Out of Oz

by Gregory Maguire

  She looked down. A nine-foot drop onto the flat roof of the ballroom below. Even if one could leap or lower one’s self down under cover of darkness, the ballroom was twenty-two feet high, she knew—she’d had the room redone last year. The ballroom stretched out in its own wing, and its windows on three sides opened onto terraces, so fevered dancers could cool themselves by taking the evening air. This meant there were no useful trees growing up near the building, no climbing cypress or espaliered ivy to serve as an escape route.

  “I were a bird, I could just wing the air down,” said Rain, as if reading her thoughts.

  “You won’t move an inch from my side unless I say so. Not one inch. Do you hear me?”

  Rain fell asleep almost at once. Perhaps, thought Glinda somewhat guiltily, perhaps she never slept in anyone’s encircling arms before. They spent the night holding each other.

  By morning it was clear that evacuation orders had been given. Breakfast was nothing but tea and slightly stale bread. If they sat very still at the open window, they could hear the sound of the ships being rolled to the launching point. How could they have been kitted out so quickly? Glinda supposed that, under a firm enough manager, three hundred men with time on their hands could achieve quite a lot.

  At noon on this day of lancing summer light, Glinda began to hear the sound of the dragons. Their cry was at once serrated and tuneful. Glissandi of violoncello interrupted by the yowls of cats in heat. Now that Glinda was really and truly imprisoned, her aggressors clearly felt no more need for secrecy. The dragon trainers led the fearsome creatures around the east edge of the house, below the ballroom. A military parade of sorts. Six of them. Perhaps one each to haul the four warships, and an extra dragon at the front and another to the rear, as sentries.

  Fearsome? She thought she might never dream of anything else again. Each one of the foul creatures was ridden by a soldier in leather chaps. Each soldier, equipped with a whip and dirk, looked terrified. Each leaned forward, wrapped obscenely around the neck of his mount, whispering to it. Dragonmasters. She had heard tell of such.

  But the creatures themselves. Rain had told only the glamour part of it. Yes, there were scales that burned in the sun, imbrications of bronze and bruise-purple gold. But a lizardy dankness obtained as well, the stench of the bog. Their skulls were shaped less like horses than like some strange elongated insect. And eyes! She remembered the glowing eyes of the Clock of the Time Dragon. Like genuine eyes, those had gleamed with life, but these actual dragon eyes looked polished, blank, black, deadly. They reflected all, they gave nothing away. “Pull back, lest one of them see you,” said Glinda, but Rain behaved as if she were at the parade of a traveling zoo. Glinda had to hold Rain’s hands to keep her from clapping.

  “Let’s try the book one more time, shall we?” she said when the dragons had passed. Before they could pull it out, Zackers opened the door without knocking and Cherrystone strode in.

  “I’m taking my leave,” he told her. “Zackers will stay behind to see to your needs. I apologize for the inconveniences, but you can see why we couldn’t allow you the run of your house and the service of your aides.”

  “Why do you not kill me, and save yourself the trouble of abusing my staff?” she said, putting Rain behind her and holding her in place with clamped hands. Nonetheless, she felt Rain peering around her hip.

  “Depending on how the matter unfolds, you may yet come in use. Not to me—to your country. Your liberated staff will have spread the word that you are detained against your wishes. All of western Munchkinland knows that you are locked up here. Should we decide to sue for peace, you are advantageously placed as a loyal Ozian with strong affections for Munchkinland. A former Throne Minister with personal ties to the rebel province. Munchkinlanders would accept you as an emissary of the Emperor. We have arranged it for you to be ready to serve.”

  “What have you done with Murth?”

  He inched forward. In the heat of the impending battle was he going to kiss her at last? But he had in mind something more of a sneer. “Why should you care?” he said. “You don’t even know her first name.”

  She sputtered and thought of slapping him, but that would be too drawing-room farce. He said, “I want to take the girl with me.”

