Turtle Heart seemed to wilt and parch as autumn came on. Their afternoons of dalliance began to lose the heat of urgency, and developed in warmth. Melena had always appreciated the attentions of Frex, and been attentive to him, but somehow his body had not been as supple as Turtle Heart’s. She drifted off to sleep with Turtle Heart’s mouth on one of her nipples and his hands—his big hands—roaming like sentient pets. She imagined that Turtle Heart divided his body when her eyes were closed; his mouth roamed, his cock rose and nudged and leaned, his breath was somewhere other than his mouth, hissing elegantly into her ear, wordlessly, his arms were like stirrups.
Still she didn’t know him, not the way she knew Frex; she could not see through him as she could most people. She put this down to his majestic bearing, but Nanny, ever watchful, remarked one evening that it was just that his ways were the ways of a Quadling and Melena had never even acknowledged that he came from a different culture than she did.
“Culture, what’s culture,” Melena said lazily. “People are people.”
“Don’t you remember your nursery rhymes?” Nanny put aside her sewing (with relief) and recited.
“Boys study, girls know,
That’s the way that lessons go.
Boys learn, girls forget,
That’s the way of lessons yet.
Gillikinese are sharp as knives,
Munchkinlanders lead corny lives,
Glikkuns beat their ugly wives,
Winkies swarm in sticky hives.
But the Quadlings, Oh the Quadlings,
Slimy stupid curse-at-godlings,
Eat their young and bury their old
A day before their bodies get cold.
Give me an apple and I’ll say it again.
“What do you know of him?” Nanny asked. “Is he married? Why did he leave Lower Slimepit or wherever he comes from? Naturally, it’s not my place to ask such personal questions—”
“Since when did you ever know your place or keep it, either?”
“When Nanny leaves her place, believe me, you’ll know,” said Nanny.
One evening in early autumn, for fun they built up a fire in the yard. Frex was home and good-humored, and Nanny was thinking of heading back to Colwen Grounds, which made Melena good-humored too. Turtle Heart put together a supper, a distasteful goulash of small sour new apples and cheese and bacon.
Frex was feeling expansive. The effect of that blasted tiktok contrivance, the Clock of the Time Dragon, had been wearing off at last—thank the Unnamed God—and the graceless poor had been turning out to hear Frex harangue them. A two-week mission at Three Dead Trees had been a success. Frex had been rewarded with a small wallet of brass coins and barter tokens, and the glow of devotion or even lust on the face of more than one penitent.
“Perhaps our time here is limited,” said Frex, sighing with contentment and clasping his arms behind his head—the typical male response to happiness, thought Melena: to predict its demise. Her husband went on. “Perhaps the road from Rush Margins leads us on to higher things, Melena. Grander stations in life.”
“Oh please,” she said. “My family rose from humble beginnings for nine generations, to produce me with my ankles in the mud out here in the middle of nowhere. I don’t believe in higher things.”
“I mean the lofty ambitions of the spirit. I don’t mean to storm the Emerald City and become personal confessor to the Ozma Regent.”
“Why not put yourself forward to be confessor to Ozma Tippetarius?” Nanny asked. She could see herself rising in courtly Emerald City society if Frex had such a position. “So what if the royal baby is only, what, two years old? Three? So we have government by a male regent again. It’s only for a limited engagement—like most male encounters. You’re young still—she’ll grow up—you’ll be well-placed to influence policy . . .”
“I don’t care about ministering to anyone in court, not even an Ozma the Fanatically Devout.” Frex lit a sallowwood pipe. “My mission is to the downtrodden and humble.”
“Goodness should to travel to Quadling Country,” said Turtle Heart. “Downtrodden there.”
Turtle Heart didn’t often speak of his past, and Melena remembered Nanny’s gibe about her lack of curiosity. She waved the pipe smoke away and said, “Why did you leave Ovvels anyway?”
“Horrors,” he said.
Elphaba, who had been hoping for ants to crawl across the grinding stone so she could mash them with a rock, looked up across the shallow basin of the stone. The others waited for Turtle Heart to go on. Melena’s heart lifted uneasily—she had a sudden premonition of things changing right here, this very evening, this most splendid gentle night, things going awry just when they had managed to settle down.
