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Wicked 2 – Son of a Witch

By Maquire, Gregory

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THANKS ARE DUE to the team at ReganBooks, starting with Judith Regan and including Cassie Jones, Paul Olsewski, and Jennifer Suitor.

Thank you to David Groff, Betty Levin, Andy Newman, and William Reiss for commenting on early drafts ofSon of a Witch .

Thank you to Haven Kimmel and to Eve Ensler, for encouraging words sent at precisely the right moment.

Thank you to Harriet Barlow, Ben Strader, and the company of Blue Mountain Center, New York.

Thank you, again, to Andy Newman, for defending the ramparts as usual, and to Lori Shelly, for able assistance at every wicked little thing.

Under the Jackal Moon

The House of Saint Glinda

SO THE TALK OF RANDOM BRUTALITYwasn’t just talk. At noontime they discovered the bodies of three young women, out on some mission of conversion that appeared to have gone awry. The novice maunts had been strangled by their ropes of holy beads, and their faces removed.

Her nerve being shaken at last, Oatsie Manglehand now caved in to the demands of her paying customers. She told the team drivers they’d pause only long enough to dig some shallow graves while the horses slaked their thirst. Then the caravan would press on across the scrubby flats known, for the failed farmsteads abandoned here and there, as the Disappointments.

Moving by night, at least they wouldn’t make a sitting target, though they might as easily wander into trouble as sidestep it. Still, Oatsie’s party was antsy. Hunker down all night and wait for horse hoofs, spears? Too hard on everyone. Oatsie consoled herself: If the caravan kept moving, she could sit forward with her eyes peeled, out of range of the carping, the second-guessing, the worrying.

With the benefit of height, therefore, Oatsie spotted the gully before anyone else did. The cloudburst at sunset had fed a small trackside rivulet that flowed around a flank of skin, water-lacquered in the new moonlight. An island, she feared, of human flesh.

I ought to turn aside before the others notice, she thought; how much more can they take? There is nothing I can do for that human soul. The digging of another trench would require an hour, minimum. An additional few moments for prayers. The project would only further agitate these clients as they obsess about their own precious mortality.

Upon the knee of the horizon balanced the head of a jackal moon, so-called because, once every generation or so, a smear of celestial flotsam converged behind the crescent moon of early autumn. The impact was creepy, a look of a brow and a snout. As the moon rounded out over a period of weeks, the starveling would turn into a successful hunter, its cheeks bulging.

Always a fearsome sight, the jackal moon tonight spooked Oatsie Manglehand further.Don’t stop for this next casualty. Get through the Disappointments, deliver these paying customers to the gates of the Emerald City . But she resisted giving in to superstition. Be scared of the real jackals, she reminded herself, not frets and nocturnal portents.

In any case, the light of the constellation alleviated some of the color blindness that sets in at night. The body was pale, almost luminous. Oatsie might divert the Grasstrail Train and give the corpse a wide berth before anyone else noticed it, but the slope of the person’s shoulders, the unnatural twist of legs—the jackal moon made her read the figure too well, as too clearly human, for her to be able to turn aside.

Nubb, she barked to her second, rein in. We’ll pull into flank formation up that rise. There’s another fatality, there in the runoff.

Cries of alarm as the news passed back, and another mutter of mutiny: Why should they stop?—were they to bear witness to every fresh atrocity? Oatsie didn’t listen. She yanked the reins of her team of horses, to halt them, and she lowered herself gingerly. She stumped, her hand on her sore hip, until she stood a few feet over the body.

Face down and genitals hidden, he appeared to have been a young man. A few scraps of fabric were still knotted about his waist, and a boot some yards distant, but he was otherwise naked, and no sign of his clothes.

Curious: no evidence of the assassins. Neither had there been about the bodies of the maunts, but that was on rockier ground, in a drier hour. Oatsie couldn’t see any sign of scuffle here, and in the mud of the gulch one might have expected…something. The body wasn’t bloody, nor decayed yet; the murder was recent. Perhaps this evening, perhaps only an hour ago.

Nubb, let’s heave him up and see if they’ve taken his face, she said.

No blood, said Nubb.

Blood may have run off in that cloudburst. Steel yourself, now.

They got on either side of the body and bit their lips. She looked at Nubb, meaning: It’s only the next thing, it’s not the last thing. Let’s get through this, fellow.

She jerked her head in the direction of the hoist. One, two, heave.

They got him up. His head had fallen into a natural scoop in the stone, a few inches higher than where the rain had pooled. His face was intact, more or less; that is to say, it was still there, though shattered.

How did he get here? said Nubb. And why didn’t they scrape him?

Oatsie just shook her head. She settled on her haunches. Her travelers had come forward and were congregating on the rise behind her; she could hear them rustling. She suspected that they had gathered stones, and were ready to kill her if she insisted on a burial.

The jackal moon rose a few notches higher, as if trying to see into the gulley. The prurience of the heavens!

We’re not going to dig another grave. That from her noisiest client, a wealthy trader from the northern Vinkus. Not his, Oatsie Manglehand, and not yours, either. We’re not doing it. We leave him unburied and alone, or we leave him unburied with your corpse for company.

We don’t need to do either, said Oatsie. She sighed. Poor, poor soul, whoever he is. He needs no grave. He isn’t dead yet.

IN TIME,when the travelers had rejoined their cronies and relatives in the Emerald City—in salons, in public houses, in taverns of exchange—they heard more chatter about the hostilities they had managed to sidestep. Rumor flourished. Forty, sixty, a hundred deaths resulting from the skirmishes between the Scrow and the Yunamata. Barbarians, the lot of them: They deserved to kill off each other. But not us.

