A Fiery Friendship

by Lisa Fiedler

  “It’s all so beautiful,” said Glinda, trying to picture it as it had been on that fateful day when the Witches appeared and the Elemental Fairies were dispatched.

  “Look,” said Locasta, pointing down. “Words.”

  Embedded in the slate floor was an eclectic mosaic cobbled from pieces of the broken castle—words, spelling out a verse of poetry—mostly obscured by dust and debris.

  But Glinda spared it only a glance in favor of focusing on the four towering stained-glass windows—to her amazement, the scenes depicted in them were of the colorfully wrought moments from the king’s statue-unveiling party. Her gaze settled on the etched figures of a young couple, a tall knight and his lady.

  Her mother!

  There was no question that the image was that of a young and lovely Tilda Gavaria. The hazel eyes, the russet-blond hair, the stately carriage and confident uplift of her dainty chin.

  Locasta came to stand beside Glinda, her focus going directly to the knight who stood beside Tilda in the glass. “He looks familiar,” she said, squinting. “In fact, he looks . . . exactly like you!”

  Glinda had been thinking the same thing herself. She felt a rush of warmth around her heart, because she knew that for the first time in her life, she was looking at an image of her father. In truth, she’d rarely ever thought of him, for he had been gone long before she was old enough to remember. It wasn’t that she’d never been curious, but she suspected asking about him would have caused her mother sadness. She knew little of how or under what circumstances he had been taken from them, but she’d always trusted that Tilda would tell her when the time was right for her to know.

  And now, here he was, her father, immortalized in colored glass.

  How right it seemed that her parents had been friends of the king. And how tragic that they’d been there to witness his demise at the hands of the Wicked Witches.

  Glinda’s chest filled with a deep ache—an ache to which she could not put a name. Yearning, perhaps it was, though it was hard to say, since she had never yearned for anything in her life.

  Admiring the artistry of the windows, Glinda couldn’t help but wonder what words Tilda and her courageous knight had shared during those terrifying moments when Goodness itself was stolen out from under them. She would have given anything—given everything—to know.

  But how did one overhear a conversation from the past?

  And then, as she stared at the first of the four windows, backlit with late-day sunshine, she noticed a twinkling in the knight’s eye.

  With her next breath, the whole glassy scene began to move in a swirling wash of color and hue. The glass images were coming to life!

  “Well, this is something you don’t see every day,” Locasta quipped.

  The party captured in the window was now an animated celebration, fragile and one-dimensional but alive with laughing guests and clinking glasses.

  If only I could hear them, Glinda thought as Shade ambled up beside her.

  “His voice is deep and has the lilt of another land,” whispered Shade. “He is telling her that she is surely the most Magical guest in attendance this night, and he very much wishes to make her acquaintance.”

  “You can hear them?” Locasta asked, amazed. “How?”

  “Because she’s a Listener,” said Glinda. “Her gift makes her sensitive to the things that no one else can hear. She’s eavesdropping on the party.”

  “He is introducing himself as the king’s Cherished Chancellor, Sir Stanton of Another Place,” Shade continued. “A place called Earth!”

  Ben’s face lit with delight. “Like me,” he noted.

  Glinda actually swayed on her feet. What a magnificent and wonderful thing to discover! “So . . . my father was . . . Earthish?”

  “Human,” Ben corrected with a grin. “Which means you’re part human too.”

  “Your father must have been brought to Oz by the Wards,” said Locasta.

  As the sunlight shone against the window glass, the sounds of the party from the past continued to reveal themselves to Shade.

  “Now the knight remarks that he was much entertained by the dance Tilda performed earlier in honor of the king. He notes that his favorite part was when she spun on her toes and caused the candles to burn in multicolored flames.”

  When the first window went still, Glinda thought her heart would break, until Shade stepped to the second one, which was now awakening into motion. The others joined her, and together they watched as Sir Stanton drew Tilda close in his arms and twirled her into a waltz. The chandelier in the stained glass threw amber light upon the sparkling red stone pendant at her throat.