“What sort of horrors?” said Frex.
“I feel a chill. I’ll get a shawl,” said Melena.
“Or minister to Pastorius! The Ozma Regent! Why not, Frex?” Nanny said. “I’m sure with Melena’s family connections you could twist an invitation—”
“Horrors,” said Elphaba.
It was her first word, and it was greeted with silence. Even the moon, a lambent bowl among the trees, seemed to pause.
“Horrors?” Elphaba said again, looking around. Though her mouth was serious, her eyes glowed; she had realized her own accomplishment. She was nearly two years old. The big sharp teeth in her mouth could not keep her words locked inside her anymore. “Horrors,” she tried in a whisper. “Horrors.”
“Come to Nanny, darling. Come sit on my lap and hush for a while.”
She obeyed, but sat forward, apart from Nanny’s cushiony bosom, allowing Nanny’s arms to ring around her waist but no contact more than that. She stared at Turtle Heart and waited.
And Turtle Heart said in an awed voice, “Turtle Heart is thinking the child to speak for the first time.”
“Yes,” said Frex, exhaling a ring of smoke, “and she’s asking about the horrors. Unless you don’t care to tell us? . . .”
“Turtle Heart to say little. Turtle Heart to work in glass, and to leave words for the Goodness and the Lady and the Nanny. And now for the Girl.”
“Say a little, though. Since you brought it up.”
Melena shivered; she hadn’t gone for the shawl. She could not move. She was heavy as stone.
“Workers from the Emerald City and other places, they to come to Quadling Country. They to look and taste and sample the air, the water, the soil. They to plan the highway. Quadlings to know this is wasted time and wasted effort. They do not to listen to Quadling voices.”
“Quadlings aren’t road engineers, I suspect,” said Frex evenly.
“The country is delicate,” said Turtle Heart. “In Ovvels the houses to float between trees. Crops to grow on small platforms hooked by ropes. Boys to dive in shallow water for vegetable pearls. Too many trees and there is not enough light for crops and health. Too few trees and the water rises and roots of plants floating on top cannot to stretch to soil. Quadling Country is poor country but beauty rich. It only to support life by careful planning and cooperation.”
“So resistance to the Yellow Brick Road—”
“Is only part of the story. Quadlings cannot to convince road builders, who want to build up dikes of mud and stone and to cut Quadling Country in pieces. Quadlings to argue, and to pray, and to testify, and cannot to win with words.”
Frex held his pipe in his two hands and watched Turtle Heart speak. Frex was drawn to him; Frex was always drawn to intensity.
“Quadlings consider to fight,” said Turtle Heart. “Because they think this is only the start. When the builders to test soil and to sift water, they to learn of things Quadlings are smart for ever, but Quadlings to keep still.”
“Things you know?”
“Turtle Heart to speak of rubies,” he said with a great sigh. “Rubies under the water. Red as pigeon blood. Engineers to say: Red corundum in bands of crystalline limestone under swamp. Quadlings to say: The blood of Oz.”
�
�Like the red glass you make?” said Melena.
“Ruby glass to come by adding gold chloride,” said Turtle Heart. “But Quadling Country to sit atop real deposits of real rubies. And the news is sure to go to the Emerald City with the builders. What to follow is horror upon horror.”
“How do you know?” snapped Melena.
“To look in glass,” said Turtle Heart, pointing to the roundel he had made as a toy for Elphaba, “is to see the future, in blood and rubies.”
“I don’t believe in seeing the future. That smacks of the pleasure faith,” said Frex fiercely. “The fatalism of the Time Dragon. Pfaah. No, the Unnamed God has an unnamed history for us, and prophecy is merely guesswork and fear.”
“Fear and guesswork is enough to make Turtle Heart to leave Quadling Country, then,” said the Quadling glassblower without apology. “Quadlings do not to call their religion a pleasure faith, but they to listen to signs and to watch for messages. As the water to run red with rubies it will to run with the blood of Quadlings.”
