“A Conference. A Conference of Birds in the eastern entrance to Kumbricia’s Pass. Though I have no way of knowing exactly when it was formally opening, nor how long it would last. It could be over already.”
She sat down. “If I understood what I picked up in the mauntery, we aren’t that far from the eastern edge of the Kells.”
“No. A few hours by broomstick, I guess. A few days, maybe, on foot.”
“There’s the donkey.”
“Two weeks on the singing donkey. He seems very lazy.”
“You’re still weak. You ought to ride.”
“You’re pushing me out of the nest?” He was relieved, in a way: someone was making a decision for him. Or perhaps she wanted to hear from his lips that he wouldn’t abandon her, he wouldn’t consider it.
Her thinking was further along than that. “I don’t know if you want to stay with me for a day, or for longer, or at all,” she admitted. “But you should choose what you want and not just fall into it. I abducted you, after a fashion. I will not keep you.”
“I’ll give myself permission to stay here.”
“You’ll settle your curiosity first,” she told him. “You don’t know why you were attacked, really. You don’t know what the Conference was for, nor what it might mean to the Birds that you didn’t arrive. You should find out that before you make any other decisions.”
“I’m not that selfless anymore. Anytime I try, I fail. I learned failure early, and mastered it.”
“Be selfish then. Ask those Birds if they have seen your friend. That Nor.”
He could hardly believe her generosity. He loved Candle already but didn’t have the perspective to know if it was as a savior, a woman, a friend, an alternative to loneliness. Or all of those together. Or if any of those were the right reason to love someone. Well, what personal experience of love had he ever had? And what testimony of love had ever been paraded before him? Precious little.
He knew in many ways Candle was right and that, also, she was giving him a way out.
“I need firewood. If you help me with firewood,” she said, “I’ll stay here the winter and not leave till spring. Between the fruits and mushrooms I’ve been drying, the potatoes growing wild in the sunny patch yonder, and what the goat and the hen can provide, I won’t starve. If I’m turned out by some landlord, or if trouble chases me away, I’ll return to the mauntery. I can be found there, by my uncle if he comes to claim me, or by you. Or there I’ll stay, maybe; it’s as good a life as most, and they’re kind women.”
He helped with the firewood, redoubling his efforts to build up the stockpile, and in so doing restoring mass to his muscles and strength to his step. By the time the first hard frost came, and the chimney was issuing its thin braid of smoke all hours of the day and night, he was ready to leave.
He wouldn’t take the donkey. She might need it.
“For what?” she asked.
“He’s better company than the goat,” said Liir at last. He took Candle in his arms on the final morning, and kissed her fondly for the first time. “I do not need to hear about goodness from any Apostle,” he told her. “You have given me more to admire than almost anyone I have ever met.”
“It’s very clear you haven’t traveled the world,” she chided him, almost lovingly. “Be safe, as safe as you can, dear Liir: and be brave.”
“Are we a couple?” he asked, bravely enough.
“We are one and one,” she said. “In Quadling thinking, one plus one doesn’t equal a single unit of two. One plus one equals both.”
For a long time, turning back, he could see the soft curl of smoke hovering over where Apple Press Farm must stand in its encroaching forest. The fire’s breath hung like a question mark above the place that she had planted herself, already, to wait for his return.
The Conference of the Birds
1
WHILE THE TREK FROM the farmstead in the woods to the start of Kumbricia’s Pass was short, comparatively speaking, every step he took bit at his bones and taxed his joints in a way that none of the long forays across country had seemed to do before.
Well, he was older. Hardly old yet—twenty-three, was he, or twenty-four? Something like that. Not old enough to feel like an adult, really, but old enough to look like one, and to know the distinction between being carefree and careless.
So he took care. Any little scatter of stones might shift beneath his weight, any patch of grass might prove more slippery than it ought. He latched his eyes to the ground. Confidence and stamina returned all too slowly.
