A Dark Descent

by Lisa Fiedler

  WHAT THE MOAT SAW

  There is a chill in the air and the ground crunches with frost. But this does not deter the barefoot boy. He slips by the Witch’s guards and gains entrance to the broad gap between the inner and outer curtain walls, the area known as the zwinger. For Marada, this space is part gallery, and part prison.

  His name is Thruff. He is young and angry—a dangerous combination, to be sure.

  Behind him, his father, who is called Norr, creeps at a distance. He is a miner, and a soft-spoken rebel. He has followed his son from their shack in the village, hoping the lad was merely on his way to gamble at marbles or kiss a pretty girl.

  But no, the boy has led Norr to the castle of the Witch.

  Thruff is swift and stealthy and is over the bridge before his father can get close enough to grab him. Inside, Thruff shouts for the Witch, demanding an audience.

  Deep in the guts of the castle, Marada, who dislikes being shouted for, leaps from her throne. Her heavy sandals tromp down the stairs of the keep and through the great hall; in no time she has marched through the inner courtyard and toward the outer ward.

  “I heard the bellow of a peasant!” she snarls as she goes. “Show yourself, and prepare to perish!”

  Thruff’s father acts with the speed of devotion, pushing the boy behind a grouping of statues just as the Witch arrives. She might have spied the boy if not for the glare of the white winter sun shining off her gauntlets.

  Instead she sees his father. “Is it you who hollers for me?” she asks through pointy teeth.

  Norr thinks fast, explaining that he has come to confess to the crime of vandalism. He does not let on that the true purpose of the messages he has scratched into the walls of her mines is to recruit rebels for a Foursworn Mingling.

  Marada kicks him hard in his rib cage, and he falls to his knees in the grass of the bailey, clutching his shattered midsection and gasping for breath. Thruff, hunkered down behind the statues, stifles a shriek. He makes to run to his father’s aid, but a covert look from the writhing Norr stops him.

  “Keep hidden,” Norr mouths to his boy.

  His boy, for once, obeys.

  “Bring me Norr’s grubby girl litter,” the Witch commands a guard.

  The soldier stampedes into the castle and returns with the miner’s wife and five older daughters. Thruff’s mother and sisters. He has not seen them since his babyhood and yet he knows them. For they are humming.

  Thruff cannot take his eyes off his mother; she is gaunt and weary-looking, and yet she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He wants to run to her, but he knows that such an act would not end well. Her hair is like his sister Locasta’s, a riot of violet ringlets; he imagines this is what freedom would look like if freedom could be seen. Her hands, though, are the opposite of freedom—scarred and wrinkled from the work the Witch has foisted on her.

  And his sisters! Five of them! All taken away from him before he was old enough to learn their names. He is certain they would share Locasta’s spunk if it had not been pounded from them at the hands of the Witch.

  His sisters are still humming and weeping. Mother looks brave. Or at least resolute. Father is nearly unable to breathe. His ribs are ruined.

  Marada growls and clouds gather overhead. She approaches Norr and presses the blunt-tipped finger of her gauntlet to his shoulder. He screams in pain. Thruff winces where he hides. He would like nothing more than to strip the Witch of these heinous gloves and melt them down with the heat of his fury to naught but a molten memory. What he cannot know is that those gloves were once as pure of purpose as the silver from which they were fashioned.

  But that was when they were worn by a king.

  Marada’s touch shoots stillness into Norr, and her incantation peals through the bailey:

  “Drain away motion, spill away breath

  Petrifaction to stone is a fate worse than death

  Sculpt away feeling, carve away life

  Then to your daughters, then to your wife!

  In between heartbeats, with a touch cold as stone,

  Why? So you miners will LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  As she chants the ugly rhyme, she touches each of Thruff’s sisters and his mother in turn, with the same gleaming fingertip. Horrified, the boy watches as their pale skin hardens over to rock; their faces go stony and vacant.

  Satisfied with her vicious artistry, Marada spits on the gauntlet’s fingertip as if just touching Thruff’s family has tarnished it. Then she stamps back to her castle, her spurs leaving a trail of sparks in their wake.

