Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02

by Son of a Witch

  A rustling of stiffened tulle sounded in her underskirts. “How do I know you are telling the truth?” she said at last. “These are such treacherous days. I’ve spent my adult life up till now in salons and theater boxes, not in closed assembly with grasping, pinching…ministers.” She spat out the word. “Insects. And I thought girls at school were devious. Here, every impassive expression hides a bloated ambition for—for dominance, I suppose. And any one of my so-called loyal cabinet could be sending you in here with a tale designed to catch at my throat. I must have more proof you are who you profess to be. This may not be Elphie’s cape you’re sporting. Maybe my sorrow tempts me into seeing what I would love to see. This may not be her broom. Tell me more, you Liir. How did her broom come to be so burnt?”

  “I’m not sure. In truth, I didn’t see her die, I only heard what Nanny and Dorothy and the others said. I was locked downstairs. But the broom burnt, that’s all I know.”

  “Anyone could tell a lie!” cried Glinda. “Anyone could burn a broom and make up a story about it!” She beat herself on the breastplate with a clenched fist, and suddenly rushed across the room, overturning a small table and shattering some china dolls. She flung the broom in the fire. “Look, I could do it, too. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Take the broom, burn it,” he replied. “Take the cape and burn it, too, or sew it into a hairshirt and wear it under your fancy ball gowns. It doesn’t matter. Give me a way to get to Nor, and to get her out; you can have whatever you want. I will come back and serve you as I served the Witch. I have no other plan for my days alive once I answer the question about Nor.”

  Glinda collapsed on the nearest stool and wept. She needed a man to come and take her in his arms, to give her a shoulder. Liir wasn’t a man, nor was his shoulder made for a highborn lady to weep upon. He stood foolishly by, twisting his hands, averting his eyes here, there.

  “Look. Glinda, look.” In his excitement he forgot to use her title.

  She raised her eyes and turned to where he was pointing.

  The fire still danced and hissed. Some trick of physics caused the flue to hum faintly like an old folk melody, as if someone were on the rooftop playing an instrument. The music was not merely consoling—and it was that—but commanding: look, it said, look. The broom lay on the back of a log that seethed with flames of pumpkin and pale white. The broom was untouched.

  “Sweet Oz…,” said Glinda. “Liir, take it. Take it back.”

  “I’ll burn my hands!”

  “You won’t.” Glinda chortled a few syllables in a language Liir couldn’t understand. “This is one of the few spells I could ever really master; it came in handy when my husband required me to hand him the burnt toast on the mornings I thought it my wifely duty to prepare his breakfast. Go on. Grasp it and bring it back.”

  He did, and Glinda was right: the broom had not only neglected to ignite further—but it also wasn’t even warm to the touch.

  “A burnt broom that has had enough, and refuses to burn further…Keep that with you,” said Glinda. “I was wrong to doubt you. Whoever you are, however you came by it, this is the Witch’s broom. And so I must trust you to be telling me the truth.”

  She shrugged and tried to smile, and almost began to blubber. “Elphie would know what to do!”

  “Tell me what you know,” he said, as softly as he could.

  “I don’t have access to the register of prisoners in Southstairs Academy, which is the place your—Nor—is most likely to be if she wasn’t murdered long ago. I’m not even sure a register is kept. But I know someone could get you in, at least. Whether you could find Nor or get her out, or yourself either, I can’t guess. But I can make introductions for you; in memory of Elphaba, I will do that much.”

  “Who would help me? A friend of yours?”

  “No friend of mine, but a bereaved member of her family. Next of kin to the dearly departed Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West…”

  “But I thought Elphaba’s sister was dead!” said Liir. “Wasn’t Nessarose—killed by Dorothy’s clumsy house?”

  “Yes, she was. But didn’t you know? Didn’t Elphaba tell you? She had a brother, too. A younger brother named Shell.”

  4

  IN COMING TO THEIR SENSES, Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire were gratified to find they still possessed their faces. The pack mules were nowhere to be seen though, nor their food supplies, nor their hosts.

  “What is that engine in my brain?” said Sister Doctor, after she’d vomited into some ferns.

