A Fiery Friendship

by Lisa Fiedler

  He finished by demonstrating said smile for Glinda.

  “And which of these conflicting opinions is accurate?” she inquired.

  “All of them,” said Eturnus, unfazed. “I am a skilled and extravagant practitioner of the Magical arts, both good and Wicked, though I only skew Wicked when the situation absolutely calls for it.” He wrinkled his nose, shaking his head disdainfully. “Wickedness . . . not really my thing.”

  Eturnus snapped his fingers, and the four items from his card appeared, hovering in the softly sunlit air around him: a Scepter, a Chalice, a Blade, and a Palette. These he casually began to juggle, as though he were some traveling minstrel, entertaining an audience of little children.

  “Now then,” said Eturnus, tossing his wares from hand to hand and back again in a graceful four-part loop, “I’m thinking you don’t have a whole lot of experience with weaponry, am I right?”

  Glinda made to reply, but he cut her off.

  “Of course I’m right. Ya know why?” He caught the Chalice, leaving the other three items floating in midair while he spun it on his index finger. “Because I’ve been here before, many Ages of Oz previous. Previous for me, that is, but currently for you. I’ve come back expressly to speak to you, in this moment, which of course is the very thing for which I will be famously infamous one day. Actually, at certain points along the ongoing forward pitch of history, I already am.”

  “Famous?”

  “Infamous mostly, but what’s a fellow to do?”

  Glinda’s mind was spinning. The lights on his clothing were making her head throb and her eyes bleary. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, really. I’ve perfected the Magic that makes time malleable. I’ve plied it, reformed it for my own purpose, and now I have the power of doubling back, retracing the footsteps of my own life. The point, Glinda, is that I am back to where I’ve been: not here but now, in this Age of Oz, and I’ve come intentionally in the course of your magnificent lifetime so that I may once again see you and your Illumina in action.”

  “My what?”

  He motioned to the sword. “Illumina. Your weapon. It’s . . . um . . . let me see, how did you describe it to yourself when you first dreamed it up in that pretty little head of yours? Oh, right . . . Illumina is ‘a sword of smarts, a blade of brilliance forged of vision without vengeance.’ ” He gave her a teasing look. “Don’t tell me you would have rather had a spadroon?”

  The memory came back to her like a thunderbolt. The Mingling in the Woebegone, the Quadling with the spadroon, the Munchkin with the saber. It was there that she’d imagined a weapon exactly as this peculiar man described.

  And now—her head turned slowly until she was staring at the sword—here it was! Illumina.

  Glinda’s eyes fluttered, then rolled back. She felt the Reliquary waver and shift as she swayed in her boots and realized that although she wasn’t the least bit tired, she was overwhelmed with the need to fall into a deep, sound slumber. And as she slept, the Timeless Magician spoke to her in a voice that was suddenly solemn.

  “Do you wish it, Glinda?” he asked. “With all the Magic that is in you, do you wish to forge with the heat of your heart and quench in the cool of your intellect this singular sword of enlightenment, which henceforth will be known and revered as Illumina?”

  Her sleepy reply carried the soft sibilance of hot iron being plunged into water: “Yes.”

  “So shall it be,” Eturnus intoned. “Let the alloy from which this blade is born be the steel of your intelligence.”

  He held out his hand for his Scepter, which fell into his grasp. This he passed first over the sword, then over Glinda’s head. “Give to this blade the radiance of your wisdom,” he instructed. “Temper it with your own benevolence, so that it will yield to nothing except justice.”

  From deep within a dream Glinda wholeheartedly offered these gifts to the sword; and in the dream she saw its blade dissolving from solid metal into a dazzling presence of light dancing above the gilded hilt. That which was, was no more; no edge, no point, no substance. What remained was a luster, bright beyond white, pure beyond gold, strong beyond silver. It was so vibrant, so brilliant, that Glinda believed she was holding all the light there ever was, and ever would be, right there in her own two hands. Drinking in the gentle force of its incandescence, she deemed it equal to the glimmer of a trillion moonbeams, and as warm as her mother’s smile.