“Nonsense!” Frex fussed, red himself. “They need a good talking-to.”
“Besides, isn’t Pastorius a simpleton?” said Melena, who alone of them could claim an informed opinion on the royal house. “What will he do until Ozma is of age but ride the hunt, and eat Munchkinlander pastries, and fuck the odd housemaid on the side?”
“The danger is a foreigner,” said Turtle Heart, “not a home-grown king or queen. The old women, and the shamans, and the dying: They to see a stranger king, cruel and mighty.”
“What is the Ozma Regent doing, planning roadworks into that godforsaken mire anyway?” Melena asked.
“Progress,” said Frex, “same as the Yellow Brick Road through Munchkinland. Progress and control. The movement of troops. The regularization of taxes. Military protection.”
“Protection from whom?” said Melena.
“Ahh,” said Frex, “always the important question.”
“Ahh,” said Turtle Heart, almost in a whisper.
“So where are you going?” said Frex. “Not that you need leave here, of course. Melena loves having you around. We all do.”
“Horrors,” said Elphaba.
“Hush now,” said Nanny.
“Lady is kind and Goodness is kind to Turtle Heart. Who did not mean to stay more than a day. Turtle Heart was on his way to the Emerald City and to get lost. Turtle Heart to hope to beg audience with Ozma—”
“Ozma Regent, now,” interjected Frex.
“—and to plead mercy for Quadling Country. And to warn of brutal stranger—”
“Horrors,” said Elphaba, clapping her hands together in delight.
“The child to remind Turtle Heart of his duties,” he said. “To talk of it brings duties back out of the pain of the past. Turtle Heart to forget. But when words are to speak in the air, actions must to follow.”
Melena glared hatefully at Nanny, who had dropped the girl on the ground and begun to busy herself with collecting the supper dishes. See what comes of prying and nosiness, Nanny? See? Just the dissolution of my only earthly happiness, that’s all. Melena turned her face from her horrid child, who seemed to be smiling, or was that wincing? She looked at her husband with despair. Do something, Frex!
“Perhaps this is the higher ambition we seek,” he was murmuring. “We should travel to Quadling Country, Melena. We should leave the luxury of Munchkinland and try ourselves in the fire of a truly needy situation.”
“The luxury of Munchkinland?” Melena’s voice was screechy.
“When the Unnamed God speaks through a lowly vessel,” began Frex, gesturing at Turtle Heart, who was looking desperate again, “we can choose to hear or we can choose to harden our hearts—”
“Well, hear this, then,” said Melena, “I’m pregnant, Frex. I can’t travel. I can’t move. And with a new infant to watch as well as Elphaba to raise, it’s too much to suggest tramping around Mudland.”
After the stillness had lost some of its steam, she continued, “Well, I didn’t intend to tell you like this.”
“Congratulations,” said Frex coldly.
“Horrors,” said Elphaba to her mother. “Horrors, horrors, horrors.”
“That’s enough thoughtless chatter for one night,” said Nanny, taking charge. “Melena, you will catch a chill sitting out here. Summer nights are turning colder again. Come inside and let’s let that be that.”
But Frex got himself up and went to kiss his wife. It was not clear to anyone whether he suspected that Turtle Heart was the father, nor was it clear to Melena which one, her husband or her lover, was the father. She didn’t actually care. She just didn’t want Turtle Heart to leave, and she hated him fiercely for being so suddenly riven with moral feeling for his miserable people.
Frex and Turtle Heart conversed in low voices that Melena could not make out. They sat by the fire with their heads low together, and Frex had his arm on Turtle Heart’s shaking shoulders. Nanny readied Elphaba for bed, left her outside with the men, and came to sit on Melena’s bed with a glass of hot milk on a tray and a small bowl of medicinal capsules.
“Well, I knew this was coming,” said Nanny calmly. “Drink the milk, dear, and stop sniveling. You’re behaving like a child again. How long have you known?”
“Oh, six weeks,” said Melena. “I don’t want milk, Nanny, I want my wine.”
