Out of Oz, Page 8

  From offstage a melody started up, a saucy two-step in the key of squeezebox. The soldiers looked at each other and then off to one side. On came a line of dancing girls with high-stepping legs, bare to the knee and venturing quite a bit of thigh. In the porphyrous barnyard, General Cherrystone’s soldiers roared and applauded the arrival of this squadron of hoofers. Well, they were cheery, Glinda had to agree. And so smart! Eight or nine dancers. Their dresses, sequinned and glittery, were made of silvery blue tulle netting stitched from the hip of the first dancer on the left all along to the last dancer on the right. Their kicks were so uniform they were no doubt managed by a single lever or pulley of some sort. Offstage, some of the musicians were hooting out in falsetto as if the dancers were catcalling the men, “Heee!” and “What ho!” and “Oooh la la!” and “Oz you like it!”

  Then, through some sleight of theater that Glinda couldn’t work out, they’d turned back-to-front somehow. The vixens put their hands to the floor and their legs in the air, and their skirts fell down over their bosoms and heads, revealing pink panties that looked, from here, like real silk. Their costumed behinds faced the audience. Each one of the girls had a bull’s-eye painted on her smalls.

  The soldiers in the barnyard roared their approval. Glinda noticed that the two puppet Menaciers had disappeared. Well, who needed male puppets when females were available?

  You could no longer make out the heads of the dancers, nor even their legs. The blue netting seemed to be rising and thickening; there was more and more of it, until all that was left were nine pink behinds bobbing in a sea of blue.

  Thank mercy she had left Miss Murth at home, she thought, as—oh sweet Ozma—the dancers somehow dropped their drawers. The pink sleeves slid under the waves, and on each of the nine bobbing unclefted arses a different letter was painted.

  R-E-S-T-W-A-T-E-R.

  The articulate rumps quickly disappeared beneath the blue waves of the lake. The audience booed good-naturedly. But Glinda noticed that the smell of roses had given over to a smell of smoke.

  From wing to wing, across the back of the stage, some long slit in the floor must have opened, for the dancing girl puppets and then their drowning lengths of blue skirt drained within the aperture. Their disappearance revealed one of the soldiers from earlier. His face had been smudged with coal dust, his clothes as well. He carried in his hand a torch. The fire was made of orange flannel lit from within; a spring-wound fan made the flames dance to the same melody that the girls had jigged to.

  Oh, thought Glinda suddenly, as the smell of smoke intensified. Oh dear.

  The aperture opened again and up from beneath the stage rose a stiffened flat. It was in the shape of a hill, the same shape as the hill on the backdrop, and very soon it stood in front of the backdrop, blocking the view of Highsummer crops. The hill was denuded of crop, and blackened. The scarecrow was a scorched skeleton with hollows for eyes.

  The second soldier came on, and the two companions returned to the shore of Restwater. Somehow while the audience had been distracted by the rising dead hill, a segment of the stage had slid forward, like the broad bowed front of a shallow drawer. From the recesses flashed scraps and humps of the costumes of the dancing girls, now clearly signifying the waves of Restwater. Then—oh, horrid to see!—from the surface of the tulle-water emerged the head of the Time Dragon itself. Its eyes glowed red; its scissoring jaws seethed with smoke.

  The two soldiers waded in the water, one on either side of the puppet Dragon, and they clasped their arms around its neck. They fell to kissing the creature as if it were one of the dancing girls, and as its smile turned into a leer, it sank beneath the waves, dragging the two soldiers with them. They couldn’t pull away. They courted the dragon with affection until they drowned.

  “Enough!” barked Cherrystone in the dark, but he hadn’t needed to say this. The lights were going down and the music fading upon a weird, unresolved chord.

  The barnyard fell silent. The dwarf came around from the back of the Clock and gave a little skip and a bow and a flick of his teck-fur cap.

  Glinda stood and applauded. She was the only one until she turned and made a motion with her hands. Then the men joined in, grumblingly and none too effusive.

  Improvising, she walked over to Cherrystone and pretended she couldn’t read his ire. “Would you care to join the troupe of entertainers back at the house for a light refreshment before they go on their way?”

  He didn’t answer. He began barking orders to his men.