  “You are not one to battle in the darkness of ignorance,” Eturnus proclaimed. “Knowledge, Glinda, will be your call to arms, and soon all of Oz will look to you for protection. For you are Glinda the Good. And Goodness does not court destruction. Goodness makes of itself a fortress, it readies itself in defense, but it does not march out; it resists the urge to inflict harm, even when harm is sorely warranted. Goodness is vigilant, it is protective, but most of all, it is the light of wisdom that will lead us to right.”

  “Wisdom and right,” Glinda whispered. “When does it all begin?”

  “A million years from now,” he replied. “Tomorrow. Yesterday. Now.”

  Glinda frowned, tilting her head, wanting to understand.

  “It will happen when it is meant to happen,” the Timeless Magician explained. “There is a saying in the future, where I have been: time will tell.” Here he laughed his scoundrel’s laugh. “It is true, of course. Time is where the answers lay in wait. Some will ambush us, but most will greet us like a pleasant surprise. Time keeps its secrets until we are ready to know them, and that is both the Magic and the authority of Time. It has a hand in everything, no matter how we attempt to twist it to suit our wanting. But here is a lesson for you, one I’ve learned at great peril: if Time advises patience, then patience you must employ.”

  He bent down so that they were eye to eye. “One day, Glinda, you will walk beside the one I love, and secure her in her rightful place as ruler of Oz. She is fragile, but she is also boundlessly strong. It will be you who teaches her to keep the promises Time demands of us. And I am grateful to you for that, even now, before you’ve done it.”

  With that, Eturnus kicked up his heels and spun, his laughter echoing through the Reliquary as he returned to his pedestal to stand again among the Heroes of Oz.

  “What of the Fire Fairy?” Glinda asked eagerly. “Can you tell me how to free Ember from the stone?”

  “Time will tell,” said Eturnus, the gleam of his clothing fading, his voice softening to a whisper as the obsidian slowly claimed him back to stone. “In its steady passage, it eventually shines its light upon all the answers we seek.” He sighed a stony sigh. “Such a shame that so many of us are not looking when it does.”

  35

  TIME TELLS

  Glinda felt the pressure of a fingertip against her throat; the slight roughness of the skin told her it belonged to Ben.

  “Her heart still beats,” he declared, relieved.

  “I’m all right,” Glinda assured them, slowly lifting her cheek from the cold slate of the floor and blinking at Locasta.

  Locasta threw her arms around Glinda and squeezed for all she was worth. “I thought you were gone from us,” she whispered in Glinda’s ear.

  A vision of Locasta looking as stony as a statue had Glinda whispering back, “I thought I’d lost you, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Locasta cocked an eyebrow. “We were standing right here watching when you collapsed.”

  Ben helped Glinda to her feet, and the four of them eyed the exquisite weapon in her hand. Metal and gold, studded with jewels.

  “It’s gorgeous,” said Locasta, running her finger along the blade’s fuller groove. “If I’d known someone would be presenting you with a sword, I’d have whipped you up a scabbard to go with those trousers.”

  Shade examined the weighty gold of the handle. “It would bring a fortune on the dark market,” she observed, then blushed and lowered her eyes. “I mean, I imagine it would. Not that I know anything about that.”

  Locasta gri
nned. “Don’t apologize for being wily. I like that about you.”

  Ben, who had turned away from the blade to frown at his notes in the journal, sighed heavily. “I suppose I don’t need to point out that we are still no closer to solving the mystery of how to release the Fire Fairy than we were before the sword.”

  No, he didn’t need to point that out. They were all painfully aware.

  “Maybe I’m supposed to use the blade to strike the pendant,” said Glinda, feeling the heft of the weapon in her grasp. “Crack the stone open, or break it to bits.”

  “And risk slicing the final thought of the king to smithereens in the process?” Locasta said.

  She was right; the answer to freeing the Fairy was bound to be more elegant, more poetic than simply hacking at the pendant with a blade. Even if that blade were Illumina.

  “We can’t just give up,” Locasta said, beginning to pace. “We have to do something.”

  Glinda glanced at the sword . . . a sword of smarts. “Or maybe we just have to wait.”

  “Wait?” Locasta sounded as though both the word and the concept were completely foreign to her. “Wait for what?”