But return they did. Eventually he was walking two hours at a stretch before pausing to rest. He fixed his gaze to the horizon and willed himself forward by setting himself serial destinations. That tallest blue pine, that nubble of grasses in the upland meadow, that outcrop of granite. Before long, the prospect grew grander, as the Kells swam into clearer focus, and the steep cut between them said KUMBRICIA’S PASS: enter if you dare.
He remembered his childhood journey with Oatsie Manglehand and the Grasstrail Train, and how the travelers had traded tales. Fierce Kumbricia, the witch from the oldest tales of Oz! Kumbricia was so ancient a figure of lore that she seemed freed from the limitations of any particular moral position. She was not exactly the demon crone from hell, intent on the destruction of mortal souls, nor was she the nodding grand-tit of the world, providing succor in times of trial. Or perhaps, more truly said, she was both. One plus one equals both. Like the most insouciant and playful of earthquakes, collapsing villages and crushing populations, Kumbricia’s actions followed her own secret intentions. To a human, what might look like luck one minute was disaster the next, but what meant luck to Kumbricia, or disaster either? In the stories she was fierce, amoral, wholly herself. Unvanquishable and incorrigible.
And unknowable, really.
Like the Unnamed God, when you came right down to it.
Occasionally, Nanny had singsonged, as a nursery ditty, something probably derived from the Oziad or some other baroque history-legend.
Kumbricia stirs the pot, and licks the ladle,
Sets the table, pours a glass of tears.
Waits beside the ominous vacant cradle.
Waiting still. She can wait for years.
Yes, just like the Unnamed God.
2
THE CLIFFS OPENED BEFORE him and then closed behind him, for the track into Kumbricia’s Pass took several quick turns along the valley floor before it began to rise. The ground breathed different vapors here, and the season was delayed: the browning leaves of the trees hadn’t fallen yet. Not enough wind could wend through to tear them away.
The brightness of the sky was shattered into glazed mosaic bits by the fretwork of branches and foliage. This high-slung canyon went on for days, didn’t it?—wasn’t that his recollection? Until it opened on the western slope of the Kells, and the Thousand Year Grasslands spread out as broad as the imaginary sea from children’s stories? How would he ever find traces of a convocation of Birds in this secret haven?
But a good place to gather, he had to concede. The mountains served as ramparts, and the ravine was helpfully overgrown. Here the Yunamata made their home most of the year. And here Elphaba and Liir had picked out their way all those ages ago, pressing on toward Kiamo Ko and the hope for sanctuary.
He had all the time for rumination he needed—and then some. What had he understood, then, of Elphaba’s drive? Her need? The force that pushed her around? Precious little. But he remembered the day she had saved the infant Snow Monkey, who would become Chistery. Her native—talent? power? skill at concentration?—or maybe, merely, compassion?—had caused a small lake to ice over so she half walked, half slid across it to collect the abandoned, fretting monkey baby.
That’s what his memory said. The very ice formed under her heels. The world conformed itself to suit her needs. But how could this possibly be true? Perhaps it was the unreliability of memory, the romanticking tendencies of childhood, that made Liir rem
ember it this way. The lake went ice. The baby monkey was saved. Maybe, really, she’d waded. Or maybe the lake was already iced over.
Maybe all that really mattered, as to her power, was that she saved the baby monkey.
At the shores of a small tarn, he paused, and became aware of a new variety of silence. It was the sound of everything holding its breath.
At the farther side of the tarn was a small island. A spinney of knot-branch trees grew in the center of the island, their five or six tree trunks so close as to resemble the uprights of a series of doors, all leading to the same interior space among the trunks, some dozen feet in diameter. The trees held what was left of the Conference of the Birds, and the Birds were holding their breath.
He stood, not ready to call out, for he didn’t want them to scatter. But they were aware of him, he was sure. How many hundred pairs of eyes blinked or unblinked at him from those ring-coiled leaves? They neither approached him in sortie nor twittered in fright. Perhaps, he guessed, they were stupid with fear.
Finally he thrashed about along the bracken and located a fallen tree trunk substantial enough to bear his weight. He hauled it to the water’s edge and pushed it in. No conjuring up an ice-walk for him. With the help of a staff, he balanced himself and began to draw his way across the water. He could have swum, he knew, but that would require his undressing either before or after the swim, and it seemed an undignified way to approach a Convention.
