The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  When the yard had cleared, and the maids put away their brushes, and Liir had come to accept that no one would scratch his rump again today in the way that gave him joy, he turned to look at Trism, who had remained.

  “Tip?” said Liir.

  “Her factotum,” said Trism.

  “Her son, it must be.”

  “No one knows. He was lost and he is back. This means she will move immediately into action. The dragons are ready. The only hold against our striking earlier was whether she might inadvertently be putting him in danger, not knowing his whereabouts. If the boy is back, and secured, any remaining prohibition against an attack has been lifted. You’ll be propositioned tonight. Mark my words.”

  “Propositioned. Hmmm.”

  “They’ll ask you to confirm that the spells I’m trying to cast through the arcane language of that solitary page of the Grimmerie are accurate. They’ll ask you to examine the book and refresh the spells, refine and intensify them, with any other charm that you can find. It’s why you’ve been brought here. Only your mother showed any real skill with that book; everyone else has fumbled and failed with it. Even Mombey is dubious about reading it. She will promise you something real, and she’ll keep her promise, if you help her bring down your uncle.”

  “That boy knew my daughter,” said Liir.

  “You must put that sort of thought aside. Perhaps you can survive long enough to be a help to your daughter again.”

  “I have been no help to her at all. Ever.”

  “Get ready for what they will ask. They’ll ask only once.”

  “Will you love me whatever I say?”

  “No. I don’t promise that. I may have made my own choices, for my own reasons, but I won’t love you unless you make your own choices, for your own reasons. That’s the bargain of love.”

  A man and an Elephant, talking about love, and neither of them shamed. What a world I’ve come up through, said Liir to himself. Oh, what a world, what a world.

  Trism knew about which he spoke. By the light of the jackal moon Mombey came into the garden behind Colwen Grounds, where Liir had been allowed to graze. She presented herself as a woman of gravity, with a furrowed brow and silvering hair, and she walked with a cane, but she hadn’t gone so far as to concede to a wrinkled neck. Trism walked four feet behind her, his head down, his eyes cloaked, his hands clasped, trying to be as remote as possible in the presence of an Elephant who still loved him.

  “We will launch our attack by dawn,” La Mombey said. “Will you help?”

  “I can tell by my sight, my smell, and my hearing that my family is not here. Beyond that, I don’t know where they are,” Liir replied. “Naturally, I can’t help you target anyplace they might be, and they might be anywhere.”

  “What if I told you we know where they are? Both of them?” said La Mombey. “Your wife and your daughter? And they would be spared? What if I gave you proof? Would you help us then?”

  “It doesn’t matter that your proof could be false.” He stood firm on his big Elephant feet. “You’ve also targeted places that harbor any child who is not mine, and I find no difference between them and a child who is mine.”

  “With your proboscis, you can’t smell the difference between your own kin and someone foreign?” she said, laughing.

  “With my proboscis,” he said, “I can smell that there is no difference. I will not help you.”

  He didn’t have to bother to say that he believed the skill to read the Grimmerie, just as the tendency to be born with green skin, might skip a generation, the way corrupted thumbs skipped in the northern Quadlings, or obesity in certain fruit flies. It didn’t matter. He turned from Trism, who was wringing his hands; he turned from Mombey, who was drunk with elation. “Ready the fleet,” she said to her dragonmaster. To Liir, she said, “You have sealed your own doom by your refusal to assist in this campaign. Count your final moments.”

  “Trism, no,” said Liir.

  “Mercy on your soul,” said Trism to Liir.

  “Mercy on yours,” replied the Elephant, without malice, only heartache.

  13.

  With the advice of the Ozmists, Rain and her companions managed to avoid Shiz entirely. Unwittingly, they also sidestepped the cohort of jumbo shadowish spider-thugs Mombey had sent across the border to apprehend them. The travelers approached the capital, just another clutch of private citizens set roaming by wartime hysteria. Rain hadn’t known what to expect of the EC. From a distance, it looked seven, nine, nineteen times more immense than the university city of Shiz.

