The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “Holding them off?” asked Miss Igivly. “I thought we were invading them.” Miss Igilvy isn’t as frivolous as she seems, thought Rain.

  “Tactics, strategies; ours not to question the military mind,” replied Madame Chard. “But spies among us may be targeting Shiz for special attack. Perhaps localized explosions to frighten the populace. We shall stand firm. We shall not be moved.”

  By the time Miss Ironish returned home a few days later, many of the girls had been moved. Their families had swum up out of nowhere to collect their precious daughters. Graduation was held in the dining hall, since the chapel was too large and would have pointed up the thinning of the ranks.

  Rain avoided Scarly and Tip, both, trying not to be obvious about it. But the third evening after they had returned, Scarly showed up in Rain’s room and pressed her to talk to Tip.

  “I have nothing special to say to him,” said Rain.

  “He needs to talk to you,” she replied. “Don’t ask me why.”

  Well, that’s something, thought Rain, so the next day, in as casual a manner as she could, she found a way to sidle up to him in the buttery pantry as she was helping to clear the luncheon things away. “Yoo hoo,” she said, sounding brittle even to herself. “I have a present for you.”

  His eyebrows raised at the sight of the map. “You weaseled this out of the Bear? How could you do that?”

  “I weaseled nothing. He told us we could come back and buy it later. Why are you so huffy?”

  “Never mind. I’m just—surprised.”

  She felt horrible and couldn’t say why. “Well, you wanted to see me,” she continued, all Ironish.

  He shared the news about a suspected attack upon Shiz. It was all the word in the Emerald City, he said. “Yes, I’m aware of that,” she replied. “I’m not blind to the fact that the school population has been cut in half. But why do you think it should concern me?”

  “Well, I shouldn’t want you to be caught in an attack,” he said, as if bemused she should have to ask.

  “Don’t worry over me. You have yourself to think about.”

  “Isn’t there a way to contact your mother? She won’t want you left here in danger, surely?”

  “I think it’s all blather. Madame Streetflye flutters, ‘Speculation! designed—to, to … intimidate us!’ Tip, life seems the same to me as ever, if just that little bit more tedious.”

  “I don’t know. In the EC they’re murmuring that the enemy has gotten its hands on some profoundly dangerous and powerful book of magic. If La Mombey, who is something of a sorceress, actually has it in her possession, and can decode it, there’s no telling what havoc may be unleashed upon us.”

  “A book of magic?” Rain felt light-headed. “Where was it found? What is it called? How long have they had it?”

  “I can’t answer any of those things. For all I know this is only one of your rumors, as you would have it. Designed to give a psychological upper hand to the Munchkinlanders. But that’s what they’re saying on every street corner of the EC. Proctor Clapp was devastated at the prospects; his sister says he’s quite shattered by his experiences and may never be the same.”

  “Those aren’t rumors,” said Rain. “I must leave—I must leave tonight. Can you help me get out?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I mean about the threat of empty rumors. If the Grimmerie has been acquired by anyone—by either of the antagonists—”

  “Yes, that’s the name of it. The Grimmerie. How did you know?”

  “Never mind. The danger is real. And I must go. I can’t say why, nor where. I must go. And you must go, too. Get out of Shiz.”

  “You care that much about me?” His tone half taunting, half skeptical.

  “If they’ve got the Grimmerie, they won’t hesitate to use it. Everyone tells me so. The war is bleeding both countries dry, and whoever has a fiercer weapon will punish their enemy with it. You’re in danger here if the Munchkinlanders have actually found the book. You have to go.”

  “What about Madame Chard?” asked Tip. “Or Miss Ironish? Or Miss Igilvy, or Scarly? Or the others?”

  “They’re all in danger, but I can’t spend a week convincing them. I’ll tell Miss Ironish right now, and she’ll have to use her powers as proctress to decide what to do with the information. But no matter what happens, I’m leaving tonight. You should too.”

  “I have no place to go,” he said.