The Birds seemed patient, and as he got closer he thought: It’s as if they have been waiting for me.
This was so, according to the hunch-hooded Cliff Eagle who bade him welcome.
“You’re the boy-broomist,” he said. “The fledgling. We knew you’d been downed. A Red Pfenix got far enough through enemy lines to cry out that much information before being wounded and having to turn back. We trusted you would come. You’ve come.”
The Cliff Eagle paused smartly, puffing out his breast feathers.
“I almost didn’t,” said Liir. “It wasn’t even my idea, really.”
The Eagle made a mouth gesture as close to a sneer as he could manage. “Humans are fickle. We know. But you’re here. The boy-broomist.”
“I’m without the broom.” Liir put his staff down on the ground so the Birds could see. “I walked. Have you a name, by the way?”
The other Birds hopped a branch or two closer to see if the Cliff Eagle would answer. They were the larger creatures, mostly—a few random Finches and Fitches, some Robins, and a busy preening department of Wrens—but mostly Eagles, Night Rocs, a youngish Pfenix in its glowing halo. Nine Swans still waiting for their Princess. A blind old Heron with a twisted left leg. Others.
“I know what happened to the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, and told them how he had buried her—and, in a dim sense, come in her stead.
The Cliff Eagle took the news unflinchingly, though the Swans bowed their heads until their necks were white hoops, and their wings shuddered with an airy sound, as of an industrial baffle.
“I am the President of the Assembly,” said the Cliff Eagle. “Thank you for coming.”
Liir had no use for honorifics. “Am I to call you Mister President? Or just Birdy?”
The Cliff Eagle bristled, and then said, “General Kynot is my name, though my name isn’t important. And yours isn’t either. We’re soldiers at strategy, not a military tea.”
“Well, I’ve been a soldier and I’m not going back to it. I’m Liir, for what that’s worth, and I use my name. I’m not Broom-boy.”
Kynot ducked his head and bit at a nit under his wing. “Sorry, the place is crawling with nits,” he said. “Liir.” It was a concession, and Liir relaxed. He was about to ask permission to sit down, and then remembered he didn’t need it. So he sat, and the Birds came farther down from the branches, and most of them settled on the hardscuffle with the sound of small loaves of bread falling to a floor.
Kynot made quick work of their concerns. The Conference seemed to be comprised of seventy or eighty Birds who were now afraid to leave. They had met to convene about the threat in the skies, but that very threat had cornered them and grounded them. It would take a talent and a cunning greater than any of their skills to make the skies safe for travel.
“You’ve come to the wrong beak if you want talent or cunning,” said Liir.
“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Kynot, and continued.
He beat out every point of his argument with a hard flap of his wings. Whereas conditions of life under the Emperor had become intolerable, whereas his airborne army of dragons had systematically disrupted air travel, unsettled populations of Birds and birds, and interfered with the natural rights of flight and migration and convocation, now therefore a Congress of the Birds had been summoned, if sadly beleaguered by aforementioned hostile army, and such delegates as had managed to sneak in had concluded thereby that they were singly and in unity incapable of combating the enemy fleet. Therefore they needed help. Fast.
“I came to tell you of the death of the Princess of the Swans,” said Liir, “because it is what Elphaba would have done. Beyond that, I can’t be of much use. If I’m the only hope around, you’re in a heap of trouble.”
“Unlike Animals, we Birds haven’t often lived wing by jowl with humans,” replied the general. “The human prohibition against eating Animal flesh being subject to abuse, think how much less strict is any taboo against eating the Bird of the air. We must be shot at and brought down before we can be interviewed to learn if we are talking creatures. Few hungry farmers are willing to extend Birds that courtesy, so those of us who talk tend to congregate in areas less frequented by human scum. My apologies, that was crude of me.”
“Don’t apologize too fast, you don’t know me very well,” said Liir. “But still, why ask me for help?”