  “I feel as if the jackal moon had been down here snouting around in an unseemly manner.” Sister Apothecaire adjusted her garments. “It must be the effects of the ceremonial pipe.”

  “And that’s why the Yunamata never built a city nor invented algebrarish nor bowed to the Wizard.”

  “With a smoke that kicks like that, who needs a city or an Emperor?”

  They ambled in oppressive daylight. “I suppose we should think about what we’re doing,” said Sister Doctor.

  “Yes. If the Yunamata are right, then the Scrow must be responsible for the scrapings. So we’re liable to wander into hotter water if we are able to find them.”

  “I think that’s our calling, isn’t it?”

  “Hmmm.” They had a choice: to venture farther into the foothills of the Kells, and make their presence known to the Scrow—or to go back and claim they’d failed. Without discussing it further, they pressed on. Duty weighed more heavily than dread.

  THE MAUNTS KNEW that their professional skills—to be loving, to be devout, to be local in their attentions and spiritual in their desires—had not prepared them to be government envoys. Still, since their mauntery served as a way station for those who acted upon the stage of the world, the good sisters considered themselves at least as broad-minded as any other cloistered soul.

  Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire, nonetheless, were unprepared for the breadth of the Scrow camp when they came upon it. More than a thousand clanfolk, they estimated, maybe fifteen hundred, and a virtual zoography of physical types. The nomads tented in patterns that followed their occupations.

  Some castes managed the animals, primarily a huge herd of sheep collected from fell-swards to be penned for a late winter lambing. Other castes specialized in creating sumptuous hangings and carpets from the wool of those same sheep. A contingent of fierce-browed young men with slender, tapering dark beards seemed to be a kind of clerks’ collective, running here and there with instructions, corrections, assessments, revisions. Older men and women—some much older—managed the care of children with surprising mildness and efficacy.

  At the center of the hubbub rose a tented pagoda. Around it, a good many brass urns issued an aroma of raspberry and heart-of-musk. It didn’t take the maunts long to realize that the incense wasn’t devotional, but hospitable: the smell from the Princess’s pagoda was, well, a stench.

  First fed on a peppery broth that seemed to clear both their sinuses and their brains, the maunts were then allowed a chance to pray and compose themselves. It was almost dusk when they were brought into a tent to meet an ambassador of some sort.

  “Please, sit,” he told them, and sat as well. He was a portly man on the threshold of old age. One eye wandered as if bedeviled by an interior vision it didn’t appreciate. His skin was the color of fine whisky. “We hope you have been made comfortable. Or comfortable enough.”

  The maunts nodded. Their approach had been greeted without apparent alarm, and they’d been welcomed respectfully.

  “Very good, very good,” he said. “Even in these uncongenial times, with the Emperor cudgeling us heathen into conversion through the force of his holy mace, we pride ourselves on clinging to our customs. Charity to visitors ranks high among our traditions. My name is Shem Ottokos.”

  “Lord Ottokos, you speak very well,” ventured Sister Doctor.

  “For a Scrow, you mean,” he said, taking no offense. “I had a university degree at Shiz, back
in the days when there was more collegiality at college. I studied the languages, ancient and modern.”

  “You had a notion to be a translator?”

  “My notions are insignificant. I am the chief interpreter for her Highness now. I assume you have ventured into our tribal lands to gain an audience with the Princess?”

  Though the maunts believed the native land of the Scrow to be significantly farther west, on the other side of the Great Kells, theirs wasn’t to quibble. “Yes,” said Sister Doctor. “We have work to complete. We are investigating the cause and agency of the recent spate of scrapings. If it would suit the Princess to grant us an audience, we should be able to clear up our concerns and be on our way almost at once. Is the Princess up to seeing us?”

  Without answering, he stood and flicked both his hands, which the maunts took to mean: Come. They followed him from his tent and toward the royal pavilion in the center of the camp.

  “She has not been well for more years than anyone can remember,” said Lord Ottokos as they walked. “She has little energy for idle chat and I will not bother to translate anything that would upset her. I would suggest you contain your remarks to ten minutes, no more. When I get up to leave, so shall you.”

