The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  She looked at them. “Yes. No one believed in Munchkinland. They thought I was being fanciful or perhaps tetched in the head. But I never stopped believing in you. I never stopped believing in the Yellow Brick Road, and the Emerald City, and that frightening old humbug, the Wizard of Oz.”

  She paused. She wasn’t quite as good as Dame Fegg, thought Brrr, but she had strengths of her own. “Here I stand now, before the very people I pledged never to forget, only to be accused by them of murders I didn’t intend to commit. I’m older now, as we’ve discussed. And I’ve traveled a little bit since I was ten. Uncle Henry took me by train all across the great mountains in my land to the city by the bay—to San Francisco—and for all that I have seen, the Rocky Mountains that, no offense intended, rival the magnificent Scalps in stature and purity—the great fertile plains of Nebraska—the ocean beyond the bay—I haven’t seen anything that could deflect my memories of Munchkinland and Oz. Not yet, not ever. My judgment of you is that you are a kind people and a fair people, and you will do what is right. You will make for me more memories of charity and justice that I can carry home, if I can ever reckon how to manage the return trip.”

  She curtseyed at Lord Nipp and again at Dame Fegg, and then she curtseyed a third time, not to the jury but to the crowd in Neale House. A small spattering of applause, quickly repressed.

  “Mmm, she’s good,” murmured Mr. Boss. “This should be rich.”

  “I shall liberate the jury to its deliberations,” began Nipp, but then Dame Fegg stood up.

  “There is a matter I meant to follow and I have just remembered,” she said. “May I be allowed to ask a question?” Nipp nodded. “I wonder if Miss Dorothy could describe for those of us who know nothing about Sanfran Tsitsko, or however it is said, the sea you mentioned once or twice. What sea is this?”

  “Oh, goodness,” said Dorothy. “It’s called the Pacific Ocean. It is as wide as the sky, and as broad.”

  “Poetic license is inadmissible in court,” said Dame Fegg. “Nothing could be as wide as the sky. The sky goes to both sides of us, you see, whereas a landscape to be viewed can only go in one direction.”

  “You’re right, in a manner of speaking,” said Dorothy, “but you see, this sea is so broad that you can’t view the other side. It’s said to stretch as far as Asia, and to take many, many days to cross by boat. Once you are out in a sailing vessel or a steamer, you lose sight of the land, of California and all, and there’s nothing around you but water. The sea is as wide as the sky, exactly so, for the water, I am told, stretches under you and the sky above, in precisely identical proportions…”

  “That’ll do,” said Dame Fegg. Munchkinlanders were vomiting into their lunch sacks. “You describe a mystical sea that bears no resemblance to reality. I hold you are criminally insane.”

  “Just because you’ve never seen an ocean doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” said Dorothy. “The same way that, when I go home, if I get home, your existence is not obliterated just because none of my family has ever been to Munchkinland.”

  Dame Fegg said, “I have heard enough, Lord Nipp. I think you can send the jury out.”

  “The presence or absence of an ocean of the mind has no bearing on this case!” hooted Temper Bailey.

  “Are there any final remarks?” asked Nipp, picking up his gavel. He pointed at Brrr, who shrank back. But Little Daffy stood up and approached the table.

  “I want to thank you for hearing my testimony, sir,” she said. “As the only Munchkinlander present who witnessed the arrival of Dorothy, I’m grateful to have been welcomed into the proceedings. It’s a custom of Center Munch to conclude a disagreement or a negotiation with a sweet, to show that honorable people can agree to disagree and still be courteous. So I have baked a little present for you.” No one could argue with Little Daffy; none of the Munchkinlanders from Bright Lettins knew the customs of Center Munch. She pulled from a basket on her arm a checkered cloth and unfolded it. “Please, in the name of those Munchkinlanders who remember Nessarose Thropp, accept this offering in the spirit in which I give it.”

  Nipp took a little pastry between thumb and forefinger. Dame Fegg did the same. Temper Bailey, using his claws on his perch, declined an offering. “May I approach the defendant?” asked Little Daffy. “It’s the custom. ‘With special zest we greet the guest,’ ” she intoned daringly. “Or is that verse peculiar to Center Munch?”

