Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02

by Son of a Witch

  He shrugged. “What someone would feel after she’s dead—that notion means little to me. She doesn’t feel. All that’s left of her—shades and echoes, and fading by the hour.”

  Glinda closed her breviary with a little slap. She hadn’t been attending closely to her devotions anyway. “That pesky slogan you see scrawled everywhere is right. She does live, you know. She does.”

  Liir snapped at her. “I have no truck with that kind of sentiment. All butchers and simpletons ‘live’ in that sense.”

  Glinda raised her chin. “No, Liir. She lives. People sing of her. You wouldn’t guess it, being you—but they do. There’s a musical noise around her name; there are things people remember, and pass on.”

  “People can pass on lies and hopes as well as shards of memory.”

  “You refuse to be consoled, don’t you? Well, that’s as much proof as I could ever need that you’re kin to her. She was the same way. The very same way.”

  5

  THE SITUATION, the Superior Maunt concluded that evening, was decidedly unsettled. Scouting from the highest windows in all directions, the novices reported that several dozen armed horsemen showed signs of making camp in the Shale Shallows. They’d broken into the kitchen gardens and rooted about in the shed for squashes and such. “It seems unfeeling not to provide them with a meal,” said the Superior Maunt, “but I suppose that might give the wrong impression.”

  Liir and Trism asked for an audience, and she sat with them on a bench at the base of a flight of steps. “We can’t have the house put in danger on our behalf,” said Liir. “Between Trism and me, while working in the Home Guard, we’ve been responsible for enough loss of life. We didn’t know the dragons would explode. We didn’t intend to bring down the basilica. We don’t know if there was human death in that catastrophe. We want to do no further damage, if we can help it. We shall give ourselves up to them.”

  “Since it may ease your minds on that score, I will tell you that I heard of no loss of human life in the collapse of the basilica,” said the Superior Maunt. “It was midnight, after all. The place was deserted, even the side sheds and storerooms that escaped being crushed by falling debris. I suspect, however, your foes imagine the basilica was your real target, and the death of the dragons—how do they term it these days?—collateral damage. As to your suggestion that you should turn yourselves in, let me take it up in council before you make your decisions.”

  “What is council?” asked Trism.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to find out,” she replied.

  THEY GATHERED IN THE CHAPEL, the only room in the mauntery large enough to hold all inhabitants and guests. Evening devotions usually occurred on a basis of rotations, some maunts handling kitchen washup or geriatric babysitting while the rest sank into quiet prayer or early nap. Tonight the Superior Maunt requested the attendance of all, even those retired maunts like Mother Yackle who were on the edge of gaga.

  Lady Glinda, though a benefactress, refused a seat on the dais up front, and she had removed her trademark diamond strutted collar for a quieter linen ruff. Liir and Trism, unfamiliar with these traditions, stayed standing. The older maunts were escorted in, in wheeled chairs when necessary; the novices took their places on their knees until the Superior Maunt indicated they should sit. “This is not prayer,” she said. “Something like it, but not prayer, precisely.”

  She sat herself down, with difficulty. After a short silence, Sister Hymnody offered a provocatory in plaintone, though her sweet bell-like voice quavered. They were all on edge.

  “Sisters, mothers, friends, and family. I shall be brief. Our tradition of charity, reinforced by our vows, brings us this evening into a conflict none of us has anticipated or experienced before. However generous the tithe of Lady Glinda, I doubt it will rebuild this house should the army of the Emperor sack it.

  “We are a small house, a mission post on the road halfway between our motherchapel in the Emerald City and the rest of the world. Our isolation has been the cause of loneliness, at times, but also promoted peace and protection. Perhaps even provocation—but I pass over that. Tonight we are neither isolated nor peaceful. It is a truth we must accept.

  “I am an old woman. I was raised as a novice in the venerable practice of obedience. Under the rubric of our order I followed instruction, including the one that required me, years ago, to take charge of this mauntery and govern it until death.

  “I still believe in obedience. Even while soldiers camp outside our walls, and quite likely call for reinforcements, I must be obedient to the wishes of the powers that placed me here.

