Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 (5 page)

And besides her? No one else to play with, once she and Irji and the rest of the ruling family—Fiyero’s survivors—had been kidnapped by the Wizard’s forces garrisoned at Red Windmill. Yes, he’d bravely followed, but fecklessly. They’d given him the slip. He had had to return to Kiamo Ko and face the screeching. Then the Witch had prohibited Liir from fraternizing any longer with Commander Cherrystone of the Gale Forcers or from making new friends among the lice-ridden urchins of Red Windmill.

So Liir had lived a lonely life. It could have been worse; he was fed and he was clothed more or less warmly. He had his chores, and the winged monkeys, largely inarticulate, at least didn’t go out of their way to move if he sat down nearby. Was there supposed to be more to a childhood? Rehearsing it to tell Dorothy, it seemed a spare, botched thing, and he suppressed most of it.

Of late, the Witch had become more irritable than usual, complaining of sleeping problems. Nanny—her nanny, at one point, and her mother’s nanny before that—was well into her eighties and good for little by way of coherent discussion. Liir had been left to talk to himself, and he’d found himself less than stimulating as a conversationalist.

Dorothy’s curiosity seemed flat to him, though, perhaps artificial. He wasn’t able to tell if she was really curious about his life, about the Witch, or if she was just marking time. Maybe steeling her own nerve by hearing the sound of her voice. He felt leery. Perhaps, the son of the Witch or no, he had inherited from exposure to Elphaba a mild sense of paranoia, as if everyone were after some scrap of vital information that they were unwilling to ask for directly.

He fussed and rolled his eyes and tried to imagine how to change the subject. He didn’t want to talk about his toddler days in the mauntery or his boyhood in Kiamo Ko. He was bereft of family, now, something of a hanger-on to Dorothy’s party, something of a guide without a clue out here in the cruel terrain. He just wanted to concentrate on the job.

He was glad, therefore, when the Lion started and said, “What’s that?”

“It’s night coming on,” said the Tin Woodman.

“Night coming on makes a sound like the Crack of Doom?” complained the Lion. “Never did before. Shhh, everyone. It wasn’t thunder. What was it? Shhh, I tell you.”

The Tin Woodman observed, “You’re the only one who’s talking—”

“
Shhh,
I said!”

They shhhushed.

The downpour made a symphony. An undertone of susurrus—rain at mid-distance—accompanied the solo vocalists rounding vowels of rainwater—
plopp
—
plopp
—or, as Liir thought, of Auntie Witch, Elphaba Thropp—
Thropp
—
Thropp
.

“Did you ever notice how rain sounds like a domingon?” asked the Scarecrow.

The Lion put his paw to his mouth: Shhhh. His grimace was anything but fearsome; he looked like an overgrown child in lion pajamas.

Then they heard what he was hearing, and before they could do anything about it, a stone at the base of the statue of Lurlina was shifted to one side. Up from the earth poked the paw of a creature. A badger, a beaver? Something brown, whiskered, and sensible. A slope grite of some sort, larger than its valley cousin.

“You’ve some nerve, besmirching the memory of Lurlina with your prattle,” said the Mountain Grite. His jowls made a saddlebag flapping noise as he spoke.

“Nerve,” said the Lion. “I wish.”

“We’re merely sheltering from the storm,” said Dorothy. “May we have your blessing to stay here?”

The Grite bared an impressive collection of incisors and canines.

“What business is it of yours?” said Liir. “We’re not bothering you.”

The Grite looked around, as if assessing whether he might take them on all at once and get the better of them. Apparently not. “My digs, if you want to call it that,” he said at last, “are directly below. You’re a big heavy lot, and you’re going to collapse the walls of my lodging.”

“A bad place to build,” said the Tin Man, for whom the teeth of a Mountain Grite weren’t much of a threat. “An insult to Lurlina, actually.”

“Maybe, but I dig deep, and if the whole thing gives and you tumble in, you’ll starve to death down there. And the stink of your rotting corpses won’t appeal to the spirit of Lurlina, however beloved of the natural world she is said to be.”

“The storm can’t last forever,” said Dorothy.

The Grite came forward a little. “Quite possibly I have rabies, you know. Fair warning. I bite first and I don’t ask questions.”

