The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “Tell me about it.”

  “They did the best they could. Besides, I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this.” She twinned her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.

  “All that I might have had of them,” said Rain. “Access to my mother’s instincts for the present, for knowing the truth of what was happening now, here. Access to my father’s occasional capacity to read the past, to tell it. And what did I get in exchange?”

  “You lived,” said Glinda simply. “You survived. I won’t say in style, for I can see that doesn’t mean a whole lot to you.”

  “I lived alone,” said Rain. “Until General Cherrystone came to Mockbeggar Hall and put you under house arrest, I had the run of the kitchen yard and the run of the backstairs workrooms and the ledge at the edge of the lake from which to jump into the water. There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one’s. I can’t repair that.”

  “The history of a nation was happening around you. Children don’t often notice this, but it happens, most years, to be true. For you no less than some, but no more, either. Every child makes its peace with abandonment. That’s called growing up, Rain.”

  “My first memories are of mice, and fish, and a frog in the mud,” said Rain.

  “Is that anyone’s fault?” replied Glinda. “And is that so terrible, after all?”

  “No one has to be so alone.” She gritted her teeth. “I pushed my hand in the pocket of ice and pulled up a little golden fish, and saw how alone it was. It was the first family I had, you know.”

  Glinda sighed. “Your hand was bare. The fish flopped upon it, I suppose? Tickled some, maybe?”

  “Yes. Just about my earliest memory, I think.”

  “Who do you think was holding your mittens while you pawed about to rescue the fish?”

  Rain looked at her lap.

  “Who do you think put the fish back in the water so it could swim to its own kind when the sun went down?”

  The spectacles slid off Glinda’s lap into a pile of knitting on the floor.

  “Who do you think walked you back across the weir and handed you over for a bath to warm you up?”

  Rain said, “And you didn’t even know if I was really Elphaba’s granddaughter.”

  “And I didn’t know if you were Elphaba’s granddaughter.”

  They had tea brought in by a parlor maid. Glinda showed Rain her collection of bubbles on ormolu stands. “Don’t talk to me about the present,” said Glinda. “I know something about what is going on. Tell me what you’ve done. Where you’ve been since you left Mockbeggar all those years ago.”

  Rain obliged with brevity. Glinda paid only scant attention, taking up her knitting and counting stitches under her breath. When Rain began to talk about the Chancel of the Ladyfish above the Sleeve of Ghastille, though, Glinda began to listen more closely. “Describe that place to me,” she said. “I love architecture, you know. It’s one of my passions. Always was.”

  Rain did the best she could—the low stumped pillars, the altarpiece built lengthwise into the wall, the view from the height. The figure of the fishy goddess or whatever it was. “I never could do mythology,” admitted Glinda. “The Great Morphologies of vin Tessarine totally defeated me back at Shiz. I cheated on the final, but don’t tell anyone or they’ll revoke my grade, which wasn’t very high even with the cheating.”

  “I don’t do mythology either,” said Rain.

  “It’s the building I’m interested in,” said Lady Glinda. “The way you describe it sited on that slope. I’ve always paid attention to the temples of Lurline—so many small and insignificant Lurline sightings were claimed in the Pertha Hills of my childhood. The dales are positively crusty with chapels. You can’t ride the hounds without breaking your mount’s leg at least once a season on some sacred stone omphalos overgrown with ivy. But what you describe doesn’t sound Lurlinist to me, or if it is, it represents a watery variation of the myth of our sky-goddess and avatrice.”

  “The great stone woman was maternal and stern and supplied with a fishtail. Beyond that I can’t say; I don’t remember the details. I had just met up with my parents for the first time in memory and frankly I was distracted by the inconvenience of them.”

  “Well, if I had to venture an opinion at a meeting of the Crowned Heads’ Book Discussion Group and Jug Band, I’d guess your parents stumbled upon the remnants of a temple built for quite a different purpose than the consolidation of religious feeling. It sounds more like a business center to me. Commerce always builds fancier temples than faith does.”

  “A fishmongery in the highlands?” Rain laughed. “You ought to have studied for that test a little harder.”

