XV

There was a day, in the first gusts of autumn, that the banners and standards of the camp below were shifted and bugles blew tinnily up the slopes to the castle. By this the Witch guessed that the troupe had arrived in Red Windmill, and were being given a royal welcome. “They’ve come so far, they won’t wait now,” she said. “Go, Killyjoy, go find them and show them the quickest way here.”

She loosed the senior dog, and so strong were his exhortations that the entire pack of his kin went racing along with him, howling with joy and frantic to do their duty.

“Nanny,” cried the Witch, “put on a clean petticoat and change your apron, we’ll have company by nightfall!”

But the dogs didn’t come back, all afternoon and into the gloaming, and the Witch could see why. With a telescopic eye in a cylindrical casing—invented by the Witch along the lines of Doctor Dillamond’s discovery about opposing lenses—she followed a shock of carnage. Dorothy and the Lion trembled with the Scarecrow beyond while the Tin Woodman struck the heads of her beasts one after the other with his axe. Killyjoy and his wolfy relations lay scattered like dead soldiers on a field of retreat.

The Witch danced with rage, and summoned Liir. “Your dog is dead, look what they did!” she cried. “Look and make sure that I didn’t only imagine it!”

“Well, I didn’t like that dog very much anymore,” said Liir. “He had a good long life, anyway.” He concurred, tremblingly, but then trained the glass on the slope again.

“You fool, that Dorothy is not for messing with!” she cried, slapping the instrument out of his hand.

“You’re awfully on edge for someone about to have company,” he said sullenly.

“They are supposed to be coming to kill me, if you remember,” she said, although she had forgotten that, as she had forgotten her desire for the shoes until she saw them again in the glass. The Wizard had not demanded them of Dorothy! Why not? What fresh campaign of intrigue was this?

She wheeled about her room, whipping pages of the Grimmerie back and forth. She recited a spell, did it wrong, did it again, and then turned and tried to apply it to the crows. Though the original three crows had long since fallen stiffly from the top of the door frame, there were plenty of others in residence still, rather inbred and silly, but suggestible in a stupid, moblike way.

“Go,” she said. “Look with your eyes more closely than I can, pull the mask off the Scarecrow so we can know who he is. Get them for me. Peck out the eyes of Dorothy and the Lion. And three of you, go on ahead to the old Princess Nastoya, out there in the Thousand Year Grasslands, for the time is coming when we will be reunited, all of us. With the help of the Grimmerie, the Wizard may topple at last!”

“I never know what you’re talking about anymore,” said Liir. “You can’t blind them!”

“Oh, watch me,” snarled the Witch. The crows blew away in a black cloud and dropped like buckshot through the sky, down the jagged precipices, until they came to the travelers.

“A pretty sunset, is there?” said Nanny, coming up to the Witch’s room in one of her rare forays, Chistery as always providing service.

“She’s sent the crows out to blind the guests coming for dinner!”

“What?”

“She’s BLINDING THE GUESTS COMING FOR DINNER!”

“Well, that’s one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose.”

“Will you lunatics hush up?” The Witch was twitching as if with a nervous disorder; her elbows flapped, as if she were a crow herself. She gave out a long howl when she found them in the glass.

“What, what, let me see,” said Liir, grabbing the thing. He explained to Nanny, because the Witch was almost beyond speech by now. “Well, I guess the Scarecrow knows how to scare crows, all right.”

“Why, what’s he done?”

“They’re not coming back, that’s all I’ll say,” said Liir, glancing at the Witch.

“It still could be him,” she said at last, breathing heavily. “You might get your wish yet, Liir.”

“My wish?” He didn’t remember asking for a father, and she didn’t bother to remind him. Nothing had yet suggested to her that the Scare-crow wasn’t a man in disguise. She would not need forgiveness if Fiyero had not died!

The light was failing, and the odd band of friends was making good time up the hill. They had come without an escort of soldiers, perhaps because the soldiers really believed that Kiamo Ko was run by a Wicked Witch.

“Come on, bees,” said the Witch, “work with me now. All together on this one, honeys. We need a little sting, we need a little zip, we want a little nasty, can you give us a little jab? No, not us, listen when I talk to you, you simpletons! The girl on the hill below. She’s after your Queen Bee! And when you’re through with your job, I’ll go down and collect those shoes.”