The Lion sighed and removed himself from the makeshift tent. Out there, the deluge sloped on him like a fountain coursing over a sculptured lion.

“We’re not going to let some overgrown rodent chase us into the storm,” said Liir. “If you bite me, I’ll bite you back, and return your own rabies to you. Go away.”

“That’s a capable awning you have.” The Grite wrinkled his face. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be. What is it?”

“It’s a cape,” said Liir. “What business is it of yours?”

“That’s the Witch’s cape,” said the Grite. “I don’t believe it. Where did you get it?”

“I took it,” said Liir.

“More fool you. She’ll have your head before nightfall.”

“She’s dead,” said Dorothy. Smugly.

The Grite’s eyes bulged, and he pushed his face nearer to Dorothy, who flinched and drew back from him: He wasn’t an especially handsome specimen of his family. “The Witch is dead? Can it be true?”

They nodded, each one of them.

“Oh, the shock of it.” The Grite clutched his paws and worried them back and forth. “The shock of it! The Witch is dead?”

The wind itself answered in a kind of obbligato descant:
The Witch is dead!

“Get out of here,” said the Grite in a colder voice. “Go on.”

“I thought you’d be glad,” said Dorothy.

The retort was crisp and censorious. “We held her in considerable regard. There have always been some Animals who would have marched at her side, right to the gates of the Emerald City, had she believed in armies, had she ever given the word. You’ll find no comfort among us.”

“She was my friend,” said Liir. “Don’t confuse us with assassins.”

“You’re a fledgling. You could barely manage to befriend her cape, let alone the Witch herself.” To Dorothy he added, “Move along, little Miss Thug and accomplices, before I call on reinforcements to deal with you.” The Grite sniffed the raw air as if expecting to find proof of their assertions in the smell of the revised world. “The Witch is dead. It can’t be. Wait till Princess Nastoya hears. Wait until the Wizard hears.”

He was lost to his own ruminations, and turned to look up at the statue of Lurline. “Give us guidance!” he said. “Speak, for once.”

The storm thundered very nearby. Everyone shuddered but the Grite. “I mean, speak in a language we can understand,” he clarified. But the storm, or Lurline within its might, didn’t oblige, and indeed, moments later the worst of the downpour was done, and the thunder shunted elsewhere.

The Grite continued. “I have no reason to give comfort to mine enemy, but there you are. You may be villainous, but you are young, some of you, and perhaps might learn to repent. I’m told that Wizardic battalions are encamped on the banks of the Vinkus River. Find the Wizard’s forces and they will protect you. That’s my advice to you.”

“The Wizard’s armies will
protect
us?” snapped Liir. “The Wizard of Oz is a menace!”

“Of course he is. A despot, a suzerain, call it what you will. The boss. And you’ve abetted him in his campaign to wipe out the western resistance. This news will travel fast, my friends.” Every time he said the word
friends,
it sounded less friendly. “But take protection where you can. When the word of the death of Elphaba Thropp spreads through these hills, you’ll have a very difficult time of it. I won’t answer for what happens next. You’ve heard my advice. Heed it.”

“I’m not giving myself up to any corps of the Wizard’s army,” said Liir. “If there are forces down the eastern side, we’ll keep to our plan to veer west, and take our chances through Kumbricia’s Pass. It’ll be a longer route but a safer one.”

“Perhaps we’d better get going,” said Dorothy, nervously.

“You had better go on,” agreed the Mountain Grite. “I won’t join a posse against you, but nor will I lie to my friends about what I’ve learned here today. The clouds are passing over. If you’ve intended to take the hairpin track down the western slope of Knobblehead Pike, you’ve overshot. You’ll have to back up. You won’t reach the river valley before dark. Shelter under a black willow; you’ll find a stand of them where the track levels out and circles a bit of highland swamp. You’ll be safe there.”

“Thank you,” said Dorothy earnestly.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Liir. “Thank him for what?”

“You,” said the Grite to the Lion, “are a turncoat. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I’d be especially wary if I were you. Animals don’t take lightly to traitors. If you were more of a Lion, you’d know that.”

“I did nothing!” said the Lion. “I was locked in the kitchen!” His tail twitched eight or ten times.

