The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “I am Avaric bon Tenmeadows,” said a gentleman with a pince-nez and a silvery whirl of mustache. “I will direct you on proper comportment for your audience with His Sacredness.”

  “Are we meeting His Sacredness all by itself, or are we actually meeting him?” asked Dorothy. “I just wanted to ask,” she sidelined to Rain, who was shushing her.

  “Enter with your heads covered and do not remove your veils until directed by His Sacredness. Do not speak until you are spoken to. Do not turn your back on His Sacredness—when instructed, you will leave the room by walking backward, heads covered, eyes down. Mention no subject with His Sacredness that His Sacredness does not introduce. Ask for the blessing of His Sacredness in your life past, present, and to come. Ask for the mercy of His Sacredness in considering your petitions, if you have any. You will have about ten minutes. Have you any questions?”

  “Well, it reminds me what it was like with the Wizard,” said Dorothy. “There must be a rule book everyone follows, generation to generation.”

  “All this fuss. It reminds me of the visiting Senior Overseer at St. Prowd’s,” said Rain. “I hope His Sacredness doesn’t douse himself with water.”

  “No, not that party trick,” agreed Dorothy. “Had enough of that one!”

  “I will retire through this near door. When the far door opens, that’s your sign to approach,” said Avaric. “You will proceed through it. But before I go, Miss Gale, may I be permitted to make a personal remark?”

  “No one’s stopping you, far as I can see.”

  “I want to thank you for your service to our country,” said Avaric. “I knew the witches of Oz, those Thropp sisters. We were well rid of them.”

  He clearly thought of Rain as little more than Dorothy’s retainer. Fair enough, thought Rain. A few more moments of anonymity in this life—let me treasure it before it’s trampled to extinction.

  The far door swung wide. Obeying Avaric’s instructions, the pair of visitors made their approach to His Sacredness, Shell Thropp.

  He didn’t sit on the throne, an impressive carved chair capped by an octagonal canopy chained to the ceiling with golden links. Rather, he squatted upon an overturned bucket. Three small tiktok creatures, narrower and more locustlike than the round brass figure Rain had once seen in that shop in Shiz, moved around in the shadows behind him, performing devotional measures with fans and also seeing to the flies, which were everywhere.

  A man about fifty, maybe. He didn’t wear the glorious robes of office, just a humble sort of sackcloth loin rag and a skirt. A beggar’s shawl about his shoulders. His eye was keen and his form sleek despite the initial impression of poverty.

  He said, “His Sacredness never knew those women very well. Nessarose Thropp, Eminence called Wicked Witch of the East. Elphaba Thropp, miscreant called Wicked Witch of the West. His Sacredness lived with them in the Quadling badlands when His Sacredness was young. His Sacredness’s sister Elphaba was born with infirmities. His Sacredness’s sister Nessarose was born with infirmities. His Sacredness himself was born whole and clean and is the Emperor of Oz and Demiurge of the Unnamed God.”

  There didn’t seem to be a question yet, so they just waited.

  He said, “His Sacredness sits on the bucket that was used to kill His Sacredness’s sister Elphaba Thropp. It represents to His Sacredness the loss of the living water of grace. A loss that will be reclaimed once the battle for dominance with Munchkinland is completed and Restwater is permanently appropriated as the basin of water to cleanse and to nourish the suffering citizens of Oz’s capital city.”

  Rain saw Dorothy peer at the bucket to see if she recognized it, but Dorothy just shrugged at Rain. A bucket is a bucket.

  He said, “Both of the sisters of His Sacredness were removed from life by the hand or the hearthstone of Dorothy Gale, leaving the Eminenceship of Munchkinland open to question. Therefore His Sacredness offers gratitude to the visitor. She delivered unto His Sacredness the rights to Eminenceship of Munchkinland. This moral privilege underpins and sanctifies the military effort to subdue the traitorous Munchkinlander rebels. For that reason has His Sacredness deigned to extend the right to an audience with His Sacredness. His Sacredness is aware of certain Munchkinlander accusations against Dorothy. His Sacredness proposes the publication of a divine testimonial clearing Dorothy of all suspicion of malfeasance in the matter of the death of his kin. The certificate.” A tiktok minion rolled forward holding a salver upon which lay a scroll bound with a green ribbon and a clump of sealing wax. Shell handed it to Dorothy.