  “I think the phrase is, over my dead body. And since you intend to keep me alive, you may as well go off on your capers. Your days of being a tutor are through, anyway; you’ve got your army to manage. Though I suppose now they’ve become a navy.”

  “I’ll take up the matter when I have completed the mission of the hour. Good afternoon, Lady Glinda.”

  “May you freeze in hell.”

  He gave the briefest of bows, not so much from the waist as from the chin, and turned to leave.

  And the Grimmerie proved as recalcitrant as ever.

  They watched the first of the ships roll into view on the water. Glinda had to admit there was something terrific about the sight. The ships were painted red and gold, from this distance looking like wooden cousins of the dragons. Their sails puffed out; the wind was strong and apparently from the right quarter. Behind the stubby masts Glinda and Rain tracked the movement of those stubby masts against the hills, which helped them mark the acceleration of two, then three ships. The fourth would be coming along.

  From this distance the dragons resembled immense overheated ducks.

  There would be no stopping a fleet with six dragons. Haugaard’s Keep was lost. But Rain didn’t need to be lost. There was still time.

  “Quick,” said Glinda. “How is your head for heights?”

  “I’m gooder than a bird in any tree, Mum.”

  It was too late to insist on Auntie or anything like that. “Can you balance yourself here without falling?”

  Rain looked out the window at the three-inch ledge. “If there’s no big wind to scrape me down.”

  “Blessings on you. There, that’s a prayer, best I can do. I’ll give you a leg up.” She helped Rain out the lower sash. Thank Ozma the windows were tall; Rain could almost stand up straight before she’d scrambled out. She fit her naked feet (still dirty, Glinda saw) this way and that, a dancer’s pose, until she was erect and balanced.

  “Anyone’s walking in the rose garden’ll see up my frock.”

  “Never mind about that. Do you think you can safely inch beyond the edge of this window? Not far—only a bit at a time to see how it feels.”

  “Oh, I’m a spider on a wall. It’s easy florins, this one.”

  “Now listen to me, Rain. I want you to inch—if you feel you can—until you’re about halfway between this window and the next one. No farther. Have you anything on which to cling?”

  “My fingernails.”

  “That’ll have to do.”

  “What does I do when I gets there?”

  “Just wait for further instructions. I am going to scream a little bit, but I don’t want you to be startled. I am only acting.”

  “Acting?”

  “Like the puppets in that play. I’m not really screaming. It’s like—it’s like singing.”

  “I didn’t know you sung, Mum. Songs, like?”

  “Oh, I have lots of little talents. Cooking is the least of them.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Don’t be snarky. Are you ready? You won’t be startled and lose your grip?”

  “Spiders don’t fall off the wall when they hear a singer.”

  “I may have to double the octave to get some attention.”

  “I’m watching the fleet. Sing away.”

  “Here I go.” Please, Lurlina, please. Or the Unnamed God. Anyone who might be paying attention. Elphaba.

  She reeled her voice out. It wasn’t very convincing. “That was it?” called Rain.

  “That was my warm-up. Here comes the real thing.”

  She was gratified that when she let loose, two of the dragons turned their heads. But she couldn’t watch them. Zackers was unlocking the door. “Glory and gumption, Lad
y Glinda? Are you all right?”

  She wheezed, holding her side. “The girl! She’s trying to escape! Out the window! Oh, Cherrystone will have my head!

  “Also yours,” she added, in a more normal voice, as Zackers rushed to the open window.

  “Holy Saint Florix,” said Zackers. “Get in here, girl, before I whup you. You’ll break every little riblet in your skinny little frame. Take my hand.”

  “Oh, oh,” screamed Glinda, beginning to enjoy the role.

  “Don’t worry, Mum; I’ve almost got her. She’s quite the little scorpion, en’t she?”

  Glinda walked backward, screeching, the way she’d seen opera singers do onstage—only of course their sound was musical, while she was working to deliver something convincingly atonal. In midscreech, she stopped dead. Zackers, his head and torso leaning out the window, turned at the sudden silence. She lifted her skirts and rushed him like a bull, kicked his damn boots off her good carpet, and tumbled him out the window. For Puggles, she thought.