  “If you must,” said Nipp. Little Daffy angled the basket and shifted the napkin so Dorothy could see inside better.

  “Take two, they’re small, and you’re a big girl,” said Little Daffy, and Dorothy obliged. Then Nipp instructed the jury to file out to a private chamber.

  “I wouldn’t go far,” said Nipp, “if you want to be present at the declaration of the verdict. I have a feeling this isn’t going to take a long time. We’ll convene again in an hour and I’ll let you know if a decision has been reached.”

  9.

  They walked enough apart from the crowds to be able to talk. “This trial is a wholesale farrago of justice,” said Mr. Boss. “Not that I care much for justice, one way or the other. But even so. Your offer of defense, Brrr, hasn’t amounted to much. She’s dead meat, our little Giddy Girl Gale. Cooked and sliced and served on a party platter.”

  “I think so too,” said Little Daffy. “Which is why I think we need to be ready to liberate her if things get ugly.”

  “I doubt they could get any uglier,” said the Lion. The mob would have no trouble wrestling Dorothy up on the scaffold, but they’d never get his big neck in a noose. They’d think of something else for him. The mind went white-blank, and he didn’t speak for a moment for fear a tremble in his voice would betray him. “Do you have something in mind?”

  “Just be on your toes. I mean that literally.”

  Hardly fifteen minutes into the break, a bell began to ring, and the crowd surged to reassemble at Neale House. But the doors to the hall remained closed. The crowd murmured, and Brrr picked up a frisson of something different. Funny how news has a vibration in the air all its own. Something had happened. Something was happening. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see, when the door finally did open, that it wasn’t Nipp who emerged from the formal entrance but La Mombey herself.

  The crowd broke into a cheer, rousing at first but subduing at the expression of their Eminence. A tall and striking woman, in this light she appeared more silvery blond and mature. Not unlike, Brrr thought, Dobbius’s portraits of the Kanraki, those mythical spirits of the ravines of Mount Runcible. He half expected La Mombey to open her painted lips and lead them in a reprise of the Munchkinlander anthem.

  Mr. Boss must have been imagining the same. Sotto voce, he began to warble a few lines.

  “‘Munchkinland, its truncheon lands on all who dare drop by…’ ”

  “Shhh,” said his wife.

  “Gentle patriots,” La Mombey addressed them. “Lord Nipp will call the proceedings to order momentarily. I beg your leave to address you on a matter of urgency in the meanwhile. It is my sad duty to tell you that our investigators have learned of disturbing developments. Word has come to the committees at Colwen Grounds that a new offensive against Munchkinland is soon to be launched. Not from the Scalps, where our noble Glikkun friends are holding the mountain passes as only they could do. Nor from Restwater, at least not that we can glean. No, the Emerald City is said to be commissioning new battalions to make skirmishes across the slopes of the Madeleines in Gillikin into the Wend Fallows of Munchkinland. The Wend Fallows are scrubby and inhospitable marches, but there is little in the terrain that could slow an army determined to cross it. Put frankly, our spies conclude that the aim of the Emerald City, after these several years of stalemate, is to up the ante. The enemy intends to press for a full surrender of the government at Colwen Grounds and Bright Lettins by engaging us on a second front.”

  She raised a staff and a surge of gluey white light pulsed from it. Brrr had forgotten that La Mombey was
a sorceress of sorts. He could detect no evidence that a charm had been cast, except the charm of pyrotechnic dazzle, but the crowd oohed and ahhed, and people in the back began to applaud. “We will not let this happen,” she said more fiercely. “In the defense of our homeland, today I declare a conscription of all Animals who originate outside our borders, including those born here whose parents or grandparents emigrated from Loyal Oz during the Animal Adverse laws. We gave you and your families succor when times were hard on you; we know you will stand with us and defend us when times are hard on us. Consequently, since yesterday I have secured the bridges and gates of Bright Lettins with a spell to help you Animals avoid the temptation to flee your duties. Links of lightning, I suppose, designed to deter any deserters. A little aversion therapy, we could call it. Following the close of this trial, Neale House will become the center for enlistment and assignment for the Animal Army of Munchkinland. May I suggest that mothers and their young among us right now be impounded for release until their husbands and fathers and mates come to ransom them. Since so many eligible male Animals seem to have had prior engagements today. For their valor in service, let us chant, hoorah!”