  He put his hands together in a tender way. His eyes never left Dorothy’s.

  He said, “His Sacredness allows that the visitors may now retreat. Go with the blessings of the Unnamed God conferred through this avatar on earth.” Only now did he close his eyes, in acknowledgement of his own immortal splendor.

  Rain said, “But we’ve come to find my father.”

  The chirring of the tiktok acolytes wheeled faster, as if spinning out disbelieving air from their metal lungs. A stench of hot oil spilled from some gasket with a slipped ring, maybe. Shell, her great-uncle Shell, said nothing. It was as if Rain hadn’t spoken to him but perhaps to his machinery.

  “We have come to barter,” she said, but she wasn’t sure to whom she was talking. Maybe not the man nor the tiktok-niques but to the empty throne itself behind them.

  “You don’t barter with God,” said Shell, in a quiet voice, not deeply fussed at the breaking of protocol. Most likely he could see that his visitors were young and foolish. “Go now. I am tired and I am waging a war in my heart. Only if I win it in my heart can it be won in the land, for I am the blood of Oz itself. I am its sacredness and I am His Sacredness.”

  Rain felt cornered by sacredness.

  She knew her great-grandfather had been a unionist missionary to the Quadlings, trying to convert them. She knew her great-aunt Nessarose had inherited his convictions and institutionalized them in Munchkinland, a theocracy overturned only when Dorothy arrived the first time. She knew her great-uncle Shell was divine, or divine enough.

  On the other hand, of her grandmother Elphaba’s convictions she knew nothing. And while Liir had expressed admiration for the courage of independent establishments of outspoken maunts like the place Little Daffy had come from, he had perpetrated in Nether How no ritual of prayer, no theological discussion. And Candle’s faith was limited to herbs and intuition.

  So Rain had avoided the questions of devotion, mostly. The concept of an Unnamed God was too much for her. If you’re abandoned by your parents, do you hunt them down to love them more deeply, or do you learn to do without? If the Unnamed God has gone to ground leaving no forwarding address, why bother to pester him?

  Still. Rain had had just enough schooling at St. Prowd’s to be able to think for herself. It would take a pretty talented godhead to infuse itself in a single person as the living essence of the land—the very Ozness that made it be Oz. If this were really true, then what would happen to Oz if Shell Thropp, Emperor, happened to get a splinter in his naked heel? And die a week later of a rude infection that refused to acknowledge the divinity of the foot it blistered?

  “You are too great for me to know who you really are,” she admitted. “But I know something of who I am. I am the daughter of Liir. I’m told that I’m the granddaughter of Elphaba. I’m your great-niece. My name is Rain.”

  “She’s also the rightful daughter of Munchkinland,” Dorothy interrupted. “If I’ve got the line of succession straight, and I’ve been keeping track, the Eminenceship of Munchkinland descends through the female line. So the nearest female relative of the last ruling Eminence has preference. That would be my friend Rain here.”

  “I don’t care about that,” said Rain. “I only want to know if you have taken my father. Your nephew, Liir. Someone kidnapped him and made off with the Grimmerie. We have come to secure his release.” She rephrased that to be more docile. “I mean, to beg for his release. Humbly.”<
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  The divine Emperor looked just a little annoyed. “I don’t barter with human lives.”

  “You attacked Munchkinland when I was eight,” said Rain. “Human lives tend to be involved in military attacks.”

  “His Sacredness has consternation in his heart. Go away.”

  Dorothy drew herself up. “Look, you. I know what I’ve done and not done. I have no need of your certificate of forgiveness unless I ever meet up with Toto and in all the excitement he has an accident. He’s not a puppy. A convenient roll of testimonial parchment could come in handy just then.”

  “His Sacredness has a headache. Do go away.”

  “You’ll have more than a headache when I get through. When I arrived first time I came in a house that smashed your first sister. Before I left I threw a bucket that splashed your second sister. Is it time for me to take care of you, too? As I was preparing for my encore, I brought down a good deal of San Francisco with me. I arrived from heaven in a gilded elevator cage right down the side of a mountain. I’m getting pretty good at this. I can bring upon your holy kingdom an entire downtown district of hearty commercial buildings. Just try me.”