Rumor could be wrong, of course, but it couldn’t be uninteresting. Two hundred dead. Twice that. Mass graves, and they would be foundany day .

But the luxury of safety came later. First, the Grasstrail Train still had to resume its snail’s progress through the Disappointments. Geographical variety—the hills, mountains, dales and forests that made the rest of Oz so memorable, such a heartland—was in short supply here. Just flats, shales, more flats, grey as pulped newspapers.

The prospect was dispiriting, and the notion of having to carry an invalid with them didn’t improve matters. Oatsie Manglehand’s clients had paid good hard cash for her service. Some originating from as far away as Ugabu, and others having joined the group along the eastern foothills of the Great Kells, they considered their own safe travel should be Oatsie’s sole concern.

Oatsie reminded them that they didn’t have a vote. She’d never represented that her clients would travel unencumbered by waifs and strays. Indeed, by terms of their contracts, she was free of liability should any of the travelers be murdered on the trail by a fellow passenger, a stowaway, a hitchhiker, a native. Oatsie had promised to lead the caravan as safely as she could, relying on her knowledge of the terrain and its populations. That was it. Period. To that end, she’d chosen a new route intended to avoid the current hot spots of intertribal conflict, and so far so good. Right?

The invalid was loaded aboard.

Despite her bravado, Oatsie was indeed sensitive to her clients’ fears, and in a way she was glad to have the unconscious young man with them. It distracted the travelers, while he remained oblivious of their resentment.

She bedded him in the third carriage back, requisitioning from her clients the warmest of winter robes. She mounded him into a cocoon. There he languished, day and night, not so much fevered as feverless—an equally worrying condition. After a day of trying, Nubb was able to spoon a few tips of brandy between the lad’s lips, and Oatsie fancied she saw his muscles relax in a new way.

She couldn’t be certain of this. She was no doctor.

Of one thing she was sure, though. With his arrival, the mood of the Grasstrail Train changed. Why? Perhaps this: If the poor creature had been beaten to within an inch of his life, and lived, there might be hope for all of them. Think about it:His face hadn’t been scraped . People relaxed. The nasal buzz of prayers around the supper campfire gave way to a quieter mood. Song returned, in time.

We’ll make it. We deserve to. The privilege of life has been accorded us, see? We’ve been saved. Must be for a reason. Spines straightened, eyes grew bright and moist in a rapture of gratitude at the plan of the Unnamed God.

Another week and they had rounded the landmark rocks that marked their U-turn north, and they left behind them in the Disappointments the greatest threat of ambush.

In this month of Summersend, the wind flicked the strands of oakhair in the forest that grew between the lakes. Squirrels spilled nuts on the skarkskin roofs of the wagons. The air was more watery, too, though both lakes were out of sight beyond the miles of woods on either side.

As the oakhair forest thinned and they reached the Shale Shallows, the shady surround and homely walls of an old settlement solidified in the middle of walnut-colored fields. The first stone building they’d seen in six weeks. Despite its steep, aggrieved gables and pinched outbuildings, despite its battlement defenses, nothing—not even the Emerald City—could seem more welcome a sight just then.

The Cloister of Saint Glinda, they buzzed. How holy it appears.

The maunts who lived within were divided into ranks. Some took vows of silence and lived cloistered. Others took vows of indulgence. They indulged in teaching, tending the sick, and operating a hostelry for those traveling between the southern Kells and the Emerald City. So the broad carved doors were swung open when the Grasstrail Train pulled up. The welcoming committee, a band of three middle-aged maunts with well-starched collars and bad teeth, stood at attention.

They greeted Oatsie with frosty politeness. They were suspicious of any unmarried woman who had found a way to live single, apart from female community. Still, they offered her the traditional wipe of the face with sweet rosefern. A fourth maunt, sequestered behind a screen, played a welcoming anthem, poorly. Harp strings snapped, and the sound of a most unmauntish oath issued forth.

The travelers didn’t care. They were almost in heaven. To anticipate beds!—and a warm meal!—and wine!—and a captive audience, ready to thrill at the story of their journey!

In this last item, though, the maunts gave bad value for money. At once their attention was riveted by the invalid. They carried him into the loggia and hurried to collect a stretcher so he could be hauled upstairs to the infirmary.

The maunts were beginning to shift the fellow to private quarters when the Superior Maunt wafted by, fresh from her morning devotions. She greeted Oatsie Manglehand with the least of nods, and glanced upon the broken lad for a moment. Then she waved her hands: Remove him.

She said to Oatsie, We know him. We know this one.

You do? said Oatsie.

If my memory hasn’t begun to fail me, the Superior Maunt continued, you should know him, as well. You took him from us some years ago. Fifteen was it, twenty? At my age I don’t apprehend the passage of time as I ought.

He’d have been a child twenty years ago, an infant, said Oatsie. I never took an infant from a mauntery.

Perhaps not an infant. But you took him just the same. He traveled with a disagreeable novice who served for several years in the hospice. You were conveying them to the castle stronghold of the Arjikis. Kiamo Ko.

He was with Elphaba?

Now you remember, I see you do.

The Wicked Witch of the West…

As some called her. The Superior Maunt sniffed. Not I. Her name here was Sister Saint Aelphaba, but I seldom called her anything. She was more or less under a vow of silence—her own. She needed no addressing.

You recognize him from youth to now? said Oatsie. You’ve seen him since?

No. But I do not forget a face.

Oatsie raised her eyebrows.

I have seen so few faces, explained the Superior Maunt. We will not talk now. I must have Sister Doctor here to look the boy over.

Whatwas his name?

The Superior Maunt vanished without answering.