“You’ll drink milk. No more wine till the baby’s born. You want another disaster?”
“Drinking wine doesn’t change the skin color of embryos,” said Melena. “I may be a dolt but I know that much about biology.”
“It’s bad for your frame of mind, nothing more and nothing less. Drink the milk and swallow one of these capsules.”
“What for?”
“I did what I told you I’d do,” said Nanny in a conspiratorial voice. “Last fall I poked around the Lower Quarter of our fair capital on your behalf—”
The young woman was suddenly engaged. “Nanny you didn’t! How clever! Weren’t you terrified?”
“Of course I was. But Nanny loves you, however stupid you are. I found a store marked with the secret insignia of the alchemist’s trade.” She wrinkled her nose in recollection of the smell of rotting ginger and cat piss. “I sat down with a saucy-looking old biddy from Shiz, a crone named Yackle, and drank the tea and upended the cup so she could read the leaves. Yackle could barely see her own hand, much less read the future.”
“A real professional,” Melena said dryly.
“Your husband doesn’t believe in predictions, so keep your voice down. Anyway, I explained about the greenness of your first child, and the difficulty of knowing exactly why it had happened. We don’t want a recurrence, I said. So Yackle ground up some herbs and minerals, and roasted it with oil of gomba, and said some pagan prayers and for all I know she spit in it, I didn’t watch too closely. But I paid for a nine months’ supply, to be begun as soon as you’re sure you’ve conceived. We’re a month late maybe, but this’ll be better than nothing. I have supreme confidence in this woman, Melena, and you should too.”
“Why should I?” said Melena, swallowing the first of nine capsules. It tasted like boiled marrow.
“Because Yackle predicted greatness for your children,” said Nanny. “She said Elphaba will be more than you credit, and your second will follow suit. She said not to give up on your life. She said history waits to be written, and this family has a part in it.”
“What does she say about my lover?”
“You are a pest,” said Nanny. “She said to rest and not to worry. She gives her blessing. She is a filthy whore but she knows what she’s talking about.” Nanny didn’t mention that Yackle was certain the next child would be a girl too. There was too much chance Melena would try to abort her, and Yackle sounded quite sure that history belonged to two sisters, not a single girl.
“And you got home safely? Did anyone suspect?”
“Who would suspect innocent old Nanny of trading in illegal substances i
n the Lower Quarter?” laughed Nanny. “I do my knitting and mind my own business. Now go to sleep, my love. Nix to the wine for the next few months, and stay the course with this medicine, and we’ll have for you and Frex a decent, healthy child, which will provide no end of recovery for your marriage.”
“My marriage is perfectly fine,” said Melena, snuggling down under the covers—the capsule had a kick, but she didn’t want Nanny to know—“as long as we don’t go wading off into the muddy sunset.”
“The sun sets in the west, not in the south,” said Nanny soothingly. “It was a masterly stroke to bring up the pregnancy tonight, my dear. I wouldn’t come to visit you if you went paddling off into Quadling Country, by the way. I’m fifty years old this year, you know. There are some things Nanny is really too old to do.”
“Well nobody better go anywhere,” said Melena, and began to fall asleep.
Nanny, pleased with herself, glanced out the window again as she prepared to retire. Frex and Turtle Heart were still deep in conversation. Nanny was sharper than she let on; she had seen Turtle Heart’s face when he was remembering the threat to his people. It had opened like a hen’s egg, and the truth had fluttered and wobbled out of it just as naive as a yellow chick. And as fragile. No wonder Frex was sitting nearer to the beleaguered Quadling than Nanny thought was altogether decent. But there seemed no end of oddity to this family.
“Send the girl in so I can put her down,” she called from the window, partly to interrupt their intimacy.
Frex looked around. “She’s in, isn’t she?”
Nanny glanced. The child was not given to hiding games, neither here nor with the brats in the village. “No, isn’t she with you?”
The men turned and looked. Nanny thought she saw a blur of movement in the blue shadows of the wild yew. She stood up and held on to the window ledge. “Well, find her. It’s the prowling hour.”
The Wicked Years Complete Collection Page 7
