Wicked 2 – Son of a Witch

 General Kynot pretended to peck at his chest for vermin. When he raised his head, his eyes were dry again. It is not easy to trust the wisdom of a human person, he admitted. Like so many humans, you could be lying. Leading us into a trap. Promising us freedom, and tricking us into an ambush of yet more dragons. Yet we have so few choices but to trust. After all, you are the son of the Witch.

 Don’t base your decision on a false premise, said Liir. I will never know for sure who my parents were. And even if I did, the son of a witch can be as wrong as anyone else. Let us fly because you are persuaded we should, not because I say so.

 I vote yes, said Dosey.

 So do I, said the Heron, though I can’t fly anymore, of course.

 I didn’tcall for a vote, said Kynot.

 That’s why I voted, Dosey replied.

 Witch nation! Witch nation! said the Dodo.

 

 THEY LAUNCHED AT NOON,maybe ninety Birds, swooping westward into the buffeting winds that ran the span of the prairie to build up enough strength to crash against the Kells.

 The venture almost scattered them at once. The Wrens tumbled like husks of dried pinlobble; the Ducks shat themselves silly; the Night Rocs couldn’t see in the widest daylight Oz had to offer, and nearly brained themselves by wheeling backward into the peaks.

 Liir was giddy and vertiginous. The broom shot out over a rocky sward, so low that he could make out the surprised expressions of wild highland goats. Another instant and he was fifteen times higher than the highest tower of Kiamo Ko, and a silver river winked in the sunlight below him, narrow as a bootlace.

 Just fighting to stay together took the better part of an afternoon. When they finally reached air space beyond the forested foothills, above the nearest start of the endless grassland, where the power of the wind diminished, they settled to rest and feed and count their number. Four of their ninety had been lost in the first descent out of Kumbricia’s Pass.

 But there were grassland grubs and beetles, and the backwash of mountain rills to splash in, so they made their first encampment.

 

 IT TOOK A FEW DAYSof rehearsal for the Night Rocs to learn how to maneuver by daylight, but the Grasslands were forgiving. After hours of uninhibited flight, with no dragons approaching, the Birds grew braver and flew in a looser formation.

 For the time being they avoided other populations, though far below them they delighted in the spectacle of wild tsebra wheeling and cantering in their winter migration toward the south, a flurry of black and white markings against the brown ground, an alphabet in the act of writing the story of tsebra migration. Or notes, singing a mythic history.

 Draffes, their long tawny necks swaying, saluted them in their high-pitched voices. Liir couldn’t hear them, but Kynot said that evening that sentient Draffes were living among draffes, in apparent harmony.

 A small band of Vleckmarshes flew up to greet the flying Conference (Kynot would not allow the Birds to call themselves Witch Nation, despite the Dodo’s pleading). At the sight of Liir on the broomstick, the Vleckmarshes made common cause with the travelers, and flew alongside.

 Then a bounty of Angel Swans, who usually kept to themselves out of pride for the whiteness of their mien, gave wing. So too a noisy clot of Grey Geese, who were wintering together on the banks of a nameless broad winter lake that appeared and disappeared in different places every year, they said.

 The Conference flew in waves, the bigger birds working harder, providing a breakfront against the wind, the smaller birds in the slipstream, and lower, in case of attack by air. It was Dosey who spotted the tents of the Scrow, arrayed in the usual geometric precision against the trackless blanket of earth.

 Liir did not want to approach the camp, not yet. But General Kynot, agreeing to serve as an emissary, dove out of formation and whipped around the camp until he could decide which tent belonged to the Princess Nastoya.

 That night, the Conference having settled under a shelter of windthorn hedge, Kynot reported to Liir.

 I found one who could speak to me, an old scholar named Shem Ottokos, said the General. I told him you were abroad, but he said he didn’t need me to tell him that. He had been able to make you out with his naked eye, because the cape unfurls so blackly against the scrim of the evening. He had the tent lifted for his queen to see, and though she is mostly blind now, she said she could make you out against the sky. He thinks it was the clot of the Conference she was seeing, its whole mass. She wants to see you, said Ottokos. She has something to tell you. Whether you can help her or not.

 If she agreed to meet me later, she can tell me then, said Liir. Did she?

 The Scrow rarely travel during this time of year, and they haven’t settled any peace with the Yunamata. Ottokos does not know if he can convince the tribal elders to pull up camp and brave Kumbricia’s Pass. He doesn’t know how to talk to his people about this. But I explained about the extermination of the dragons. Perhaps Ottokos will be persuasive.

 If Princess Nastoya still has time, we have time, said Liir. It is her time that we need to read, not ours.

 

 NORTHWARD, BEATING AGAINST THE ICY WINTERgusts known in some circles as the Farts of Kumbricia; northward and northward, and the Thousand Year Grasslands went white under drifts of frost. The snow was lipped and patterned by the wind into shapes like the imbricated scales on a fish. Now out of sight of the Kells, now back; now joined by a throng of Snow Geese, five hundred strong, now by a mystic Pale Crane, her partner, and her senile though quite energetic mother.

 At last, because the smaller Birds feared freezing to death, and the food stock grew scarce, the Conference wheeled eastward. Kynot had a notion that they could most safely cross the Kells again at the point where the Arjikis had built their mountain villages. If nothing else, there would be the chance of a barn in which to roost, or a bonfire around which to warm themselves. It was rough work, though. Once more suffering the churning of wind against the hard breast of the Kells, the Conference sought a lower altitude, which took more time but afforded quicker shelter should a storm come up.