T
HE
G
RITE KEPT HIS WORD
and ratted on them. Before the travelers had finished washing the next morning, a scouting party of Scrow appeared at the edge of the black willow grove. Riding bareback and nearly naked on their purple-white steeds, they looked like wild centaurs in the mist. Without a word but with considerable glower the Scrow contingent circled the grove. There, the travelers were kept loosely penned. Attempts to negotiate were fruitless; they had no language in common.

The languages of Oz. Liir had never thought about them. The father tongue had always seemed universal; even Dorothy spoke without peculiar inflections or special difficulty. True, the dialect of the mountain clans, the Arjikis, was characterized by the growling of syllables halfway down the throat—but the difference had made little impression on Liir. He could still understand the Arjikis.

So why would the isolated Mountain Grite speak the common tongue with clarity and effect, while the Scrow clung to a language only they understood?

Right up to the end, the Witch had kept trying to teach the winged monkeys to speak, as if to be able to testify might save their lives someday. So much bound up in language…The language of spells themselves—
spells,
of all things! A way to order sounds to make things shift, reveal what is hidden, conceal what isn’t…

He wished he had a skill for language. He wished he could spell magic as, with effort and increasing control, Elphaba had learned to do. He would bind the Scrow frozen, and he and his companions would walk away safely. But this was beyond him—like everything else.

The Scrow scouts tossed the travelers hanks of repugnant dried meat and smoked corn. It was clear Dorothy and company were to wait here. A day and a half later, the leader of the Scrow arrived, traveling in a slow-moving caravansary that with considerable care negotiated the path to this low-lying western ridge of Knobblehead Pike.

The party included a translator, so Liir found himself requesting an audience with the Highness behind the shabby drapes of the palanquin. He wasn’t skilled at bargaining. “The only thing I request is that we, uh, hurry,” he said. “My friend Dorothy wants to get safely to the Emerald City; she has an appointment with the Wizard. Then she intends to travel abroad somewhere.”

And I with her, he thought to add, but didn’t. Would she have me? And if not—what else am I going to do?

The translator was an old, gnarled Scrow gentleman who, despite his tribal appurtenances, had been trained in the university environs of Shiz. “Very well,” he said. “I don’t see why we should dally. It is in all of our interests, after all. Give her Highness a chance to compose herself, and we shall let you know when she’s ready.”

Dorothy said, “We don’t think much of crowned heads where I come from. Who is this Highness?” The interpreter left without answering.

“How rude,” said Dorothy. “Well, who
is
she, this Highness? Might it be the Ozma everybody goes on about?”

Liir explained. “The last Ozma disappeared many years ago, kidnapped as a young girl when the Wizard came to power. Nanny believed the child had been bewitched in a trance, never to grow older by a day until the moment she was released from the charm, like a fairy-tale princess. Then she would rise up and smash the mighty in their comfort, and return the monarchy to its rightful place. But Auntie Witch always pooh-poohed that. She said the child had probably been murdered long ago. The remains of the Ozma Tippetarius would be found deep in the bone bins of the Palace, along with her ancestors, if anyone were allowed to look there.”

“I believe in Ozma,” said the Scarecrow staunchly.

Mindless fool, thought Liir, but said nothing more.

The court of the Scrow didn’t keep them waiting for long. When the sun had reached its zenith, attendants unrolled a green carpet with a puckered selvage. Shapeless pillows, sour with mildew, were placed about. “Stand until her Highness is seated,” the translator said, arranging in a kind of lattice pattern the remaining hairs on his pale domed head. “Then you may be seated, too.”

She was helped out of her compartment by six retainers. Her muscles were of little use in holding up her bulk, and her large, sagging face twisted into seams of overlapping skin. She grimaced at the pain of every step. An old woman, a monolith of an ancient Scrow matron, easily the size of all her retainers standing together. Like a queen bee among drones.

Her face was scored with green and purple smudges, some sort of ceremonial marking. The waft of vetiver and lily water, pleasant enough, couldn’t entirely disguise an animal odor.

“Princess Nastoya,” said the translator in comprehensible Ozish, “may I present Dorothy Gale, of parts unknown, and her companions, a Lion, a Scarecrow, a gentleman clad in Tin, and the boy about whom you’ve been told.” He then repeated the lines in Scrow, to indicate how he would go on.

“How do you do?” said Dorothy, curtseying.