By nightfall, as Oatsie’s clients finished their nightcaps, the next generation of rumors was launched. The man-child was the Emperor’s confessor. He was a brigand trafficking in the sex trade. He spoke in the voice of a Loon. Except for a single rib, the man-child had broken every bone in his body.

Many of the rumors were contradictory, which in the aggregate made them all more amusing.

IT WAS A HARD TIME.It had been a hard time, in Oz, for some time (for all time, said world-weary students). The Superior Maunt, too tired for colloquy, removed herself to her chambers and settled in a rocker. Amid trappings more severe than what her younger colleagues could tolerate, she rocked a little and thought, as coherently as she could. (It was a habit of hers, to forestall the onset of vagueness, that she review a strand of history from time to time.)

The Witch—so-called—had lived at the cloistered mauntery a decade and a half ago. One couldn’t forgetthat —to the Superior Maunt’s knowledge, no one else in Oz had ever been born with skin as green as new lilac leaves. But Elphaba had kept herself to herself, accepting without complaint such assignments as were meted out. She’d lived there for, what, five, six, seven years? And then, the Superior Maunt had hired Oatsie Manglehand to escort the close-lipped novice back into the civilian world. The small boy had tagged along, neither warmly included nor shooed away.

What had his name been, and where had he come from? An urchin left behind by one of the gypsy bands that scavenged for petty mushrooms among the roots of oakhair trees? The Superior Maunt couldn’t remember the lad’s provenance. Someone younger would know.

Elphaba had gone. Off to Kiamo Ko, there to stew in her own private penance. The Superior Maunt occasionally listened to testimonies of sin confessed by her sisters, but during her tenure as a maunt, Elphaba had never petitioned for an audience. Of this the Superior Maunt was quite sure. Though the nature of Elphaba’s sins had been of great interest to the under-entertained sorority, Elphaba had never obliged.

Bit by bit—the news filtered through even to an outpost like this—the maunts learned of the slow evolution of Elphaba into a Witch, by dint of her rash behavior, her unexpected family ties. (She’d been sister to Nessarose, the Wicked Witch of the East, as some said. For the love of the Unnamed God, who could have expectedthat ?)

The Superior Maunt sighed, chiding herself for the pleasure she took in remembering her contempt for those days. How she had leapt up from her prayers and clapped her hands, to hear that the long reign of the Wizard of Oz had drawn to a close at last, and the merciless old bastard disappeared into the clouds in a hot-air balloon advertising some obscure commercial tonic. Then the surprise ascendancy to the Palace throne of Lady Chuffrey, née Glinda Arduenna, of the Uplands. A sort of prime minister pro tem, until things could be sorted out. (She’d come out of nowhere, politically speaking: money to burn, and a certain sort of style, but who might have guessed the vacuum left by the Wizard’s departure would suck in a society wife with a penchant for glitter gowns?)

Not a terrible choice. The Superior Maunt began talking aloud, to keep her thoughts straight. And I say this without need to reflect nicely on our own Saint Glinda, for whom Lady Chuffrey was probably named. Or renamed herself,Galinda a rural name,Glinda the more sophisticated: the saint’s name. Clever move. No,Glinda, as she became known popularly—a single name, like a house pet, like a lapdog!—Glinda managed to run an open court for a while, and much that had gone wrong, at least in that prior atmosphere of Wizardic secrecy, was corrected. There was an inoculation initiative, very thoughtful. Some schools for millworker girls, of all things. Good programs—expensive to run, though. It had seemed generous and intelligent from the perspective of a cloistered spinster—but what kind of perspective was that?

Then Glinda had stepped aside. Ever the dilettante, she’d grown bored with governing, people assumed, and had taken up collecting miniature furniture with a vengeance. Well, to be fair, maybe she’d been pushed out. For a while a puppet government replaced her. A right dolt, calling himself a Scarecrow. Rumors had flown that he was no real Scarecrow, that he wasn’t even the Scarecrow associated with the Visitor: Dorothy. He was just some out-of-work bum dressed up to fool the masses. Being paid every weekend at the back door, probably—but by whom? Glinda’s people? Her thwarters? The banker barons of industrial Gillikin? Who knew? In due course he was booted out by the latest nuisance, the next hollow man, reeking with glory: the sacred Emperor.

The long years since Elphaba had driven her wild broom across the sky had been quiet—on the surface. Certain atrocities had ceased, and that was good. Other atrocities replaced them. Certain diseases subsided, others had taken grip. Now something was agitating the Scrow and the Yunamata in the West, something so fierce that agents from one or both of the tribes were striking out at neutral parties.

Like the junior maunts sent out on a mission by the toadies helming the motherchapel in the Emerald City. Those sycophantic biddies! They’d cluck themselves to death if their Emperor asked it. Their emissaries, those innocent young things, had stopped here at the Cloister of Saint Glinda for nourishment and cheer. Where were their faces now, wondered the Superior Maunt. She hoped she’d never see them again, neither in her dreams nor in a parcel in the delivery of post.

She was drifting off to sleep in her rocker. She arose, groaning at the pain in her joints, and tried to pull her shutters tight. One of them stuck and had to stay as it was. She’d meant to have it seen to this afternoon, but with the arrival of the caravan, she’d forgotten.

She visited the toilet reserved for her private use, and dressed in her rough gown for the night. When she settled herself on her horsehair mattress, she hoped she would drift off quickly. It had been a taxing day.

The jackal moon looked in her window at her. The Superior Maunt turned her head so as not to meet its eye, a folk custom with which she’d been raised seven, eight decades earlier, and never shaken.