 The weather was with them, at least. Day after day the sky was peerless blue, if pinion-quaking cold. Under snow squalls or rain clouds the Conference would have fumbled. But they always had the chance to move on: this kept the smaller birds brave.

 They came at last to the highland valleys and white wastes of the Arjiki stronghold of Kiamo Ko. Liir did not care to alight there, but the nights were drawing in earlier and earlier, and he had no choice but to see it as a blessing.

 His rump sore, and almost unable to uncurl his spine from the arched position in which he flew, he landed on the cobbles of the courtyard with 220 of the smaller Birds, while the larger ones waited formally outside for an invitation. The monkeys shrieked, though whether it was out of terror or welcome, Liir couldn’t tell. Chistery met him at the top of the steps to the main hall.

 I suppose you’ve asked me, for old time’s sake, to join you, he said. I’d come if I could. But I don’t think my wings are up to it.

 You can’t have had news of our intentions, said Liir.

 You’re a message, that’s all, said Chistery. No one can watch you raveling and unraveling up the columns of mountain air without knowing you intend to be seen. I’ll tell you, my heart was in my throat though, as you came nearer. I thought to myself, It’s Elphaba herself.

 No, it’s only me, said Liir. How’s Nanny?

 Past her prime. For the fourth decade in a row, I’d say. She’s having a sandwich of egg and dried garmot. Do you want to go up?

 I suppose I’d better. May we stay here?

 You needn’t ask, said Chistery, slightly hurt. Until someone else comes to claim it, the house is yours.

 Nanny sat up in bed, looking gently at her bread crusts. When she saw Liir, she smiled and patted the bedclothes. Don’t worry, I won’t wet, she said. I’ve already gone.

 Do you know who I am? asked Liir.

 Ought I? She didn’t sound worried about it. Is it Shell?

 Decidedly not.

 Good. I didn’t like Shell very much. She held out the pieces of bread. I saw the Birds coming, and I saved them something from my lunch.

 That’s nice of you.

 Actually, the bread was a bit stale. But maybe they won’t notice. It’s nice to see you again, whoever you are. Just like old times. She patted his hand. I never could tell what was going on then, either, but now I don’t mind so much.

 Nanny?

 Hmmmm? She was beginning to drift off to sleep.

 Did you ever hear of someone named Yackle?

 One eyelid of Nanny’s cocked open. Might have done, she said warily. Who wants to know?

 Only me.

 Days a lifetime ago are clearer to me than today. I don’t even know what sex I am anymore, and I can remember what I got in my Lurlinemas basket when I was ten. A tin cannikin full of colored beads—

 Nanny. Yackle.

 I met someone named Yackle once, said Nanny. I always remembered it because her name reminded me of jackal. Like the jackal moon, you know.

 Where?

 She had a little commercial enterprise, if you call it that, in the Emerald City. The Lower Quarter, downslope of Southstairs, if you know where that is.

 I do.

 I went in to have my tea leaves read and to ask a question about Melena. Your grandmother.

 Liir didn’t bother to correct her.

 Yackle was an old crone without much time left, I’d guess. But she still had talent. She gave me a few words of advice, read me the riot act about my petty filching, and told me Elphaba would have a history. Can you believe it!

 How did she know about Elphaba?

 Silly. I told her, of course. I told her Melena had given birth to a green daughter. I bought whatever Yackle could provide as a corrective agent to ensure the second child didn’t come out green. And she didn’t, did Nessarose. Neither did Shell. Only our Elphie. A history! Can you believe that?

 Must be a common name.

 Yackle, you mean? Don’t know about that. Never heard it again. Why do you ask?

 Do you think Elphaba will have a history?

 She does already, ninnykins! I just saw her flying up the valley as large as a cloud. Her cape went out behind her, a thousand bits in flight. Nearly touched the peaks to the left and the right. If that’s not a history, what is?

 

 CHISTERY SAW HIM OUT.You’re welcome here anytime, he said. This is your house.

 She always loved you best, you know, said Liir, grinning as he laced the braces at the clasp of the Witch’s cape.

 Considering what she was like, is that a compliment or an insult? replied the Snow Monkey. Fly well.

 

 BY THE TIME THEY NEAREDthe Emerald City, half a month later, the Conference of the Birds was six thousand strong. They’d had to slow down as they grew larger, for fear of midair accidents, but east of the Kells the winds were less harsh. As the Conference crossed the Gillikin River, coming into sight of the smart little villages and spruce knolls and brick factories and millhouses of the rolling Gillikin tableland, its shadow grew more definite by the day.

 Liir had no intention of attacking the Emerald City. The Birds were not warriors, and the Conference, or Witch Nation, wasn’t military in makeup. Liir didn’t want to see Shell, nor the Lady Glinda, assuming she had returned to take up residence in her Mennipin Square town house for the winter season.

 He only wanted that they should be seen.

 It was nearing evening when they approached the walls of the City from the north. The sun was sagging against a few distant scraggly clouds, heading pinkly for its rest, and then it disappeared behind the horizon. The western sky would remain glassy bright for a half hour yet.

 As workers clocked off at the Palace, as the boulevards were thronged with people heading for supper, and as the indigent went to their own work of begging for coin against starvation, the Conference wheeled into place. Anyone looking north at the display of Birds, from the inn called Welcome Arms on the banks of the Gillikin, say, would read only cloud: an invasion, a plague, a disaster. The same impression struck those looking, from the northwest of the city, at the Birds swimming like an ocean away from them.

