Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (84 page)

Amid the wheelbarrows and compost and some rangy geraniums put out to die but refusing, so far, Rain settled on an old blanket and touched the Grimmerie for the first time since the pine barrens above Mockbeggar Hal.

Mister Mikko stood on one side, almost asleep from the strain of his new responsibilities. Dorothy knelt at the other, Toto gnawing the edge of one of her heels. Rain puled back the cover. The book flew open to a blank page—at least it began blank.

They didn’t know the word for a
watermark
, but a faint green huzzle of light seemed to radiate from the page—so dimly at first that they thought it a refraction cast by a drop of water balanced upon a nearby leaf. A zigzag—a
Z
escaped from the
O
, thought Rain. The edges of the image were blurred, as if they were made of the smalest bits of paper, the kind of airy nothings that fly in the light when the pages of a book are turned. Ozmists of the page, perhaps.

“It’s almost Elphaba, isn’t it,” said Dorothy tearily.

“Nonsense,” said Mister Mikko, who had taught Elphaba Thropp in the good old days, back at Shiz. “It’s nothing at al like Elphaba. It’s the soul of a deceased bookworm, nothing more. Let’s get this over with.”

“She’s not coming back,” said Dorothy, “and I’m not either.”

Rain flipped through the pages, which were docile enough under her touch.
On the Extermination of Pests
. No! Dorothy was a hot ticket, but hardly a pest.
To Call Winter upon Water
. There it had al begun, for Rain: the beginning of a coherent memory of her own life, not just a colection of incidents.
For Tomfoolery, Its Eradication or Amplification
. Please.

Was there a spel
To Make the Heart Whole, Regardless
?

She better be careful before she mischiefed herself—or Ozma—into disaster.

She laughed when she saw the next page.
Gone with the Wind
. Wel, Dorothy had arrived via a mighty big windstorm the first time, no? Maybe it was time to cal it up again.

“Are you ready?” she asked Dorothy.

“Next time I want a holiday,” said Dorothy, “I’m going to try overseas. The Levant, maybe. Or the Riviera. Or the Argentine pampas. Over the great ocean to meet the China people. Al this gadding about Oz has confirmed in me a taste for travel.”

“Overseas. Please.” Rain looked up from where she was bent over the book. She knew herself wel; she wasn’t the type to mouth pithy sentiments suitable for crocheting. Al she could think of to say was,

“Dorothy, next time? Take out some travel insurance.”

“Right. And I’m going to choose my fortune cookie a little more carefuly next time too. Now listen. Rain.” Ever tit for tat with Dorothy. “Before it’s too late? Don’t give up on Tip. I mean Ozma. There’s so much ahead for you stil. I wish—”

“Don’t wish,” said Rain, “don’t start. Wishing only…”

“And about your grandmother,” said Dorothy. “I don’t know if—”

“I don’t want to talk, I have work to do.”

“I just mean,” said Dorothy, smiling painfuly, “there’s no need for her to come back. I mean, look. Here you are.”

Rain glanced around herself miserably. The Lion and Dorothy were gazing at her with watery grins. She wanted to throw a potted geranium at each one of them. “I’m going to send you on your way before you feed me any more of your nonsense,” she barked.

Dorothy then turned to Brrr. “I used to like the Scarecrow best,” she began.

He gruffed at her, “So did I. Now are you ready to take some advice from a Cowardly Lion? Make your way safely home. With our royal blessing. But when you get there, don’t surrender, Dorothy. Never surrender.”

“You didn’t, did you,” replied Dorothy. “Local Lion Makes Good. Wel, first thing I’m going to do when I get back is find out what happened to Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, bless ’em. And if San Francisco is in as much of a mess as the Emerald City, wel, I’ve learned something from Little Daffy about setting a bone. I’l pitch in. Singing al the way, of course.” She was making fun of herself to settle her nerves. “We might’ve made a nice duo, Brrr, but courage caled you elsewhere.” They didn’t speak again, but it took them a few moments to pul out of each other’s grip.

Rain began to intone the spel. A smal local windstorm kicked up from the cobbles. For a moment it looked like the Ozmists, once again, but it was grittier. An updraft lifted Dorothy in the air as if she were flying high in the elevator she’d never stopped describing to anyone who would listen. Al that was left of Toto, as Dorothy snatched him up, was a little pointed turd, which Mister Mikko kicked into the compost. No one had time to say goodbye to the dog. The basket in which Toto had traveled was left behind on the ground, rocking in the force of their disappearance.