  “Hoorah,” shouted everyone except the Animals.

  Brrr said, “What’s the word for the tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the time?”

  “Fate’s foolery,” said Mr. Boss cheerily enough. “Give me one of those biscuits, wife. A surge in war fever always makes me peckish.”

  He fished in the basket and came up with two confections and a piece of paper. “‘Dorothy, take these two,’ ” he read. “Oh, don’t tell me, you poisoned the others? I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.” He put them back.

  “Nonsense, don’t be silly,” she said but could explain no further, as La Mombey had swooped away and the doors to the hall were opening.

  When the crowd was reassembled in the broad chamber, quieter than ever, Lord Nipp emerged, and then the barristers. The Owl looked terrified. No wonder. However the verdict went, Temper Bailey would probably end up in an Animal line of defense trying to hold the Wend Fallows. Me too, if I’m not careful, Brrr thought.

  The trapdoor opened and Dorothy began to climb up, but nerves, it seemed, were finally getting to her. She paused on the ladder, half into the hall, and swayed. Maybe she’d caught sight of the scaffold out the windows at the rear of the room. The Chimpanzees hurried forward and put a gloved hand under each of her armpits and more or less hauled her out. “Oh, my,” she said. “I sure hope it’s not my time of the month.”

  “Nothing good ever happens to that girl,” said Mr. Boss.

  “The judgment is called forth,” said Lord Nipp, and the jury proceeded into the room. The foreman handed a twist of paper to the magistrate. Then followed a bit of symbolism derived from older systems of jurisprudence in Munchkinland, Brrr guessed. Lord Nipp put the paper inside one half of an empty, hinged wooden ball and clapped the ball closed to make a full sphere. The judgment of Dorothy was imprisoned inside it. Next Nipp withdrew from under his table a round cage of metal bars, like a birdcage, that spun on a central axis. Through a hinged door he popped the wooden ball, and then latched the door and spun the cage.

  “Oh don’t, it makes me dizzy,” said Dorothy. “And Lord knows I’m dizzy enough already.”

  “You’re telling me,” whispered Mr. Boss.

  “It reminds me of falling in the elevator, down in the dark, spinning around and about,” said Dorothy. She put her hands out as if to steady herself. The crowd in the hall began to murmur a low note, holding the drone throughout the building and beyond it. The ball clacked against the bars of the cage, making erratic syncopation against the dark hummed note. “I don’t feel quite myself,” said Dorothy. “But then I think that’s customary in Oz.”

  The rotating cage slowed down and stopped. Lord Nipp opened the door and removed the ball. “Let justice be served,” he said. Then he unscrewed the two halves of the ball and took out the verdict. There’s no element of chance to this gesture, thought Brrr. In an older time perhaps more than a single ball danced and battered against others. But time eliminates alternatives until there’s only one eventuality, sooner or later.

  Maybe that was the point.

  “The opinion of the jury,” said Lord Nipp, glancing up from the folded paper, “accords with my own. I have no need to amend it. The court of Bright Lettins finds the miscreant Dorothy Gale guilty of all charges. The magistrate of this court concurs. She shall be put to death to defend the honor of Munchkinland.”

  Dorothy swooned and nearly fell into the open trapdoor. Little Daffy was on her feet and at Dorothy’s side before anyone else could move. “I’m an apothecaire, and I was Matron’s Assistant at the Respite of Incurables in the EC. Before the troubles,” she added. She felt Dorothy’s pulse and put her hand on Dorothy’s head. “Wouldn’t it be just our luck if the murderess dies of a heart attack before she can be put to death? Just like what was suggested of Nessarose Thropp. Ironical in the extreme.” To the Chimpanzees who had rushed forward to help, Little Daffy barked, “Move aside, Monkey boys, she needs air if she’s to survive long enough to be killed.”

  “Clear the front of the room,” cried Nipp. Temper Bailey obliged by flying through the open window.

