A Fiery Friendship

by Lisa Fiedler

Try something, she told herself. Anything. She gave the bottle a shake, which caused the water to spin and slosh inside the pale-green glass, yielding nothing but bubbles. Panic rising, she wriggled the cork and tugged; it gave way with a hollow pop.

  Should I taste it? she wondered. Perhaps the Queryor had put a drop of some transformative potion into the water that would give her the Magic to do what was expected of her. As she raised the tiny decanter to her lips, her hands trembled, splashing several drops over the rim. These landed as softly as teardrops in the dust around her knees.

  Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom . . .

  Glinda looked down and saw that the accidental spill had left a splatter of muddy little dimples in the dirt, slightly darker than the dry patch into which they’d fallen.

  Her heart raced as a plan availed itself. Gripping the bottle, she began to carefully pour the water out, creating a damp trail of letters in the dirt. F . . . I . . . R . . . E.

  When Glinda looked up at the Queryor, she saw that he was pleased. For she had indeed made “fire” out of water. Not literally, of course, but apparently, the word fire was enough for the beast. He gave a curt nod, as if encouraging her to continue.

  “Now you must turn it into earth,” said Ben. “Uh, I mean, to lurl.”

  Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom . . .

  With every beat of the Queryor’s drum, Glinda drew closer to failure. Staring at the word she had written, she noticed that as the seconds pounded by, the letters were beginning to dry back to dust. The “fire” was turning into lurl.

  Quickly she brushed the greenish-brown dirt from where the F-I-R-E had disappeared into the palm of her hand. She showed the lurl dust to the Queryor and was again awarded with a nod of approval.

  “Water to fire, fire to lurl,” Locasta cried. “Two down, one to go.”

  The steady thumping of the Conundrum faded into the background as Glinda struggled to find a way of turning dirt into air. Heart racing, she studied the tiny mound of dust in her hand and waited for inspiration to strike.

  Inspiration. Another word for breath! (This she knew thanks to high marks in Approved Vocabulary for Girls.) And what was “breath” if not a very special sort of air?

  Holding her palm close to her chin, Glinda blew upon the dust; her breath carried the tiny particles into the sky, where they caught a breeze and became one with the air.

  Air . . . made from lurl, made from fire, made from water.

  In that moment, the pounding of the Conundrum ceased. And the beast smiled.

  30

  ASKED AND ANSWERED

  Too numb with relief to stand, Glinda remained on her knees in the dirt.

  “You may ask your question,” the Queryor said with satisfaction. Glinda realized that he was not only pleased for her success but impressed by her clever solution as well.

  “How do I release the Fire Fairy Ember from his hiding place?” she asked.

  This too seemed to impress—or at least surprise—the beast. He stared at Glinda for a long moment, his tail flicking with interest.

  “Shall I take this to mean that you—a young girl barely out of the schoolroom—have discovered the whereabouts of an Elemental Fairy, one of the greatest mysteries in all of Oz’s history? Tell me, how is it that you—?”

  Glinda interrupted, wagging her finger at the beast. “Due respect, good Queryor, but you have already asked me your question. The rules of the ritual, as I understand them, are that we each are allotted only one.”

  At this, the beast threw back his huge horned head and laughed. It was a shrill, goatlike bleating sound, not at all handsome or melodious. But it was genuine. “As I cannot argue with such an indisputable fact as that, I will indeed answer your question.”

  Again the beast pawed at the ground with his feline feet, as though deciding how best to phrase his response. After what felt like a thousand lifetimes, he spoke the following words:

  “You must follow the arc that all heroes tread. But to achieve your goal, you must formally acquaint yourself with she who is your own spirit’s likeness, cast in the permanent purity of stone. You will have but one chance to recognize her; if you miss her once, your paths shall never cross again.”

  “Maybe you should be writing this down,” Locasta muttered to Ben. “Something tells me it’s gonna be a long one.”

  Ben quickly reached into his knapsack for the quill and the Makewright’s journal to transcribe what the Queryor had said.

