IV

They left the Scrow encampment and the Princess Nastoya behind. The Grasstrail Train moved in a circle north, now, a wide arch.

Igo died, and was buried in a sandy mound. “Give his spirit movement and flight,” said Elphie at the ceremony.

The rafiqi admitted later that he had thought one of the guests of the command meeting with the Princess Nastoya was to be sacrificed in a ritual slaughter. It had happened before. The Princess, though coping with her dilemma, was not above a sense of revenge. It was the honesty of Pinchweed that saved him, as he was the obvious choice. Or perhaps Igo wore the prospect of his death closer to the surface than humans could see, and the Elephant took pity.

The crows were annoying; they pestered the bees, shat all over the wagon, teased Killyjoy. The Glikkun, Raraynee, stopped at a well, met her isolated widower husband-to-be, and left the Grasstrail Train. The toothless new husband already had six motherless children, and they took to Raraynee like orphaned ducklings behind a farm dog. There were only ten travelers left.

“Now we’re entering Arjiki tribal lands,” said the rafiqi.

The first Arjiki band approached a few days later. They wore nothing so splendid as what Fiyero had worn, in the way of blue markings—these were nomads, shepherds, rounding up the sheep from the western foothills of the Great Kells for their annual counting and, it seemed, sale to the East. Still, just the handsome look of them ripped Elphie’s heart into pieces. Their wildness. Their otherness. This may be a punishment to the hour of my death, she thought.

The Grasstrail Train by now was down to only two wagons: in one, the rafiqi, Oatsie, Liir the boy, Pinchweed the entrepreneur, and a Gillikinese mechanic named Kowpp. In the other, Elphie herself, and the bees, the crows, and Killyjoy. Already she had, it seemed, been accepted as a witch. It was not an entirely unlikable disguise.

Kiamo Ko was just a week away.

The Grasstrail Train turned eastward, into the steel gray passes of the steep Great Kells. Winter was almost here, and the last travelers were grateful that the snows had held off. Oatsie intended to stop the winter in an Arjiki camp some twenty miles on. In the spring she would head back to the Emerald City, making the northern route through Ugabu, and the Pertha Hills of Gillikin. Elphie thought of sending a note to Glinda, if after all these years she was still there—but, being unable to decide yes, she decided no.

“Tomorrow,” said Oatsie, “we’ll see Kiamo Ko. The mountain stronghold of the ruling clan of the Arjikis. Are you ready, Sister Elphie?”

She was teasing, and Elphie didn’t like it. “I am no longer a sister, I am a witch,” she said, and tried to think poisonous thoughts at Oatsie. But Oatsie was a stronger person than the cook, apparently, for she just laughed and went on her way.

The Grasstrail Train stopped on the side of a small tarn. The others said its water was refreshing, though icy cold; Elphie didn’t know or care about that. But in the middle was an island—a tiny thing, the size of a mattress, sprouting one leafless tree like an umbrella that has lost its fabric.

Before Elphaba could quite make it out—the evening light came early at this time of year, and even earlier in the mountains—Killyjoy had plunged feverishly into the water, and splashed and swum his way to the island, intent on some small movement or interesting scent he had picked up. He ferreted in the sedge, and then clamped his teeth—the most wolflike of his features—gently around the skull of a small beast in the grass.

Elphie couldn’t see but it looked like a baby.

Oatsie screamed, Liir quivered like a blob of jelly, Killyjoy released his grip, but only to get a further hold; he was drooling over the scalp of the thing he had caught.

There was no way to go through the water—that would be death—

But her feet went out anyway—

They hit the water hard, the water hit hard back—

The water turned to ice as she ran—foot by foot of ice under foot by foot of hurry. A silvering plate formed instantly, cantilevering forward, making a cold safe bridge to the island—

Where Killyjoy could be scolded, and the baby saved, though she hadn’t dared hope she could be in time. She pried Killyjoy’s jaws apart, and scooped up the thing. It shivered in terror and the cold. Its bright black eyes were alert and watching, ready to upbraid or condemn or love, same as any capable adult thing.

The others were surprised to see it, as surprised as they’d been to see the ice form, perhaps by some magic spell left on the tarn from some passing wizard or witch. It was a small monkey—of the variety called the snow monkey. A baby abandoned by its mother and its tribe, or maybe separated by accident?

It didn’t think much of Killyjoy but it liked the warmth of the wagon.

They pitched their camp halfway up the perilous slope to Kiamo Ko. The castle rose in steep black angles out of black rock. Elphie could see it perched above them like an eagle with folded wings; its conical-roofed towers, its battlements and bartizans, its portcullis and arrow-slit windows—they all belied its original intention as the head of a waterworks. Below it wound a powerful tributary of the Vinkus River on which the Ozma Regent once had meant to build a dam and channel water into the center of Oz—back when the droughts were their most threatening. Fiyero’s father had taken this stronghold by siege and storm and made it the seat of the Arjiki princes, before dying and leaving the clan leadership to his only son, if Elphaba remembered rightly.

The small luggage was packed, the bees hummed (their melodies ever more amusing as she listened, week by week), Killyjoy was still sulking over being denied the kill, the crows sensed that a change was coming and wouldn’t eat dinner. The monkey, who was called Chistery because of the sound he made, chittered and chattered now that he was warm and safe.

Around the campfire good-byes were spoken, a few toasts, even a few regrets. The sky was blacker than it had been before: perhaps it was the contrast of the whiteness of snowy peaks all around. Liir showed up with a parcel of clothing and some sort of musical instrument, and said good-byes too.

“Oh, so you’re stopping here, are you?” said Elphie.

“Yes,” he said, “with you.”

“With the crows, with the monkey, with the bees, with the dog, and with the Witch?” she said. “With me?”

“Where else can I go?” he asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered.

“I can take care of the dog,” he said calmly. “I can collect the honey for you.”

“It makes no difference to me,” she said.

“All right,” he said, and so Liir prepared to enter his father’s house.