  “As I speak these words, my dear friends, I hear in them an echo of the Emperor’s remarks. He professes subservience to the highest aims and intentions of the Unnamed God. God is the mouthpiece and the Emperor is his striking arm. The First Spear.

  “I have not met the Emperor, and I will not. I should decline an invitation were one offered. The Emperor has hijacked the great force of faith and diverted it to further the prosperity and dominance of the City. Who can argue with a man who has the voice of the Unnamed God speaking exclusively in his ear? Not I. I have never heard such a voice. I have only heard the echo that still reverberates, once the Unnamed God stopped speaking and the world took up with itself.

  “In our house, we profess to believe that the Unnamed God has made us in its likeness and its image, and this should have enlarged us to be like the Unnamed God. I fear in the Emerald City, they have remade the Unnamed God in their image, and that has belittled and betrayed the deity. Can the Unnamed God be belittled, you ask. No, of course not. But the deity can go unrecognized, and return to mystery.”

  The sisters shifted. Many of the novices were ignorant of the Emperor’s apostasy, and the shoals of theocracy were beyond their ability to navigate. The Superior Maunt noticed.

  She stood. “Bring me two other chairs, one at my right and one at my left,” she said. This was done.

  “The Unnamed God retreats into mystery, and is not especially localized in my heart, my dears. Nor in the Emperor’s. The mystery is as equally in your heart as in mine, and in…the spirit of the trees and the…the music of water. That sort of thing. In the memory of our elders. In the hope for the newborn.

  “I break with the tradition of our house tonight, as the decisions now to be made involve your lives as well as mine. I am old; happily I would go to my sweet reward this evening were it provided me by a literal spear of the Emperor. I cannot ask the same of you. Therefore it is my wish that henceforth the mauntery—even if our residency here lasts only till dawn—shall be governed not by a single voice, but by a troika of voices. Were the disagreeables not outside our walls, I should invite your opinions and call for a ballot. Time prevents me from allowing that. In extremis, our family of maunts shall accept the leadership of three. Sister Doctor, will you rise to the chair?”

  Sister Doctor gaped. She grasped Sister Apothecaire’s hand briefly, and moved forward. Sister Apothecaire trembled and moved to the edge of her seat, perching for approach.

  “I shall take the second seat,” said the Superior Maunt. “I may be old, but I’m not dead.”

  The room was so still that the sounds of horses whinnying and stamping outside carried through the cold.

  “The third chair I am reserving for the novice known as Candle,” declared the Superior Maunt. “I have a notion we shall see her again. For how long, I don’t know. But we need the wisdom of age, the strength of the fit, and the initiative of the young. From this moment forward, my absolute command over this establishment is dissolved. I shall enter it so in the Log of the House before I retire. Now, let us see how we get on.”

  Sister Apothecaire bit her lip and tried to feel more humble than humiliated.

  Skirts rustled as the women shifted. Faint whispering, unprecedented in the chapel, sounded, like faraway wind. The Superior Maunt dropped her forehead into her fingers and breathed deeply, feeling that the world had changed utterly, and wonderi
ng how quickly she would regret this action.

  In the stillness, Lady Glinda stood. Reticence not being her usual thing, she’d had about enough: and anyway, hadn’t the Superior Maunt called for a collaborative spirit? “If I may speak,” she began, in a tone that implied she knew she could not be denied, “even if the army breaks through the defenses of this mauntery, they cannot do you good women much harm. There will be no bloodshed or rape here. Not while I am in house. Make of it what you will, even though I am retired from what passed for public service, I am still seen as a friend of the government. I have the ear of every society power monger in the country. The army knows well enough they cannot abuse you while I am a witness—and they will not touch me. They daren’t.”

  She added, “I am Lady Glinda,” in case some of the younger novices hadn’t cottoned on yet.

  “It isn’t the girls that are wanted,” said Sister Doctor. “It is the boys.”