Her mind went briefly to those days in the Pertha Hills of Gillikin, days sharper and more wonderful in memory than what she could apprehend of current life. The taste of pearlfruit leaves! The water on her father’s wagon roof when the rains came. The rains came so much more often in her youth. The snow smelled of things. Everything smelled. Wonderfully or not, it was wonderful that they smelled. Now her nose hardly worked at all.

She said a prayer or two.

Liir. That was his name. Liir.

She prayed to remember it when the time came for her to wake up.

THE NEXT MORNING,before Oatsie Manglehand gathered her band together for the final push to the Emerald City, she took Nubb to a small plain parlor. There they met with the Superior Maunt, Sister Doctor, and Sister Apothecaire.

When the Superior Maunt sat down, the others sat. Since she abstained from morning tea, the others abstained.

If we are to help this boy, we must share what we know, began the Superior Maunt. I’ve picked up all sorts of hearsay. A report from Sister Doctor, if you please.

Sister Doctor, a beefy woman with questionable credentials but proven expertise in diagnosis, wasn’t sanguine about the prospects for the invalid. He appears to have suffered little from exposure, so he will have been left for dead only shortly before you found him.

Oatsie didn’t speak to this. She didn’t want to begin by contradicting a professional woman, even if she thought Sister Doctor had to be wrong.

Sister Doctor pressed on. He is a shattered man, quite literally. It isn’t mine to guess how he came to be so wounded, but his state is like nothing I’ve ever seen. One of his legs is broken in multiple places; both his wrists are sprained. One of his shoulder blades is cracked. Many of his ribs. Four of his fingers. Three of the bones in his left foot. Not a single bone punctured the skin, however. And, apparently, no blood loss.

Not unless the blood ran off in the rain squall, thought Oatsie, but kept still.

Sister Doctor rubbed the back of her neck and grimaced. I spent so much time setting bones that I could do only a cursory exam of his organs. He is breathing shallowly and with difficulty. The phlegm that runs from his nose is both yellow and bloody. This suggests respiratory troubles. Sister Apothecaire has her own notions about this—

To start with the question of the discharge, began Sister Apothecaire, somewhat overenthusiastically, but Sister Doctor spoke over her.

Sister Apothecaire can speak presently. I utter no opinion about her…conjectures.

The heart? asked the Superior Maunt, overriding the old tired conflict.

Working. Sister Doctor grunted as if in disbelief at her own answer.

The guts?

The word might bewobbly . I suspect an imploded spleen or the like, and septic poisoning. There’s a funny color in the extremities and on certain contusions that I don’t care for at all.

What color is that? asked the Superior Maunt.

Sister Doctor pursed her lips. Well, I’m a bit overtired. We worked all night, you know, without resting. But I should have said there’s a green tinge to the bruises, ringed with a plum-yellowy margin.

Suggestive of internal bleeding, you think…or a disease? Or maybe something else?

He may be comatose or he may be brain-dead. I have no way of knowing. Though his heart is good, his color, as I say, is not, so circulation may be failing. The lungs have been compromised severely—whether by a preexisting condition or by some aspect of his adventures I cannot venture an opinion at this time.

To conclude— The Superior Maunt rolled her hand in the air.

Death by nightfall, maybe tomorrow morning, said Sister Doctor.

We could pray for a miracle, said Nubb. Oatsie snorted.

Sister Apothecaire will handle treatment, said Sister Doctor, making it sound as if she thought prayer would be a wiser course.

Youcould pray for a miracle, said Sister Apothecaire to Nubb. I have other work to do.

Sister Apothecaire, said the Superior Maunt. You have something to add?

Sister Apothecaire pushed her spectacles down her nose, then removed them, huffed upon them, and wiped them clean on the hem of her apron. She was a Munchkin and exhibited the Munchkin farmwife’s passion for hygiene—not a bad attribute for a person in her profession. It’s all puzzling, she agreed. We have made him as comfortable as we could, and as the mercy of our mission requires. With tape we have bound his limbs to splints and shims. Should he live, he may regain some degree of motor function.

What does that mean? asked Oatsie. Speak clearly to the ignorant. Me.

He may be able to sit up, to use his hands, if his nerves are not shot to hell. He may be able to walk, in a fashion; that is unlikely, but as I say we aim for the stars. What is more troubling is the discharge from his membranes. The nose, most obviously, but the other orifices as well. Ears, eyes, anus, penis.

You’ve had a chance to do some initial work in the laboratory, prompted the Superior Maunt.

Indeed. Just a start. I’ve found nothing definitive, nothing I haven’t seen before, either in my station here at the mauntery or in my prior position as Matron’s Assistant at the Respite of Incurables in the Emerald City.

Sister Doctor rolled her eyes. Sister Apothecaire never lost an opportunity to publish her credentials.

Canyou supply us with a hypothesis? asked the Superior Maunt.

It would be rash to do so. Even sitting, Sister Apothecaire was shorter than her peers, so her sideways glance at her disapproving colleague required her to poke her chin up, which perhaps gave her a more combative expression than she intended. Whoever he is, I do wonder if this lad was from high altitudes. The mucous seepage may be due to the systemic collapse of arterial function due to a sudden change in air pressure. I haven’t seen such a symptom before, but the Fallows are very low ground indeed compared to the highest peaks of the Great Kells.

The way Sister Doctor murmured mmmmm made it plain to all what she thought of her colleague’s hypothesis. She straightened her spine as if to say, hurry up; her longer spine gave her height over her colleague, which she liked to use to advantage.

The Superior Maunt intervened. Do you agree with Sister Doctor that death is imminent?

Sister Apothecaire sniffed. The two didn’t like to agree on anything, but she couldn’t help it. She nodded her head. There may be more to learn, she added. The longer he hangs on, the more chance I’ll have to study his nature.