  When Shade frowned, Glinda’s gut lurched.

  “Is it the Witches?” she guessed. “Do you hear the Witches coming?”

  “There is a clamoring, yes.” Shade was closing her eyes and tilting her ear to the past. “A tumult, an uproar! King Oz is steady, though, ordering his guests to remain inside while he and his four Regents go outside to confront this uninvited evil.”

  “So much for the waltz,” said Locasta, her voice breaking with grief.

  It was of course the moment revealed by the zoetrope. And as much as Glinda did not wish to witness the horror a second time, she still could not bring herself to look away.

  The second window stilled and Shade hurried to the third with Glinda, Ben, and Locasta at her heels. Again the glass awoke and they saw King Oz glittering upon it, bedecked in silver armor. The glass party guests turned in the windows to gaze out beyond themselves; their translucent backs were now to Glinda and the others as they watched their king and his vassals stride out to meet the Witches.

  “The battle begins,” said Shade, but said no more. Glinda understood that she was keeping the worst of what she was hearing to herself—the shrieks of terror, the shouts for help. For a long time Shade just stared and listened. The others watched, but of course they heard nothing.

  “The fight is finished,” Shade murmured at last. “The Wicked Ones have won, and they are divesting the king of his armor.”

  They walked slowly to the fourth and final window. In it they saw the castle beginning to crumble, just as it had in the steam’s story.

  “Now we’ll see what happened next,” said Ben grimly. “Now we’ll see the end.”

  “That depends on how you define ‘end,’ ” whispered Locasta, placing a hand on Shade’s shoulder. “What are they saying now?”

  “The Witches are gloating over their stolen silver,” Shade reported. “So involved are they in their game that they do not see King Oz’s Gifts—four shimmering curlicues of green light—rising from his shadowy form. These Gifts are what they were sent for, but they are too enamored of their silver regalia to notice.”

  “Sent by whom?” asked Ben.

  “A Witch far Wickeder than the other four combined,” Shade answered. “She is watching from the shadows, unwilling to show herself. But I can hear the growl of her black heart. She is angry, watching the others fail her, and she vows never to forgive.”

  But Glinda did not want to hear about growling hearts. She wished only to know what her mother and father were saying. She was about to tell Shade this, when her attention was drawn to the lower left corner of the window. There, amid the glassy swirl of ball gown skirts and polished boots, a tiny form was taking shape. It seemed to be pulling itself from the depths of the glass.

  As it grew more defined, Glinda felt a plummeting dread in her belly. The figure was sooty black, with pulsating red eyes.

  She knew this creature.

  It was the fifth Witch.

  And she was appearing in the stained glass to interrupt the lesson Glinda needed so desperately to learn, just as the ink had ended the zoetrope’s tale and the smoke had overtaken the steam from the teakettle.

  The figure in the glass was growing larger; she was almost the size of the party guests now. And with every increasing inch, as her blackness grew deeper, the jewel tones of the other figur
es paled, draining away.

  One of them—the knight—turned in the glass, his expression wild but determined. Feeling his frantic gaze upon her, Glinda looked up from the fifth Witch and met her father’s eyes. Beyond him, through the window and into the past, the Witches were bickering over stolen silver. He opened his mouth to cry out a command.

  “Shade, what’s happening?” Locasta prompted. “What is he saying?”

  Shade’s eyes flew open, and in a voice much deeper than her own, she shouted a single word. It was the last word they’d heard in Maud’s cottage just before the steam turned evil:

  “Hide!”

  This directive echoed through the Reliquary like thunder, and the fifth Witch clenched her dark, glassy fists in frustration—because she could not hear the knight’s voice, not now and not then!

  “Glinda, your father is directing the Elemental Fairies to collect King Oz’s Gifts. He is instructing Ember to hide in Tilda’s red pendant and directing the others, Ria, Poole, and Terra—” Leaning closer to the window, she strained to hear more of the knight’s orders. “I’m sorry. I can’t understand what’s he’s telling the other three. The reveling of the Witches and the shouts of the crowd are drowning out his voice.”

