Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 (9 page)

“She certainly has no talent for music.” Sister Doctor sniffed. “I do remember the day she arrived, though. I happened to be suturing one of the novices in the kitchen. I turned to ask kindly for water, and there was that Candle, her rickety domingon slung over one shoulder like a crossbow. Mad old Mother Yackle had her by the hand, as if she’d just created her out of calves’ foot jelly. ‘The gypsy Quadling, her uncle leaves her to us,’ said Mother Yackle.”

“Mother Yackle doesn’t speak and hasn’t in years.”

“That’s why I remember the event so distinctly.”

“Did you see the Quadling uncle?”

“I went to the window, and he was making his way rather hurriedly through the kitchen garden. I called out to him, for there are procedures for the introduction of a novice, and this wasn’t one of them. But he wouldn’t be stopped, merely called over his shoulder that he would be back in a year if he was still alive. It’s rare to see Quadlings this far north these days. I imagine the poor girl is quite lonely.”

“Well, yes. No one speaks Quaddle.”

“I believe the term is Qua’ati. So is Candle mute or is it that she just hasn’t anyone to speak her native tongue with?”

“I don’t know.”

Perhaps it was Candle’s silence and self-control that had inspired the Superior Maunt to choose her for keeping vigil over Liir. The maunts began to regret their tendencies to bark and spark at each other. Thinking on their noisy failings, they fell into a silence now.

I
N THE FOLLOWING FEW DAYS,
they came across their share of blue squirrels, bald egrets, and disagreeable emmets. The egrets kept to the ground cover, rarely taking wing; the emmets preferred the bedding. It wasn’t until near dusk on the fourth day that the maunts came across an Animal, a lone and pagan Water Buffalo in the shallows of a cove of Restwater, Oz’s biggest lake.

“Oh, oh,” moaned the Water Buffalo at their approach, “not the missionary voice traveling in twos! Not again! I bury my own waste, I only speak when spoken to, I lick my knees fifty times a night before I sleep—what more am I to do to appease the fates? I don’t want to be converted! Don’t you understand? Oh, all right, get it over with. I’ll lapse before nightfall, I promise you. I can’t help myself. Perhaps I’m too far gone for you to bother with me?” He peered, both gloomily and hopefully, at them.

“We’re not converters,” said Sister Apothecaire. “We haven’t the time.”

“And who cares about you? You can go to hell,” said Sister Doctor, meaning to be cheerful. This was the right note, as it happened; the Water Buffalo began to smile.

“Scarcely see a soul coming from your direction who doesn’t have designs on my immortal soul,” said the Water Buffalo. “It used to be I was worried about my hide. I always thought a soul was private, but it appears it can be colonized against your will if you don’t watch out.”

“Well, we
are
maunts,” admitted Sister Apothecaire.

The Water Buffalo winced. “
No
. Say it ain’t so. You’re plates of glamour and glasses of fashion, as anyone who rests a sore eye upon you would have to agree.”

“Don’t be mincing,” snapped Sister Doctor. “These are perfectly respectable clothes for traveling in.”

“Depends on where you want to get to,” intoned the Water Buffalo.

“Look, we can evangelize like the best of them, if that’s what it’s going to take—”

“Sorry, sorry!” said the Water Buffalo. “I’ll be good. What’s your game?”

They told him. He knew nothing of the attacks on the young maunts and their scrapings, nor had he ever heard of Liir or his misadventure. But he had seen airborne battalions of trained creatures flying so high that he couldn’t make them out. “Something’s amiss,” he said. “I know there’s been an attempt to call a Congress of Birds out in the west, but lately I’ve seen few Birds brave enough to fly at anything like a decent height.”

“We can’t patrol the skies right now,” said Sister Doctor. “It’s the Scrow or the Yunamata we need to find.”

“The Scrow rarely venture this far east. However, you may come across a small band of Yunamata, if they haven’t moved off yet. They’re down from Kumbricia’s Pass. I came across them bathing this morning. We all minded our own business. They don’t have anything to do with the Unnamed God, so they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them. They rinsed their totems and washed their hair, and one of them gave birth to a baby underwater. They’re rather froggy folk when it comes to birthing. They circulated a birth pipe around, passed out in the sun for an hour or so, and then gathered their things and left. They seemed to be heading southwest. Several dozen of them, no more.”