  “Use the map I gave you and find one,” she couldn’t help snapping.

  Miss Ironish saw her into the study. She had aged in the year since Rain had arrived. Her eyes were sunk into dark sockets and her skin had become crepey. “Miss Rainary, I have only a moment for you. I am not in the habit of having private interviews with my girls unless I call for them.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, Miss Ironish.” Rain explained her concerns—that she believed the threat to Shiz wasn’t propaganda designed to scare the citizens of the city, but was real.

  “If our enemy has acquired a weapon that might turn the tide of the war in their favor,” said Miss Ironish, “I doubt they’d bother to use it on our fair city. Symbolic of achievement though we may be, we are still only a provincial capital. The Emperor of Oz rules from the Emerald City and that’s where the war will be lost, should we lose it. And we could never lose it; Oz is too vast to be governed by the little people of the east.”

  “I don’t know which city is more deserving of attack,” said Rain. “Maybe because Shiz is the college town of Oz, Munchkinlanders feel it would be a more terrible blow to crush it. Or maybe they intend to, like, practice their new technique of assault here? And frighten the EC into submission? So Loyal Oz might sue for peace? To preserve the palace and the administration buildings from devastation?”

  “Govern yourself. Panic is a folly, Miss Rainary. I’m impressed though by your colorful language.”

  “I don’t care. I just want you to know that the threat is real, and you should do everything you can to protect yourself, your teachers, Cook, the maids, the girls. It is your duty.”

  “I will not be told my duty by a student.” Eyes blazing, Miss Ironish stood up. “I will not honor you by asking you on what basis you draw your conclusions. You are criminally impertinent. I shall consider your punishment. Miss Rainary, you are dismissed.”

  Rain stood there, wringing her hands.

  “Get out of my study, I said.”

  That night Miss Ironish saw to it that the wonky stable door, which Tip had foolishly repaired as part of his chores, was bolted tightly. Then she locked the door to the annex, sealing Rain inside. “I may open the door in time for your breakfast, such as it is these days,” shrilled Miss Ironish through the door, “or I may not. Think upon your disgrace, Miss Rainary.”

  Rain wasn’t sharply surprised, once the lights had gone out all over the school, to hear footsteps on the stairs. Tip arrived with a small satchel of clothes on his back.

  “I saw her storming about like a maniac,” he said. “Muttering your name. And since you said you were leaving, I hid downstairs before she locked you in. I know mere locks won’t hold you.”

  “I hardly know how I am going to get out,” said Rain, though she had packed a few clothes herself, and some rolls she had smuggled from dinner. She left behind the single rock, the feather, the acorn, the arrowhead. She had packed the large pink shell, though.

  “Isn’t it obvious how you’re going to leave?”

  It wasn’t, until he pointed a finger skyward.

  He went up the ladder first. Remembering the time their shoulders had grazed, she waited until he had clambered out of the hatch. She lifted Tay through, and then followed. She had never looked over the roofs of Shiz at night. It was beautiful, but less distinct than she might have imagined. Maybe people were darkening their windows or conserving their oil, as month by month the prices of staples had continued to rise. She could make out the famous dome of St. Florix most easily, a
dark perfect mound against a velvet sky that, as it rose, became pinned in place with frozen stars.

  “Up is easy,” whispered Tip. “Down is tricky.” But they made it quickly enough across the leads, monkeying themselves groundward via rain gutters and downspouts and old dead ivy whose thick espaliered limbs had never been carved away from the back of the stables.

  Once at the street level, Rain said, “Which way are you going?”

  He answered, without catching her eye, “Which way are you going?”

  Rain hesitated, then pointed west.

  “Then I’m going that way too.”

  17.

  She argued furiously with him for half the night. She didn’t need a chaperone. She wasn’t scared to be on her own anymore. In fact, she said, she’d never been scared to be on her own.

  He countered by saying that since he hadn’t applied for a job at St. Prowd’s he didn’t have to apply for permission to leave. He happened to be walking on the road from Shiz at the same hour and in the same direction she was going. What was wrong with that?