You will study nothing in his nature that isn’t directly related to the easing of his afflictions, said the Superior Maunt mildly.

But Mother Maunt! It is in my charge as an apothecaire. The syndrome he dies from may afflict others in time, and this is an opportunity to learn. To turn our noses up at it is to discount revelation.

I have delivered my opinion on the matter, and I expect it to be observed. Now, to you both: Is there anything we can do for him that we are not doing?

Notify the next of kin, said Sister Doctor.

The Superior Maunt nodded and rubbed her eyes. She lifted a saucer of tea to her lips now, and without hesitation the others did the same.

I propose we get one of the sisters to play music for him, then, she concluded. If our only contribution is to ease his death, let us do what we can.

Preferably not the sister who was torturing the harp when we arrived yesterday, muttered Oatsie Manglehand.

Have you anything to add, Oatsie? said the Superior Maunt. I mean aside from your critique of musical performance?

Only this, said the caravan guide. I won’t bother to apologize for contradicting them, she decided. Sister Doctor proposes that the boy would have been set upon by brigands and left to die only shortly before we found him. But the terrain out there, my friends, is flat as a rolled-out tart crust.

I don’t follow, said the Superior Maunt.

The body had to have been lying there for longer than Sister Doctor suggests. I would have seen the marauders in retreat. There was no place for them to hide. There is no tree cover. You know how bright a night it was; I could see for miles.

Puzzling indeed.

Do you use magic in your ministrations?

Oatsie Manglehand, said the Superior Maunt tiredly, we are a sorority of unionist maunts. Such a question. She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with old, bowed fingers. Over her venerable figure, Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire both nodded silently to Oatsie:Yes. We do. What little we’re capable of. When we need to .

The Superior Maunt continued. Before resting for the night, I recalled his name. The boy was named Liir. He left the mauntery with Sister Saint Aelphaba—well, Elphaba, I suppose; she never professed her vows. Do you remember the boy at all, Sister Doctor?

I had just arrived about the time Elphaba was setting out, said Sister Doctor. I remember Elphaba Thropp a little. I didn’t care for her. Her moods and silences seemed hostile rather than holy. Of the many urchins who are abandoned around here, however, I remember even less. Children don’t interest me unless they are gravely ill. Was he gravely ill?

He is now, said the Superior Maunt. And somewhere, if his mind is still able to dream, he is still a child in there, I presume.

Very sentimental indeed, Mother Maunt, said Sister Doctor.

I do remember him, now you give his name, said Oatsie Manglehand. Not well, of course. In the better years I make three or four separate runs, and we’re talking twelve, fifteen, eighteen years ago? I have packed more than a few children onto heaps of worldly goods, and buried some by the side of the track as well. But he was a quiet lad, unsure of himself. He shadowed Elphaba as if she were his mother. Was she his mother?

Oh, dubious, very dubious, said Sister Doctor.

There is the green tone to his bruises, Sister Apothecaire reminded them.

I blush when I’m embarrassed, Sister Apothecaire; this does not relate me to the radish, said the Superior Maunt. Well, we’ll have to ask around. Most of the older sisters who might have remembered Elphaba are dead now, and the others are in their second childhood. But Sister Cook, if she hasn’t been guzzling the cooking sherry—or perhaps if she has—she will know something. She always slips food to the children loitering in the kitchen yard, and she may remember where the boy came from.

Meanwhile—and the good woman rose, to signal that the meeting was done—we will do our best with Liir, whether he be witch’s spawn or the reject of a gypsy mother. It hardly matters on one’s deathbed from whom one has been born, does it? The world is the womb now, and the Afterlife waits for one to be born into it.

She turned rheumy eyes on Oatsie Manglehand. The wagoneer could see that the Superior Maunt was waiting, hopefully, for her own deliverance from this world and delivery unto the next. Oatsie accepted the old woman’s cool hands on her forehead, knowing the gesture was intended as a blessing, a forgiveness…perhaps a farewell.

The wind is high, said Oatsie Manglehand. If we leave now and find the water level low enough at the near ford, we’ll make the far bank of the Gillikin by nightfall.

The Unnamed God speed your progress, murmured the Superior Maunt, though her eyes had shunted inward, as if already on to the next problem. Indeed, she was. Before Oatsie had finished tying the strings of her boots, she heard the Superior Maunt say to her colleagues, Now you must help me on the stairs, ladies, for I will go to visit our invalid.

She’s a tough old bird, muttered Oatsie to Nubb.

Let’s get out of here, said Nubb. Don’t want to stay under any roofs that house a son of a witch, even if it’s holy roofs.

THE MAUNTERY,the oldest bits of which dated back several hundred years, was conventionally arranged around a courtyard. The vernacular of austere Merthic style—flattened stone columns, bricked quoins devoid of plaster or wash—was indicative of the speed with which defensible households had needed to be raised.

Up far too many stairs, the surgery included an office crammed into a closet, where Sister Doctor kept her notes and manuals. In a storage space under some eaves, Sister Apothecaire filled oaken cabinets with her unguents and restoratives, purgatives and negatives. (Small, as many Munchkins still were, she could work upright in a space too cramped for her colleague to stand upright in, so she got the private office. Endless grousing over this.)

The surgery also gave onto two largish dormitories. The right-hand chamber served the poor and ill of the domain. The left chamber was reserved for ailing maunts. Through here, behind a stout door, loomed an odd-shaped space, the finial of a corner tower. Inside, therefore, it was a round room, with narrow slitted windows looking in three directions. The room had no true walls or ceiling, just sloping rafters that met at the top of the conical space. A bedbound patient could stare up and see how the roof planking traversed the ribs. There were bats, but they were cleaner than most of the patients, so they were let be.