  Glinda saw that the fifth Witch’s eyes were trained on Glinda’s father, red and furious, absorbing what was left of his color, stealing away everything that he was.

  With a roar that exploded from the deepest part of her heart, Glinda lifted her foot and slammed it into the stained-glass figure of the Witch.

  The crash was deafening as the window split into thousands of jagged shards. The noise was amplified by the simultaneous shattering of the other three windows. Ben, Shade, and Locasta jumped back from the shower of glass.

  Then, silence.

  Five triangular pieces of colorful window glass lay at Glinda’s feet, each containing a portion of the fifth Witch, slashed and separated, helplessly caught in two dimensions. With a sigh of great relief, Glinda kicked one of the fragments and sent it skidding across the poetry embedded in the Reliquary floor.

  “My father was the one who sent the Elementals into hiding,” she rasped, awestruck. “It was Sir Stanton who deemed them the protectors of Oz’s four great Gifts.”

  Shade confirmed this with a nod.

  “He saved them, Glinda,” said Ben. “He saved them all. And now you’re finishing what your father began.”

  Glinda felt both humbled and emboldened by this. Sir Stanton of Another Place—her own father—had saved the day that by all accounts should have been beyond saving. He could not defend his beloved liege, but he had succeeded in protecting the king’s cherished Gifts, and thus the royal lineage of Oz. And if Glinda could become half the wise warrior her father had been, those Gifts could live on, when the time was right, in the next rightful ruler of Oz: Ozma.

  Glinda took a moment to absorb what she had learned, then shook back her red hair that was so much like her mother’s and strode to the center of the Reliquary floor. She had spent a gratifying, bittersweet moment in the past, but now it was time to turn her attention to the present.

  In order to save the future.

  32

  THE ARC OF HEROES

  Something’s missing,” said Ben, casting a glance around the Reliquary. “It was different in the glimpse the zoetrope gave us.”

  “Different?” said Glinda. “In what way?”

  “There were statues,” Ben explained. “A whole collection of magnificent statues, each carved from a different kind of stone. They were arranged in a semicircle.”

  Locasta lifted an eyebrow. “You saw statues?”

  Ben nodded. “Didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive!” Locasta scowled. “I would have remembered statues. I hate statues.”

  Ben looked bewildered. “Who hates statues? Nobody hates statues.”

  “I hate statues,” Locasta assured him.

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  When she didn’t elaborate, Ben gave up and turned to Shade. “Did you see the statues?”

  Shade shook her head.

  “Glinda?”

  “I didn’t,” said Glinda, “but I believe you did. After all, you were able to see the slope when we couldn’t.”

  “I just assumed they were the masterpieces the king had unveiled for his guests. Odd that you wouldn’t see them if they were the reason for the party.”

  “Where were they, these statues?” Glinda asked.

  Ben pointed toward the glass doors. “Where those eight chunks of stone are. Although I only remember there being seven statues.”

  Glinda’s eyes went wide as she made the connection. “You said the statues stood in a semicircle?”

  “Yes,” said Ben.

  “Also known as an ‘arc.’ The Queryor said I was to follow the arc that all heroes tread. Aren’t statues most often made in the likeness of heroes?”

  “Not always,” muttered Locasta, without further enlightenment.

  “My mother mentioned something called the Arc of Heroes,” Glinda recalled excitedly, “when she showed me her Magical deck of cards.” She tried to remember the illustrations, and the names of the Fairies and warriors depicted in the deck other than King Oz and the child princess, Ozma. She recalled a Lonely Traveler, with a mischievous expression, a delicate Moon Fairy, and . . .

  Just then a single leaf wafted down through a hole in the Reliquary’s domed roof and landed softly at Glinda’s feet. She picked it up and examined it, turning it over in her hand, marveling at the bright crimson color.

  Locasta frowned. “What’s she looking at?”

