Sing O! for the warrior phantom phaeton
Carrying Ojo over the mountain
His saturnine sword was the scimitar moon
Soon, thundered Ojo, vengeance soon!
This went on too long and no one could tell what Ojo was trying to achieve, and Liir said that was pretty much standard operating procedure for the military. But then Little Daffy recalled something from her own childhood.
Jack, Jack, Pumpkinhead
“How does it go now?” She tried again.
Jack, Jack, Pumpkinhead
Woke to life in a pumpkin bed
Made his breakfast of pumpkin bread
Fell and squashed his pumpkin head
Went to the farmer and the farmer said
Pumpkins smash but can’t be dead
Plant your brains in the pumpkin bed
Grow yourself a brand-new head.
That’s what he said he said he said
’Cause the farmer liked his pumpkin bread.
Rain admired that one and clapped her hands.
“That’s a nursery ditty from a soundly agrarian society,” said the Lion, “no doubt about it.”
“Do you have a song to sing?” Candle asked of Rain.
“I knew about a fish once that was locked in a apple-shaped room in the ice. But I don’t know what happened to it.”
They waited in case she might remember; they waited with that affectionate and bothersome patience with which elders heap expectation on the shoulders of the young. When Rain spoke again, though, she seemed not to be aware of their appetite for anything more about the fish. She said, “I don’t know what happens to us.” She said it as a question.
“Oh well,” said Candle. “None of us knows that.”
“What happens to us is a joke, and don’t pretend otherwise,” said the dwarf.
“What happens to us is sleep,” said Liir firmly. “Time to go have a pee, Rain. I’ll walk you a little way out.”
Tay didn’t let Rain go anywhere without scampering after her, no matter how asleep it had seemed to be. It woke itself up when Rain moved, and it followed Rain and her father to a blind of scattercoin, where Liir turned his head just far enough to simulate modesty, but not far enough to allow Rain to escape his peripheral vision.
They wandered about for three more days, slogging through mud and sluicing through rain that sometimes preferred to be snow. Between low tired hills, through unnamed valleys formed by streams threading down from the Kells for ten thousand years. “You ought to know if we’re closing in on the farm,” said Liir to Candle as they blundered along shallow slopes. Their ankles all ached from the slant. “You can see the present.”
“This isn’t the present anymore,” said Candle. “Apple Press Farm is in our past now, and one hill looks much the same as another.”
Finally they discovered the right arrangment of slopes and dips, and they began to drive down ancient agricultural tracks kept clear by animal passage. They came upon a tapering winter meadow. A thwart-hipped woman with a basket and a set of rusting loppers was moving about the weird beautiful verdant green glowing wetly in the thin snow and the thinning rain.
“As I live and breathe,” said Little Daffy.
The woman turned, straightened up, her hand on her hip. “So the prodigal turncoat returns to the nunnery,” she said. “It’s hallelujah time; get the bacon out of the larder and trim off the moldy bits.”
“Nice to see you too, Sister Doctor,” said Little Daffy. “What are you doing here?”
“Double the work I’d be doing if you hadn’t scarpered,” said Sister Doctor. “If you’ve come home for forgiveness, you’re going to have to fill out quite a bill of penitence first. Who are your traveling companions?” She took a pair of spectacles from her apron pocket and reared back a little to see the Clock at the meadow gate. “Not that thing again? And the Lion—Sir Brrr, I remember, I’m not that gaga yet—and the dwarf too. So you’ve joined a cult, Sister Apothecaire.”
“It’s Little Daffy now,” said the Munchkinlander. “I’ve left the mauntery.”
“I suppose you have.” Sister Doctor snapped the spectacles closed so fiercely that one lens popped out and lost itself in the snow. Rain and Tay dug it out for her. “Are you here to sing a few pagan carols and pass the basket? You’ll get neither coin nor comfort from us.”
“I always admired your largesse,” said Little Daffy. “But what are you doing here?”
“Trying to keep the community together, that’s what. When the army of Loyal Oz advanced on the mauntery two years ago, we had no choice but to flee. It didn’t go unnoticed that you absented yourself at the first opportunity. We assumed you must have hurried back to your homeland.” She said homeland as if she were saying bog.