 From the Emerald City, though, from every west-facing window of the Palace, the intention was unmistakable. The Conference of Birds had rehearsed to perfection. They flew in formation for viewing from the east. They were the Witch, hat and cape, skirt and broom, shadowy face tucked down against the wind, but beady-eyed bright. Liir, on his broom, followed General Kynot, whose superior navigational system gave him his location. Liir on his broom played the keen black eye of the Witch.

 Was Shell there, wondered Liir, knuckles on some marble windowsill, Lord High Apostle Muscle himself, Shell Go-to-hell Thropp, First Spear, Emperor of Oz, Personal Shell of the Unnamed God? Did he lean forward and squint at the holy ghost of his remonstrating sister, and rub his eyes?

 Six thousand strong, they cried in unison, hoping that the echo of their message would be heard in the darkest, most cloistered cell in Southstairs as well as the highest office in the Palace of the Emperor. Elphaba lives! Elphaba lives! Elphaba lives!

 Raising Voices

 1

 THE CONFERENCE HAD GROWNtoo large for a single speaker to address it. On the morning it disbanded, therefore, two delegates from each species met with General Kynot and his loose affiliation of ministers, which included the Wren, the Dodo, and the most aggrandizing of the Grey Geese, a gander who had appointed himself.

 Liir was invited, too. He asked the birds to keep an eye out for Nor. You go everywhere, you see everything, he said.

 We stay clear of humans when we can, replied the Grey Goose, present company accepted. Pro tem.

 It’s probably futile, Liir agreed. Still. He walked about with the drawing ofNor by Fiyero . She used to look like this. She’s older by now, of course.

 All people look alike to me, murmured a Vleckmarsh.

 She’s simply beautiful, said the blind Heron.

 Well, thanks just the same, said Liir, tucking the paper away.

 The General gave a rambling address that confused everyone, including himself. To conclude, he conceded, we go on to new work. The Birds run a risk of reverting to behaviors less than helpful. Now, I don’t mean to besmirch the fine Ostriches from the Sour Sands, who because they don’t fly were not part of our Conference. But we all know what Ostriches are rumored to do when faced with a crisis. We must not retreat into our claques and clans. Wary of human settlements—yes, who wouldn’t be? Let’s not be stupid about humans. But wary of one another? A little less so, if we can manage.

 And a little more chatter amongst us, added Dosey the Wren. In ways we are only beginning to understand, we are the eyes of Oz.

 When can Witch Nation have a reunion? asked the Dodo. This was fun.

 The boy-broomist must go and make his own nest. And I?—off and away to my family, said the General. The wife, you know, and there was a new clutch of eggs last spring. But there are the families of those Birds who were heinously trapped and slain by the Yunamata. Those families should be contacted, if we can figure out how.

 I’ll take care of that, sir, said Dosey.

 You take care of yourself, missie.

 Should this be an annual event? asked the Dodo. Ought I be taking notes? I mean mental notes, at least? But the General had lifted himself onto the hump of a sudden, warmer breeze, and whatever he answered over his shoulder could not be heard in the cheer that went up to bid him good-bye.

 2

 LIIR DIDN’T ASK THEGREYGOOSEfor company, but the Goose followed along behind. It was a problem. The Goose was too regal to be servile, and too beautiful; he made Liir feel like a chimney sweep who hadn’t seen a bath in a month. The Goose called himself Iskinaary.

 They flew from the southern edge of the Emerald City and headed straight out across Restwater, keeping east of the isthmus between the lakes. If the mauntery of Saint Glinda had been torched, Liir didn’t want to know about it yet.

 Where the Vinkus River seeped along flat-bouldered steps into Restwater, they stopped to get their breath, and they surprised a fox out of a clump of wrestlebush. The fox dove at Iskinaary and wrenched his wing, but Liir clobbered the fox with the broom, and the fox let go. His wing drenched in blood, Iskinaary shed unashamed tears at his disfigurement. Closer examination proved that the damage was, indeed, slight. Nonetheless, if they were to proceed together, they’d need to go on foot.

 I don’t mind a chance to give my legs some exercise, said Liir.

 That’s the most disingenuous thing I’ve ever heard, said Iskinaary. And it’s not as if you have particularly handsome legs.

 They walk faster than yours do, I’ve noticed.

 If you want to walk faster, you’ll have to carry me.

 Iskinaary was heavy to carry, and for all his beauty he still smelled very much like a Goose. Still, Liir didn’t mind that the trip would take a little longer. So much had happened. A chance for reflection was welcome.

 He was returning now, having accomplished something at last—a set of dragon murders, regrettable, but there you go. He was eager to know how his accomplishment would fit in the house. What he and Candle would be like together now. He had no experience of a happy return, ever. He would hardly know what to say, where to smile. He hoped that not knowing might seem wonderful.

 He knew more about human warmth, too, from Trism. How that knowledge would translate in the presence of Candle was a puzzle to anticipate with excitement.

 When they reached the Disappointments south of the Vinkus River, it was sunset, and the cold dusk made them shiver. But there was evidence of the tiny flower known as Shatter Ice—four little bluets in a nest of the tiniest emerald leaves—which meant the hump of the winter had been passed, and spring, however long it took to arrive, had started on its way.

 

 ISKINAARY’S WING HAD MENDEDa bit—not much—by the time they approached the series of wooded knolls in which Apple Press Farm was hidden.

 You’re not planning on staying and becoming domesticated, I assume, said Liir. I mean, it’d be fine to see you, umm, swanning about our meadows, but I can’t expect that would give you anything approaching professional satisfaction.