It’s like nothing so much as being inside a witch’s hat, thought the Superior Maunt as she paused to catch her breath. Then she pushed aside the curtain and entered.

Liir—if it was he, and she was rather certain it was—was laid upon the high bed more like a corpse than an invalid. He’s been given no pillow? asked the Superior Maunt in something of a whisper.

The neck.

I see. Well, there wasn’t much to see, really. His braced limbs were swathed in wide strips of gauze, his chest bound, his head undressed, and that dark hair cleaned with oil and herbs. His eyes, behind slits in the bandage, were closed. The lashes were long and feathery. He has not been torrefied, has he? You have tucked him up like a victim of burns.

The skin needs tending for the sores, so we cannot fully immobilize him.

I suspect not, thought the Superior Maunt.

Her eyes weren’t what they had been. She leaned forward and looked closely at the seams where Liir’s upper and lower eyelids met.

Then she lifted his left hand and studied his nails. His skin was clammy, like the rind of a valley-skark cheese. The fingernails were crazed.

Pull back his loincloth.

Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire exchanged glances and did as they were bade.

The Superior Maunt had had little reason to become an expert in the male anatomy, but she showed no sign of pleasure or revulsion. She gently shifted the member this way and that, and lifted the testicles. I ought to have brought my reading spectacles, she murmured.

She needed help straightening up. Very well, do him up again, she said. Her maunts obliged.

Sister Doctor, said the Superior Maunt. Sister Apothecaire. I will not have you loosen his bindings to show me the bruises you report. I rely on your perspicacity. However I make note here, and will do so formally in the Log of the House, that I observe no sign of greenness in his skin. I will tolerate no murmur belowstairs that we are harboring any sort of—aberration. If you have been indiscreet enough to propose such to your sisters, correct the damage at once. Is this understood?

She didn’t wait for an answer, and turned back to the body.

It was hard to take the measure of a man who displayed the flaccid composure of a corpse. No brow is noble when it is dead: It has no need to be. This lad seemed about as close to death as one could be and still harbor hope of recovery, yet the sense she had about him was neither tranquil nor restive.

He was a young man, with youth’s agreeable form: That much was apparent despite the bandages. The young suffer and die, too, and sometimes it is merciful, she thought. Then she was filled with an unseemly glee and selfishness that she had lived a long odd life of her own, and it wasn’t over yet. She was in better shape than this poor benighted kid.

Mother Maunt, are you yourself? asked Sister Doctor.

A tremor of digestive grief, nothing more.

She couldn’t put her finger on it. She turned to go. There was Sister Cook to interview next, and other pressing matters of the day. As Sister Apothecaire fussed with the bedclothes and Sister Doctor dived to confirm the pulse, the Superior Maunt sighed. We will do our duty, and no more than our duty, she reminded them.

They stood to attention. Yes, Mother Maunt.

Neither tranquil nor restive, she thought again: It is as if his spirit is not here. His body is not dead, but his spirit is not here. How can this be?

Blasphemy, and bad science besides, she lectured herself, and scooted away as fast as her arthritic limbs could manage.

THESUPERIORMAUNThad long since given up supervising Sister Cook. For one thing, the ancient maunt had little interest in cuisine, her stomach having been soured by too many decades of regrettable food served under bad kitchen government. Those appetites remaining to her, after all these decades, concerned feeding the spirit alone.

So, pausing at the thresholds of the mauntery’s kitchens, the Superior Maunt felt a faint queasiness.

Given where the mauntery was situated—on the back route from Quadling Country—the establishment took in its share of Quadling girls deemed too plain or unruly for marriage, or too dull for the mild professions—teacher, governess, nurse. Sometimes their families reclaimed them. More often, the girls ran away, but at least they were older and better fed when they struck out on their own.

Still, while in residence, they were as a population docile enough, and they made good kitchen assistants. Looking for Sister Cook, it occurred to the Superior Maunt that a Quadling girl might sit with the convalescent upstairs.

Sister Cook? called the Superior Maunt, but her voice was rusty. Sister Cook?

There was no reply. Into the kitchens ventured the Superior Maunt. A few quiet girls worked in a sunny corner, kneading vast tough pillows of bread dough with their bare knees. The peasant practice was generally frowned upon, but the Superior Maunt passed by the novices, pretending not to notice, as she didn’t feel up to delivering a chastisement.

Sister Liquor was high on a ladder, giving each purple glass bottle of savorsuckle brandy a quarter turn. She was singing to herself and swaying on her rung.

Mercy, murmured the Superior Maunt, and kept going.

The pantry offended with the promise of lunch: bread, moldiflower root, rounds of aged skark cheese, and soft blue olives, the kind even donkeys refused to eat. It’s notthat hard to keep your mind on higher things when this is the daily fare, observed the Superior Maunt.

The outside door was open. Beyond the pantry, in the walled orchard, wands of pearlfruit trees twitched and shuddered in the wind. The Superior Maunt went through, as much to catch a breath of fresh air as to see the severe autumn colors of pearlfruit leaves, which shaded from granite pink to a hesitant periwinkle.

In the emerald grass near the well several novices sat on their aprons. They’d taken for a little outing one of the palsied biddies in a wheeled chair and kindly thrown a tartan over her lap. The ancient maunt—older even than the Superior Maunt, by the look of it, or more infirm, anyway—had pulled her shawl over her forehead, to keep the morning sun out of her eyes. Two of the novices were husking pearlfruit pods. A third was fingering some sort of instrument, a kind of zither or dulcimer with lengths of catgut strung along two axes, one set perpendicularly above the other. The effect of her plucking and slithering was more tympanic than melodic. Perhaps the thing was out of tune. Or the player untalented. Or even that it was a foreign way of making music. Still, the other novices seemed not to mind, indeed, even to take pleasure from the droning sounds.