  Dorothy proposed that they make their way into the Emerald City via the great squared archways known as Westgate. So the companions stopped to take stock on the graveled slopes outside the city walls, where travelers arriving from the West were required to unroll their Vinkus carpets, lay out their satchels for inspection, and present papers of introduction if they had serious government business. Rain was daunted.

  So were her friends. “It’ll be impossible to find a kidnapped man in this canyon of towers,” said Mr. Boss. “Tall buildings, begging your pardon, dwarf me.” He looked dubious. He’d never dared risk bringing the Clock of the Time Dragon through any of the gates of the capital, so the EC was one district of Oz about which he was entirely ignorant.

  “I’ve come this far, but I don’t know as I’d be welcome farther, being a Munchkinlander,” said Little Daffy. “Sadly, I have no state secrets to sell to the Emperor of Oz. Only curious cupcakes and the like.”

  Rain turned to Brrr.

  “Well, I’m with you,” he said. “I’m not bailing.”

  “But aren’t you still wanted in this town?” Rain asked him.

  “Yes, I had a prison sentence converted to a civilian assignment, to find the location of the Grimmerie and report it, from which I went skipping away five or six years ago. And yes, some magistrate or another might remember. But I’d venture everyone has other matters on their minds these days.”

  “You must be mad,” said Rain. “Back then, you were one of the centerpieces of their campaign to locate the Grimmerie. You failed to bring it in. You can’t risk showing your face here. You’d never get out alive.”

  “Nobody does,” said the dwarf. “You’ll have figured that out by now, sweetheart.”

  “I’m going alone,” said Rain.

  “You can’t go alone,” said Brrr. “We can’t let you.”

  “I’ll go with her,” said Dorothy. “It’s safest for me. Anyway, I remember this place. I can do the Emerald City. I’m older now, I’ve been to Kansas City and San Francisco. We can find our way together.”

  Rain turned on her. “Not on your life. I’ll need to be circumspect. You couldn’t be circumspect even with your mouth tied up in muslin bandages.”

  “You know, I used to like you people in Oz a lot more than I do now,” replied Dorothy. “Time was I could just open my mouth and people would be quiet and listen. Now it’s just jabber jabber jabber, shut up and sit down. Well, too bad, Rain. I’m coming with you.”

  “But you’re Dorothy,” said Rain. “You make a spectacle of yourself just by how you stare at things so deeply.”

  “It’s called astigmatism and it’s correctable with lenses but they got crushed in the landslide in the Glikkus. As far as I’ve ever heard, it’s a free country, Rain. So I’m traipsing along. I’ll promise not to sing and I’ll go buy a shawl from one of those vendors. We’ll get by just fine. I can be your big sister. You can call me Dotty.”

  The dwarf and the Munchkinlander looked at each other. “Dotty. It has a certain legitimacy,” said Mr. Boss. Rain gave up.

  Dorothy found a shrub to hide behind as she wriggled out of her skirt. She turned it inside out. The several kinds of cloth used to patch and line it were unmatched and worn. Suitably seedy. “We make do in Kansas,” said Dorothy. The reversed garment helped conceal that look of dirty glamour a tourist can bear. Draped in a rough grey wool shawl, Dorothy could almost pass as a peasant milkmaid fr
om the Disappointments—one who has somehow avoided rickets and malnutrition due to fierce inner strength.

  Meanwhile, Rain had always managed to mosey along without attracting attention even though she’d been hunted her whole life long. She said to Dorothy, “You better carry the shell. I don’t want Tay disappearing into the crowds,” and she drew Tay up into her arms.

  “Heavens, not that,” agreed Dorothy. “If Tay is anything like Toto, you’ll be dropping the avoirdupois chasing after him. I’d have always preferred a French poodle, frankly. Though I’d never tell Toto that to his face. It would ruin him.”

  Rain said good-bye to the Lion, the dwarf, and the Munchkinlander. “We’ll make up a plan as we go along,” she said. “Maybe Dorothy will be an asset after all.”

  “Maybe this time,” sang Dorothy, but then restated that without musical expression.

  “Rain, are you sure about this?” asked the Lion. He seemed to have shrugged off some of his distractedness following the death of Nor. The congress with the Ozmists may have set his mind at rest—whatever else might be said, Nor was no longer suffering. Anywhere. Now, Brrr could look with beaded focus and a certain concern at the girls standing before him.