  Often she sunk into black silences. She wasn’t used to arguing. She’d lived in her own world so much, she’d never had to apologize for it, nor explain. So a traveling partner her own age—even one she liked when she wasn’t arguing with him—was going to be a burden of sorts.

  “You know,” she said, “if I have gotten older since we met, so have you. And while you might be young enough not to have been called up to service during this round of inductions, if you stand still in a public place like Shiz you’ll be old enough to be fingered the next time, certainly.”

  “You’re certain about a lot of things of which you have no notion.”

  “Explain,” she said. “Prove me wrong, then.”

  But he changed the subject. “Where are you going? Off to find your mother?”

  “In a matter of speaking,” she said, for she hadn’t entirely lost her habit of reticence, even though St. Prowd’s, and indeed the bricked walls of Shiz, were now several hours behind them.

  The moon had risen. Tonight it looked without character. Just a disc cut out of paper and fastened with sticky string to the sky. A smell of arugula and basil pushed up from small cottage farms sunk a few feet below the high road. The wind was rousing but warm. No one was about except anonymous animals scrabbling in the hedgerows. Once they heard the low of a pained cow that some unreliable farmhand had forgotten to milk. Tip was unhappy about that cow and wanted to scurry off to help her, and Rain said, “Go ahead, do that good deed, but I must keep on the road as long as my legs will carry me,” so he left the cow in her misery and kept pace with Rain.

  Gillikin west of Shiz.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, but when they came to a crossroads where a stone gave several choices—a boon, this moonlit night!—the fifth of five choices said simply THE WEST. That road looked the most desperate, and she struck out along that one, though the striking was slowing down some, and eventually they stopped to sleep a little. They burrowed under a hedgerow, mightily irritating some birds and some sort of family reunion of mice. Was it only a dream that they were talking to her? “If you’re headed for the Kells, you’ve chosen well enough. But once you reach the Gillikin River follow it to your left until the mountains come in sight. You will have crossed into the Vinkus by then, and be near enough to ask directions to Kiamo Ko.”

  She woke before Tip did. His hand was on her breast, and he slept with his mouth open. Tay dozed greenly between them, closer to both than they could dare be to each other. She hadn’t heard Tip breathing in his sleep for what seemed like such a long time. She began to cry for no reason she could name. Tay stirred and licked Rain’s tears off her face with its sandpaper tongue.

  Once there had been a mouseskin in a field. It had been on her finger. She had wanted to be a mouse. She had wanted to be something other than what she was. She had had so many chances, and she had passed so many of them by.

  I must have become what Madame Chortlebush calls a teenmonster, crying for nothing, and feeling my life is over. She warned us about this, thought Rain.

  “Wake up, it’s not morning but it’s light enough to walk,” she said to Tip, but she didn’t move, for she didn’t want his hand to slip away an instant sooner than it needed to.

  He woke and shuddered and seemed not to notice he had been touching her. He shuffled to the other side of the hedge and let loose a long confident stream of pee, standing up. She turned her head away and softly smiled to herself, and couldn’t say why.

  The road grew rougher, less traveled; and while there were farmers about, with carts and animals, no one paid the young walkers much mind. Well, Rain hardly looked like a St. Prowd’s girl, having slept in her best dress, which was never very good to start with. And Tip had left behind the penitential uniform that Miss Ironish had insisted he wear. They looked like brother and sister traipsing along, since they were too young still to be—to be anything else.

  She tried to make small talk, as they called it, but it was too small for Tip, and she soon gave up. Tay capered after them almost as a dog might, and sometimes allowed itself to be carried on the shoulders of one or the other. They bought the cheapest food at any crossroad farmstand they passed, always taking care to follow signs for THE WEST, which by late in the day had begun to be called GILLIKIN R. With an attempt at good humor Tip referenced the map once or twice, but its markings were archaic, and Rain was happier when he put it away.

  “Why aren’t you heading toward your own home?” Rain asked once.