  She couldn’t resist fluting after him, “I’ll take that as regrets, but do feel free to change your mind if you’re so inclined.” Then she cocked her head at Mr. Boss and indicated Mockbeggar Hall’s forecourt.

  II.

  My, but Cherrystone needed to sort out his men. They seemed bothered by the turn toward tragedy that the episode had taken. Clever little dramaturg, thought Glinda, sneaking a glance at Mr. Boss and his associates as they dragged the Clock of the Time Dragon across the forecourt of Mockbeggar.

  Puggles had rushed ahead to light a few lanterns and arrange for a beverage. But Mr. Boss said, “There’s no time. We have to get out quickly before your General Mayhem arrives to put us under lock and key.”

  “But you’re my guests,” said Glinda.

  “Fat distance that’ll get us, when you’re in durance vile yourself.” He turned to the Lion. “Brrr, guard the gateway, will you? If you can manage to look menacing, you might hold off the law for a valuable few moments.”

  “Menacing isn’t my strong suit,” said the Lion. “How about vexed? Or inconvenienced.”

  Glinda recognized the voice, dimly. Not the famous Cowardly Lion? Doing menial labor for a bunch of—shudder—theater people? She had made him a Namory once, hadn’t she? “Sir Brrr?” she ventured.

  “The same,” he replied, “though I drop the honorific when I’m touring.” He seemed pleased to be recognized. “Lady Glinda. A pleasure.”

  “To your station, ’fraidycat,” snapped the dwarf. Brrr padded away. The brittle woman in the veils went with him, one hand upon his rolling spine. In the lamplight he looked quite the golden statue of a Lion, regal and paralyzed, and his consort like some sort of penitent. The lads in orange were still strapping up the Clock and securing it.

  “I have been trying to think of where we met,” said Glinda. “I ought to have kept better notes.”

  “You ever intend to write your memoirs,” the dwarf said, “you’re going to have to make up an awful lot. Maybe this will remind you.”

  He motioned to the young men to stand back. They looked singularly strong, stupid, and driven. Ah, for a stupid young man, she thought, losing the thread for a moment. Lord Chuffrey had been many wonderful things, but stupid he was not, which made him a little less fun than she’d have liked.

  The dwarf approached the Clock. She couldn’t tell if he pressed some hidden mechanism or if the Clock somehow registered his intentions. Or maybe he was merely responding to its intentions; it seemed weirdly spirited. “The next moment,” he murmured, “always the next moment unpacks itself with a degree of surprise. Come on, now.”

  The section of front paneling—from which the lake of blue tulle had swelled—slid open once more. There was no sign of the dragon head, the drowned Menaciers, the rustling waves. The dwarf reached in and put his thwarty hands on something and pulled it out. She recognized it at once, and her memory snapped into place.

  Elphaba’s book of spells. Glinda had had it once, after Elphaba had died; and then the dwarf had come along, and Glinda had given it to him for safekeeping.

  “How did you persuade me to give it to you?” Her voice was nearly at a whisper. “I can’t remember. You must have put a spell on me.”

  “Nonsense. I don’t do magic, except the obvious kind. Fanfares and mistaken identities, chorus lines and alto soliloquies. A little painting on black velvet. I merely told you that I knew you had the book of spells, that I knew what was in it, and that I knew your
fears about it. I’m the keeper of the Grimmerie. That’s my job. If not to hoard it under my own protection, then to lodge it where it will do the least harm.”

  He held it out to her. “That’s why I’ve come. It’s your turn. This is your payment for our service tonight. You will take it again. It’s time.”

  She drew back, looked to make sure that Cherrystone wasn’t approaching from the barns or the house itself. “You’re a mad little huskin of a man, Mr. Boss. This is the least safe place for the Grimmerie. I am incarcerated here.”

  “You will use it,” he said, “and you must use it.”

  “I don’t respond to threats or prophecies.”

  “Prophecy is dying, Lady Glinda. So I’m going on a hunch. Our best thinking is all we have left.”

  “My best thinking wouldn’t boil an egg,” she told him.

  “Look it up. This thing is as good a cookbook as any you’re likely to find. Come on, sister. Didn’t Elphaba trust you once to try? It’s your turn.”