“I went back to release our guests from their locked chambers,” said Little Daffy, “and I apologize to no one for that. I fell on the stairs, and by the time I came around, your dust on the horizon had already settled. Thanks for the show of sorority. Sister.”
“Well, let bygones be bygones and all that,” said Sister Doctor with a new briskness. “In a panic, missteps are taken. Have you come to rejoin your community?”
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“Where else would we be? The mauntery was burned to the ground.”
“Sister Doctor. The mauntery is made of stone.”
“Well, I mean the roofs and floors. The furniture, such as it was. There’s nothing to return to without a massive rebuilding effort. And our divine Emperor of Oz isn’t about to channel funds into the repair of a missionary outpost that he ordered to be torched. So we’ve crowded in here.”
“How did you come to find this place?”
“It always belonged to the mauntery,” replied the maunt. “Back in the days of the Superior Maunt, as you may remember, some skilled artisans among us used this outclave as a place to hide a printing press. We circulated broadsides anonymously, warning against the increasing theocracy of the Emperor. Ha! If we only knew. And him divine, can you credit it. Not a smart career move for a bunch of unmarried women trying to live out of the limelight. And with Lady Glinda our sponsor, no less. Oh, a great vexation for her too, I’ll wager, unless she swanned her way through it.”
Brrr looked at Little Daffy to see how she was taking the news of her former community. The little bundle from Munchkinland seemed at home, having this discussion with an associate who had been both a comrade and an adversary. The Lion said, “News of the old gang is all very well, but we’re sore and soggy here and more than a bit peckish. I hope you’re going to invite us in.”
At this Sister Doctor seemed to recover her sense of stature. “Well, we have less than we ever had, but of what we have, we share willingly. I wonder if winter broccoli appeals?”
“A hot bath would appeal more,” said Liir.
Sister Doctor took out her spectacles again, wiped the rain off them, and peered at him through the intact lens. “I thought I recognized that voice. It’s Liir, isn’t it—the one they say is Elphaba’s son. Oh, now the soup is on the boil. What are you doing with this lot?”
“Hoping for supper, maybe.”
“I’ll get you something, something for all of you.” She threw her implements together in her basket and looked over her shoulder. “It isn’t safe to come into the farm, though. Let me organize something and I’ll be back.”
“Why not safe?” asked Mr. Boss. “We can defend ourselves against maunts in the wilderness.”
“Eat first; we’ll talk later. Just hunker down here, and come no farther.”
“Well, we’re not going to push down the barricades, but I say, we have a child with the chills. A hot posset would be most—”
“That’s an order,” said Sister Doctor. Little Daffy put her hand on the dwarf’s arm, and he fell silent, although he growled like a bratweiler. “Build a fire, that won’t hurt,” added the maunt. “There’s a mess of drying firewood stacked up a half mile on, near where the
orchard peters out.”
They walked through the apple orchard—candelabrum of branches sporting sprigs of snow, not all that unlike apple blossom—and Liir remembered the instance of magic he’d witnessed here. Using the power of her music and her own musky capacity, Candle had called up the voices of the dead to help the Princess Nastoya lose her human disguise and to revert to her Elephant nature, and so finally to die the way she wanted and needed.
Now, to return to this orchard…! Another season, another crackling moment in his life. Rewarding, not morose. He reached for Candle’s hand, and she squeezed his in return. Maybe everything would be all right. Sooner or later.
He recalled an outdoor oven some distance from the farmhouse and sheds. They built a fire. The grate was hooded and the flue hooked, so the fire could burn in the intermittent rain. They rinsed some of the broccoli that Sister Doctor had left behind. They munched on woody florets, hoping for better. Rain sat closest and grew less grey. In an hour the maunt was back with a donkey on which were saddled baskets and bags with bottles of claret, a ham, ropes of onions and twists of sourswift. A tablecloth, once unbundled, revealed six loaves of onion bread and a caramel cake burned on the bottom. “Heaven,” said the Lion. “Don’t suppose you brought any port, or some cigars?”
“Maunts go through cigars like termites through doorsills. We have none to spare.”
“Thought you might say that.”