  “For Time to tell,” she said. “I know that Time has a hand in everything, no matter how we attempt to twist or cajole or even outsmart it. Sometimes it is up to Time to decide, and the difference between one minute and the next can turn out to be the greatest difference of all.”

  Locasta stopped pacing and looked at Glinda as though she’d just sprouted a tail. “Waiting is the same as doing nothing.”

  “I don’t think it is,” said Glinda. “Patience is the most difficult demand Time makes of us, but it’s also the one for which it doles out the most significant rewards.”

  “At home we’re taught that patience is a virtue,” said Ben, trying to be helpful.

  “It’s a definite advantage in spying,” Shade offered.

  “It’s boring!” Locasta sulked.

  “Trust me,” said Glinda. “If we just give the world a moment to turn and let Time move at its own pace without trying to hurry it along, something may change in the course of that moment, if only just a little bit, and that something will give us our answer.”

  “Then we might as well get comfortable.” With a loud rush of breath, Locasta dropped to the floor in front of the Arc of Heroes, pointedly propping her chin on her hand. “This is me waiting,” she huffed. “Happy?”

  Glinda bit back a smile when she saw that Locasta had inadvertently positioned herself between the statues of the now empty-handed Mythra and Queen Lurline. This was precisely where a fiery-spirited rebel like Locasta belonged: flanked by Oz’s two greatest examples of wisdom and action.

  Slipping the sword into the sash of her tunic, Glinda sat down beside Locasta. Ben sat as well, and Shade leaned against one of the cracked pillars at the entrance to the Reliquary.

  To wait.

  Several minutes later, Glinda noticed something utterly ordinary. But supremely important! “It’s getting dark.”

  “Yes, that’s what happens when the sun sets,” Locasta teased. “It’s how day turns to night.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Glinda. “And in between, the shadows fall.”

  Ben anxiously handed the journal to Glinda; her eyes pored over the Queryor’s clue.

  She found the phrase she was looking for and read aloud just as a golden deluge of sunlight came pouring through the curved window above the doors behind the statues. “Look to the west for a falling star! What is the setting sun but a star . . . falling behind the horizon?”

  Sure enough, the hazy rays of sunshine were causing the statues to cast long, sooty shadows over the words of the mosaic on the floor.

  Glinda quickly reached into her pocket and withdrew the cross-stitch she’d taken from Maud’s cottage, the one Maud and Tilda had sewn under the ruby maple so long ago, when the shade of the leaves had fallen over their shoulders and dappled the cloth with patches of sunshine and darkness. Glinda recalled that this had left some of their stitches visible while others were hidden in shadow.

  Some answers can only be found in the shadows.

  “Look,” she said, hastily flattening the sampler on her lap. “The poem in the mosaic on the floor is the same one my mother and Maud embroidered on the sampler.”

  “How did we miss that?” said Ben.

  “Well, we’ve been a little busy,” Locasta noted. “And not exactly in the mood for a poetry reading.”

  Glinda scrambled to her feet, her grasp going to the handle of the sword as if she’d been carrying it all her life. As she ran to the far side of the Reliquary, she noted that with every passing second, the shadows cast by the heroes were shifting and deepening, skittering across the floor to obscure some words of the mosaic, while ignoring others and leaving them visible in scattered patches of light.

  She brushed away a coating of dust.

  And in the mix of light and shadow, she saw:

  A HERO IS HE WHO AS IN A MYTHRA LLIES ON FIELDS OF BATTLE

  HIS SPIRIT EVER STEADFAST A SWORD SHE WIELDS, AND TAKES THE LO STONE IN HANDLE AVES WITH A HEAVY HEART.

  SO SOLEMN IS THIS AF FAIRY ET REM EMBER:

  A RIGHTEOUS FIGHT CAN SOON IGNITE

  TO YIELD THE LIGHT WHEN THOSE

  FAR TOO LONG INDEPENDENT

  AT LAST

  UNITE.

  Glinda let out a ringing shout of joy, for she understood beyond all doubt—beyond the shadow of a doubt, to be exact—that the means by which to release the Fire Fairy was quite literally within her grasp.