“What’s that old hag blathering about now?” said Nanny to Liir.

The bees were alert to the pitch in the Witch’s voice, and they rose to swarm out the window.

“You watch, I can’t look,” said the Witch.

“The moon is just like a pretty peach rising over the mountains,” said Nanny with the telescope to her old cataracted eye. “Why don’t we put in some peach trees instead of all those infernal apples in the back?”

“The bees, Nanny. Liir, take that from her and tell me what happens.”

Liir gave a blow-by-blow recounting. “They’re swooping down, they look like a genie or something, all flying in a big clump with a straggly tail. The travelers see them coming. Yes! Yes! The Scarecrow is taking straw out of his chest and leggings, and covering the Lion and Dorothy, and there’s a little dog, too. So the bees can’t get through the straw, and the Scarecrow is all in pieces on the ground.”

It couldn’t be. The Witch grabbed the eyepiece. “Liir, you are a filthy liar,” she shouted. Her heart roared like a wind.

But it was true. There was nothing but straw and air inside the Scarecrow’s clothes. No hidden lover returning, no last hope of salvation.

And the bees, having none left to attack but the Tin Woodman, flung themselves against him, and dropped in black heaps on the ground, like charred shadows, their stingers blunted on his fenders.

“You’ve got to give our guests credit for ingenuity,” said Liir.

“Will you shut up before I tie your tongue in a knot?” said the Witch.

“I suppose I should start down and get some hors d’oeuvres going, they’ll be peckish after these ordeals you’re setting them,” said Nanny. “Have you an opinion as to cheese and crackers or fresh vegetables with pepper sauce?”

“I say cheese,” said Liir.

“Elphaba? What’s your opinion?”

But she was too busy doing research in the Grimmerie. “It’s up to me, as always was the case,” said Nanny. “I get to do all the work. I’m supposed to be teary with joy, at my age. You’d think I could rest my feet for once, but no. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”

“Always the godfather, never the god,” said Liir.

“Will you two please have mercy on me! Now go on, Nanny, if you’re going!” Nanny headed out the door as fast as her old limbs could take her. The Witch said, “Chistery, let her go under her own steam, I need you here.”

“Sure, let me tumble to my death, delighted to be of service,” said Nanny. “It’s going to be cheese, for that.”

The Witch explained to Chistery what she wanted. “This is foolish. It’ll be dark before long, and they’ll tumble over some cliff and die. The poor dears, I’d rather not. I mean the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, they can tumble all they want, and not be much hurt, I imagine. A good tinsmith could repair a battered torso. But bring me Dorothy and the Lion. Dorothy has my shoes, and I have a rendezvous with the Lion. We’re old friends. Can you do this?”

Chistery squinted, nodded, shook his head, shrugged, spat.

“Well try, what good are you if you don’t try,” she said. “Off with you, and your cronies with you.”

She turned to Liir. “There, are you satisfied? I haven’t asked them to be killed. They’re being escorted here as our guests. I’ll get the shoes and let them go on their way. And then I’ll walk this Grimmerie into the mountains and live in a cave. You’re old enough to take care of yourself. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Who needs forgiveness now? Well?”

“They’re coming to kill you,” he said.

“Yes, and aren’t you just breathless with anticipation for that!”

“I’ll protect you,” he said, uneasily, and then added, “but not to the extent of harming Dorothy.”

“Oh, go set the table, and tell Nanny to forget the cheese and crackers, and go with the vegetables.” She shook her broom at him. “Go, I tell you, when I tell you to go!”

When she was alone, she sank in a heap. Either phenomenal luck lay with these travelers, or they had enough courage, brains, and heart among them to do quite well. She was taking the wrong approach, clearly. She should welcome the child, explain the situation nicely, and get the damned shoes while she could. With the shoes, with the help of the Princess Nastoya, maybe there would be vengeance against the Wizard yet. Anyway, the Grimmerie would be hidden. One way or the other. And the shoes removed outside the Wizard’s reach.

But the shock of the death of her familiars made her blood run cold inside her. She could feel her thoughts and intentions tumbling over and over one another. And she wasn’t really sure what she would do when face-to-face with Dorothy.