  “Don’t underestimate what people in the throes of passion may do,” said the Superior Maunt. “Our rectitude means little to the world beyond our walls, and the commitment of our lives is as cheap as throwaway grain on unuseful margins of field. Still, Sister Doctor, you are right. The army seeks two young men, but they do not know for sure that they are here.”

  Liir said, “I do not think the broom would carry two, but Trism could climb to the ramparts late at night, and fly to safety. That would leave only me, and whatever fate I have earned, I should face it by myself.”

  The room grew decidedly chilly. “So the rumors of the broom are true?” said Sister Doctor. The Superior Maunt took in some breath wetly at the corners of her mouth.

  Liir shrugged but couldn’t deny it. From the side, mad Mother Yackle called, “Of course the rumors are true. The broom came from this very house. I myself gave it to Sister Saint Aelphaba years ago. Am I the only one concentrating enough to know this?”

  She might, an hour earlier, have been hushed, and the Superior Maunt began to speak. But Sister Doctor raised her hand and stayed the Mother Maunt’s comment, and remarked, “You’ve been quiet for a decade, Mother Yackle, but of late you’ve come back to yourself somewhat. Have you anything to add we should know?”

  “I don’t talk when there’s nothing to say,” said Mother Yackle. “All I have to add is this: Elphaba should be here to see this hour.”

  “You have an uncommon association with—the Witch of the West.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Mother Yackle. “I seem to have been placed on the sidelines of her life, as you might say, as a witness. I’m mad as a bedbug, so no one needs to attend, but I’ve taken some measure of her power. Oh!—but she should be here to see this hour.”

  “Mother Yackle? A guardian angel?” called Sister Apothecaire.

  “Well—a guardian twitch, anyway,” replied the old woman.

  Liir trembled and thought of his lack of power, once again, and of his revery within these walls. Now he remembered what he hadn’t seen before: that in the corner of the room where the green-skinned novice had sat rocking the cradle, a broom leaned against a chest of drawers.

  “Are there other remarks?” asked Sister Doctor.

  Shocked somewhat by the developments, the maunts muttered quietly, but no one else spoke until Sister Apothecaire stood and said, “Mother Maunt, I would like to applaud you for your courage and your wisdom.”

  Tears ran suddenly from the old maunt’s eyes as her house, to a person, stood and paid their respects. Outside, the horses shied and the men started at the sudden rain of noise from the chapel windows.

  THE BROOM, THOUGH, wouldn’t carry Trism. In his hands it was no more than a broom. “I lack the proper spunk, it seems,” he said.

  “Maybe it has lost its power,” said Liir, but in his own hand the thing leaped to life again, bucking like a colt.

  “We might be able to manage a sleight of hand with only one man to hide,” said Lady Glinda. “After all, as you pointed out, they are looking for a pair of you. Perhaps Trism could be passed off as my bodyguard. It was unlike me to have ventured here without a bodyguard, after all, though I did. Sometimes I like to confound even myself,” she explained. “It isn’t difficult.”

  “If the men who hold us under siege recognize Trism from the barracks at the Emerald City, he will be put under arrest,” said Sister Doctor.

  “Well, I used to be good at makeovers,” said Glinda. “And I could do magic with a blush brush. He’s got big shoulders for a maunt, but he’s pretty enough, and a little peroxide on the facial hair, which is so conveniently blond—” She tossed her own curls. “Well, I never travel without it.”

  “I think not,” said Trism in a steely voice.

  “Then we’ll have to take the chance we can pass you off as my servant,” said Lady Glinda. “Liir will leave tonight, on the broom, and tomorrow morning I shall ride out with Trism at my side, and make no explanation. If you choose then to open your doors to the soldiers, they will find nothing untoward here. I shall wait outside your gate as an obvious witness until their search is completed. If they are that hungry for blood, they will not dally here but rush on elsewhere.”

  “But where will you go?” the Superior Maunt asked Trism. By now they had retired to her office, and she was sagging against the worn leather of her chair.

  Liir looked at Trism. As much as could pass between them in a look, without words, passed: and another moment of possibility crashed and burned.