Beneath the saddlebags, Sister Doctor had piled four or five pelts and two woolen blankets. The rain had faltered again, but the shadows blued up in a frosty way. Liir was about to renew the request for indoor lodging, but Sister Doctor anticipated his request.
“You can’t be allowed to stay, I’m afraid,” she told them. “I was distracted by seeing Sister Apothecaire—Little Daffy as she styles herself now. I didn’t really take in the measure of the difficulty until I realized you had Liir with you. It’s too dangerous for you to come into the house. No one must know you are here.”
“You have stool pigeons among the maunts?” asked the Lion. “So much for your professed neutrality.”
“I’m protecting my sisters as much as I’m trying to protect you. We’ve been visited three times in the past two years by emissaries from the EC military to check and see who’s been through. I can’t vouch that every voice among our sorority is equally devoted to neutrality—how could I? How could I plead knowledge into all of their souls? Nor can I attest that they’d stand up to harsh questioning if the investigators sniffed out that we were hiding something. Better for all that you should move on.”
“What are they looking for?” asked Liir, and “When were they last here?” asked his half-sister, at the same time.
“You’ve eluded them for so long that some believe you are dead,” said Sister Doctor to Liir. “But they don’t believe you brought the Grimmerie into the Afterlife with you. So they’re convinced they’ll find it sooner or later. You may have heard that the invasion of Munchkinland is stalled. General Cherrystone’s army has taken Restwater, but the struggle around Haugaard’s Keep is a standoff. The Munchkinlanders can’t reclaim the lake; nor can the EC forces advance as far as Colwen Grounds to finish their reannexation of Munchkinland. The Munchkinland farms won’t sell bread or grain to Loyal Oz until the invading forces yield Restwater and retreat.”
“Never yield,” hissed Little Daffy, almost to herself.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sister Apothecaire, Munchkinland won’t starve. But with no one to sell bread to, much of their unharvested grain just rots in the fields. The EC meanwhile hankers for bread but has plenty of water to drink. The term on a game board is called stalemate, I think.”
“How does this figure in surveillance of maunts?” asked the Lion.
“Isn’t it plain as the nose on your plain face? The EC once again ramps up its campaign to find the Grimmerie. In the hopes that it might reveal secrets of how to unleash a mightier force against central Munchkinland, and strike a blow at the heart of the government at Colwen Grounds. Finishing the job.
“In short,” she said, “if you lot thought you were out of danger, you’re sadly mistaken. Whoever travels with Liir Thropp courts danger, by association.”
“And you’ve given us broccoli, bread, and wine,” said Little Daffy. “Sister, thank you.”
“I maintain my vows.” She passed the strawberry compote for spooning upon the more burnt bits of caramel cake.
They told her what they’d heard about the legendary Dorothy making a comeback tour. Sister Doctor hadn’t been apprised of this, but she wasn’t much interested. “We haven’t had a reprisal of the Great Drought for some time now, but if it should come as soon as next summer, punishing the fields with blight, the Munchkinlanders have little left in their coffers to buy supplies from Loyal Oz, and trading agreements are suspended anyway. The uneasy balance settled upon now seems more or less peaceful—only a few soldiers die a week on one side or the other, in this skirmish or that—but one doesn’t know who will give out first, Loyal Oz or Munchkinland.”
“You’ve become callous,” remarked Little Daffy. “‘Only a few soldiers die a week?’ Time was you and I would go out on the battlefield and tend to the sick, and care about it.”
“Don’t hector me. I care as much as I can, but I don’t spend energy caring about things I cannot resolve. I tend to my maunts and keep us out of harm’s way. Right now I’m feeding the hungry and harboring enemies of the state. I can’t do all that and work in international diplomacy too. Pass me the butter pot.”
The Lion said, “Look, we have a little girl here. Surely she deserves a roof over her head for one night? We’ve been on the road a week or more.”