“If you see them, tell them we’re coming,” said Sister Doctor.

“Jubilation, they’ll be over the moon,” drawled the Water Buffalo. “If you want to meet up with them, better
not
tell them you’re coming, honeys.”

The sisters moved on, but before they had lost sight of the Water Buffalo, Sister Apothecaire thought to turn and call, “We forgot to ask your name!”

“Only the chattering classes of Animal have names!” the Water Buffalo replied cheerily. “And there hasn’t been a professional Animal the length and breadth of Oz for thirty years. If I don’t have a name, I can’t be targeted as a potential convert, can I?”

A moment later, when he was out of sight, his voice rang toward them thinly: “Though if you had to locate me, I suppose I’d answer to Buff…”

“Weird creature,” said Sister Apothecaire a while later.

“He’d survived, a talking Animal in the wild,” Sister Doctor reminded her. “It can’t have been easy. After the Wizard’s banishment, the Animals didn’t rush for reassimilation. Who could blame them, with all they’d been through.”

“Sounds as if the creature’s been dogged by zealots, though.”

“Indeed. Well, the Emperor is a devout man, and wants all his subjects to enjoy the benefits of faith, I suppose.”

A
NOTHER NIGHT,
and the wolves howled more fiercely than ever. The dawn seemed full of its own arcane purpose, a pale light leaching through grey cloud-hemp. The maunts ventured out across the Disappointments. Then, easy as playing at knackers, they came upon a group of Yunamata doing winter rush-work.

“Hail,” said Sister Apothecaire in Yumish, “or have I said
hell
by mistake? Hello? Yoo hoo Yunamata? We come in peace.”

“What are you saying?” said Sister Doctor. “They look mystified.”

“I’m addressing their tribal gods,” said Sister Apothecaire, and in Yumish, “I. Good. Good one. Good human person woman being. I. Good thing. Where is the library?” In her anxiety it was all she could remember.

“They look amused,” said Sister Doctor.

“That’s respect,” said Sister Apothecaire. But amusement was better than hostility, so she began to relax, and more of the plain tongue began to return to her.

The Yunamata were known for keeping to themselves. Nomadic, but not a horse culture like the Scrow, this Vinkus tribe was fleet of foot and economical of domestic impedimenta, needing only a few pack animals to carry their belongings. Generally they sheltered in Kumbricia’s Pass or the forested slopes of the Kells south of there. What were they doing out in open country?

Sister Doctor, who never liked to go slumming as a veterinarian, felt she could sniff out an Animal tendency: the Yunamata looked as if they might all have one giant, docile Frog among their ancestors. Way, way back. Nothing like webbing between their digits, no long flickering tongues, no, no; they were human through and through. But an amphibian sort of human, with leathery skin, narrow ridiculous limbs, and thin lips that seemed partly withdrawn into their mouths.

One could laugh at the silliness of them. Laugh—and then be carved to shreds, for when aroused they could be a formidable enemy. The Yunamata had skill with knives. Mostly they used their serrated tools—lethal curved blades set in handles of the hardest mahogany—for aid in the construction of their tree nests, where they harbored at night. Those same knives could carve a pig or eviscerate a minor canon with equal efficiency.

Sister Apothecaire set out to convince the Yunamata that the maunts were abroad neither to betray the clan nor to convert them. Just in case, like the Water Buffalo, they’d previously been targeted as a population ripe for conversion. As a group, they listened, promoting no spokesperson among them. By turns they mouthed small neat phrases. Sister Apothecaire took pains to translate these remarks to her colleague carefully, and to question her own understanding if she had any doubt. She didn’t want to assent to human martyrdom merely because she’d forgotten some nicety of Yumish grammar.
Was
there a retractional pluperfect subjunctive in Yumish?

“You are going on quite a while,” said Sister Doctor after an hour or so.

“I am doing my job and trying to see if we’re going to be invited to stay for supper,” said Sister Apothecaire. “Leave me be.”

“I hope they aren’t teetotalers. I think I’m getting a sniffle.”

When the conversation had concluded at last, and the Yunamata retreated to prepare a meal, Sister Doctor said, “Well? Well? I deduce from your smug expression that they’re not about to sharpen their blades to scrape our faces from us. Though I’d like to hear it put directly, to ease my mind.”