  “Well, if you go up to Shiz, you study for me, now, will you? Learn from my mistakes.” Glinda laughed too. “Rain, what will you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do good, though, will you?” She blinked brightly at the green girl. “If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?”

  “I don’t know what good I could do.”

  “None of us does. That doesn’t let us off the hook.”

  “What will you do?” asked Rain challengingly.

  Glinda sighed. “Haven’t you heard?”

  Rain shook her head.

  “I am being sent to Southstairs. I go tomorrow.”

  “What for? That’s impossible!”

  “It’s not impossible and now don’t you go upsetting yourself or you’ll upset me. It’s quite right and proper that I pay for my mistakes. When I was at Mockbeggar Hall I unleashed the power of the Grimmerie against those dragons, and the dragons were indirectly under the supervision of Shell Thropp. I attacked the armed forces of the Throne Minister of Oz, Rain. That’s just about treason. I can be pardoned, but not quickly. Haste would not be seemly. The Lion, if he’s to rule wisely and deserve the trust of the citizens of Oz, must be seen to have no favorites. Including me. Justice demands no less. I am a former Throne Minister but I’m not above making mistakes. I leave in the morning.” She laughed. “I had been hoping to finish this little bed-jacket before I went, but I think I’m going to have to have the carriage stop at Brickle Lane on the way to Southstairs so I can pick up something ready-made. I don’t want to arrive looking less than my best.”

  “But it’s outrageous. Southstairs! If you go, I should go too.”

  “You were a child, dear. Not responsible. If you persist in objecting, you’re a child still.” She put out her hand so Rain could help her stand. “I mustn’t keep you, dear. And I have much to attend to myself. I just so wanted to know if it was true, and now I know. Maybe Elphaba will come back one day, or maybe she won’t, but in the meantime I have known you. That will see me through, I do believe.”

  Elphaba is not coming back, thought Rain, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not to an old fool like Glinda.

  “Oh, Rain,” said Glinda, when the girl was almost out the door. “One more thing. About Tip. You may think that a story should have a happy ending—”

  “Whoever told me stories?” asked Rain. “I’m not looking for happiness. But I’m not looking for an ending either.” She wouldn’t talk about Tip to Glinda. She just waggled her green fingers and slipped away.

  It wasn’t hard for Rain to get the attention of the Cowardly Lion, though it was difficult to get a private moment. He was surrounded by staff.

  “I want architects from the planning council all over that dome, do you hear me. Extra buttressing against tremors. Talk to some professor of aesthetics about the designs if you must, but I want to approve them. I don’t care which college, pull a straw from a broom and make a wish. Tell the Glikkun contingent they can go to hell. No, don’t tell them that; give them some chits for supper and have them come back after dark. Pursley, have you the list? I want a delegate sent to the town of Tenniken to see if you can find any contemporaries who knew a soldier named Jemmsy. Died in the
Great Gillikin Forest thirty odd years ago, a member of the Wizard’s army. Don’t ask me why, just do it. I’m issuing a new line of medals for courage, and his relatives deserve a whole bunch of them. They can flog them in the streets for all I care.”

  Rain almost grinned. The rogue Lion as a functionary of the government.

  “Was Rain here? Where is she? There you are, my dear. Have you come to advise me about the Glikkuns? They’ve refused to be party to the peace we brokered with Munchkinlanders and a nasty little situation is brewing up in the Scalps. Sakkali Oafish, the troll chieftain, wants nothing to do with me. The harridan. We go back a ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to get the Nome King involved. Common cause among the trollfolk. It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement. And what about the Munchkinlander problem? They’re not cooperating with my proposal of extension of health benefits to the Animals who served in their army. Can we be shocked, do you think?”

  “You look in clover, Brrr. If not particularly rested.”

  “It’s the weskit, isn’t it? A Rampini original. How do you like the curls?”

  She shook her head.

  “I was afraid so, but I’ve gotten used to them. It keeps the mane out of my eyes without my having to resort to a hairband. Now, about the color? I was silvering prematurely, but is this look a bit rancid?”