  “Her name has been laid low,” the Queryor continued, “but her strength is Truth Above All, and this cannot be overshadowed. She resides in a castle unbuilt, the very place where your current undertaking was born. So look to the west for a falling star, and you will light upon that which she calls herself. Take all that she has to offer you, and a true friendship will be forged.”

  Ben hastily scribbled the enigmatic passage into the journal.

  “I suppose a straightforward answer would have been too much to hope for,” Locasta grumbled.

  Ben’s quill hovered patiently above the page as he waited to see if the beast would say more. Locasta folded her arms and tapped her toe anxiously. Shade ducked into the collar of her cape and peeked out with dark, eager eyes.

  Just when Glinda was sure the beast had told them all he was going to tell, the Queryor again opened his mouth to speak.

  But this time, it was not only his voice that filled the air. A borrowed one joined with his in a kind of spoken harmony, as if this second voice were tracing the Queryor’s speech with light, outlining his words like an audible halo. It was an extraordinary sensation that Glinda could only liken to the sight of a thundercloud lit around the edges by the slenderest hint of a silver lining.

  “In this life we must play the hand we are dealt,” the Queryor said in two voices.

  So mesmerizing was this Magic that it was a moment before Glinda realized the voice wrapped around the Queryor’s was a voice she’d known and trusted long before she’d ever heard the sound of her own.

  It was Tilda’s voice, speaking in tandem with the wisest creature in all of Oz.

  “Some answers can only be found in the shadows.”

  Glinda would have liked the beast to expound on that, but somehow she knew he would say no more.

  Ben closed the journal, and Locasta hurried over to help Glinda to her feet. It wasn’t a hug like she’d given Shade, but Glinda decided it was close enough.

  As she brushed the dirt from the knees of her breeches, she met the Queryor’s quiet gaze and was caught off guard by the sting of tears behind her eyes. This, it seemed, was good-bye.

  “It has been a great honor to stand before you,” she said, and meant it sincerely. “I thank you most humbly.”

  The beast’s eyes glimmered but he remained silent.

  When Glinda turned to follow her friends toward the arch, she was stopped by the serene rumble of the Queryor’s voice.

  “One moment, if you please.”

  Turning back, Glinda saw that the beast had set aside the Conundrum.

  In the blue-green sky the wind did not whisper, the clouds went still.

  With his gentle eyes locked on Glinda’s, the Queryor lowered himself to his catlike knees and inclined his tremendous horned head in a most majestic bow.

  “Thank you, Glinda,” he said, with her mother’s voice entwined in his. “Thank you.”

  The red road collected them and led them away from the Queryor’s lair.

  “So first we have to find the place where our ‘current undertaking was born,’ ” Locasta said. “A castle unbuilt.”

  “How can someone live in a place that isn’t built?” Ben wondered aloud.

  “On the day the Witches first showed themselves, the king’s palace destroyed itself,” Glinda reminded them, closing her eyes to picture the scene the steam had revealed. “There was a party taking place. I remember it was in a room with stained-glass windows, and it was filled with elegant people.”
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br />   “And Fairies,” said Ben. “The zoetrope told us that the Fairies were guests of the king.”

  “The party was at the Reliquary!” Locasta recalled. “Just before the smoke came to ruin the steam, the knight cried out, ‘Hide!’ Perhaps he was commanding the Elementals to conceal themselves from the danger of the Witches.”

  “If that’s so,” said Glinda, “the Reliquary of the demolished castle is also the birthplace of this quest.”

  “Then that’s where we have to go,” said Ben. “To the Reliquary at the castle of King Oz.”

  “The ruins of the castle of King Oz,” Glinda corrected. “But I don’t know where they are.”

  “There’s no shortage of folklore in Gillikin about Oz’s castle,” said Locasta. “Once I heard some of the older miners whispering that the king had built his castle in the heart of the Centerlands, atop an enormous mountain, and adorned it with emerald stones.”