  The guards examine the statues with distress. Seven more hunks of sculpture that they will be required to polish. One less able-bodied miner to labor in the bowels of Oz, and worst of all, six fewer dainty maids to serve them guggleberry cider in the dining hall.

  It is a bad day in Gillikin, to be certain.

  But then, it always is.

  Thruff waits out the remainder of the afternoon, squatting behind the statues that saved him. Through the blur of his tears, he memorizes the stony faces of his family angle by angle, curve by curve, and for one fleeting moment, he dreams of telling Locasta how sweet his sisters were, how brave their father was, and how lovely their mother looked, even at the end.

  But he knows he will not do that.

  For to tell her this tale would be to admit that he is to blame for the loss of them. So he hides until moonrise, then scuttles out of the zwinger and runs home to the shack where his sister Locasta waits.

  Newly made an orphan. Thanks to Thruff.

  Locasta kept her eyes on the moat until the final image sank to the muddy bottom.

  “He went to rescue them,” Shade whispered.

  Locasta nodded, listening to the ripple of the water and wondering how they were going to distract the guard, raise the portcullis, and get inside the castle to search for the compass. Saving her family, it seemed, was no longer an issue.

  Then from the grassy rise came an unexpected sound. At first Locasta thought she was imagining it, but as the sound drew nearer, it became unmistakable.

  Someone was humming.

  29

  TRUE OR FALSE?

  Is it really time for me to go?” asked Glinda.

  “It is,” said Mythra. “There is much for you to do in Oz.”

  Glinda stepped out of the hug and looked up into the Mystic’s face. “Come with me! The Revolution will be much stronger with you there to lead it!”

  “It is not my place to lead it,” said Mythra, smoothing Glinda’s newly trimmed bangs. “That responsibility belongs to you. Here is where I must remain.”

  “You never told me why you had to leave Oz in the first place,” said Glinda, surprised that such a tremendous detail had gone unaddressed. “Are you being punished?”

  “Not in the way you’re implying. But now that I know what I’ve missed—not being there to see my darling Tilda marry her knight; never even dreaming that you, granddaughter, had come to exist—well, I can tell you that my exile has become a far worse punishment than I ever imagined. Now, gather up your things. It’s time to say good-bye.”

  Glinda trudged to the table to collect the rope and the shield; she was already wearing the pink tourmaline ring. But the pearl—she just couldn’t bring herself to deposit it into her pocket without enjoying one more look.

  Placing it between her thumb and forefinger, she held it aloft to admire its luster against the gray backdrop of the cave ceiling. This created the illusion that she was balancing a full, white moon between her fingertips.

  “You should be very proud of that little bauble,” Mythra observed. “The enchantment you cast upon it shows that you possess the true wisdom of a Sorceress’s vision.”

  In Glinda’s mind the word “vision” brushed up against her thoughts of the moon, and suddenly the horrid image of the four Witches torturing Elucida came crashing back to her.

  The moon vision.

  At the same moment, Mythra’s brows arced up. �
�Moon vision?”

  Glinda quickly told Mythra about the dark phantasm that had set everything into motion—how the Wickeds had stepped out of the future and onto her back lawn. She described the compass formation, the Witches’ cruelty, and how the poor Moon Fairy had seemed helpless against this confluence of evil.

  She was just getting to the part in which the sinister fifth Witch had appeared and two of the three captives had been revealed when Mythra held up her hand.

  “There is nothing to fear from that nightmare,” she said calmly.

  “Are you sure? Because my mother said it was from a time yet to come, and that it was possible—”

  “Possible,” Mythra repeated, “means a thing is as likely not to happen as it is to happen. In this case, the not happening is what applies.”

  “So you’re familiar with this moon ceremony?”

  “Quite.” Mythra gave a little shudder. “It would have been called the Ritual of Endless Shadow if it had been allowed to take place. The fifth Witch hoped to release her master—a Shadow called Urla—from where I had imprisoned her, with Elucida’s help, in the moon. I imagine you were just about to describe a pair of terrible red eyes?”