  “You’re expecting Muhlama H’aekeem to come find you here, now you’re single again and, oh, by the way, the king of the forest. Ha!”

  “Ha,” he agreed, brought down a bit. “She hated authority. Did everything in her power to avoid it. She didn’t come to the installation nor send a card. When did the noble old concept of tribute go out of style? Well, maybe when my term limit has expired, she’ll show up again.” He began to comb out his whiskers with his claws, worrying in advance.

  “Brrr. Pay attention. You can’t seriously be intending to put Lady Glinda in Southstairs prison?”

  The assistants bustled, but more quietly, so they could eavesdrop. He roared them out of the room, but then told Rain she had understood the matter perfectly correctly. He hoped it would not be for long. Glinda would be given every courtesy possible under the circumstances, but liberty was costly, and she would have to pay. “It’s for the good of the nation, Rain,” he said. “I shall haul her up again just the first moment that my advisors recommend it safe to the polity to do so.”

  Mister Mikko, the Ape, came to the door with a few statements needing signatures, but Brrr sent him packing. “So glad to be able to put him on payroll. I owe him. Now what are we going to do about Dorothy?” he asked Rain.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Rain “You’re the Ozma Regent now.”

  “She hangs around the Emerald City any longer, she’ll become a demagogue,” said the Lion. “Either that, or a parody of herself. Like the rest of us.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Well, I believe she wants to go home. Again. Doesn’t she?”

  “Last I heard. She’s not insane, you know. I’d want to leave too.”

  “But I haven’t got any ideas,” said Brrr. “I’m the leader now; I don’t have time to think.”

  “We could always try the Grimmerie,” said Rain.

  “Mister Mikko, bring the book from the treasury,” roared Brrr. “I do so love having my whims indulged in,” he admitted to Rain. “How about some chocolates?”

  “You’ll suffer again, Brrr. No elevation is eternal.”

  “Don’t I know it. I’m just trying to have fun while it lasts.”

  So, thought Rain, an Animal as Throne Minister of Oz. After all this time. Whatever would Elphaba think of that?

  Dorothy’s departure from Oz was arranged so hastily that Little Daffy and Mr. Boss were absent—out of town, engaged in their harvesting expedition in the Sleeve of Ghastille. They didn’t get to say farewell, or anything saltier.

  Before dawn, Brrr escaped his royal guards and commandeered a hansom cab so he could make his good-byes to Dorothy in person. He met Rain and Mister Mikko in the insalubrious courtyard of a private atelier in the Lower Quarter, a back-neighborhood place Mister Mikko had located where they might attract less attention. Mister Mikko commandeered the book. An elderly chatelaine, Miss Pfanee, opened the gate to the few who had gathered. She curtseyed low when she saw the Cowardly Lion among the delegation. His presence had not been advertised. But when she caught sight of Rain gleaming green in the predawn gaslight, she gasped and fled and didn’t come back.

  Amid the wheelbarrows and compost and some rangy geraniums put out to die but refusing, so far, Rain settled on an old blanket and touched the Grimmerie for the first time since the pine barrens above Mockbeggar Hall.

  Mister Mikko stood on one side, almost asleep from the strain of his new responsibilities. Dorothy knelt at the other, Toto gnawing the edge of one of her heels. Rain pulled back the cover. The book flew open to a blank page—at least it began blank.

  They didn’t know the word for a watermark, but a faint green huzzle of light seemed to radiate from the page—so dimly at first that they thought it a refraction cast by a drop of water balanced upon a nearby leaf. A zigzag—a Z escaped from the O, thought Rain. The edges of the image were blurred, as if they were made of the smallest bits of paper, the kind of airy nothings that fly in the light when the pages of a book are turned. Ozmists of the page, perhaps.

  “It’s almost Elphaba, isn’t it,” said Dorothy tearily.

  “Nonsense,” said Mister Mikko, who had taught Elphaba Thropp in the good old days, back at Shiz. “It’s nothing at all like Elphaba. It’s the soul of a deceased bookworm, nothing more. Let’s get this over with.”

  “She’s not coming back,” said Dorothy, “and I’m not either.”