  “We might have brought tribute…,” murmured Sister Apothecaire.

  “Sister!” said Sister Doctor sharply. “We are maunts of the House of Saint Glinda! We do not bring tribute to a foreign princess!”

  “I meant a cake, or a witty novel,” she explained unhappily.

  “She has no need of cakes or novels,” said Lord Ottokos. “Meaning no disrespect to our Princess, I would recommend that you breathe through your mouths. It is not considered impertinent to hold your sleeve in front of your nose. Try not to gag, though; it upsets her Highness.”

  The maunts exchanged glances.

  The interior of the pavilion was dark and dank. Even chilly, come to that. Eight or ten heavy stone caskets with perforated lids slowly exhaled sheets of moisture that hung, nearly visible, in the air. Ice, thought Sister Doctor. They’ve carried ice down from the higher Kells, where it lasts all year long. And the cold serves to tamp down the smell of rot. Now that’s a labor, for ice is heavy, and the higher Kells are not convenient…Perhaps that’s why they’re so far from their normal territory at this time of year, for easier access to the ice pack up the eastern, more gradual slope of the Kells…

  Sister Apothecaire, whose eyes had adjusted more quickly to the gloom, pinched Sister Doctor’s elbow and indicated a massive mound of reeking laundry on a low table. It was rolling on its side and opening its eyes.

  “Your Highness, may I present Sisters Lowly and Lower-even-than-that,” said Lord Ottokos, before he remembered to speak in his own tongue. “Ladies, the Princess Nastoya acknowledges your presence.”

  She had done nothing of the sort. She had not spoken nor even so much as blinked.

  Lord Ottokos continued. “The Princess enquires after your health, assumes it is sufficiently robust or you wouldn’t be here, and compliments you on your courage. Have you news of Liir?”

  The maunts turned to each other, but in the darkness of the pavilion they could scarcely read each other’s expressions. “Liir?” said Sister Apothecaire faintly. She was beginning to need her sleeve, as had been proposed.

  “The boy who denied he was Elphaba’s son. Is that not why you came to us? To tell us of him? Where is Liir?”

  Sister Apothecaire began, “Why, that’s uncanny, I never—”

  But Sister Doctor cut her off, saying “We came to discover why the Scrow are scraping the faces of unarmed travelers.”

  Lord Ottokos made his mouth into a pucker—amused, distressed, it was hard to tell. “I repeat, have you news of Liir?” he said.

  “If you’re not interpreting our comments to your senior, need we have this conversation here?” said Sister Doctor.

  “My good Sister,” said Lord Ottokos, closing his eyes briefly, as if experiencing a spasm, “the Princess Nastoya entertains visitors only once every several weeks. Do not waste her time. She is waiting to learn what you have to say.”

  “We have seen Liir, we have!” said Sister Apothecaire, unable to govern herself any longer. “He was found not all that far from here some days ago, and brought to our mauntery for recovery, if he can be recovered.”

  “Sister!” barked Sister Doctor.

  Sister Apothecaire shot her colleague a look that seemed, vaguely, to imply: Give it a rest.

  Lord Ottokos turned and spoke to Princess Nastoya. For the first time, she stirred; that is, her face stirred. Beneath its greasy robes her body had kept up a constant slow stretching, twitching, creaking. Her eyes widened, and globes of ink-colored tears collected in the folds beside her nose. She was a woman in mighty distress. When she spoke, the voice was deep and plain, a laundry mistress’s voice, no sonority to it. She said only a few syllables, but the language of the Scrow must have allowed for much meaning in enunciation and pronunciation.

  “Forgive my not getting up,” began Lord Ottokos’s translation. “I am stricken, a creature severed unnaturally in two by decisions made long ago, when the Wizard of Oz set public policy against thinking Animals. Now, one part of my nature is nearly dead and the other clings to life waiting help.”