  A pretty bold bluff, Rain thought, but it may not work on someone like Shell, who has lived in power for so long he doesn’t remember what it’s like to be powerless.

  Dorothy clasped her hands together and prepared to break her promise not to sing. Rain motioned to her, don’t, don’t. Dorothy filled her lungs with air and, consumed with trust in the conviction of sweet melody, fixed upon her countenance an expression of mighty choral readiness. La Belle Dame sans Merci.

  Great-uncle Shell, you’re not the only one who’s become deranged by power, thought Rain.

  As the tiktok characters ran for cover, the door of the magnificent salon opened up, and Avaric bon Tenmeadows rushed in. “What is the meaning of this?” he cried.

  Dorothy opened her mouth and began to sing about rainbow highways and raindrops and storms. Awful lot of rain in there, thought Rain. The thunderclouds broke overhead at the same instant, a tympanic accompaniment to the sound of Dorothy’s voice. When she reached the end of her musical preamble and paused for breath before launching into the melody proper, the thunder roll was deteriorating and another mounding behind it to take its place. They realized that it wasn’t only thunder overhead.

  14.

  The autumn clouds covering central Oz had screened the approach from the east of the dragons trained by Trism bon Cavalish. Maybe their arrival over the Emerald City had kindled the lightning and signaled the thunder. Or maybe it was only the meanness of the Unnamed God, allowing fire and destruction to rain upon the capital under the guise, initially, of an ordinary cloudburst.

  In the sudden darkness, Rain and Dorothy ran for cover. They followed the tiktok acolytes until, one by one, the tiktokery exploded their glass gaskets due to barometric anomalies, spinning out on the marble floors, knocking over the plinths of fresh flowers. The girls didn’t know if Shell was behind them, but they could hear the man named Avaric calling to someone, so perhaps he was leading the Emperor to safety.

  “Don’t go outside,” they heard Avaric’s voice yell, but Dorothy was freaked by the sound of collapsing buildings. “We’ll be crushed in this damn place, a mausoleum in the making,” she yelled at Rain, and grabbed her hand. “It’s this way, I’m sure. I’m pretty good at directions.”

  “How do you get out of Oz, then?” screamed Rain, with a touch of hysteria of her own. Was her father here in this roar of tumbling stone, or was he safe somewhere else? Or, anyway, safer?

  Dorothy’s sense of the architecture of the palace wasn’t quite what she advertised. They ran through a long, slightly bowed corridor of steep arches, like the hollowed-out chambers of a lake nautilus built on a scale for giants, and they came across Avaric approaching from the other direction. He was leading Shell by the hand. A contingent of palace apparatchiks and staff huddled behind them.

  “The city is under attack,” Avaric told them.

  “And I’m just warming up,” said Dorothy, assuming a performance pose.

  “Don’t!” cried Shell.

  “Where is Liir?” demanded Dorothy, going up to the Emperor. “Where’s that damn book? Tell us, or I’ll go into a reprise.”

  “We haven’t got him,” said Avaric. “Not for lack of trying, but the enemy must have got to him first. Do you think they could unleash this havoc without his assistance? Mercy, girl; the city is falling. Don’t make it worse.”

  Dorothy took a breath, then closed her mouth. “Well, all right then. But I’m warning you.”

  “We can see the buildings collapsing,” said Avaric. “The Law Courts is flaming rubble. Look, there’s a passage from the Palace directly to Southstairs Prison. We’ll be safer from assault from the sky if we’re underground, and Southstairs is nothing but underground. Come; we owe you that much, child of Liir. Come with us.”

  “If my father isn’t in prison, I’m not going,” said Rain. “I’ll take my chances outside.”

  Avaric said, “On your own head, then. We can’t wait. His Sacredness must descend to the safety of the megalithic tombs, to emerge in triumph when the aerial assault is over.” He began to beetle away, and the fragments of court society that had continued to gather in the corridor flooded after him.