They leaped to their feet at her approach, scattering their work in the grass. They were Quadlings, the younger three of them. Girls, please, said the Superior Maunt. To your tasks. Then, deferentially, Your health, Mother.

The older maunt nodded but didn’t look up. Her eyes were on the fingers of the girl playing.

I was hoping to find Sister Cook, said the Superior Maunt.

She’s in the mushroom cellar, harvesting for a fungal soup. Shall I fetch her? asked one of them.

No, said the Superior Maunt, looking one to the other. Are you all first-years?

Shhhh, said the crone.

The Superior Maunt did not like being shhh’d. Are you professed, the lot of you?

Shhhh, he’s coming.

Mother, I have work— said the Superior Maunt. The sister in the chair raised her wrinkled hand. She had no fingerprints, no lifelines on her right hand—no identity, no history, nothing to read, as if her hand had been burned clean of individuality through some chastening flame.

Only one old biddy had this hand. What are you on about, Mother Yackle? asked the Superior Maunt.

The old creature didn’t answer, didn’t look up, but she did crook one hobbled finger skyward. The Superior Maunt turned. All kinds of romance and lore about visitors from the sky, from sacred scripture to rabble-rousing prophecies. The sky was hard to ignore.

It wasn’t the sky, though, that Mother Yackle was indicating, but one of the trees. Out of it fell a ruffling cascade, like a stack of ladies’ fans sliding silkily off a credenza. A scatter of brazen feathers, red winking. A gold eye set in a pear-shaped skull.

A crimson pfenix! Male, to judge by the plumage. The species was rumored to have been nearly hunted to extinction. The last known colonies of pfenix lived in the very south of Oz, where the watery acres of marsh began at last to dry out, and a strip of jungle thought to be seven miles wide still defeated travelers to this day. This fellow—blown off course, perhaps, or deranged by disease?

The pfenix landed on the center of the musical instrument that the third girl was playing. She looked up in some alarm; she hadn’t been attending anything but her music. The pfenix craned his head and fixed first one, then another golden eye on the Superior Maunt.

If you’re looking for the talented one, said the pfenix—well, the Pfenix, if he spoke—this is the one for you. I’ve been watching for an hour, and she takes little notice of anything but her music.

The women said nothing. Talking Birds were not uncommon, but they rarely bothered to speak to human beings. What a specimen this Pfenix was! His rack of tail feathers fanned out laterally, like a turkey’s, but a Pfenix just as easily could unfurl his close-coiled camouflage feathers, which spiked globally all about him, affording a sort of private chamber of airy, concealing, fernlike fronds. A mature male Pfenix aloft in full display could look like a shimmering globe in the air.

Do you know the boy who has been brought here? asked the Superior Maunt, beginning to govern her own awe.

I don’t know any boys. I don’t consort with your kind at all. I am a Red Pfenix, he added, as if they might not have taken it in.

The Superior Maunt disapproved of vainglory in all its forms. She turned to the musician. What’s your name?

The girl looked up but didn’t answer. Her face was not as ruddy as some Quadlings—less red, more umber. Its shape was pleasing, proportioned along the lines of an oakhair nut: broad brow, high cheekbones, sweet swollen cheeks like a toddler’s, a small but firm chin. The Superior Maunt, who did not pay much attention to the looks of her novices, was surprised.

She was too beautiful to be a natural maunt, so she must be a moron.

She doesn’t speak much, said one of the novices.

She’s been here three weeks, added the other. Her whispered prayers are in a dialect we can’t decipher. We think she cannot raise her voice.

The Unnamed God hears anyway. Where do you come from, child?

Sister Cook will know, said the first novice.

Up, girl, up, said the Superior Maunt. You have been chosen by a Red Pfenix. You don’t talk much, but you understand our tongue? Just the one I need. She offered her hand to the musician, who rose, reluctantly. The Red Pfenix nestled in the grass and set to ridding himself of lice.

Can I send for a bowl of scented water, something? Is there a way we can offer charity to you? said the Superior Maunt. We don’t have visits from the likes of you often. In fact, I think never.

I’m only passing through, said the Red Pfenix. There’s a Conference farther west. But the music drew me down.

You love music?

If I loved music I wouldn’t have stopped. She doesn’t play very well, does she? No, I don’t love music; it interferes with my homing devices. I was merely curious to see an instrument like this again. The sound of her playing reminded me of a time I had seen one long ago; I’d quite forgotten. But thank you for your charity. I require nothing but a little rest.

The Red Pfenix looked at the musician, who stood shyly in her pale grey novice’s skirts. She’s a puzzle, that one is, said the Red Pfenix.

Got him! shouted Sister Cook, coming up from behind with a snare, and indeed she had. The Red Pfenix squawked and thrashed; all the eyes in his plumage contorted. The scream was horrible. Pfenix steaks! said Sister Cook. I have just the recipe!

Let him go, said Mother Yackle.

It was not her place to speak next, and the Superior Maunt was irritated. She knew Sister Cook was thinking: Pfenix steaks! With knobs of butter, and tarragon mustard, and small new potatoes roasted in the same pan…

Let him go, said the Superior Maunt, more sternly than Mother Yackle.

Shoot, said Sister Cook. I spend fifteen minutes creeping up on this bird, and with my lumbago I actually manage to catch it, and you say ‘Let him go’?

Do not question my authority.