  “Similar fables exist in Winkie and Munchkin Countries as well,” said Shade. “I’ve heard a lifetime’s worth of stories about the king’s broken castle in the very middle of Oz, but close to the sky.”

  “The middle of Oz and close to the sky sounds like a mountain in the Centerlands to me,” said Ben, his feet in the Maker’s boots tapping anxiously.

  As if to confirm that their theory had merit, the red road began to rapidly unfold toward the midpoint of the Centerlands, where Glinda thought she spied the vague outline of a landform in a shimmering green mist.

  They ran the whole way.

  Soon they had reached the center of the rolling pasture. Locasta tilted her head upward to study the tall, craggy prominence that loomed above them. “It’s a mountain,” she remarked.

  “Plateau,” Glinda corrected, noting the flat top. She remembered the term from a class called Natural Landforms and Other Steep Things Girls Should Never Attempt to Climb.

  “Well, whatever it is,” Locasta said, “it’s big! How in the name of Oz are we going to get to the top of it?”

  Glinda was wondering the very same thing. The plateau’s sides were so perfectly vertical as to be perpendicular, so there would be no hope of climbing it.

  “I’ll fly around the girth of it and see if I can find any manner of ingress,” said Feathertop, spreading his wings. Catching the breeze, he set out to circle the enormous mountain. Given the mass of it, several long moments passed before he returned.

  “Well?” asked Ben.

  The eagle shook his sleek white head. “Nothing. Not even a foothold.”

  Glinda continued to study the plateau; scaling it would require miles of sturdy rope, not to mention some sort of grappling hook or anchor. She briefly entertained the wild notion of fashioning some sort of makeshift sail or balloon out of Shade’s cloak and hoping for a stiff, upward breeze to carry them to the summit. She turned to Ben. “Is there anything in the Makewright’s knapsack we can use?”

  Ben took a quick inventory. There was a coil of rope that seemed promising at first but on closer inspection proved to be far too short. He flipped through the Maker’s journal, but there was no advice that pertained to vertical propulsion.

  Finally Ben withdrew the theodolite; the brass gleamed in the sun.

  “Is there any way to put that to good use?” Glinda asked.

  Ben looked doubtful. “It could help me calculate the angle of an incline,” he explained. “If there was an incline. But as you can see, this blasted hunk of dirt and stone doesn’t have any slope at all.” He backed up several yards and lifted the mechanism to his eye, aiming it at the towering flat face of the plateau. Then he gasped and jerked it away, blinking in confusion. With an expression of wonder, he peeped through the lens again.

  “Please don’t tell me you’ve discovered yet another phantom world through that contraption,” asked Feathertop.

  “Not a world,” said Ben. “A trail. A long, slanting path leading up the side of the plateau!” He let out a triumphant hoot. “I see it as clearly as I saw Oz from Earth. Now all we have to do is walk up the slope to the top.”

  “You want us to walk up a slope that isn’t there?” said Locasta.

  “I know I don’t often agree with Locasta,” said Glinda, squinting in the direction Ben had pointed the instrument. “But I’m afraid I don’t see anything either.”

  “It’s there,” Ben assured her. “A natural ramp along the eastern-facing side!”

  Again he bent his head to the brass gadget and looked through the eyepiece, opening the small mirror on one side, turning the round plates. “Let me just line up these crosshairs . . . a quick bit of arithmetic to calculate the angle of the gradient . . . rise over run . . .”

  “Surveyor’s terminology,” Feathertop informed them with a proud bob of his head. “Young Master Clay is quite proficient at his job.”

  When Ben’s face reappeared from behind the theodolite, he was grinning. “This won’t be a difficult hike at all! The incline is roughly equivalent to a typical flight of stairs.”

  “I’m used to climbing stairs that I can actually see,” Locasta pointed out.

  “Then you’ll just have to take it on faith,” said Glinda decisively. “Faith in the Makewright’s Magic. And faith in Young Master Clay.”

  Beaming, Ben tucked the instrument back into the knapsack and placed his booted foot onto the slope that only he could see.