Stil, Tip remained in Madame Teastane’s. Maybe, thought Rain, Tip is only waiting until the right moment to steal away. And then what? And then what? Crack open the Grimmerie and—and what? We’d do what? Steal from the truth and lock each other in disguises again? That could do no good.

But weeks went by, and then months. No message arrived.

When to stay any longer would be to accept paralysis as permanent, Rain readied to make her departure from the Emerald City. Once the warm weather settled in she would leave by foot. Alone. She sent word to the Cowardly Lion. He replied by messenger. Perhaps he’d experienced one too many good-byes. As casualy as sharing a loaf of bread, Brrr deeded Rain the Grimmerie in its blue sack. “You’re the only one who can use it,” he wrote. “It’s too dangerous to have in town. I don’t want to know what you do with it, just don’t bring it back to me. Love, Brrr.” A packet in brown paper, done up in string, slid out of the sack after the book. Rain opened it. A medal that said
COURAGE
on it. Brrr making fun of himself? The ribbon was of ivory silk with a silver thread. No doubt he’d supervised the design. She turned it over. Oooh, fancy, a bit of engraving.
RAIN
, it said.
WHO KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME PAST, PRESENT & TO COME
.

The matinal hour suited her now. Ever since the day Dorothy had made it out of Oz—safely, one hoped, though if ever a girl was trouble prone it was La Gale of Kansas—Rain found that she preferred to walk the streets as night was shifting toward dawn. Perhaps at that hour a native greenness in the atmosphere hovers below the registration of our easily blinded eyes.

In any case, before dawn one weekday she put Tay in Toto’s old basket and left it on the doorstep of Madame Teastane’s Female Seminary. “For Tip” said her own note, “from Rain. For as long as Tay alows.” Tay hadn’t fussed at being left on Tip’s doorstep. It was as if the rice otter knew where Tip was, and who Tip was, and what job it had to do. A smal job of comfort, if green comfort was possible. Half a comfort. Who could say.

She walked to Nether How in total silence.

The next year, when the Grasstrail Train came through and delivered one of those color supplements to the gang at Kiamo Ko, Chistery borrowed Nanny’s glasses and read every panel out loud to her.

“Oh my,” said Nanny, and “Read that bit again, wil you,” and “Mercy!”

“And that’s that,” said Chistery when he was through.

“A load of hogswalop,” said Nanny, “but affecting in its way. Is she coming back, do you think?”

“Elphaba?” said Chistery. “Now, Nanny.”

“No, Rain, I mean,” said Nanny. “Realy, monkeyboy. I’m not moronic. She wouldn’t care to stay around in the Emerald City. Do you think she’s coming back here to live? This is her castle, after al. And something tels me she has that old book that has caused so much trouble.”

Chistery was humbled by the correction. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no clue about Rain’s future. I thought you were asking if Elphaba was coming back.”

“The very idea,” said Nanny, removing the hard-boiled egg from its shel and settling down to eat the shel. “Besides,” she said a few moments later, “Elphaba’s already come back. I saw her last week on the stairs.” But Chistery was clattering the cutlery. Having gone hard of hearing, he didn’t take this in.

Candle and Lir lasted another year or so in the house at Nether How, but in the end, Candle decided to leave her husband. Rain wept and thought it was her fault. She shouldn’t have come back; she shouldn’t have brought her endless ache to infect the rooms of the cottage of her parents. She should be the one to go.

But Candle insisted she herself needed to light out until she could come to some understanding about how she could have been persuaded, al those years ago, to give their daughter’s childhood away to someone else. She and Lir had never fought again, but nor had they spoken like lovers or even friends. It was time.

“My childhood was never yours to have, and anyway, you gave it to me the best way you could,” said Rain, sniffling. She’d come to believe this.

“Lir was frightened for his life, so he was frightened for yours,” said Candle of Lir. “When you were born green, he choked, and hid you away. I let it happen. That’s how it seems to me now, Little Green.