  “I don’t mention her name,” said Glinda. Not coldly, but in deference.

  “Shall I leave you the Lion to help you protect the book?”

  “I am not allowed pets.”

  Brrr, circling the court and sniffing for trouble, gave a low growl.

  “Sorry. I’m flustered. I meant to say staff. I have a skeletal crew on hand to look after me, but I think you need the Lion’s services more than I do.”

  “His services aren’t much to speak of,” said the dwarf. The boys laughed a little nastily. They were Menaciers themselves, she saw, just in a different uniform, serving a different commander. She wanted nothing to do with any of them.

  “When I saw you once before,” she told Mr. Boss, “you were on your own. You didn’t have this extravagance of tiktok mechanics at your heels.”

  “Once in a while I park the Clock in secrecy when the times require it. That instance, as I recall, I was making a little pilgrimage on foot. I told you that I knew you had the Grimmerie, and what was in it. I told you things about Elphaba that no one could know. That’s how I convinced you to relieve yourself of the Grimmerie then, before Shell Thropp had acceded to the Throne and approached you, intending to impound the book. I trust he did make that effort?”

  She nodded. The dwarf had predicted events quite cannily. Thanks to him, she’d had nothing to show Shell, not in the palace treasury nor in her private library, not in Mennipin Square nor in Mockbeggar Hall. She’d been clean of this dangerous volume.

  And now, Cherrystone breathing down her throat every day, she was expected to take it back again? To hide it in plain sight?

  “Are you working to set me up for execution?” she hissed.

  “I never talk about the end game.” He winked at her. “I’ve lived so long without death that I’ve stopped believing in it.”

  From the shadows of the great Parrith onyx pillars with strabbous inlay, the Lion spoke. “Things are settling down now. Campfires being lit, men sorted out. We don’t have much time.”

  “Please,” said Mr. Boss to her. “And I don’t say please often.”

  Glinda kept her hands tucked under her arms. She looked up at the dark windows of Mockbeggar. If she took this book, she wanted to make certain that Miss Murth and Puggles and Chef were ignorant of it. She didn’t want to put them under any more danger than necessary.

  There was no sign of a shape at the windows. Or was there? Perhaps a little thumbnail of darkness at a lower pane. Surely Rain was off and asleep?

  The spooky woman in the veil hesitated, but then left the Lion’s side to approach Glinda. The lamplight etched shadows from her veil along the sides of her face, but Glinda could make out her strong thin nose and full lips and a shock of white hair, odd in one who seemed otherwise so young. A wasting ailment, perhaps. Her skin was dark, like a woman from the Vinkus. “We do not play at intrigue,” she said to Glinda. “We work to avoid it wherever we can. But I ask you. Do this for Elphaba. Do this for Fiyero.”

  Glinda reared back. “What license have you to take their names to me!”

  She replied, “The right of the wounded, for whom propriety is a luxury. I beg you. In their names. Take the book.”

  “Listen to Missy Flitter-foot of the Prairies,” said Mr. Boss to Glinda. “Before they tear us limb from limb.”

  The Lion shook his mane. “Ilianora. Gentlemen. Mr. Boss. They’re beginning to marshal their forces. I can hear them coming.”

  She didn’t know why she took the Grimmerie from the dwarf, but Brrr was already settling himself between the shafts of the Clock, and the lads in tunics were putting shoulders to the carriage. The one they called Ilianora drew her veil down upon her forehead. “If they catch us up, and tear the Clock apart with their fingers, they won’t find its heart,” she said to Glinda, and put two dusky fingers upon Glinda’s pale hand. “Much depends on you now.” Then she turned, a corkscrew twist of white sleeves and ripples, and hurried after the Clock as it passed through the gates of the forecourt and into the dark, heading not toward Zimmerstorm and the Munchkin strongholds, but west along the road leading toward Loyal Oz.

  The dwarf was walking away backward, hissing at Glinda. “We won’t go far. Into a tuck between low hills in the Pine Barrens. Just until we’re sure everything is copacetic.”

  “You have no reason to look after me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. We want to make sure the book doesn’t come to harm.” Then on his bandy legs he stumped to catch up with his companions.