  “Nicely managed, Rain,” she said. “You can come in now.”

  “I like it out here,” said Rain.

  “You heard me.” She didn’t want to look down. She had appreciated Zackers, for a few days anyway, and she hoped he wasn’t dead. But he was moaning and cursing. It was only nine feet after all.

  But too high to climb up, even if his ankle wasn’t broken, which it looked to be, the way his foot was improperly hinged. And he could never leap to the ground.

  “How clumsy of me,” she called down to the roof. “I must take a refresher course in deportment to restore my glide.” Zackers’s reply wasn’t suitable for Rain’s hearing, and Glinda hustled her away. But not before picking up the Grimmerie.

  The house was empty of soldiers, as far as she could tell; they had all evacuated onto the ships except, she supposed, a skeleton crew holding Mockbeggar hostage. Knowing an unencumbered view would be essential, she hurried Rain up the dusty steps to the parapet. Ah!—free from this summer bondage for a few moments at least.

  “You need to help me with this one, Rain,” she told the girl.

  “I’m ready, Mum.”

  Glinda taught her the words. They stood facing the fleet—The Vinkus, the Quadling Country, the Gillikin, the Munchkinland—its four powerhouse dragons yoked between prows, as Murth—Murth!—had imagined, and the two extra dragons paddling along in the rear like a pair of proud snarling parents.

  “Traversa psammyad, unicular artica articasta,” said Glinda. “That’s the start of it. Can you memorize this quickly? We have so little time.”

  Rain nodded. Her eyes were like iron, hard and true.

  They held hands and leaned across the parapet. The wind was blowing from behind them; maybe it would carry their words far enough. “Traversa psammyad, unicular artica articasta,” they chanted in unison. Glinda taught her the rest, line by line. Rain drank it in like fizzy wine and remembered it faultlessly.

  “A wand would help, but I haven’t had a wand in years,” said Glinda. “Wands go wandering. We’ll have to do without.”

  She stretched out her left arm, Rain her right. They delivered the spell to bring winter upon the water.

  It was unclear whether it was working at first, for the strong wind continued to blow, the sails to billow and flap, audible even at this distance. Glinda held her breath and trained her gaze on the foothills of the Great Kells. It seemed as if the masts were making slower progress against them. Slower, slower still. Then the masts shivered and creaked, and one of them split because the soldiers-turned-sailors didn’t yet know their progress had stopped, that the sails had needed to be brought about or cut.

  The four boats and the six dragons were pinned in an island of ice that had come up from the water below and congealed around webbed feet and submerged hulls. The dragons were enraged and crashing their wings. Shrieking.

  “They sound like you, Mum,” said Rain.

  “We haven’t time to watch them drown, or burn their way loose, or turn around to catch us. We’re cooked any way you look at it. Let’s go.”

  22.

  Safe enough to set one of the barns on fire, one that stood away from the house. And anyway, it had been more or less eviscerated; she saw that the soldiers had appropriated a good many of the posts and beams from the hayloft. A security measure, bringing the structure down, she could say. The clouds of black smoke would alarm residents of Haventhur and Bigelow and the rest, and ready them for whatever punishment Cherrystone and the forces of the Emerald City might still manage to loose against them.

  Glinda had never saddled up a carriage, but Rain had spent her childhood in the barns. While the girl wasn’t big enough to handle the tackle, she knew what was needed, and she could demonstrate how it hooked and snaggled together. In the time it would have taken them to walk to Zimmerstorm on their hands and knees, Glinda had readied the lightest of carriages. So they set out along the coast road, heading west—away from the wreckage on the water.

  As it happened, they didn’t need to go very far. Four miles out—away from the burning barn, the ships frozen in the summer lake, the panicked and furious dragons, and General Cherrystone—waited the Lion and that high-strung veiled woman with the pretty white hair. She was pacing and he was lolling, but when the Lion saw the carriage he drew himself to his hind legs and smoothed his mane.