  Rain shrugged. “Dorothy might be able to get an audience with the Emperor. She once saw the very Wizard of Oz himself, even though he was a recluse. Few can say they ever did that.”

  “Indeed,” said the Lion.

  “She might be able to find out if they are holding my father. She might be able to strike a bargain for his release. I’ll keep my head down. I promise. We’ll just look about. We’ll see what we can learn, and we’ll come back. Will we find you here?”

  The Lion said, “Rain, when thunderheads are about to open, it’s hard to say which way anyone will run. Think about it. Various thugs hunted your parents down in Apple Press Farm. You yourself had to flee from Mockbeggar Hall. Then someone found out about Nether How. Now your father is hauled away from Kiamo Ko. The only place you’ve ever stayed unmolested is the Chancel of the Ladyfish above the Sleeve of Ghastille. Should we get separated, remember our plan to leave messages there. Weighed down by that question mark horse-stone. All right? Agreed? But I promise you this, we won’t leave here unless we have no choice.”

  “There is no safe place in Oz, is there,” said Rain.

  “There is no safety anywhere,” said the Cowardly Lion.

  Those to stay behind took their leave in a formal fashion, like parents departing from their scholar daughter in the reception room at St. Prowd’s Academy. As the storm clouds gathered—literal, heavy rain clouds, the seasonal burst approaching at last—Rain and Dorothy and Tay turned to slip among a large group of foreigners come for market day, some plains Arjiki and some Yunamata froggy-folk. Together Dorothy and Rain passed under the massive carved transoms of Westgate. Through which so many years ago (but how many?) Dorothy and the Lion, the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow had originally emerged after their famous interviews with the Wizard of Oz, their instructions firmly in hand: to march to the castle at Kiamo Ko and kill the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Dorothy didn’t remember the names of the thoroughfares that interlaced the vast city, but once they reached the knoll of a public park she identified the towers of the Palace in the distance. “That much hasn’t changed,” she promised. “It was called the Palace of the Wizard when I had my several audiences with him, and just as I was leaving Oz last time around they were talking about renaming it the Palace of the People. But it doesn’t look any different. A Palace is a palace.”

  Rain barely listened to Dorothy’s prattle. She was trying not to be daunted by the weirdness of it all. Not the buildings—what meant buildings to her, really? The statues on their plinths, the great crescents of fine houses, the iron railings and the pushcarts, the monumental stone tombs of art and commerce. Rain was more aware of the people. So many. Who could ever make a collection of so many people?

  When they passed one of the market squares, it was life as Rain knew it, people squabbling for food, bargaining over prices. But the trestle tables set up under bentlebranch arbors offered small choice, and more to the point—Dorothy saw this too—the vendors and the shoppers were predominantly female. An occasional elderly bearded man in green glasses, carrying a blunderbuss; that seemed the police force and the minister and the army, the whole local patriarchy all at once. Schoolboys, to be sure, and toddler boys nearly indistinguishable from toddler girls, and genderless babies. But men the age of her father? Absent.

  “We wouldn’t want to start our search for your father in Southstairs, would we?” whispered Dorothy.

  “The prison? I hope not,” replied Rain. “Let’s go directly to the Emperor. If we can’t get in to see him by dint of one trick or another, you can reveal yourself as Dorothy.”

  “What if that doesn’t cut the mustard with him?”

  “You can warble him into submission. Or I’ll come forward and claim the Emperor as my blood relation. What is there to lose now?”

  Dorothy bit her lower lip. “As I hear it told, you’ve spent your whole life on the run from this man. It seems a dicey strategy to go up to him and holler a big ole Kansas howdy.”

  “Yeah, well, running in place hasn’t gotten me very far, has it. I’m tired of skulking through my life. We’re facing the music.”

  “Do you think your father would help the Emperor use the Grimmerie against the Munchkinlanders?”

  Rain said, “Don’t ask me a question like that. There are so many ways I don’t know who my father is.”