  She was alone for a moment, alone with the Grimmerie in the guttering light of lanterns. It weighed against her breast and clavicle like the child she had never had. It was nearly warm to touch. It was warm to touch. The tooled binding seemed to relax in her hold.

  Nonsense.

  She flung herself inside and up the grand staircase. She was huffing by the time she reached the top, and she could hear soldiers returning to their posts in the banquet hall and the reception rooms. She heard the crystal chink of stopper against bottleneck; brandy was being decanted. Disagreements about the Clock’s presentation were being aired. She achieved her private suite, however, without molestation.

  A single candle glowed in a sconce. Miss Murth sat ramrod straight, looking directly ahead. The girl was on the floor, her head in Miss Murth’s lap. Murth was stroking her hair.

  “You fool. You should be abed. I can manage my own nightgown,” snapped Glinda.

  “The girl couldn’t sleep and I didn’t dare let her wander about alone.”

  “So where did the two of you wander to? The ramparts?”

  Miss Murth pursed her lip. “The girl was curious. But I did not care for the entertainment. It did not seem suitable.”

  “Suitable for whom? I’m disappointed in you both. Take yourselves off somewhere else to sulk. I didn’t write the script. Go on, I’m in no mood to talk.”

  Miss Murth arose. She didn’t glance at the Grimmerie, which Glinda felt was glowing against her bosom like a red-hot breastplate. “You will bring us to ruin, Lady Glinda,” she said in a low voice. “Come along, girl.”

  The sleepy child stood and yawned. As much to herself as to Glinda or Murth, she murmured, “My favorite was the Lion.”

  I2.

  Whatever happened, Glinda was pretty sure she wouldn’t be subject to a midnight inquisition, so she just stuffed the Grimmerie under her pillow. Then she humped herself into bed and blew her own candle out, and failed to sleep till nearly dawn.

  What to do about the book? Cherrystone had already scoured her apartments, but he was no fool. He might work out that the performance of such a seditious little one-act was a diversionary tactic. That some transaction had occurred in the forecourt. He could come storming in here at dawn and tear the place apart. What to do? Where to turn?

  And why was she the point person? Was it simply too obvious for words—that she was known to be more capricious than clever? That no one would think to look for an instrument of parlous magic in he
r presence? That she was a silly, dispensable figure whose moment had passed? She couldn’t dispute any of this. And she still couldn’t sleep.

  Her thoughts returned to Elphaba Thropp. It was more than fifteen years since they had parted ways. What an uncommon friendship they had had—not quite fulfilling. Yet nothing had ever taken its place. Years later, when that boy Liir had shown up at Glinda’s house in the Emerald City, she had known him at once for Elphaba’s son, though he seemed in some doubt on that matter. (Children.) He had had Elphaba’s broom, after all, and her cape. More to the point, he had had her look: that look both haunted and thereby abstract, but at the same time focused. A look like a spark on a dry winter’s day, that staticky crackle and flash that leaps across the air from finger to the iron housing of the servant’s bell.

  What would Liir do, were he handed the Grimmerie? What would Elphaba?

  She drifted to sleep at last as the summer dawn began. Birds insisted on their dim pointless melodies. She didn’t believe she dreamed of Elphaba; she didn’t have the kind of aggravated imagination that loitered in dreams. Maybe she dreamed of a door opening, and Elphaba coming back from the Afterlife. To settle Glinda’s consternation; to save her. Or maybe this wasn’t a dream, just a foundational longing. Still, when she rose to a clamor of soldiers practicing in formation outside, she found that she had an inkling about what to do. Like a bit of advice from Elphaba, in her dream! But that was fanciful.

  Miss Murth was drawing the bath. “I fear a slight headache,” called Glinda. “I will do without tea until later. Leave me alone.”

  “Very good, Mum,” said Miss Murth in a voice of superiority and disdain. She slammed the door on the way out.

  Glinda approached the wardrobe and removed the Grimmerie. She sat it on a towel on her dressing table. The volume was as long as her forearm and almost as wide, covered in green morocco and gussied up with semiprecious stones and silvergilt. No title upon its spine. The pages were rough cut, she could see, and when she ran her finger across the deckle edges she believed she felt a curious charge. Or perhaps she simply wasn’t fully awake yet.