  “I have training in surgery, and my colleague in applications—”

  Lord Ottokos spoke over Sister Doctor. “I have entrusted the boy Liir with a task, and I have been waiting his return these ten years. Ten years is a decade to a woman, marking the difference between maiden and matron, matron and crone, crone and harpy—but to an Elephant it is only a breath. A long, foul breath, but only a breath. I know the loyalty of Animals, I know the fickle allegiances of men. Because Liir was possibly a flitch of Elphaba, I had placed my trust in him all these years. I have hoped he might discover or invent a solution for my dilemma. And I have been patient—an Elephant is patient. And you come to tell me you have found him. Bless you, my daughters. Is he coming back to me at last?”

  “He is not well,” said Sister Doctor.

  “He was not well,” corrected Sister Apothecaire. “Perhaps he’s improving. We’ve been traveling, so we can’t report developments in his state.”

  “Why does he not arrive?”

  “Something happened to him,” said Sister Doctor. “We don’t know what. Perhaps what attacked our sister maunts attacked him, too. He is sunk in a strange sleep from which he may not awake. If we knew what had attacked him, we might better invent how to treat him. Lord Ottokos, ask her my question!” she said suddenly. “It is pertinent!”

  Lord Ottokos obliged this time, and muttered something to Princess Nastoya.

  The reply. “We do not scrape the faces of maunts, nor of mice, nor sheep. We do not treat others as we have been treated. You must hunt the barbaric Yunamata and find out from them why they have taken against travelers.”

  “It isn’t the Yunamata,” said Sister Doctor, and in making the remark out loud she suddenly felt certain about this for the first time; she had been dubious up until now. “They wouldn’t do such a thing. Can you be sure your people are not forgetting their traditions under the burden of sorrow they feel at your condition?”

  “My people, as you call them, are not even my people,” said Princess Nastoya. “They honored me years ago and made me their princess, and even in my decay they will not allow me to abdicate. They are a nation that has elevated charity beyond what is possible even in the precincts of your religious order. If out of fealty to me they would rather be governed by a Princess who is partly a corpse, how could they raise a hand against defenseless travelers?”

  “The young maunts who ventured this way were intent on conversion,” admitted Sister Doctor. “They were sent by the Emperor himself, we hear.”

  “None of us admires the Emperor’s zealotry. But intention to convert is hardly a reason to kill people and defile their bodies. The murderers you seek aren’t among the Scrow. Don’t waste your time consider
ing the matter. It is the Yunamata or it is someone else. Or something else. Perhaps they had a disease.”

  “No disease makes one’s face fall off,” said Sister Apothecaire firmly.

  “If you know so much, what is my disease?” said Princess Nastoya.

  “We should have to examine Your Highness,” said Sister Doctor.

  “Enough,” interrupted Lord Ottokos. “I won’t translate such a barbaric notion. The Princess has dismissed you. You may leave.”

  But the Princess spoke over her interpreter, and he was bound to listen. He bowed his head and continued, “She says again—and she has too few words left to spend in life to say it a third time—where is the boy Liir?”

  “But he is not a boy any longer. We have told you what we know.” Sister Doctor put her sleeve to her nose; in her line of work she knew the smell of putrescence all too well. “He is in a comatose state not six or eight days’ journey from here, though perhaps nearer to the Emerald City than you would like to venture.”

  Lord Ottokos snapped, “We are not imbeciles. We know where his body is. You have told us. That is not the question.”

  The maunts blinked at him.

  “Where is he?” Lord Ottokos repeated. “Where is he?”

  “We don’t know where he is,” said Sister Apothecaire. “Our talents are not that fine.”

  Princess Nastoya shivered. Handmaidens came forward to withdraw shawls drenched with sweat and other seepage. “Let me help,” said Sister Apothecaire suddenly.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Lord Ottokos.

  “I do dare. What are you going to do, have me scraped? Sister Doctor, a vessel of water and some essence of citron—lemons, limoncelli, parsleyfruit, anything. And some vinegar reduced to the usual.”

  Princess Nastoya began to weep then, full tears of a nasty vintage. They fell on Sister Apothecaire’s bare hands and burned them; she was not halted in her work. “What has she said just then, in that low murmur?” she asked Lord Ottokos, who stood sputtering and clutching his beard in rage and disbelief.