The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “About our tenure here, I can make no comment. But I’ve had a grand time helping my daughters learn to read, when I was home on leave, and my granddaughter too. I can make of your stupid little maid a capable reader of simple texts in a month or two. By Summersend, anyway, if we’re here that long. It’s a deal.”

  She raised her glass; the edges chinked to seal the wager.

  “But you must have a challenge of your own,” he said. “I shall dare you to … oh, what is it you can’t do? Is there anything?”

  She hoped he wouldn’t say generate a new strain of prettibell. “I’ve always had Chef, of one name or another,” she said. “I suppose I could enter into the fun of it and learn to prepare a meal on my own.”

  “It’s a deal,” he said, and the glasses chinked again. “But really?” he added, as he stood to go. “Even in childhood you had a chef?”

  “Mumsy was an Upland,” she said, as if that explained it.

  “But didn’t you linger in kitchens and pick things up, as all small children do? Even I did that.”

  “I don’t recall much of my childhood,” she told him. “It’s been such a full rich life ever since, I haven’t felt the need to dwell on that simpler time. Life, with whatever it has brought—university one decade, the Throne Ministry of Oz the next. The cultivation of roses and prettibells one year, house arrest another—well, daily life has always seemed distracting enough. Childhood? It’s a myth.”

  “Good night, Lady Glinda. And thank you for a very pleasant evening. I shall send for your chambergirl in the next day or two.”

  It was late. She dismissed Miss Murth and the girl, but not before thanking Rain for her help. Then Glinda prepared herself for bed. She didn’t need to check with the little mirror to see herself smiling. She believed she had won the hand.

  Though as she settled herself upon the pillows, she found herself thinking about childhood. Had she meant what she had said? Had her own childhood really evaporated as thoroughly as all that? Or had she merely forgotten to pay it any attention once she’d left it behind and headed off to school in Shiz?

  8.

  The third, and as far as she could figure, the last of her early memories. Though who knows the architecture of the mind, and whether the arches that open upon discrete episodes are ordered in any way sequentially?

  Probably they are not.

  Still, this was a memory of autumn. Either it was actual autumn or she was dressing her few memories in contrasting colors, the better to render them distinctive.

  Apple trees? Yes, apples. An orchard hugging a slope. Hesitating in its ascent, the incline leveled off several times—built up manually, to accommodate carts, or maybe the hill just preferred itself like that. This was her only memory to begin with the setting first, and with her entering the place, rather than with herself central as a maypole and the situation emanating from her.

  She was wandering about the contorted trunks, trees twisted in their growth by a constant upsweep of wind from the valley. (So there must have been a valley. What lay below? A house? A village? A river? Why were memories so independent? So jealous of corroborating detail?)

  Windfalls jeweled the grass, the colors of russet, burgundy, limeberry, freckled yellow. Fruit hung in the boughs like Lurlinemas ornaments. Leaves twitched as if signaling to one another: she approaches.

  Around a certain tree she came upon a wounded bird humped in the grass like an overturned spindle. At first she thought it had bruised its head in an accident, twisted its neck. She had never seen a side-beak merin before.

  The eye above the treacherous beak stared at her. She felt herself being pulled into the bird’s gaze, sacrificing her own centrality for a moment. She felt she was being seen and understood by the merin.

  The merin is a waterbird, distant cousin to the duck and the swan, though devoid of both the duck’s work ethic and the swan’s narcissism. The unusual bill swivels sideways to filch morsels from other birds. When not in use the beak, on a double-hinged jaw, can swing and tuck backward into creamy neck feathers so that in flight the merin resembles a coat-knob with wings. This merin, the color of a stag-head beetle, didn’t store its beak in its ruff. It merely looked at her and opened its mouth as if to speak.

  She hadn’t yet known that some creatures can speak. She did not learn it now—at least not through evidence. But she could tell by the serrated stroke of remark, by the waterfowl’s stuttery smoker’s vowels, that the merin had something specific to say.