  “Why aren’t you minding your own business?” he replied.

  So they walked, and ate, and sang a little bit—that was neutral enough—and slept again. Longer this time, for they had spent a whole day on shank’s mare. The next day Rain had blisters and the friends had to slow down. The day after that Tip had grown his own blisters, worse than hers, and they paused on the banks of a river they had found. They didn’t know if it was the Gillikin already or a tributary, but if they turned left at the water’s edge and kept walking west, they would either see the great mountains sooner or later on the horizon, or they would see their river merge with a larger one. That is, assuming the mice in the hedgerow were correct. But how could mice know where Rain wanted to go?

  A series of bluffs and strands ran down to the water’s edge, which was frantic with fish life and seemed some sort of bird paradise as well. Tay dove away from them for the water, and for a moment Rain thought she might have lost her rice otter forever, but after a half hour’s frolic Tay returned, its hair slicked back and some sort of weed in its teeth, a very happy look on its face.

  Rain and Tip found a kind of cave with a little ledge in front of it, almost a front porch with a river view. A single room, not too deep, nothing scary asleep inside but for a few bats in the ceiling. What could be better? Tay brought them some fish, and Tip, who’d come equipped with a flintstone, struck up a small fire. Whatever fish it was, he baked it wrapped in whatever greens. It was the best meal Rain had ever eaten.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she was suddenly sitting bolt awake. The bats were screeching in pitches too high to hear; they were saying something like “Oh!” and “No!” and “Blow!” Tip was gone, and Tay was asleep in some richly enviable dream. Rain leapt to her feet, her senses as alert as an animal’s, and cried out, not even in words.

  The fire had gone down and she stepped in the embers in her haste, because she had heard Tip moan, perhaps. She fell to her hands and knees and looked over the edge of the bluff. Tip lay six or eight feet below, on his chest.

  She remembered someone called Zackers, but not what or where about him. “Tip?” she called.

  The moon was lowering at this hour but there was enough light still for her to see an animal of some sort, an overgrown grite perhaps, and a partner or mate behind it, growling and tensing to jump.

  She reached for the first thing her hand fell upon, the
shell, and she almost threw it, but something stopped her. “Blow!” said the bats. She put the broken tip to her lips and puffed up her cheeks and forced air through the aperture as if it were a trumpetina.

  The sound screeched like ogre’s fingernails on an ogre’s slate, and any remaining bats in the cave fled the premises permanently. But so did the grites. Then Rain slithered down to crouch beside Tip and check to see how hurt he was.

  Not very, it turned out. He wouldn’t admit until the next morning that he had gotten up in the middle of the night to pee off the edge of their cliff-porch, and misjudged. So, maybe not so hot to be a boy, thought Rain, but she didn’t say so.

  She remembered the Clock crashing down a slope the time her forgotten companions had come across the Ivory Tiger in the poppy fields. That earthquake. And the other time, when the Clock slid off into Kellswater, up to its gills in fatal water. Now Tip himself was hurt from a fall. To aim high—to risk the prospect—well, there was no assurance of safety. Ever. As the world turned, it kept sloping itself into new treacheries. To live at all meant to risk falling at every step.

  He couldn’t walk just yet; his ankle or his shin was bruised. He could hardly name the location of the pain, and Rain couldn’t tell. She wished Little Daffy were here. “A day’s rest won’t hurt,” she said.

  “You are in such a hurry, can’t stop to help relieve an unmilked cow. So you should go on without me,” he taunted her.

  She didn’t reply, just went scavenging for breakfast.

  Later. “You saved my life, you know. Those overgrown grites were a nasty branch of the grite family. They were all ready to jump. I couldn’t have fended them off for long, or gotten away. After all this, to be eaten by beasts in the wild! A certain mythic justice, probably, but no fun for me.”

  “After all this?” said Rain. And now, since she had saved his life, he more or less had to tell her something. Otherwise he’d have died and she wouldn’t even have known a thing about him, really.