  “All we have to do is walk,” he assured them. “The slope will be solid underfoot, I promise.” He took a step, then another.

  With the third, it was obvious that he was no longer trudging across a grassy flatland. He was rising higher and higher with every stride.

  “It looks like he’s walking on air!” said Locasta. “Angled air. Slanted air.”

  The others quickly joined Ben on his steady upward climb. They saw nothing beneath them but the level ground dropping farther and farther away as they made their way up the invisible path.

  “You should see yourselves!” said Feathertop, hovering along beside them. “You appear to be floating. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you all had hummingbird’s wings.”

  With every step along the unseen slope, Glinda grew more excited. She was about to see the former home of the King Uniter of Oz.

  31

  HEARD FROM AGES PAST

  It’s spectacular,” said Glinda, her voice hushed, her eyes wide.

  “And . . . spacious,” Locasta added.

  She was not exaggerating. The ruins of King Oz’s castle rambled across the top of the immense plateau for acres and acres and even more acres still. The effect was both grandiose and eerie. It was clear that in its prime the castle had been a vast and handsome edifice boasting grand ballrooms, fanciful breezeways, elegant bedchambers, libraries, sculleries, and more. Glinda understood that it was not merely the gigantic shell of a castle, rather the remains of a marvelous lifestyle upon which she gazed.

  Dotting the once-luxurious landscape were portions of half-toppled towers, and walls existing in various degrees—some remained at the heights to which they had originally been built, while others had broken at the halfway mark. Some of these walls still housed leaded windows with deep stone sills—the style of the casings ranged from curved at the top, to gently pointed, to straight and flat but embellished with handsome carvings.

  The entire roof of what had been the great hall had long ago collapsed; all that was left of it were its rounded, rib-like rafters, with only the blue of the sky resting upon them. A few of these arced beams were still intact—which is to say they extended all the way from the east wall to the west. But most had split apart at their apex, giving the impression of a chipped-toothed smile. On the floor of the hall lay a scattering of large, leaden roof tiles. Glinda could picture these falling down like rain . . . or tears. In fact, she had seen them falling in the teakettle’s tale. She’d watched the stones of the parapets throw themselves down from on high, and she’d seen the heavy wooden doors splinter on their hinges.

  Everywhere vines cr
ept, winding around broken banisters and half-smashed corbels; hanging moss made the outer walls look almost furry.

  But somehow, to Glinda it still managed to look proud.

  Proud, but wounded.

  “Do you think the entire grounds counts as the place the quest was born?” Ben wondered. “Or does it have to be the Reliquary, specifically?”

  “Reliquary,” said Glinda with complete confidence. She doubted the quality of Magic she was seeking would allow for anything less than exactness.

  “Let’s go,” said Locasta.

  In a single-file line, they wandered through the bits of castle, seeing stairs that climbed to nowhere (for the second story had fallen all away) and doorways separating rooms that were not there. Floors buckled, mezzanines overlooked nothing but patches of dried grass. Outer balconies hung precariously over terraces and verandas that were hidden beneath crumbling blocks and finely formed cornerstones.

  And still, it was beautiful in its disarray.

  “There!” cried Shade, pointing.

  They all looked and uttered a collective gasp—partly from relief and partly from awe. Because the Reliquary did indeed stand; it was located in the very center of the plateau, which Glinda understood meant that it stood upon the very heart of Oz. It was, shockingly, almost entirely intact, but for a few cracked beams and a gap or two in the gracefully domed roof.

  They left Feathertop outside as a lookout and entered the sacred octagonal room through a pillared opening, the place where it had once connected to the castle.

  Inside were a number of large stones—brilliant green emerald, the whitest marble, quartz, obsidian, alabaster, and more. The far wall was dominated by two glass-paned doors, looking out over a western piece of sky. Above these was a half-moon window with the image of a setting sun leaded into it. Four arched windows were cut deep into each of the catty-corner walls, starting at the floor and stretching up to the round dome of the ceiling. These were of the most exquisite stained glass.