  “Yes! The fifth Witch. You know about her?”

  “It was she who, on the night of King Oz’s demise, attacked Elucida. My extremely unwilling presence was the only thing that could have enabled her to succeed, and she very nearly did, by seizing the Magical strength of my past, present, and future and turning it against the moon.”

  As Mythra spoke, Glinda was racked with a feeling of being torn apart, split into three pieces—the sensation was not quite agonizing, but vastly unpleasant, and she understood that what she was experiencing was something Mythra had already endured.

  Connection Magic.

  Now Glinda felt herself flanked by two familiar forms: to her left was the glistening reflection of her past self. On her right stood the spirit of her own future.

  “So I called upon the lingering power of Oz, the King Uniter,” Mythra continued solemnly, “and with the help of four stolen pieces of silver, the last of his Magic helped me to escape the fifth Witch and foil the ritual. I was made whole again, made whole forever.”

  A violent force came pounding in on Glinda from both sides, and she felt herself slamming back into a single being. The action—Mythra’s memory of it—was so jarring that Glinda’s teeth rattled and her bones felt as if they might splinter.

  “The fifth Witch knew that she could not rescue the Shadow without the full arc of my past, present, and future Magic, and since neither she nor anyone else could ever again divide what Oz’s Magic had united, the Shadow was lost forever. This enraged her, and her rage, I am sorry to tell you, made her grow even stronger, right before my eyes. She turned herself to smoke and vowed that she would not rest until she had destroyed me and every last bit of Goodness in the Land of Oz.” Here Mythra crooked a sardonic grin. “But mostly me.”

  “So that’s why you pretended to be dead. To escape the fifth Witch.”

  To Glinda’s surprise, the Mystic’s cheeks flushed slightly. “I hope you do not think me a coward.”

  “No!” said Glinda with an emphatic shake of her head. “I recently did something similar, though instead of fleeing to the Underlands, I hid in a toolshed.” She cocked her head, still trying to understand the complex tale. “But what do the Elemental Fairies have to do with this ritual? Madam Mentir said they were involved.”

  “Had the fifth Witch succeeded in freeing the Shadow, she planned to infuse her with one of Oz’s Gifts. In the absence of the next Ozma, claiming even a single piece of the Oz spirit would have allowed the Shadow to take the throne of Oz.”

  “But doesn’t Ozma need to accept all four Gifts of Oz to live on as the rightful ruler?” Glinda asked, remembering what Squillicoat had told her.

  “Key word: ‘rightful,’ ” said Mythra. “In that vocabulary class of yours, did you happen to learn the meaning of the word ‘wholesome’?”

  “It’s another way of saying Good.”

  “Exactly. To be wholesome, our Oz ruler must be whole. Wicked, however, is not quite so concerned with balance. In fact, Wickedness thrives on being incomplete, off center, crooked. Fortunately, after Oz’s death the fifth Witch had no Gifts at all.”

  “Because the Fairies hid them!” Glinda exclaimed. “But you knew where all four were hiding. So if she had rescued the Shadow, she would have forced you to tell her the whereabouts of Ember . . . or Terra, or Poole, or . . . Ria.” Her eyes widened. “That reminds me! Where is Ria? She was the only one the map didn’t point to, and the rope-and-rock diagram burst before I could decipher it.”

  “The Elemental Fairy of the Air,” Mythra began, her voice filled with reverence, even as it trembled, “the lovely and powerful Ria, guardian of the Wind, was entrusted to Mistress Dottie Jane of Munchkin Country. Appropriately enough, Ria chose to conceal herself in what was Dottie Jane’s signature accessory.” Mythra grinned and fluttered her fingers as a hint.

  “A fan!” said Glinda. “A pretty paper fan! Of course. I know just what it looks like, because I saw her holding it when the zoetrope revealed the unveiling party to us. What of Terra? Where did he choose to hide?”

  “The Lurl Fairy is in the groundskeeper’s compass,” Mythra said, “and Poole—well, he took himself into Dallybrungston’s fussy little pocket square!”

  “The hankie!” Glinda laughed. “Yes, the map told us that.”

