• 5 •

WITHIN A few weeks of Dorothy’s departure, Glinda formally took the Throne. Brrr was able to get an audience with her, and, after a little fawning and purring, he wheedled a title. Sir Brrr, Lord Low Plenipotentiary to the market environs of Traum. It was, as he thought and others joked, a cruel blow: about as undistinguished a peerage as it was possible to acquire. One could pick up higher honors going through the garbage. Lord Low Plenipotentiary was a title without an estate, a job without a salary, an honorific without a voting voice in the Council of Agreement, which Lady Glinda had promised to reconvene after a lengthy hiatus.

And Traum? Traum, of all places? Lady Glinda was depositing him at the site of his public humiliation. Had she meant to rub his nose in it? Or in her giddy innocence did she hope to give him a chance to return as a conquering hero? He didn’t know and he didn’t bother to visit his district and find out. Let them get on without him.

He drank too much during the day, and he lost track of that agitated kid, Liir. When the Lion learned that the Scarecrow had been nominated to succeed Lady Glinda to the Throne—the Scarecrow elevated to be the Head of Oz, while the Lion groveled, a Lord Low Plenipotentiary!—well, he lost more acreage of guts to stomach acids.

Anhedonia, a doctor said. Fear of pleasure.

He almost bit the doctor, for the pleasure of it.

He might have survived the indignity if he’d had a circle of companions. Anything like a confessor, a crony.

But Dorothy was gone, disappeared perhaps the way Ozma Tippetarius had disappeared, too. The Scarecrow was busy with regal affairs and rarely met his public. (Some said he wasn’t even the same Scarecrow, but an imposter. Brrr never got close enough again to venture an opinion on the matter.) And Nick Chopper was filled with the romance of labor rebellion, getting in bed with dubious sorts to hatch out schemes to organize the tiktok workers, the mechanized servants of Oz. Change was in the air, everyone said—change of every sort except spare change: not that kind. Times weren’t better, they were just—different. Times were hard in a new way. You could be grateful for the novelty of it, but only up until teatime, when dried rye brisks and plowfoot jelly made their baleful appearance on the table. Unless you were Palace, of course.

He might have survived it if he had never learned to read. But what else was there to do but hang out in cafés frequented by the demimonde, sip stale tea or watered-down plonk in the Burntpork district, and scrutinize the cast-off newsfolds?

Whipping the pages so hard they tore. The financial columns and the editorial pages arguing about whether Nick Chopper was well connected enough to bring the Throne’s attention to a proposed scheme of merit-credits for the tiktok workforce…. Whether it would be any good for Oz…. The social obligations, if any, of rewarding clockwork for ticking on time…. The suffering of laborers and their families if a general strike was called…. NICK CHOPPER: BLEEDING HEART OR BLOODY HEARTLESS?

Brrr didn’t care. It was the parties he wasn’t invited to, the salons, the committee meetings dedicated to raising funds to repaper the libraries in imperial Ozma style, now that it was no longer forbidden to speak her name…. The drunken lunches of the newsmongers who laughed at the excesses of the high and mighty! He’d have been glad enough to rag on his former friends, had he been invited to do so.

Then some journalist, writing under a nom d’espionnage, published a column questioning the correctness of the Palace’s having awarded even so much as a Low Plenipotentiaryship to a Lion who had been, after all, a collaborationist. He’d worked at the Wizard’s bidding, hadn’t he—when more respectable Animals were imprisoned, or had fled into the outback?

A collaborationist. Working for the Wizard, who had done so much to oppress the Animals of Oz. When once Brrr had been tarred as the Witch’s familiar, now he was a lackey of her enemy. He was a turncoat for all seasons. You couldn’t win.

Perhaps, the argument went, if the Cowardly Lion were stripped of his honors, hardworking Animals would feel justified, at last, in returning to the cities and towns of Oz and entering the workforce again. Hadn’t Brrr been known as a Cowardly Lion? If he were all that brave, he’d surrender his honors himself, voluntarily, for the symbolism of it. His apology to the nation.

Let him be rehabilitated as a common citizen and join the Animal workforce that Loyal Oz hoped would soon be returning from exile—those who hadn’t been exterminated, that is. Bring back the Animals as a backup labor resource. Show the agitated millworkers they could be let go if they made trouble.

So off then, outa there, but good. Brrr tried not to think of the injustice of it, but of course the injustice greeted him daily. Was there any reason he should be so embattled other than the maliciousness of fate?

He didn’t avoid the thought of Dorothy; he didn’t need to. She evaporated out of Oz as successfully as the Witch herself had. One would have thought Dorothy had been brought from abroad for no other reason than to have her wet way with the Witch. But that was paranoia, wasn’t it? Fuck Dorothy. In a manner of speaking.

And as for his promise to keep an eye on Liir—well, Liir had his own history to follow. He had disappeared into the crowds of the Emerald City. Just another urchin on the make, a feckless little whippet cast aside by the powerful. Let him dodge his own fate as best he might; he was not the Lion’s cub, after all. Brrr had his own hide to protect.

Back to the wilds, once again, where the knowledge of his demotion by way of low promotion could prove less bitter, less public. He’d have to avoid the Ghullim, of course. If Muhlama H’aekeem had lived, she might be the Chieftainess now. And if the networking of the Ghullim was as keen as they boasted, they’d have heard that their runaway Lion had been marginalized by the indignity of petty honors. And tarred with the worst taunt of all. Collaborationist.

No, he’d avoid the Ghullim. Avoid them all. Avoid the whole damned mess of his whole damned life up to now.