  “If Trism can get through, he should try to find Apple Press Farm,” said Liir. “He might smuggle Candle to safety elsewhere. The Emperor’s soldiers are headed vaguely in that direction, and the site has been discovered and ripped up by thugs and vandals at least once already. It seems to have been used as a clandestine press for the printing of antigovernment propaganda.”

  “Yes,” said the Superior Maunt modestly, “so I’ve been told.”

  “For you, I would try to find that farm,” said Trism. “And I will take the scraped faces, that they not be found here when the army does its ransack.”

  “As for me,” continued Liir, “I’ve learned something from you.” He looked at the Superior Maunt, who was tending to nod. “I promised to try to complete an exercise, and I did this much: I helped rid the skies of the dragons that were attacking travelers and causing fear and suspicion among the outlying tribes. I will finish my work before anything else happens. I should let the Conference of the Birds know that, for now, they are free to gather, to fly, to conduct their lives without that undue threat. With the help of the Witch’s broom, and unimpeded by dragon-fings, I can manage that shortly.

  “Beyond that,” he said, “I have other scores to settle. I set out years ago to find Nor, a girl with whom I spent some childhood years.”

  “But, Liir,” said Sister Doctor, “the Princess Nastoya is expecting your return.”

  Liir started. “I had assumed she’d have died long ago.”

  “She’s been trying to die, and trying not to die, a complicated set of intentions,” said Sister Doctor. “She mentioned you, Liir.”

  “I don’t know what I can do for her. I do not have Elphaba’s skills, neither by inheritance nor by training.”

  They sat silently as he worried it out. “In the choice of what to do next, I’m troubled. On the one hand, you say the Princess Nastoya is old and suffering and wants to die.”

  “Yes,” said the Superior Maunt wearily. “I know the feeling.”

  “On the other hand, Nor is young and has a life ahead of her, and perhaps it is a greater good to help her first, if I can.”

  They waited; the wind soughed a little in the chimney.

  “I will return to Princess Nastoya,” he told them. “I know I won’t be able to help her to sever her human disguise from her Elephant nature. I’m not a person of talents. But if I can give her the loyalty of friendship, I’ll do that.”

  “You would help an ancient crone over a disappeared girl?” said Sister Doctor. Her sense of medical ethics flared.


  “Young Nor found her own way out of Southstairs,” said Liir. “Whatever else has been done to her body or her mind, she clearly has spirit and cunning. I shall have to trust that her youth will continue to protect her. And maybe she doesn’t need my help now—though I won’t rest until I know it for sure. Meanwhile, Sister Doctor, you say that the Princess Nastoya has asked for me. Ten years ago I made a promise to try to help; I owe her my apologies if nothing else. And if I can report conclusively to the Scrow that it was not the Yunamata who were scraping the faces of solitary travelers, I may be able to help effect a treaty of faith between the two peoples.”

  “Is it hubris to aim for such a large reward?” asked Sister Doctor.

  “No,” said the Superior Maunt, her eyes now closed.

  “No,” said Liir. “The Superior Maunt has shown me that tonight. If we share what we know, we may have a fighting chance. This house, as a sanctuary, may survive. The country, and its peoples, may survive.”

  “The country,” said the Superior Maunt. Her mind was sliding sleepward. “Oh, indeed yes, the country of the Unnamed God…”

  “The country of Oz, be what it may,” said Liir.

  In a semblance of a toast to hope, they raised imaginary glasses of champagne, as the Superior Maunt began to snore.

  SOMETIME LATER THAN MIDNIGHT, Sister Apothecaire showed Liir and Trism to an attic. A window gave out conveniently to a place where two matching peaks of roof on either side sloped together to form a valley between them. Corbelling protected this section of roof from the view of people on the ground.

  Sister Apothecaire said, “Sister Doctor mentioned your intentions to me, Liir. I’m glad to have the chance to add what Sister Doctor forgot about. The Princess gave us a message to give you—but of course you had disappeared by the time we got back. She said something about Nor and the word on the street about her. I don’t recall precisely, but she has something to say to you.”