  Tingling with excitement, she snapped her eyes up from the mosaic to meet the astonished and thrilled gazes of her friends. “Mythra’s sword is more than just a gift from her spirit to mine,” she told them breathlessly. “It’s the key to freeing the Fairy. Not by attacking the stone with it, but by uniting the stone with it.”

  She lifted the sword, cradling the gilt handle in her hands. The jewels of the grip twinkled back at her, as if they were smiling upon her success. One was a blue sapphire for Munchkin Country, one a yellow topaz for Winkie, and the third a deep violet amethyst for Gillikin.

  All that was missing was a red stone for Quadling.

  Heart thumping, she angled the sword to examine the pommel—the small knob at the very tip of the handle. As she expected, the pommel contained a tear-shaped indentation, an empty fitting for a missing jewel that was the same size and silhouette as the red beryl pendant in which the Fairy of Fire had so long been concealed.

  By now, Ben, Locasta, and Shade had joined Glinda, and she pointed to the depression in the gold. “I must return the stone to the sword,” she said. “Like in my mother’s song: a perfect fit must be achieved.”

  As she spoke this phrase, the last shimmer of pinkish sunlight lit the dainty shoulders of the Ozma statue. The power to save her mother had come to her at last, and she knew now what lay ahead:

  She must defeat the Witch Aphidina after releasing the Fairy by securing the stone in the pommel of Mythra’s sword.

  A sword that bore the name Illumina.

  And in that moment, the Haunting Harvester Witch of the South would meet her doom.

  When the others stepped out of the Reliquary and into the dusk, Glinda lingered behind. She wanted to stay just a bit longer in the place where her parents had first met. Glancing through an empty window frame at the cobalt sky, she caught a glimpse of the newly risen moon, plumpish and bright against the twilight, though not quite full.

  The night the moon had shared her secret with Tilda, she’d graced the Grand Adept with the full beauty of her celestial face. But tonight a sliver of the moon’s rounded edge had already slipped ever so slightly into shadow.

  Glinda pulled her gaze from the sky to admire the statue of the Moon Fairy in the Arc of Heroes. In it, Elucida’s pretty face had been carved in profile, like a cosmic coquette, peeking over the shoulder of night to flirt with the world below. As Glinda studied her, Elucida’s eye began to tw
inkle, but not with charm or mirth . . . with warning!

  Glinda followed the Fairy’s stony gaze across the Reliquary.

  And there in all its dark majesty was the horrible vision from her dream-that-was-not-a-dream; the premonition Elucida had conjured for Tilda on the night before Declaration Day had returned.

  Where the Reliquary’s domed ceiling had been, Glinda now saw the black canopy of some future sky, holding a moon swollen with light. Around it twinkled four celestial bodies, to which Glinda could put names. Directly below it loomed the same four ghostly figures she recalled from her own backyard. They were now as they’d been then—surrounding a trio of unwilling participants.

  Glinda repeated the words her mother had spoken to the first vision: “Identities.” Because she already knew who made up the outer circle, she was careful to aim the spell at the three frightened captives huddled at the center.

  Slowly the gloom that cloaked them receded. The first of the three began to shed its shadow, emerging feature by familiar feature, until Glinda’s heart clenched in her chest. It was her mother! Tilda was making a shield of herself against the Wicked Magic, defending the smallest captive, who now began to materialize from the dark haze. Green eyes, coppery hair.

  Glinda was looking at herself.

  Before the third figure could reveal itself, a silver spark burst forth from the future moon in the counterfeit sky, a spark so bright it looked as if light itself were being born. As it had in the earlier vision, it fell slowly from the sky, growing larger in its descent. The shadows of the Witches reached up to seize it.

  “Elucida!” Glinda screamed. “Elucida, look out!”

  The sound of her voice ruptured the Magic as violently as if she had sliced at it with her sword. With a thunderous clap, the four sinister figures and their three captives exploded in a glare of broken light. The echo of her own voice burned in Glinda’s ears.

  “What are you yelling about?”

  Glinda whirled to see Locasta, standing on the threshold of the Reliquary with Ben and Shade beside her.