 I have my own ambitions, said Iskinaary. I’m intelligent as well as gorgeous, you know. Leave it to me.

 To be more specific, said Liir gingerly, I’m not necessarily inviting you to take up residence with us permanently. No hard feelings.

 Iskinaary shrugged, as much as a Grey Goose could shrug. Makes no difference to me what you say, he replied. I wasn’t waiting for an engraved invitation. I’ll follow my own instincts. We Animals stillhave instincts, you know.

 Touché. And your instinct is?

 To keep my own counsel.

 They entered the woods, slopping through mushy hillocks of drifted snow. And, being instinct rich, Iskinaary, have you any opinion whatmy instincts are?

 You’re not untalented, said Iskinaary, overlooking the slight sarcasm in Liir’s tone. You’re even rather smart. For a human. You keep excellent company.

 Yourself.

 Exactly. Furthermore, from what I’ve observed, you have a talent for reading the past.

 What does that mean?

 Iskinaary honked. What it sounds. There are very few who can read the future. And you’ve mentioned this Candle of yours can read the present. But reading the past is a skill in and of itself. It’s not just knowing the past. It’s feeling it. It’s deriving new strength and knowledge from it—learning from it all the time. It’s my own guess that this was intended to be the great strength of human beings, when the Unnamed God came up with the notion of you. Sadly, like so many good ideas, it hasn’t quite worked out in practice.

 Thank you very much.

 No insult intended.

 I didn’t know you believed in the Unnamed God.

 I was speaking metaphorically. I assumed you’d get that. Is this the place you’re looking for?

 It was. The low roofs of the dependences, and the main structure of the house itself, and the big barn room in which the broken press presumably still stood. Perhaps it could be made to work again.

 They came the long way around, to approach from the open meadow by the front door. There they found that Liir’s invitation had been accepted. Nine tents were erected in the meadow, as perfectly aligned as the casual ramble of the fences would allow. Eight subordinate tents made a square, and the Princess Nastoya’s tent stood centrally.

 With her canny ways, and for all the advance warning of this contingent of Scrow, Candle ought to have known he was coming. Nonetheless, she seemed surprised. Surprised, and flustered, large and slow, even redder of face than her natural coloring suggested was possible. Perhaps blood pressure problems? Or had she been experimenting with native rouges?

 He approached her cautiously—as if she were a young novice, not a farm bride. He took her hands and held them, and found out that even now he didn’t know how he felt. I’ve flown the world, he said.

 Welcome home from the world. Her face was tucked down, as if she were shy. A new shyness.

 Candle, he said, has the fellow called Trism come here?

 She looked up at him from under a wrinkled brow. He said you’d ask for him. I couldn’t be sure of him; he seemed a soldier of some sort. Well, now you’ve asked, and right off. Though I’d have thought you’d enquire if I was all right first! All these guests, and me in this state!

 Of course—of course. But I can see you’re all right. And I don’t know if Trism survived.

 Well, he did, she said, summarily. Oh, Liir, she continued, her voice now sounding as if he’d only been gone an hour, and she’d missed him for sixty full minutes, look what’s happened, and I wanted to greet you on our own. She spread her hands at the meadow.

 I know, he said. I invited them.

 I’m glad you finally arrived to greet them, then. They’ve been here a week, and my careful larder is just about bare. The one older fellow speaks a rude sort of Qua’ati, but I can’t make out a thing from the others.

 The Scrow were trying to brew a kind of tea out of the bark of apple trees and such sap as was running in the maples. They wrinkled their noses at it and hardly seemed to notice Liir’s arrival.

 In the family way, I note, said Iskinaary pointedly, slipping into Qua’ati effortlessly, or are you just big-boned, my dear?

 Indicating the Goose, Liir said to Candle, This is my… He paused; the wordfriend seemed inappropriate.

 Familiar, supplied the Goose.

 Oh, please! said Liir. Isthat what you’re on about?

 Don’t mind me, I’ll just settle here with the stupid hens, snapped Iskinaary.

 I’m not a witch, nothing near! said Liir. You’re going on the grossest sort of hearsay.

 Get on with your task, and I’ll be the judge, said the Goose. He shifted about three inches to one side and turned elegantly still, which gave him the effect of being statuesque while allowing him to eavesdrop with impunity.

 Liir picked up Candle’s hands again. He wanted more from her, he willed it so. She let him thumb her palms for a moment, then she pulled her own hands away.

 So Trism got here unharmed? he said.

 The dragon master? He did, she said, her face turned away again.

 Where is he?

 He couldn’t stay.

 Cautious. Gentle step, here. Why not? Candle?

 She began to lift a huge urn of water from the table in the yard; he took it from her.

 Candle. What happened? Was he all right? Suddenly Liir had no trust: not in his own apprehensions of Trism, nor of Trism…nor even of Candle. Trism, after all, had once wanted to kill him. Did he treat you poorly?

 This water needs taking out to the Princess, she answered. She’s being laved round the clock. I’ve been preparing it with essence of vinegar, as that priestly prince instructed me to do.

 What happened? What passed between you and Trism? Candle!

 Liir. What could pass between us? He didn’t speak Qua’ati. And I could understand what he chose to tell me, but not answer him—I don’t speak that bossy a tongue. I have a small voice, a half-voice. As you know.

 In succession, Liir thought a half dozen crises. She knows I loved him. That I love him. That he loves me? That he loves her?

 That she loves him?

 What was this verblove anyway, that could work in any direction?

 Did he hurt her?