  She tried to lift the bird but it wouldn’t let her. The subsequent scratches on her forearms, chalk marks at first, slowly beaded up. Crimson stitches on an ivory bolster.

  She said, “You’re hurt, but hurting me back won’t help you any.”

  It humped itself a few inches away, as much by willpower as by mortal strength, and regarded her with need and fury.

  “If I can’t pick you up and take you—”

  But where would she have taken it? To some house, some village, some river?

  She rolled an apple at it in case it liked apples. The merin knocked it away savagely.

  Then—so why did she remember any of this?—she took care of it. She didn’t remember how, just that she did. She found a way to feed it for a while until it had gathered its strength.

  Say what you know.

  I remember pulling a golden minnow or smelt from my pocket, still flapping, as if I had just rescued it from the weir, and feeding it to the merin. I remember how the fishlette flopped in the beak, dropped in the grass, and with what acumen and zip the merin retrieved it, and swallowed it whole.

  But what a patently false memory this was. The rescue of an ice-bound fish happened in winter. The merin’s recuperation from some unknown attack or disease clearly happened in the autumn—all those apples decorating the memory.

  So—if the oldest memories could contaminate one another, could prove impossible—what good was memory at all?

  Was that why she remembered nothing more?

  Except that when the merin had recovered its nerve and its composure, it staggered to its bandy legs and rushed at her, clacking its beak like scissors. Until it pivoted. Like a one-legged man picking up his false leg and tucking it under his arm before hopping to bed, the merin swung its beak into place. Then the bird raised its weird puppet-head and opened its wings. She could see that one wing had been wrenched at; its feathers thinned. An ugly viscous patch glistened on the leading edge like wet shellac.

  And still it somehow managed to launch itself. It battered through branches as it learned how to fly all over again, with new strength in its left wing correcting what it had lost in its right. Lopsidedly it lifted along the slopes of air that mimicked the steps of terraced orchard below. It wheeled against silver blue, heading for something beyond the scope of memory to imagine.

  To climb up the invisible staircases of the sky—!

  Without benefit of a mouth, which was in storage, it said to her, one way or the other, “Remember.”

  9.

  Cherrystone was true to his word. The next morning he sent an underling to collect Rain for her first lesson in reading. It would take place in the Opaline Salon. Safe enough. Miss Murth reported that the door had been left ajar, as if for Lady Glinda or her minions to be able to check for impropriety.

  “Is that so. Well, then, be a dear, Murthy, and nip down there to investigate, just in case,” said Glinda.

  “Lady Glinda. I do many things and I do them well, but I do not nip.”

  Rain returned an hour later not visibly glorified with learning. She trotted off to water the potted prettibells in the south porch, since Glinda now felt obliged to keep the damn things alive.

  Chef sent word that his supplies of potatoes had been appropriated. Also three whole smoked haunches of skark and a pair of hams. Would Lady Glinda settle for a lunch of coddled eggs and new carrots?

  Miss Murth had a headache and retired for the afternoon.

  Glinda walked the length of her apa
rtments. Since Mockbeggar Hall crowned a headland, it enjoyed water views from three directions. Westward Glinda could see a flock of geese. Out the front windows she spied a lone tugboat plying the waves. Easterly, several stacks of smudgy smoke unfurled from an indeterminate source.

  She rang for Puggles. “They’re not burning Zimmerstorm, surely?” she asked.

  “I can’t say for certain, Mum,” he replied. “All our kitchen deliveries are now handled through an EC lout who acts mute. Perhaps he is. He is called Private Private, and he doesn’t speak to us or anyone else, near as I can tell. So I can get no word out of him.”

  “This is intolerable.” She tried to summon Cherrystone, but the guard who seemed permanently stationed in the banquet hall replied, “He’s not at home, Mum.”

  “Of course he’s not at home,” she snapped. “His home is someplace else. This is my home. Where is he?”

  “Privileged information, I’m afraid, Mum.”

  “I’m not Mum to you, laddie. Address me as Lady Glinda or Lady Chuffrey. Who are you?”

  “Privileged information, Mum.”