  Ben shrugged.

  “Don’t you see it?” asked Glinda, astonished. “It’s a ruby maple leaf.” She held it out to Ben.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  But Glinda saw it as plainly as she’d seen the deck of cards her mother had thrown into the air. In her mind’s eye, she again saw the cards twirling their descent, briefly taking the shape of falling leaves before vanishing into nothingness.

  Hadn’t the Queryor’s long-winded answer to Glinda’s question included the phrase, In this life we must play the hand we are dealt?

  Her mother had said that too.

  On a hunch, Glinda held out her hands, palms up and open, ready to accept the Magic. And the Magic did not disappoint.

  Eight perfect ruby maple leaves appeared in the air, tumbling downward from the dome of the Reliquary. It was as if her mother had thrown them into the air just seconds, not days before, and Glinda was watching the conclusion of their fall.

  And as they fell, they abandoned their leafy shape and crimson color to once again become the beautiful cards Tilda had tossed into oblivion.

  When they landed in Glinda’s outstretched hands, Locasta’s eyes went wide. “Where’d those come from?” she asked.

  “You can see them now?”

  All three of Glinda’s companions nodded.

  “What are they?” asked Ben.

  “Statues.” Glinda held up one of the stunningly illustrated cards, one of the three she had rushed over in her hurry. Glittering letters identified the image as THE TIMELESS MAGICIAN—a lanky man of indeterminate age with an air of unmatched experience about him, as though he’d traveled farther and wider than anyone else had ever dreamed of going. In the drawing, he pointed skyward with one hand and down to the ground with the other, as if he did not conform to the same boundaries ordinary fairyfolk were forced to obey. Hovering in a twinkling around him were four tools—a Blade, a Scepter, a Chalice, and a Palette.

  “My mother showed these to me just before Bog arrived to collect her.” Glinda examined a card featuring a slender man in pleated vestments of red, blue, purple, and yellow, with four different faces on his head—one on the front, another on the back, and two more on either side. His title, which was inscribed in letters that rippled just like his col
orful robes, was THE PLURAL PRECEPTOR. Glinda showed the card to her friends.

  “I’ve heard of being two-faced,” Locasta observed. “But four-faced?”

  Ben reached for the next card in the pile. Here was another imposing Fairy called (somewhat extravagantly, Glinda thought) THE UNIVERSAL DOWAGER, ARCHITECT OF WORLDS. Her regal posture gave the impression that she could easily hold said worlds upon her shoulders and not buckle beneath their weight. Shade leaned in to admire the artistry of the drawing before Ben handed it back. Locasta just looked eager to find out what in the world Glinda was getting at.

  “I think the statues Ben saw are of the once and future heroes of Oz,” she told them, “and the drawings on these cards are meant to represent them. That’s why I didn’t see them in the scene from the zoetrope. To me, they existed only as I had already seen them—in the form of playing cards, not statues.”

  “That makes sense,” Ben agreed. “Once you’ve seen something in a certain light, it requires a conscious adjustment of perception to imagine it in any another version of itself.”

  “So perhaps it’s not just what is being perceived but who is doing the perceiving that determines what is seen,” said Glinda. “Ben was able to see the statues because he’s a sculptor, and always seeking a glimpse of the artistic.” She gestured to Locasta. “You didn’t see the statues because you were afraid to see them.”

  “Hey!” Locasta pouted.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s a fact,” said Glinda. “You said so yourself: you hate statues.”

  “Hatred,” Locasta said stiffly, “is not the same as fear.”

  “I disagree,” said Glinda with a solemn shake of her head. “I suspect those two feelings are much more alike than you’d think. But that is a conversation for another time.”

  Locasta rolled her eyes.

  Glinda turned to Shade. “I think the reason the statues weren’t visible to you is the same reason you were the only one who could hear the windows.”

  Shade nodded. “Statues are silent. And I am a Listener. I heard what was meant for me to hear, just as Ben saw what was meant for him to see.”