 Candle. I beg of you.

 Don’t beg, intoned Iskinaary, standing on one foot. Remember General Kynot. Don’t beg. Never beg.

 We’ll talk later, she said. Now, if you’d take that water to your guest? And then you’d better do what you came here to do.

 I came here to be here! With you.

 And this band of ragamuffins who preceded you? They are, what? The relatives?

 Tears pricked his eyes. Don’t be preposterous, and don’t be mean! I’ve been away, Candle. Doing what you asked. Getting something done. Anything. Learning where I wanted to be.

 I have my bad moments, she admitted, wiping her own face. It hasn’t been easy. Let’s not talk. Go straight to work, and help that old sow if you can.

 She’s an Elephant.

 Whatever the beast she is.

 Candle!

 I didn’t mean it like that. Liir, you startled me. Carrying this child is hard work. I haven’t been myself.

 He could see that.

 Did Trism leave parcels for me?

 Two packets in the press, hanging on strings from the ceiling, to keep the mice from them. The mice are very interested. Are you going to haul this water to the invalid, or shall I? I have other work to do now. Washing. The old woman runs through a dozen towels a day.

 She picked up a basket of wet laundry and wobbled outside to an old apple tree, where she began to sling the clothes on drooping branches to dry. She’s hurting, he thought: even I, dull as I am, can see that. But from what? My long absence? My affection for Trism? Or is the child inside her making her sick, draining her blood, eating her liver from within, kicking her pelvis sore with its ready heels?

 3

 HE WASN’T UP TO DEALINGwith Princess Nastoya yet, and the Scrow seemed to have settled in nicely. Hell, she’d been dying for a decade, she could die some more for another ten minutes before he finally had his reunion with her.

 Stung by Candle’s reticence, he wandered into the barn to retrieve the parcels. If Trism had gotten them here safely, then he must have managed to elude Commander Cherrystone. Glinda’s glamour had worked once again, and riding at her side as her factotum, Trism had played the shadowy manservant, a known quantity. He’d been smuggled out of the mauntery safely.

 But what had happened here? Had he followed Liir’s directions and found Candle in residence, beautiful and reticent and large with child? Had Trism resented the notion of a Candle? Had he been stung by the fact that Liir had never mentioned her pregnancy? Had he assumed Liir was the father?

 Had Trism been cruel to her?

 Liir took down the parcels, struck by the thought that the workings of the human heart could be as various and imperturbable as the workings of human communities. He didn’t know enough of love in all its forms to compare, to choose, to sacrifice, to regret. Held in Trism’s soldier arms, he’d been strengthened; held in Candle’s loving regard, he’d been strengthened, too. Now the only thing holding him was Elphaba’s cape. Was her mantle of penitential solitude to be his, too?

 He wiped his eyes and opened the parcels. In the slanting light through the barn door, he wheeled out the hoops of face. Now that he knew what they were, they seemed less grotesque—no less terrible than a drawing or a dream of someone. A flat disc not unlike a mirror. They’d had lives, these people, as puzzling as his. No one would ever know what those lives were like, though.

 Well, said Iskinaary, who’d followed him in, as I live and breathe. Is this what they mean by a human shield?

 They’re the faces of the dead.

 You’re in here studying them, when you have a dying woman out there in a tent, waiting for your attention? Iskinaary was incensed.

 Liir looked at them, shaking his head. From the distance he heard the first few notes of a melody. Candle had taken down the domingon again. Whom was she calling with it? The baby within her? Come out, come out? Or Liir himself, stuck in his indecision, his confusion?

 I’m quite an expert at music, as I have perfect pitch. Unusual in a Goose, said Iskinaary. She’s got a way with that instrument. She could play the eggs right out of a mama Goose.

 I heard her encourage the yard animals to sing, said Liir. I mean really sing, not just bray and cackle.

 Singing lightens the load, said Iskinaary, who looked about ready to deliver an aria himself. He cleared his throat. But Liir suddenly snatched up the hoops from the ground and turned on his heel.

 If she can be persuaded, he said, maybe she can help the load lighten. She’s so weighed down herself—but she’s a kind person. What a good idea!

 Thank you, said Iskinaary, his feathers ruffled. Denied an audience, he hummed to himself in a desultory fashion, but shortly thereafter he followed Liir to find out what his good idea had been.

 

 LIIR INTRODUCED HIMSELFto the man called Lord Ottokos.

 We’ve met before, said Shem Ottokos, though since then, you’ve grown up and I’ve grown old.

 Liir explained what he hoped Candle might do. If she would.

 Shem Ottokos seemed to find nothing peculiar in the proposal. Your wife is very kind, even in her heavy condition, and your husband seemed equally kind.

 She is not my wife, and I have no husband, said Liir. Indeed, I have no talent except the idea for this. And I do not know if it will work.

 I will tell the Princess Nastoya that you have arrived, said Ottokos. She is in grave distress, and it is hard for her to talk anymore. But I believe she is still able to hear and understand. I must believe this: it is my job.

 Liir took the scraped and treated faces of the dragons’ victims into the orchard, faintly budding already, though the ground was still wet with old snow. He hooked the thirteen hoops upon notches of apple tree branch, as near to body height as he could guess each one had required when attached to a living body. The damp sheets and toweling fluttered like liquidy limbs beneath.

 4

 SHE PUT ASIDEher domingon when he approached and asked her for her help. Don’t do it for me, said Liir. Do it for her.

 I’m already doing laundry for her, said Candle. I have no more strength.