  She almost hit him. But Cherrystone came swooping in, pretty as you please, through the kitchens. “I thought I heard your voice,” he said, like a husband returning from an afternoon shooting grouse. She almost felt he was going to swing across the room and plant a kiss on her cheek.

  “Traper. I need a word. Privately.”

  He shrugged. “As you know, privacy doesn’t do either of our reputations any good.”

  “This is war, Traper. Reputations be damned.”

  “As you wish.” He made a gesture and the Menacier skated away.

  She told him she wanted to know what was burning to the east. “Oh, that? It’s the cotton harvest, I’m afraid. The holdings between here and Zimmerstorm.”

  She gasped. “You must be mad. What has cotton ever done to you?”

  “Oh, very little. Cotton is blameless, I admit.”

  “What is the point? Just to deprive the farmers of their cash crop? They sell to mills in Gillikin, you must know that. You’ll force up the price of cotton in Loyal Oz. That’s madness pure and simple.”

  “Maybe there was a population of boll weevils doing the nasty on that farm.”

  “I’ll say. Are you trying to foment the farmers into attacking you here? The Battle of Mockbeggar Hall? Seriously. Traper. I want an explanation.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you’d become the Good Witch of Munchkinland, Lady Glinda. They already have a pretender to the position of Eminence squatting up there in Colwen Grounds, I’m told.”

  “And I have friends in the neighborhood.”

  “Among cotton farmers? Please.”

  It was a stretch; she saw that. She tried again. “Those farmers supply you and me both with dairy and grain and who knows what else. You’re playing with fire, General. Rather literally, I’m afraid.”

  “Well.” He poured himself a small portion of her brandy. Before lunch! He offered her a glass. She didn’t acknowledge his offer. “The truth is, the boys are antsy. Soldiers like to be on the move, and they’re going slightly stir-crazy. They need to be kept busy. A little burning of fields is a useful exercise. Gets them out and working.”

  She stared at him as if he were mad.

  He added, “You haven’t had sons, you wouldn’t get it. Soldiers like to destroy as well as to build.”

  She was flummoxed. “If you’re going to be here for months, what will you do—scorch the entire district?”

  “Maybe we’ll take up lowland sports. Like hip-sprung dancing, the way the old ones do in the pub in Zimmerstorm. Or darts.” He was being amused by her consternation. “Or I could teach my men to speak Qua’ati, perhaps. By the way, your Rain made a creditable start at learning her letters this morning.”

  “I need a carriage.”

  “There’s nothing available today.”

  “You’ll have to locate me one. I have an appointment. I’m leaving directly after luncheon.”

  “I can’t spare a driver.”

  “I’ll have Puggles or Chef. They’ll know how to manage a team.”

  She turned to leave as he was speaking. “Where is your appointment?”

  “East of the cotton fields,” she replied. “I haven’t decided the exact destination.”

  Somewhat to her surprise, when she descended the stairs in her wine-colored summer cloak with the musset panels, the front doors were open and the Menacier from the banquet hall was waiting. “The name is Zackers, Lady Glinda,” he said with crystalline politeness. “I have orders to accommodate you within reason, and to turn back if you cannot be reasoned with.”

  “I have nearly no sense of reason,” she told him, “so be forewarned.”

  It wasn’t her best carriage but it was better than nothing. Miss Murth had brought a fan, but the breeze off the lake was strong this afternoon and the horseflies mercifully few. What a treat to hear the trap clicketing along on the abalone drive, and then the softer sound it made in summer dust when they passed through the front gates of Mockbeggar and turned east along the lake road. Lady Glinda hadn’t really felt imprisoned yet, but her release was more welcome than she’d anticipated.

  The road rose and fell as the low hills of the Pine Barrens to the north approached the lake. This part of Oz had been farmed for hundreds of years. Some tedious old geezer at a dinner party once had told Glinda that the Munchkins of antiquity had settled here first before colonizing the breadbasket of Oz to the northeast. How anyone could deduce such a thing seemed dubious to her, though in time her eye for architecture began to assemble clues that supported his thesis. And, she had to acknowledge, the fecundity of this district would have appealed to any wandering troll or trollop.