  “How did you know I would come here?” asked Glinda.

  “You forget for whom we work,” said the woman. “The Clock tells us things that may happen. Not what should happen, mind, or what will happen. But what might.”

  “Anything might happen,” said Glinda.

  “The secret of why prophecy is so popular,” agreed the woman. “Good for business.”

  “I brought you back the book,” said Glinda. “It’s too fussy for me to have. I thought so the first time I had it, and I think so again.”

  The Lion said, “We’ll take it. You’re safer without it now, in case there are reprisals. But from the hill where the Clock is hidden—we have a good view of the lake. We saw what you were able to do with the Grimmerie. You used it well.” He grinned at her. “Nice piece of work, sister.”

  Glinda remembered the play. “Have the sailing Menaciers all drowned?”

  “It’s not over yet,” said the woman. “But they saw the Clock’s performance, and the fear of their own drowning will undo them usefully. You’ve pinched exactly the right nerve. The alarm has been given, and the dragons have been slowed or made ill.”

  “A dragon with a head cold. Nasty thought.”

  “You never knew a dragon to live in an icy realm, did you? Cold is perishing pain to them, one hears tell.”

  Glinda took the Grimmerie from where it had lain like an old farmer’s manual on the floor of the carriage. It had shed its disguise while they clattered on the road, and it looked like itself. Perhaps a bit more tattered. Could a book that old continue to age?

  “You’ve done a great service,” said the Lion, taking it from her. “Some wouldn’t have thought you capable.”

  “Well, I learned to cook. At my age,” she told him. “What’s next? Arts therapy? Anyway, I’ve had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases on down any road. Come, Rain. A quick good-bye, and off you go.”

  “Good-bye,” said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman.

  “Not to them,” said Glinda. “To me.”

  She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. “Mum?”

  “He was too interested in you,” she said in as bland a voice as she could manage. “It’s become too dangerous. You are better off with them.”

  “We don’t have those instructions from Mr. Boss,” said the Lion. He growled low in the back of his throat.

  “Mr. Boss is not the only one who gives instructions,” she told him. “I am a Throne Minister Emerita. As I remember it, Sir Brrr, I am the one who conferred a Namory upon you. Many years ago.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, pussying about with his l
apel. “Very nice and all that, but Lady Glinda.”

  “I gets to go with the Lion?” Rain was unskilled at the control of elation. It cut Glinda like onion juice in a fingertip newly slit with a paring knife. Or worse.

  “You do,” said Glinda. “Off with you then.”

  Rain clambered down and ran to the Lion. He backed away with his paws out. The veiled woman with him just laughed. “You’ve faced worse, Brrr. Come. Let’s see what the dwarf has to say about this.”

  “You do know who she is—her name is Rain—” said Glinda, but her voice was failing her, and she didn’t know if they heard. They were moving away, turning, cutting up through the scrappy barrens of pine.

  Just when it was too much, when Glinda thought she might sob, Rain suddenly twisted about. “But en’t you coming?” she called.

  “Can’t possibly.”

  “Why not?” The girl sounded petulant, as if suddenly she decided the whole world ought to go her way, all the time.

  “Zackers is stuck on the roof. I have to fling some sandwiches down at him so he won’t starve. And there’s Puggles. He can’t move, Rain. Now that I know how to make soup, I have to make some soup and spoon it into his mouth until I can find somebody to care for him, to make him better if it can happen.”

  “And there’s Murth,” said the girl ruminatively.

  Glinda didn’t believe there was Murth any longer. “You take care of one another. Come and see me sometime if you are passing through.”

  Rain had already turned back around and was chattering to the Lion. The woman lifted the girl up on the Lion’s back—he was down on all fours again—and Rain squealed with glee. She grabbed his mane by two fistfuls and her little naked feet came up as her knees went down. Her head went back in joy. Blinding joy. She looked like a girl in the best of times. She looked like a girl broken out of the prison egg. But she didn’t look back.

  The Patchwork Conscience of Oz