  Rain flipped through the pages, which were docile enough under her touch. On the Extermination of Pests. No! Dorothy was a hot ticket, but hardly a pest. To Call Winter upon Water. There it had all begun, for Rain: the beginning of a coherent memory of her own life, not just a collection of incidents. For Tomfoolery, Its Eradication or Amplification. Please.

  Was there a spell To Make the Heart Whole, Regardless?

  She better be careful before she mischiefed herself—or Ozma—into disaster.

  She laughed when she saw the next page. Gone with the Wind. Well, Dorothy had arrived via a mighty big windstorm the first time, no? Maybe it was time to call it up again.

  “Are you ready?” she asked Dorothy.

  “Next time I want a holiday,” said Dorothy, “I’m going to try overseas. The Levant, maybe. Or the Riviera. Or the Argentine pampas. Over the great ocean to meet the China people. All this gadding about Oz has confirmed in me a taste for travel.”

  “Overseas. Please.” Rain looked up from where she was bent over the book. She knew herself well; she wasn’t the type to mouth pithy sentiments suitable for crocheting. All she could think of to say was, “Dorothy, next time? Take out some travel insurance.”

  “Right. And I’m going to choose my fortune cookie a little more carefully next time too. Now listen. Rain.” Ever tit for tat with Dorothy. “Before it’s too late? Don’t give up on Tip. I mean Ozma. There’s so much ahead for you still. I wish—”

  “Don’t wish,” said Rain, “don’t start. Wishing only…”

  “And about your grandmother,” said Dorothy. “I don’t know if—”

  “I don’t want to talk, I have work to do.”

  “I just mean,” said Dorothy, smiling painfully, “there’s no need for her to come back. I mean, look. Here you are.”

  Rain glanced around herself miserably. The Lion and Dorothy were gazing at her with watery grins. She wanted to throw a potted geranium at each one of them. “I’m going to send you on your way before you feed me any more of your nonsense,” she barked.

  Dorothy then turned to Brrr. “I used to like the Scarecrow best,” she began.

  He gruffed at her, “So did I. Now are you ready to take some advice fro
m a Cowardly Lion? Make your way safely home. With our royal blessing. But when you get there, don’t surrender, Dorothy. Never surrender.”

  “You didn’t, did you,” replied Dorothy. “Local Lion Makes Good. Well, first thing I’m going to do when I get back is find out what happened to Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, bless ’em. And if San Francisco is in as much of a mess as the Emerald City, well, I’ve learned something from Little Daffy about setting a bone. I’ll pitch in. Singing all the way, of course.” She was making fun of herself to settle her nerves. “We might’ve made a nice duo, Brrr, but courage called you elsewhere.” They didn’t speak again, but it took them a few moments to pull out of each other’s grip.

  Rain began to intone the spell. A small local windstorm kicked up from the cobbles. For a moment it looked like the Ozmists, once again, but it was grittier. An updraft lifted Dorothy in the air as if she were flying high in the elevator she’d never stopped describing to anyone who would listen. All that was left of Toto, as Dorothy snatched him up, was a little pointed turd, which Mister Mikko kicked into the compost. No one had time to say goodbye to the dog. The basket in which Toto had traveled was left behind on the ground, rocking in the force of their disappearance.

  Still, Tip remained in Madame Teastane’s. Maybe, thought Rain, Tip is only waiting until the right moment to steal away. And then what? And then what? Crack open the Grimmerie and—and what? We’d do what? Steal from the truth and lock each other in disguises again? That could do no good.

  But weeks went by, and then months. No message arrived.

  When to stay any longer would be to accept paralysis as permanent, Rain readied to make her departure from the Emerald City. Once the warm weather settled in she would leave by foot. Alone. She sent word to the Cowardly Lion. He replied by messenger. Perhaps he’d experienced one too many good-byes. As casually as sharing a loaf of bread, Brrr deeded Rain the Grimmerie in its blue sack. “You’re the only one who can use it,” he wrote. “It’s too dangerous to have in town. I don’t want to know what you do with it, just don’t bring it back to me. Love, Brrr.”