 You know people and you know kindness. Your music sang me back to life. You have that skill. It’s called knowing the present. You could make the barnyard sing. I only ask that you know the present of Princess Nastoya, and play her constituent parts to their own places.

 You think like a witch. I am not a witch, Liir.

 I am not a witch and I am not thinking like one. I am trying to learn from history. I am trying to figure out what happened in the past, and work to use that knowledge again. You played in my past, and brought me my life. Perhaps you can play her death to her.

 I don’t feel well. She rubbed her eyes with her forefingers. Frankly, I haven’t been sleeping. I don’t know that this pregnancy is going as it should, but there’s no one to ask.

 You don’t feel as badly as Princess Nastoya does.

 Liir!

 He caught her at the elbow. Tell me what happened! he said roughly. Tell me what happened with Trism!

 Leave me be, Liir, she said, crying, but when he gripped her arm harder, she said, He told me to come away with him. He said whoever had followed the two of you so far would not give up that easily. He said the mauntery would be burned, and its members tortured until they disclosed the whereabouts of this satellite operation. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Of course the maunts know about this place! Why else would Mother Yackle have sent us here? Or the donkey know the way? Think, Liir!

 He told you to leave with him?

 He said I should go with him, for protection: that it is what you would want me to do.

 Liir was stunned. Why didn’t you do it, then?

 I trusted you, she said, a little abrasively, how do I know whether to trust another soldier? He could have been abducting me to kill me and my child. He could have been lying. He could have been doing it to hurt you. Though now I see he meant more to you than I reckoned.

 What he heard mostly was her possessive pronoun:my child . Notours .

 And he didn’t stay, said Liir, in a voice nearly as small as hers.

 No, he didn’t, she answered. Generally, people don’t. They come, they go. He left. The Scrow came. For all I know your Commander Cherrystone will be here in time for tea, and Mother Yackle for the washing up.

 5

 THESCROW RETINUEcarried the Princess into the orchard and set her down on a blanket. She was grey; her legs had swollen like bolsters, her scalp was nearly bald. She’d lost her eyebrows and her eyelashes, which gave her sightless eyes a horrible eggy look. Her chin bristled with enough hair to wipe farm boots clean.

 Liir could hardly put this collaboration of bones and muscles and foul odors together with his childhood memories of meeting Nastoya the day or two after Elphaba had died. He didn’t try. The Princess was beyond language, groaning and leaning into a screw of physical pain that seemed to implicate the entire orchard. He could never apologize for having abandoned his promise to her for so long. Neither could she speak whatever message she’d had for him. It was too late now.

 Lord Ottokos retained his composure. He spoke to her about every shift of limb and placement of pillow. Unsuccessfully he tried to dribble some water into her mouth, but even at this late moment he was afraid he might drown her before she could be divided from her disguise. She would have to go to her death, if this worked, thirsty.

 She was prostrate on the ground, her head rolled back, giving her chin some prominence for perhaps the first time in a decade.

 We’re ready, said Ottokos. He stood with a gnarled old staff, a bit of sourwood into which iron thorns had been pounded. It looked like a mace of some sort, a scepter, and Lord Ottokos was ready to assume the leadership of the tribe.

 Liir nodded at Candle, who had come equipped with an old milking stool. She sat down clumsily. Her legs went wide, but there wasn’t enough lap on which to hold her instrument. She had to balance it on an overturned washtub. Still, she looked at Princess Nastoya with a complicated expression, and presently she began to play.

 The others in the company had not been invited, but they lined the edge of the orchard, knuckles locked, a Scrow position of reverence. The Goose stood near Liir, a foot or two back, both deferential and significant. It wasn’t clear if he was Liir’s familiar, or if Liir was his interpreter.

 Candle began by dissecting chords and distending them into arpeggios. She chose the lighter modalities at first, but quickly shifted into more subtle variations. The Princess was uncomfortable on the ground, and her blankets were already getting soaked in the snow.

 To grow a death, murmured Liir, holding Candle’s shoulders, you must plant a life.

 She shook him off. He began to walk the perimeter of the orchard, trying to see from different angles. Was there something more he could do? He should be doing? Candle was hard at work, and no doubt Princess Nastoya was doing her own, but was more help needed, in this mission of nothing but mercy?

 One stretch of the orchard. Another.

 Liir, whispered Candle as he neared her. I am very uncomfortable here. It is not like six months ago. I can’t keep this up for long.

 She rotated the instrument a quarter turn and splayed her fingers, cocking them laterally, and she flat-struck the alto quarter, trying a sprigged quadrille, a dance of spring.

 The third side of the orchard. Iskinaary wandered over as if at an evening reception honoring the recent work of a well-regarded painter. You might try concentrating on the past, he said.

 I don’t know her past, said Liir. I don’t know a thing about it, except that she knew Elphaba.

 I don’t mean her past, said Iskinaary. She knows her own past well enough, somewhere in there. I mean the others. Even in death, we are a society, after all.

 Liir turned and looked at the Scrow, standing a distance away, but then he saw what Iskinaary meant. It wasn’t anything the living could do—it was the human dead who were best equipped to call the human disguise off Nastoya. They could beckon it forward, if Candle could play the scraped faces to sing.

 But the playing was her talent, and the singing was theirs—it was his job to listen. To witness their histories, and cherish them in memory, his only talent. He had looked into the Witch’s crystal ball, after all, and had seen her past, even if it had nothing to do with him. He had stumbled upon his own reveries without benefit of any gazing globe. Maybe his only job was to listen. That much he could do.