“You have flown, as most humans have not,” said Kynot simply. “You have powers unique among the humans we’ve met…”
“I can keep my balance. So what. It’s the broom that has powers. Elphaba’s broom.”
“The wing doesn’t work separately from the feather, Liir. They work in tandem.”
“Well, I haven’t the broom any longer, or haven’t you heard? So I can’t fly—which means this hardly concerns me.”
“You were attacked by the dragons yourself. Weren’t you? Or have I been fed misinformation?”
“Well, I was. But that’s between me and the dragons. It has nothing to do with you.”
“And they call us birdbrains.” Kynot was livid. “There is a common cause among our kind and a flying boy, you dodo.”
“I object,” said a Dodo, just waking up from a nap.
“Sorry, that was uncalled for. Listen. Liir. You must have been intending to help us, or why did you come here at all?”
He thought of Candle. “It was the suggestion of a third party.”
“A suggestion of what? That you deliver your tragic news, and then stay to laugh at us in our plight? That you see your fellow creatures chased, tortured, kept from associating freely, just as you were chased, robbed, and nearly killed, and then you—what? Walk home and retail the event for amusing dinnertime conversation?”
“Don’t paint me so bleakly. I’m capable of doing that for myself. Look, it’s occurring to me that I might ask something of you. On and off over the years, I’ve been looking for someone. A girl-child. Perhaps you could help. On your various migrations and such.”
“We can’t fly freely, or haven’t I put that clearly enough, you cretin?” Kynot was apoplectic. “How can we serve your private needs when our numbers are being diminished by the day?”
“Well, then.” Liir shrugged. “It’s a no-go. I guess I didn’t really understand much about this skirmish involving the Birds. It’s sad, but it hasn’t anything to do with me. And even if it did, I’m powerless…I’m not Elphaba.”
A small Wren hopped forward and said to Kynot, “If you please, begging your pardon, General…”
“Do not beg my pardon
! Do not beg at all! How many times have I to drill this lesson into your brain, Dosey?”
“Sorry, Gen’ral. Begging your pardon for that one, too. It’s just that the young man might want to think on this bit somewhat.” Dosey turned to Liir and cheeped. “It ain’t just us Birdys, mister. Those dragonfings are bad cess for human beings, too. Scraping the faces of defenseless women in the wilderness! Have they no shame? Have you? If you cain’t help us out of the kindness of your liver, surely you could work to keep such things from happenin’ to your own kind?”
“Well said, Dosey.” Kynot sounded less apologetic than surprised.
“Those were unionist missionaries, I’m told,” said Liir, his shoulders slumping. “It was horrible to hear about. But I’m not a maunt, and I don’t even know if I’m a unionist.”
“So what next? They’ll kill your brother in his stockings, and you’ll say, ‘He had grey eyes and I have green, so it weren’t really about me a’tall’?” asked the Wren. “They already attacked you, duckie, so’s I heard. Ain’t you rememberin’?”
“Maybe I deserved to be attacked.”
“Oh, save us,” muttered Kynot. “Somebody save us. But it’s not going to be this nutter.”
Dosey wasn’t ready to give up. “Mebbe you did deserve it,” she snapped. “But that’s giving those dragons an awful lot of credit for knowing the insides and the sinsides of your soul! So what if they fly out of the stables of the Emperor! They’re not Talking Dragons! They’re in the pay of the Emperor of the Ugly! And you cain’t be sartain those young maunts deserved what they got, can you? Their faces so scraped! It’s hideous is what it is!”
“It’s not for me to decide whose faces get scraped or not…”
“No,” said Kynot. He reared up and looked as if he wanted to peck Liir’s eyes out. “No. Leave it in the beak of the Unnamed God, or his mortal avatar, the Emperor. Leave it to the agents of the Emperor, who run the Home Guard for the security of the Emerald City at the expense of all others who live in Oz. Or leave it to the underlings who follow the orders of their superiors. Leave it in the beaks of the dragons themselves. Dragons don’t kill people, people kill people. They kill themselves by walking unprotected in a world where there are dragons. You make me sick.”
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