  Shell, in his humble garments, stood his place a moment longer. “Rain Thropp,” he said. “I never had daughter nor son of my own. I took many a woman but never a wife, as I couldn’t find one suitable for my ambitions. His Sacredness does not have a wife.”

  “You’d better hurry,” said Rain, as the thunder gathered again.

  “Your right to the Eminenceship of Munchkinland supersedes mine,” he concluded. “Your being my only living female relative also consolidates in you the right to be Throne Minister of Oz, as the historical line of Ozma is severed and dead these five decades. Should I fail to emerge for reasons of transcendence, it is your throne to accept, your scepter to grasp.”

  She didn’t answer. She grabbed Dorothy’s hand and they ran away.

  The guardhouse had been hit. What had been Proctor Gadfry Clapp lay in pieces, his other limbs severed and spread out from his chest as if hunting their missing brother leg. Farther out, poorhouses had collapsed, and the corpses of men too frail to have gone for soldiers were already being laid upon the streets. Something called the Ministry of Offense was in flames. It was hard to value the relative sounds of terror: that of the thunderous clouds, from which dragons stitched down like great herons gaping underwater to gobble up terrified minchfish, or that of response from the ground, where buildings shuddered, and the trapped and the shocked and the grieving and the terrified wailed with one voice.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Dorothy. “Back to Westgate, back to our friends.”

  But there was a child who’d been jettisoned in a tree, somehow, and Rain said, “We can’t leave that infant there.” Its mother in the dirt with her skirts over her face, dead, and the baby carriage on its side, wheels still spinning. “Tip wouldn’t let that child loiter in branches.”

  They claimed the child and placed it in the arms of a woman who was rushing somewhere with a barrel of melons; she took the baby without comment and hurried away.

  At the Ozma Embankment the girls came upon a bevy of ladies who had flung themselves into the water to escape the first wave of flaming parcels dropped by the dragon fleet. In their big skirts they couldn’t clamber out. Dorothy and Rain yoked themselves together and pulled, but unless the women conceded to abandoning their finery to the ashen water and climbing up in their petticoats, they would remain only floating lily pads in a pond that reflected skies of lightning, gold fire, and scudding clouds. The women bowed to the urgency of the moment and allowed themselves to be rescued, and hurried off, giggling, as if public nudity were a greater scandal than the fall of the Emerald City.

  Rain hadn’t seen dragons since her efforts, with Lady Glinda, to call winter upon
the water. She remembered the creatures with some affection, but she wasn’t as inclined to admiration now. The beasts swooped from the clouds with a malice she couldn’t have imagined. She didn’t know if from Munchkinland her father had used the Grimmerie to focus their attack, or if the climate of storm from which they emerged had terrified them to fight harder. She couldn’t tell what they carried in their claws and what they dropped, but all about the Emerald City explosions burst as large as torched trees—like trees turned into flame, a central trunk of impact from which limbs and arteries and fringed hems of fire bloomed instantaneously.

  The dragons and their detonations would do more than bring down the government, if they hadn’t managed that already. They would slaughter every living creature in Oz.

  Only then did Rain realize that in the welter of panic she had lost track of Tay. “We have to go back,” she told Dorothy.

  “We can’t,” said Dorothy. “Tay will find us.”

  “Like Toto?” said Rain. “Come on.”

  “Tay is smarter than Toto. Not that it’s hard to be smarter than Toto.”

  Rain was no hero, she was no saint; she knew that. It was no lost child hanging from a tree branch, no dead school administrator in pieces on the ground that pitched her mind to thinking of a solution. It was the loss of Tay, her silent companion. She couldn’t bear to lose the rice otter, not when she’d lost so much else. Over and over again, the losing.

  She stood on the edge of a schoolyard of some sort, amid some children’s rusticated ramps and gymnasial fretwork, and she said to Dorothy, “Give me the shell.” Dorothy obliged without comment, for once. Rain said, “I don’t know if this will work, but it can’t hurt.” She lifted the shell to her lips and sounded a call as long and hard and intensely as she could.

  When Rain had finished, Dorothy supported her to keep her from falling over and passing out from the effort. “The Ozmists?” asked Dorothy.