  “I have every faith you will be as successful with Ria, Poole, and Terra as you were with Ember,” said Mythra.

  “As do I,” said Glinda confidently (but not overconfidently). “With the help of Locasta, and Shade and Ursie and—Ben! Oh, I nearly forgot. To release Ben from the collide-o-scope, I had to promise the Nome King a trade.” Her eyes went to the beautiful gem-studded belt at Mythra’s waist. “I truly hate to ask, but—”

  “Say no more.” Mythra unclasped the belt and fastened it around Glinda’s waist. Then she picked up the gossamer cloth from the table, whipped it sharply around her head, and let it waft down to her shoulders, where it once again became a tattered shawl of rough brown wool. “Be as brave as you are and as wise as you’ve been,” she said, giving Glinda a gentle nudge toward the stairwell, which had silently reappeared.

  “I will,” said Glinda, swallowing her tears. “You’re sure you can’t come home to Oz? Ever?”

  The Mystic’s answer was to give no answer at all. Then, just as she had done when Glinda first arrived, she turned her back to her visitor and hobbled into the gloomy recesses of her cave.

  “Thank you, Priestess,” said Glinda. “Thank you in abundant amounts.”

  With a heavy heart, she made her way up the steps, toting her shield and rope. It wasn’t until she’d reached the orange door to Roquat’s palace that she heard the faint echo of the Mystic’s voice from below:

  “Truth Above All, my darling Zephyr,” it said. “Your grand-mamá misses you already.”

  * * *

  Glinda burst through the orange door, swung open the iron gate, and found the Nome King right where she had left him. Kaliko, who was busy polishing the gemstones that dotted the marble walls, barely spared her a glance.

  “I have the belt,” she said, dropping into a curtsy before the Nome King’s throne, her eyes fixed on the collide-o-scope in his hand.

  Roquat looked less than pleased by her success. “Well done, Glinda Gavaria,” he said grudgingly. “That is indeed the very item I had in mind. Give it here.”

  Glinda rose and handed over the belt and watched Roquat fasten it around his broad midsection. He gave her a smug look that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

  “You’ll release Ben now,” she said. “Won’t you?”

  “Hmmm.” The monarch scratched his stone chin. “No. I don’t think I will.”

  Glinda was aghast. “But that was our agreement. You said you would let him go if I brought you the belt. We had a
deal.”

  Roquat spun the collide-o-scope between his fingers. “You make an excellent point, but I remain disinclined to release the earth child. He’s making progress in there, you know. Learning to see through other prisms. So you may as well be on your way.”

  Leaving Ben behind, trapped in a spinning collide-o-scope, was simply not something Glinda was prepared to do. “How about,” she said, mimicking the king’s earlier offer, “I play you for him!”

  “Wondiferous! If you win, the boy goes free. But what if I win?”

  “Then, in addition to keeping Ben spinning in that contraption, you will also collect this valuable prize.” Glinda handed him the enchanted pearl.

  Kaliko, interested now, stopped polishing and raised his stony brows.

  “What is the game?” asked Roquat, gazing at the pearl, his eyes shining with appreciation. “Multiple choice again?”

  “True or False, if you don’t mind.”

  “He doesn’t,” Kaliko blurted. “True or False it is! What are the rules?”

  “Well, I assume there is some Magic involved in releasing my friend from that contraption.”

  “There is,” Roquat confirmed.

  “So you will describe a Magical act, or spell, or anything else that may or may not achieve the desired result, and I will tell you if what you’ve described is true or false.”

  Kaliko bounced exuberantly on the balls of his stone feet. “Delightful!”

  “And no cheating,” said Glinda.

  “Fine, fine . . .” The king nodded his consent and handed the pearl back to Glinda.

  “Begin,” she said, curling her fist around it.

  Roquat cleared his throat; it sounded like sand skittering over stone. “The way to release your friend is through a Witchly dance, which involves tapping the heels, wiggling the hips, and spinning on tiptoe.”

  Glinda opened her fingers ever so slightly to peek at the pearl. In response to Roquat’s statement, the creamy hue had changed to the color of coal.