I merely question your sense, said Sister Cook heavily. She turned the snare over, and the Red Pfenix exploded away from the orchard, cursing.

He was on his way to a Conference, said Mother Yackle.

Enough, said the Superior Maunt. Enough of this. Sister Cook, who is this novice? Where did she come from?

Sister Cook was grinding her teeth in annoyance at the missed opportunity. Candle, she muttered. Left here by a gypsy cousin for safekeeping, said he’d be back in a year. Either she’d be mauntified by then or he’d reclaim her, but I said I’d take her on. She causes no trouble because she can’t gossip with the other girls, and she knows how to make a mean marrow gravy. I’ve had her working with Sister Sauce on the feast day roast.

Can you spare her?

Can I spare a Red Pfenix is a better question, and the answer to that one isno .

We don’t eat Animals, said the Superior Maunt. I know times have changed, but it’s in our charter. We don’t eat anything that can talk back to us, Sister Cook, and if I find you have been butchering behind my back…

I can hardly spare her, said Sister Cook, looking at the musician. But if you make her take that unnerving domingon with her, I’ll call it even.

Domingon, is that what it is. I’d read of them, but never seen one. Come, my daughter, domingon and all. The Superior Maunt gestured, with as tender a smile as her crabbed old mouth could assume. The girl rose. She took the Superior Maunt’s hand in an easy, unaffected way—the other girls snickered. Yes, she must be simple.

I had come looking to ask you what you remembered of a novice we once housed—the strange green girl, Elphaba.

Before my time, snapped Sister Cook, and left.

Mother Yackle scratched her nose and yawned.

The Red Pfenix was still screaming in the sky. He circled the towers of the mauntery, safe now, and recovering the ability to be affronted. He was like a clot of blood swimming above the infirmary.

Did you say there’s a boy in the house? asked Mother Yackle. She let her shawl slip back, and raised her bleary, milk-clotted eyes toward the Superior Maunt. Did he bring back the broom?

THESUPERIORMAUNTwas going to need a long rest after lunch, she knew: all these stairs. A certain penance regarding the joints. But she exerted herself, and Candle lent a willing arm without being asked, which was a good sign that the girl wasn’t hopelessly slow.

The sun was high enough overhead by now that the room had grown warmer and begun to sink into noon shadow. The young man lay as he had lain, twitchless, blanketed with an unnatural calm. Sister Apothecaire and Sister Doctor had brought their small chores close, so they could be nearby while they worked—Sister Apothecaire, the grinding of herbs in a mortar, and Sister Doctor the annotating of symptoms in a ledger. Sister Doctor sat on one side of the bed, Sister Apothecaire on the other.

You know this novice? said the Superior Maunt.

Her colleagues neither admitted familiarity, nor dissented.

She’s a garden girl with an instrument called a domingon. I have heard of these but never see one. Apparently Candle has a small talent at music. Perhaps in the long hours on watch over Liir, she will develop it. Candle, meet Sister Doctor and Sister Apothecaire. You will have seen them at table or in chapel if not elsewhere.

It was not the professional maunts’ obligation to bow, but when Candle did not bow either, Sister Apothecaire, out of social anxiety, gave a lurching sort of bob that might have meant any number of things.

To the older women the Superior Maunt said, There are matters more pressing for you to attend to than the continual observation of our new guest. I have a different assignment for you.

Mother Maunt! replied Sister Doctor. Far be it from me to question your discernment. But I must remind you, in loyal obeisance of course, that while you govern the spirit of this House, I supervise the health of the individual souls within it.

As to such treatments that may be required, began Sister Apothecaire, but the Superior Maunt held up her hand.

I will hear no objection. Candle seems a simple soul, but she can sit here and watch the boy. She understands my instructions. If he so much as speaks, she will let someone know. She can practice her scales and perhaps grow in skill. If he is to die, let him be comforted by the peculiar drone of her instrument. This is my wish, and I have made my point.

She cupped her hands before her in an archaic, formal gesture that meant be it thus or, depending on the expression of the speaker, enough out of you, you.

Nevertheless, Sister Apothecaire protested. I’m well aware of this girl, she doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. You are making a terrible mistake—

In this rare instance Sister Apothecaire is correct, said Sister Doctor. Should any wound suppurate, or a complication develop—

I have other jobs for you two, said the Superior Maunt. Your insistence at brooking my will convinces me. You two are the ones for the next job at hand.

They paused in their flailing, affronted and curious.

I haven’t yet told you what I recently learned about the three missionary novices from the Emerald City who stopped here some days ago, said the Superior Maunt. Their small party was ambushed and they were all killed. Scraped, I’m afraid. Someone will need to find out who did the deed, and why.

She turned. Finish your nostrums and reinforce your binding spells at once, enough to last till dinner anyway, and come with me. I shall nap briefly instead of taking a meal, and we will convene in my sectorium when the lunch prayers are concluded.

She was untrained in their profession. How did she know they’d used several illicit binding spells? This was why she was the Superior Maunt, they guessed. She didn’t know medicine but she knew women.

There was nothing for them to do but obey. Walking slightly in advance of them, the Superior Maunt couldn’t help but smile faintly to herself. The medical womenwere good, solid folk. They were merely curious, curious as hell, like the rest of the House. And whatever was troubling Liir, inside or out, he would recover or decline more comfortably without being smothered by the attentions of middle-aged maunts.

The Superior Maunt paused to catch her breath. Stairs were the devil. Her two colleagues respectfully froze in place while she wheezed. The willpower of women, she thought. These two, and me besides. I make the awful choice to put them in danger. If anyone can manage the task at hand, they will. Keep them safe, she prayed.

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