  Little Daffy motioned to Brrr to approach. “We’re losing her. Quick, quick. Mr. Boss, Lord Nipp—Dame Fegg! In the name of justice! Air at once. I’ve left my apothecaire’s satchel with my colleague just below the scaffold. We must get her on the Lion’s back; he can rush her there.” The magistrate and the barrister helped drape the insensate defendant on Brrr’s back.

  Little Daffy slapped her husband’s rump and said, “Up, you too,” and Mr. Boss scrambled right onto Dorothy’s spine, his bowlegs splayed out on either side of her, clamping her in place. “To make sure she doesn’t fall,” said Little Daffy. “A hand up, please. Your Lordship, arrange that a vial of smelling salts be brought to the scaffold. It’s of utmost urgency. If we’re not careful, she just might slip away from us.”

  Then, to Brrr, “Off, you,” and pointed her finger. Finally Brrr understood her scheme. He hoped he wasn’t too old to clear the windowsill, and in fact he scraped his loins rather badly in the effort. He emitted more of a yowl than a roar. The Munchkins in the alley scattered in terror as Brrr, Little Daffy, Mr. Boss, and the unconscious captive bolted into their midst. His heart pounding, Brrr tossed Munchkins aside like ninepins, and passed the scaffold, its ligature looped to a peg and swaying in the force of his rush. He careered around the edge of the crowd. Whatever shocking charm La Mombey might have set upon the bridge across the Munchkin River, to keep Animals from leaving before conscription, he would push through it. The charm couldn’t hurt half as much as his scraped underside already hurt. So what if links of lightning might neuter him: execution by firing squad would accomplish the same thing.

  The plunge through rings of blue lightning was like being raked by sticks of fire on all inches of his body. It singed his whiskers and softened his claws, and the dewclaws dropped out and never grew back. The sizzle did give a measure of extra bounce to the curl of his mane, he could feel it through the torment. He’d make a prettier corpse in a moment or two.

  Little Daffy and Mr. Boss seemed unfazed by the charmed barrier. They sat like human clamps upon their human saddle, who had not been revived by the scorching light.

  Four or five miles beyond the city limits, on the west side of the Munchkin River, the Lion paused under a stand of quoxwood trees. Dorothy fell with a heavy clump off his back. “Is she dead?” he asked.

  “No,” said Little Daffy. “But I don’t expect the effects of my poppified pastries to wear off for a few hours.”

  By the time Dorothy began to come around, they were a dozen miles north of Bright Lettins. Village lights to one side and another suggested happy settlements, but the Dorothy Gale Rescue Brigade hunkered down in a cart shed aside a field of lettuces. They ate the rest of the pastries and quite
a bit of lettuce, and drank from a bottle of plonk that a farmer had hidden inexpertly beneath some burlap sacking.

  “I hate your new hairdo,” said Mr. Boss to Brrr. “Makes you look more dandified than ever. Hey, how did it feel to bust through that charm? You carried it off like a pro.”

  “It tickled,” said Brrr, “the way being jabbed with red-hot pitchforks soaked in brine tickles.” He had never thought to get a compliment from the dwarf. It was almost worth the unending agony under his pelt, as if he’d survived an attempt at the skinning of his hide. Taxidermy while you wait.

  Dorothy began to stir. Her first intelligible words were, “Now that we’re alone, I can ask. Where is Liir?”

  “Hidden in the outback somewhere,” said Brrr. “With wife and child.”

  “I must still be hallucinating. Wife?”

  “He’s older than you,” said the Lion. “Remember that.”

  “So am I, now,” said Dorothy, dizzily. But a bit of prairie reserve crept into the pitch of her voice and the upward jerk of her spine. “Why did you rescue me?” she continued, when whatever passed for coherence in her had returned.

  “I did it because I don’t like bullies,” said Brrr, “and they were bullies to their boots, everyone except Temper Bailey.”

  “I did it because I don’t think you’re guilty,” said Little Daffy. “I was there in Center Munch, no lie, and I was about the age you are now. I do remember your arrival. Everyone hated Nessarose. It was liberation. You were a Hero of the Nation. It’s political expediency to name you a villain now. Bald opportunism. You were being brought down only to drum up a patriotic fervor just before the Eminence announced another front is about to open in the war. Which means it isn’t going all that well for Munchkinland, I should guess. Really, do they think we are morons?”