch you up later,” said the Lion.

  He was perusing the goods in a pushcart and being ignored by the merchant when a sudden cloudburst forced him under a nearby portico. Waiting out the rain in a throng of Munchkins, he heard the swell of their comments include the words La Mombey. Brrr didn’t need to push to the front of the crowd. He could see over their heads. One of a pair of horses pulling a brougham had cast a shoe, and a farrier was sent for. Without fanfare the door to the carriage opened. An attendant in Munchkinlander formal couture, cobalt serge and silver buttons, held up a parasol as a woman alighted.