 6

 IWAS THE FOURTH OF FIVE CHILDREN, and I loved the way sun warmed stone. Just before lunch, on the flagstones of the terrace, I used to dance barefoot with my mother for she loved it too.

 I was happy enough in my marriage, and happier still when I was widowed, though happiness seems incidental to a good life.

 I never wanted to take the cane my father gave me, and I picked it up and broke his nose with it, and he laughed so hard he fell into the well.

 I made things with colored threads, little birds and such.

 I always wanted to go to university at Shiz, as some of my friends would do, but boys like me weren’t allowed.

 I believed in the Unnamed God and accepted the mission set me because God would take care of everything: the Emperor said so.

 I once took off all my clothes and rolled in a field of ferns, and had an experience I never told anyone about.

 I was at the ceremony in Center Munch when the cyclone dropped the house on Nessarose, and I saw it with my own eyes, but I lost my ribbon on the way home.

 I loved how milk tastes, and the way hills go blue with cloud markings, and my baby sister, her hair black as a beetle brush.

 I loved it when I was alive.

 I loved it when I was alive, too.

 Forget us, forget us all, it makes no difference now, but don’t forget that we loved it when we were alive.

 

 LIIR HEARD SOMETHINGfrom each hoop. Every face sang as Candle provided accompaniment. The bud-notched trees shook with the force of their voices, though there were no tongues, and little enough left of lips, and no wind to pass through the aperture and turn their mouths into flutes.

 Reminded of human life, the corporeal part of Princess Nastoya melted into the snow. All that was left of her human disguise shook off—a spin of charcoal smoke, smudged in the air like incense. It stood, finding its feet, before it dispersed, and the voices fell silent.

 There was nothing left on the blanket but a massive She-Elephant. The Scrow all closed their eyes and began to weep. Her eyes opened and her head rolled back. Her eyes met Liir’s for an instant. Her neck snapped.

 No Place Like It

 

 AFTER AN HOUR,Lord Ottokos indicated that a surgeon should come forward with a saw. The small bowl-stomached woman went to work at the Elephant’s right tusk and removed it in just a few minutes. Then she sawed an inch of disc off the wider end. The tusk being hollow at the wide end, the disc formed a ring with an aperture several fingers wide. The surgeon fitted this on the point of the other end of the tusk, and handed the relic to Ottokos.

 He bowed and accepted it. In turn he fastened it to the staff he had prepared. When finished, the staff was a six-foot stake crowned by an arched prong of Elephant tusk, an ivory smile without a face around it.

 I will lead under the influence of Nastoya, he said in a quiet voice, and this calmed the Scrow from their weeping.

 What influence is that, thought Liir; a shard of bone, a makeshift totem?

 That, and memory. Maybe all the influence needed.

 

 THESCROW HADlived so long under the leadership of Princess Nastoya that they hardly knew what to do when she was gone. With effort, everyone tugging at once, they managed to get her body onto the cart that had brought Candle and Liir to Apple Press Farm. Then they began the long trudge back to their tribal homeland. They would burn her on a pyre when they arrived, and the scraped faces besides, and not a moment too soon. Nastoya had never smelled very fine while alive, and now she was a health hazard as well.

 Lord Ottokos insisted Liir should accompany them through Kumbricia’s Pass in case the Scrow delegation met up with the Yunamata, and trouble flared. It’s the last thing you can do for Princess Nastoya, finishing the task she asked of you back when the Witch first died, he said. See her bones to safety, anyway.

 Liir decided to leave the broom and the cape behind. He wouldn’t fly while in the company of the Scrow, and after departing from them, he mightn’t be able to fly back, anyway. Kumbricia’s Pass had been resistant to his flying above it.

 After packing the hooped faces alongside Nastoya’s carcass, Liir bade Candle and Iskinaary a quick good-bye. Mind each other, he said. Iskinaary, keep watch.

 I can watch over myself, said Candle. You forget I can read the present.

 Can you read what is in my heart? he asked. If so, tell me what it is, he continued to himself. Tell me, so I can tell you back.

 Candle held his hands but wouldn’t meet his eyes. Perhaps, the nearer the baby was to birth, the more she despaired of ever having said it was his. Would he ever be able to map any part of her mystery?

 He set out once more, with a sense that his life would be rich in setting outs, and perhaps poorer in homecomings.

 

 THERE PROVED LITTLE DRAMAon the high ground. One evening the Yunamata materialized out of nothing, naked as Birds, painted in tribal markings. They approached the corpse of Princess Nastoya, carrying the lighted roots of hagtooth bush that they used in their own funeral rites. They sang, and melted away again in rather unseemly haste.

 At the final gorge, where the Conference of the Birds had departed for its circuit around western Oz, Liir said a quick and perfunctory good-bye to Lord Shem, Prince Ottokos, and turned home with a heavy heart.

 The accomplishments of the last six months had been irrelevant, he decided, for all but Nastoya. Was that the only accomplishment that mattered?—that somehow you not bungle your own death? Everything else that had happened in his short adult life had been frothy and meaningless, ultimately. Passionate, yes—yes, that, indeed. Passionately felt, but without shapeliness or worthy outcome.

 The dragons were dead: some people were still walking about, ignorant of how their tired lives might otherwise have ended up with a scraping. That much was good. Stack that up against the cursed lives of those Quadlings who daily had to remember their own dead, lost at the burning of the bridge at Bengda. The bit of thatch falling, a letter in the air, flaming and drowning.