“Don’t think I haven’t guessed who she is,” said Sister Doctor. “I’m trying to protect you all. Have you no sense? Or do you really not believe me?” She sighed, and then slipped off the starched yoke of her religious garb, and without evidence of humility or shame she let the bib of her garment slip down almost to her nipple. The scar on her shoulder was rippled, a plum color, like congealed tadmuck. Glossy and hideous. “Do you remember how Mother Yackle went blind? These men don’t come to play parlor games. I am trying in as calm a voice as I can to tell you that you’re in danger at Apple Press Farm. They know from that fellow Trism that you were here once, Liir and Candle, and they suspect this will be one of the places you might return. They’ve turned the house inside out three times thinking they might yet find the Grimmerie on the premises. We’ve had to put it to rights as best we could, over and over again. Thank the Unnamed God for Sister Sawblade, that’s what I say.”
She dressed herself again and concluded her sermon. “Even the house might be bugged. Do you know what I mean? We have a weird infestation of woggle-bugs. I’m told there is some thought they can be communicated with—don’t ask me how. My capacity for comprehending mystery doesn’t extend to science, only to faith. But I can’t be sure they aren’t capable somehow of alerting the next contingent of investigators that you were in residence, were I to make a mistake of mercy and let you in. You see,” she finished, “you can’t stay. For our sake, but also for your own good. Tonight, all right, to the barn, but quietly. For the sake of a croupy child. After dark. I’ll take Sister Manure off muckout detail. But tomorrow you’ll be on your way. No one will be the wiser, no one but me and the donkey. And I can stand anything.”
“She can,” said Little Daffy miserably, when she had gone. “I don’t like the old bitch anymore, but she’s a tough little biscuit, and she means what she says. Anyone else in Oz would crack under torture before she did.”
10.
Before dawn. At the sound of maunts beginning their devotional song, Sister Doctor nipped in with a cornucopia of supplies the travelers could use during the next stage of their journey. She refused to advise them which way to go or what to do. “I don’t want to know if you have the Grimmerie with you,” she told them. “However, I do believe it’s time to lose the Clock. You’d
move faster without it, and what good is it doing you now?”
Liir pondered the question as they slipped away, unheeded, from Apple Press Farm. Here he had learned to love a woman—to love this wife, this mother of their child—and even more, he had learned to love at all. He had felt a pang at coming near, had been afraid, however stiff his face and controlled his upper lip, that he would mourn for the lost simpleton he’d once been. He needn’t have worried. Leaving Apple Press Farm, his mind returned to the present and the future as they headed north into drier air.
Iskinaary had kept silent while on the farm. Liir remembered only after they’d left it that the Goose, too, had been there before. Falling into step with the Bird, Liir asked him what he had concluded about the maunt’s revelations.
“I could have finished off an entire generation of woggle-bugs in an afternoon’s work,” said the Goose. “I should have thought that might be apparent, but did anyone ask me for help? Noooooo. Just a silly Goose, old Iskinaary.”
“You can be some help now, and take to the wing,” said Liir. “Do a little scouting for us. Sister Doctor’s caution seemed well founded. Some pots can take years to come to the boil, but when they do, the scalding is ferocious.”
“I’ll do that,” said the Goose. “For you. For you and Candle. Oh, and for the girl too, I suppose. By extension. Though I wish she would show a little more oomph. I don’t mean to be cruel, but she’s a bit slow out of the eggshell, isn’t she?”
“I’d go do that surveillance right now before you get an additional thrust to your liftoff by a boot in the behind,” said Liir, and Iskinaary obliged.
And then Liir thought: How are we ever going to protect her?
They walked single file. The farther from Apple Press Farm, the farther apart from one another they straggled. Even Tay kept a little distance from Rain. It was as if they had all taken in the message that there would be no safe harbor for them, not while the world was at war—so, presumably, not ever.
Liir tried to remember being Rain’s age—eight, nine, ten. Whatever it was. He had been in Kiamo Ko at that age, playing with Nor, surely? Or had Nor already been taken away by Cherrystone and his men? In any case, he’d been alone in his life, as alone as Rain seemed to be. He’d lived with his mother, with the Wicked Witch of the West (which might be the name of any mother, all mothers, he realized), but he’d lived apart, not unlike the way Rain kept apart from him and Candle. Of course Elphaba had shown little interest in him. Or if she had shown some kind of interest, he’d been too dull to read it as such—the way, presumably, Rain was too dull to recognize Liir’s love, even passion, for her.
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