Maybe I’l learn to forgive him, or to forgive myself. Maybe I’l come back then. I can only see the present, not the future.” After she was gone, Lir said, “I’m to blame for more than everything. And if I mention, Rain, that Candle left you first—when you were a newborn—it was for a good reason. To save you. She knew who you were. She had that touch. She knew you’d survive, and she left you for me to find. She had that confidence in you and that instinct to protect you too. Maybe what she’s doing now—for you, for me—is no less kind. Though we can’t see it yet. She does see the present, remember.” He tried to disguise a wince. “I can vouch for that. On some level, as an Elephant, I was dead to her—that’s probably why she couldn’t see the present, see me as stil alive.”

“Do you think she’s gone off to find the famous Trism? Now that you located him after al these years?” Rain couldn’t help herself; it was easier to hurt someone else than to plumb her own griefs.

“You know,” said Lir, “when I met your mother at the mauntery of Saint Glinda’s in the Shale Shalows, everyone caled her Candle. Candle Osqa’ami. She did herself. But I think that was a mispronunciation from the Qua’ati. Her name is nearer to Cantle. It means ‘a part of a thing.’ A segment, portion. Sometimes something that has broken off, a shard. A potsherd. A cantle of a statue, of a shel.”

“Stop talking about it. Either she’l come back or she won’t.”

“You know, I’ve heard only a shel with a broken tip can make any music.”

Iskinaary said, “I was thinking quail eggs for supper? Or a nice lake trout.” Neither father nor daughter answered him. Rain went out to the front yard and looked at the hils. There was nothing to colect anymore that had meaning, nothing to count or to count on. She walked anyway, dropping fistfuls of nothing, trying to empty herself out of herself.

They buried the Grimmerie on the slope of Nether How, as close as Lir could remember to the spot where he’d seen it emerging in the arms of that ancient magician. They marked the spot by staking Elphaba’s broom into the ground, thinking it would last the winter. In the spring they would haul some stones to mark the spot permanently.

When they returned in the spring, though, the broom had taken root and was starting to sprout virgin green, so they left it where it was as marker indeed.

Another year passed. No word came from Tip. Rain didn’t want to hear news from the Emerald City or, indeed, from anywhere in Oz. She took to wandering the hils around the Five Lakes, and she ventured farther and farther upslope into the Great Kels. Though she had applied by mail and been admitted into Shiz University, she never accepted the position or the bursary and she let the matter slide.

The world seemed slowly to unpopulate, the winds to speak to her in subtle and aggressive tones that she couldn’t understand.

Then one day in spring, when the afternoon had a summery clamminess to it though the mountain slopes were only starting to leaf out, she thought again about the shel that had summoned the Ozmists and, perhaps, helped trick La Mombey into giving away the location of the hidden Ozma Tippetarius. The Ozmists had only spoken of appetite for the current day, which was for them the future. One day Rain would be dead too, though she would stil be curious about the future. She would be among the Ozmists herself no doubt, eager to know about the children of Ozma Tippetarius, if any could ever be born. The appetite to know ever further what might happen—it was an endless appetite, wasn’t it? The story wants to go on and on. She couldn’t fault the Ozmists for the permanence of their affection for life, even in death. Half dead herself, she felt that affection too, though it had no focus, no object upon which to address itself.

She took up the shel she’d stolen from Chalotin, that old Quadling seer without feet. She didn’t blow it. She felt the broken tip of it—the breakage that alows it to sing. She remembered someone once saying something like “Listen to what it says to you.”

She put it to her ear. That same spectacular hush, the presence of expectation, the sound of expectation. A cantle of nothing whole.

She could make no words out, of course. She had tried for years and had never heard so much as a sylable. She laid it back upon the table. The Goose, who had gone rather silent the last year, eyed her balefuly. “Wel?” snapped Iskinaary. “Anyone leave a message for you?”

His question provoked the answer. What was it saying to her? Nothing in words—she’d been listening to the wrong thing. It didn’t speak to her through its hush. It spoke to her through its presence.

It was saying to her: I exist, so what does that say to you?

Lir took no interest in the buried Grimmerie. Instead he negotiated with a tinker to hunt out and eventualy deliver to the cottage at Nether How a set of eighty pages of blank paper. Then Lir spent most of the month of Lurlinetide binding them with glue and string into a codex of sorts. After some sloppy experimentation, he managed to accumulate a pot of lampblack by scraping the soot from the chimneys of the oil lamps and grinding it with resin and the char of burnt bark. Iskinaary donated a quil, and Lir sat down to write. It seemed to make him happy while he was waiting for—wel, whatever he was waiting for.