  How she’d come to love Restwater. As if she didn’t see it every day from her chambers, she marveled once again. Every bend in the road, every dip after every rise, bringing new vistas of blue shattered by sunlight. Blue between the pines, one shade; blue between the birches, another. Blue in chips and fragments; blue opening up. If there were such a place as heaven, she thought, it could do worse than modeling itself on the road from Mockbeggar to Zimmerstorm.

  All too soon, however, she began to smell the stench of char, and most of those blues went brown with heavy hovering smoke, a kind of industrial fog. She coughed, and Murth coughed, and their eyes stung and then ran. “Shall I turn back, for your health, Mum?” asked Private Zackers.

  “Press on.”

  The fields were destroyed. At least—she peered through the streams in her eyes—at least the outbuildings and farmsteads seemed standing. Those visible from the road, anyway.

  What had those farmers done? Where had they gone while their livelihoods were being torched?

  The carriage passed a vegetable garden that for the fun of it, she guessed, had also been ravaged. A scarecrow shrugged its shoulders at the sky, presiding over ruin, as if asking the Unnamed God the reason for such wantonness.

  Murth’s tears were real tears. She was a fool, after all, if a dear one. For herself, Glinda felt ready to take some training with a halberd.

  Before long—not soon enough—they had cleared the worst of the damage and were beginning the descent into Zimmerstorm. Its town hall steeple, its pitched roofs clad in the blue-grey tiles of the region—it all looked more or less correct. A mercy.

  Glinda directed Zackers to halt the trap in the village square. “We shall take our tea, my companion and I,” she told Zackers. “Your company is not required.”

  He stood on guard at the street door of the local tearoom anyway.

  Then Lady Glinda had the most unfortunate experience of realizing—very slowly, picking up cues as if they were bug bites—that the residents of Zimmerstorm didn’t fully believe the testimony of those who’d been dismissed from Mockbeggar. They harbored a suspicion that Lady Glinda was in collusion with the occupiers.

  She could hardly blame them. She was Gillikinese herself,
of course, and she had had high-ranking association with the Emerald City. And she couldn’t mount an explanation in public—former Throne Ministers didn’t do that. Besides, who would believe her? She just had to sit in stony silence as the cabbage-faced Munchkinlander hostess grunted and scowled and made as if to dump the tea in her lap. “A biscuit,” Glinda begged.

  “No biscuits,” snapped the proprietress. “Your military friendsies scarfed ’em all up. For ’emselves.”

  “Perhaps a roundlet of toast?” wondered Miss Murth.

  The toast came about twenty minutes later. It had been burnt inedible. As burnt as the cotton fields.

  “Perhaps a constitutional,” suggested Lady Glinda.

  “That’s five farthings, Mum,” said Sour Peasant Woman.

  Lady Glinda wasn’t in the habit of carrying coin. Miss Murth had none to carry. How embarrassing to have to petition Private Zackers to pay the establishment. I won’t make that mistake again, Glinda thought.

  Still, while Zackers was settling up, Glinda and Murth got ahead of him, across the village square. A miniature escape! Oh, hilarity.

  “Into the lending library, Murthy,” said Glinda. “Quickly now. Move your arthritic hips or I’ll run you down.”

  The librarian was a retired Munchkin on a stool. She recognized him though she didn’t know his name. “I’m looking to borrow a book that can teach one the essentials of preparing a meal,” she said. “For dining, I mean. For human dining.”

  “Books en’t going to teach that, Lady Glinda,” he said. “Mothers teach that. Closest I can help you with is a volume on animal husbandry, which has an illustrated index on slaughtering your own livestock.”

  “I think not,” she murmured. Turning, she saw a notice board behind his desk. A scroll was posted with nails. She peered at it. A crude drawing with a handwritten announcement. She hadn’t brought her reading glasses. “Miss Murth, can you decipher that message?” she asked.