  Dorothy was silent for a while. They made their way along a canal colonnaded with cenotaphs celebrating various Ozmas of history. A dead cow floated by, and even Tay wrinkled its nose. “The city has seen better days,” said Dorothy. “I have to add, though, I don’t know who my father was, either. Really. Lost at sea and all that. Makes you wonder what any of us knows about who we are.”

  Rain hadn’t taken to Dorothy, and she didn’t think she was about to start now. But she reached out and squeezed her hand. She had learned to touch people, a little, by touching Tip, and Dorothy was a stranger here. Stranger than most.

  It began to sprinkle. A smell riled up from drains that had gone too long untended—the municipal workers all having been called to the eastern front, probably. The city was hard to navigate. They ended up in a place called the Burntpork district and bought a few rolls to eat, but had to give them to Tay because they were too hard. “I’ve come this far, and I keep losing my way,” said Dorothy. “Let’s try that sloping bridge over the canal; it looks as if it carries a funicular, or maybe it’s an aqueduct. It’s heading vaguely upslope, so it has to get us to the higher ground of the city. We make another misstep and we’ll plunge into the sinkhole of Southstairs and be stuck in prison the rest of our born days.”

  By midafternoon, tired, they found the forecourt of the Palace, or one of them. “Is this it, then?” asked Dorothy.

  “Yes, I think we’re ready.”

  The Kansan turned to the Ozian. “You know, if we’ve played this wrong—if the Emperor wasn’t the one behind the abduction of your father—we’re in for big trouble. You know that.”

  “It’s a risk I’m ready to take. Are you?”

  “The Munchkinlanders tried and convicted me of murder,” said Dorothy, “so if I’m a villain on that side of the border, I should be welcomed as a heroine here. How do I look?”

  “Don’t forget you killed both sisters of the Emperor.”

  “Yes, there is that. Perhaps I should switch my skirt around again.”

  But it was too late. The door of the military offices of the forecourt opened. A bleary stooped man with only one leg wheeled himself out and examined a clipboard, and then looked at the two young women standing before him.

  “Miss Rainary?” he said in a dubious voice.

  “Proctor Gadfry,” said Rain.

  “I take it you’ve fled Shiz like everyone else,” he said. “I can offer you no succor he
re. You’re looking for a certificate of matriculation? Go away. St. Prowd’s statute of limitations has expired until after the war. Or has my tyrannical sister sent you here to pester me? I have more than enough to do than see to the mess she’s made of all our hard work.”

  “Proctor Gadfry,” said Rain. “You went to battle.”

  “And battled till I could battle no more,” he said, flicking one wrist toward where his absent knee should be. “I’m lucky to get a sinecure here until hostilities are concluded, one way or the other. But I was expecting a coven of downscale marsh witches who want to file a protest about something that happened about twelve thousand years ago. You’re not with that group?”

  “I have brought someone,” said Rain. “To see the Emperor.”

  “Hah. Go away.”

  “A visitor named Dorothy Gale,” said Rain. “A friend of mine.”

  Dorothy curtseyed a little clumsily and almost lost hold of the shell, but then turned and smiled at Rain with an expression both soft and fierce. It was the use of the word friend. Rain dropped her eyes.

  “I see,” said Proctor Gadfry, sizing up the situation for how it might be used to his own advantage.

  Her uncle Shell. Her great-uncle Shell. The Throne Minister of Loyal Oz until he named himself Emperor of Loyal Oz and its colonies, Ugabu and the Glikkus and Dominions Yet Unrecorded. And eventually the Emperor had declared himself divine. Quite the career path.

  Hard to know exactly how to prepare to meet the Unnamed God, thought Rain. Especially when he’s given himself a name and he’s related to me on my father’s side.

  Dorothy and Rain were brought to a dressing chamber and asked to change into simpler robes. Then they were escorted into a parlor that showed no signs of being the worse for wear due to the long war. Fresh prettibell spikes arched against the burnished leather walls, and an aroma of arrowscent and pickled roses issued from braziers set in brass wall brackets. The windows were draped with lace worked over with scenes from the life of some Ozma or other. The visitors had to take off their shoes to stand on the patterned carpet, which felt like moss on its first day.