“They speak by indirection. They know about the scrapings. They have seen evidence of it. They say it must be the Scrow. The Scrow have a tradition of royalty, and their queen is an old woman named Nastoya who has been in declining health for a decade. Were we to fulfill the mission assigned us, we would next have to hunt for this Princess Nastoya and reprove her about these infractions. The Yunamata insist that the Scrow must be in allegiance with the Emperor.”

“Ridiculous. If the Scrow were in allegiance with the Emperor, would they be scraping his emissaries? Or are the Yunamata lying?”

“Look at them. Could they lie?”

“Don’t be soft. Of course they could. The most purring of cats can still kill a bird within half a purr.”

“I suppose I believe them,” said Sister Apothecaire, “because they
admit
to their capacity for vengeance. But they also have told me that this is the season of the jackal, and out of wariness of the moon’s opinion, they take a vow of gentility. Babies born under the jackal moon are considered lucky. Babies born in Restwater are luckier still.”

“Are you sure you’ve understood correctly? Throughout Oz the season of the jackal is considered dangerous.”

“Perhaps it’s a kind of propitiation,” said Sister Apothecaire. “They mentioned the Old Dowager, a kind of deity who harvests souls. She sounded a bit like Kumbricia. Do you remember Kumbricia, from your schoolgirl lessons in antique lore? Kumbricia, the oldest witch from the time of creation? Source of all venom and malice?”

“I turned my back on such things when I entered a unionist mauntery,” said Sister Doctor. “I’m surprised you remember such poppydegook.”

“I don’t know if we’re getting a meal,” said Sister Apothecaire, gesturing, “but look, it appears we’re getting a pipe of some sort.” A delegation of Yunamata was approaching with a communal smoke.

“A vile habit,” snarled Sister Doctor, but she determined to do her best at being sociable, and stomach such barbaric customs as courtesy required.

3

N
O ONE AT THE MAUNTERY,
Candle included, knew enough about musical instruments to appreciate the domingon she arrived with. It was made of seasoned wrenwood by a master from the Quadling Kells, and Candle had first heard it played at a summer festival. The master himself performed, using his fingers as well as a fiddle bow and a glass emulant that he kept tucked under his bearded chin when not required. Now Candle recalled that the domingon
had
been fitted out with a feather, though at the time Candle had thought it merely ornamentation—and a sexy fillip at that.

She had thought she was in love with him, and had slept with him before dusk, but a few days later she realized it was the music she had loved. What she heard in its music: a coaxing, an invitation to remember, to disclose. Perhaps because her voice was small and high, she couldn’t project, and she imagined it would be more gratifying to play music than to speak. Mercilessly she pestered her uncle to circle back and buy her the domingon; she’d been surprised when he obliged.

Candle was not simple, not in the least, but her debility had made her a still person. She listened to church bells, when they pealed, trying to translate; she watched the way the paper husks of an onion fell on a table, and examined the rings of dirt that onion mites had left in parallel rows on the glossy wet inside. Everything said something, and it wasn’t her job to consider the merit or even the meaning of the message: just to witness the fact of the message.

She was therefore a calmer person than most, for there seemed no dearth of messages from the world to itself. She merely listened in.

For a week now she’d been playing the domingon until her fingers ached, watching and listening for the language of Liir’s recovery. It wasn’t unusual that she had had experience with men; Quadlings were a casual sort in matters of sexual prudence. The carnal experience had neither scarred her nor much interested her. Through it, at best, she had learned something of the human body, its hesitations and reservations as well as the surge of its desires.

In the infirmary, as her eyes moved from the instrument to the invalid, she felt she was picking up some news. Was it some minor language of olfactory signals, an arcane pattern of eye twitches, a hieroglyph etched in the beads of his sweat? She didn’t know. She was sure of this, though: Liir’s body seemed the same in temperature, comportment, and color. But he was going through a phase of crisis, and would either awaken for sure or die at once: no middle ground.

She didn’t know if she should go get the Superior Maunt or if she should stay at her post. She was afraid if she left, if she dropped the domingon on the floor even for the twenty minutes it might take to find the Superior Maunt and get counsel, she would lose Liir for good. Wherever he was, he was lost, and the music of her instrument was his only hope back.