 And doubtless there were still disconsolate prisoners in Southstairs, and misguided soldiers in barracks, and those abject poor who had survived the cleaning out of Dirt Boulevard. And that kid named Tip, whose granny had probably sold him already for a better brand of cow, a broom, a new pot for the hearth.

 To be sure, the airborne Conference of the Birds—a great show, if nothing else. But what did it mean? Where did it get anyone? For all Liir knew, that juvenile spectacle would give the Emperor better leverage to draft additional soldiers, to tax for newer weapons, to dictate for more control over the crown city of Oz. A flying witch made out of birds! In another generation that would have been called pleasure faithism: as if spectacle itself could convince one of anything.

 Yet the world was a spectacle, its own old argument for itself. Endlessly expounded with every new articulation of leaf and limb, laugh and lamb, loaf and loam. Surely there wassomething in the world lovely enough to counter the dread of being alone, a solitary figure untroubled by ambition, unfettered by talent, uncertain of a damn thing?

 The great force of evil? Shell, Emperor Quake-in-your-Boots, naming himself the Spear of the Unnamed God? Or the next despot, or the one after that?

 The colossal might of wickedness, he thought: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

 Remembering Princess Nastoya, he thought:Sever us from our disguises . Then he flinched, almost in disgust: was that a prayer?

 How he wished the Elephant Princess had been able to deliver whatever message that Sister Apothecaire had advertised she had for him. Another slim hope dashed, so many slim hopes waiting to rise in its wake.

 A message about Nor, and the word on the street. Could Princess Nastoya, with her massive ears, actually have learned Nor’s whereabouts? Surely she’d have found a way to tell him?

 Nor, lovely Nor, wherever she was. He didn’t know where, he might never know, except she was in his memory—like everyone else. There, and drawn on the piece of paper secreted into the inner pocket of the Witch’s cape. He saw it in his mind’s eye, clear as day, the drawing, the coffee-colored wash suggesting the gleaming highlights of preadolescent, perfect skin, the letters written in Nor’s peculiar, crabbed printing.

 It was as if the burning letter had spelled something, suddenly, just before it was quenched in black water. The thought came like a spasm, and he harvested it before it disappeared. He unpacked the Princess Nastoya’s promised gift.

 The word on the street.Elphaba Lives!

 Nor’s handwriting.

 

 WHEN HE GOT BACKto the farm a little after dusk, perhaps a week later, he knew at once that it was deserted. One knows those things about an old farmstead. Iskinaary was gone, and the donkey, and the hens had scattered. For a minute he wondered if Trism had come back for Candle, and now—angry at Liir for his quizzical ways, or herself taken with handsome Trism—she’d changed her mind, and cast her lot with him.

 Or perhaps Trism’s warning had been accurate, and Commander Cherrystone and his band had found Apple Press Farm at last. Found a way to avenge the slaughter of the dragons.

 It mattered, and would matter more tomorrow. For now, he was alone, as before. As usual. It was a condition he’d need to get used to, or to tolerate never getting used to—not exactly the same thing, more’s the pity.

 He walked through the house. Her domingon was gone, which suggested deliberation, but the dishes were unwiped, still crusty with porridge, which suggested haste. Had she taken the broom? No, there it was, put up on the mantelpiece out of harm’s way.

 He built up a small fire in the kitchen to take the edge off the chill. There was precious little with which to make a meal. As he stood trying to think, though, he heard a barracking in the boggy land some way south of the farm. Thrashing through underbrush, he found the goat hidden in thickets, tied to a tree, sorely in need of milking, and cross as blazes.

 He led it back to the barn, and milked it in the shadows of the broken press, glad he had learned one skill at least.

 Then, in the dark corner of the stair hall where they left the trash for tipping into the dump beyond the orchard, he nearly tripped over the Witch’s cape. He picked it up to shake it out and hang it on a hook, and the lump of dead matter rolled off the hem into the corner.

 Oh, oh oh oh. So this was it. The baby had come, come early, he guessed; he didn’t know all that much about the calendar as it pertained to babies. It must have come too soon, and it had been dead on arrival, or it had died at once. And Candle had been alone, poor thing—alone but for that vainglorious Goose. How misguided that Liir should have felt the need to honor the corpse of Nastoya and leave Candle to face a possible childbirth or a stillbirth alone, with only a silly Goose to hiss for help.

 He had hauled the dead carcass of an Elephant across the mountains on a cart; he had tried to hear the testimonies of people who had had their faces scraped. He had murdered dragons and people. He could bear to touch the small corpse of a human child.

 So he picked it up. He held it at a distance. Tears started, though why? He hadn’t believed this was his child, and there was no new reason to believe it now. It was just another child, just another inevitable fatality, the next crude accident of the world, and not the last.

 He maneuvered its cold form closer. Cold, though not icy; this death had to have just happened. Had the scraped faces sung the fetus to a death, as they’d sung Princess Nastoya?

 Maybe the child had been born dead this very morning, as he was making his approach. And a rosy morning it had been, the sun strengthening, and the inane involuntary return of a green blush to the skin of the world. He had even sung a bit of his own. Not his usual way!—he’d yodeled some nonsense syllables, thinking: Maybe it will be all right. Maybe Candle. Maybe Trism. Maybe something will work.

 The form was cold. Was it a normal infant size, or smaller? He didn’t know human infants. He nestled it against his neck, and thought he felt its mouth move.

 Gingerly he stepped from the stair hall into the kitchen. Was it warming up? Or was it just his own heat he felt, reflecting back at him?

 In the feeble light of the new fire, he moved it again, shifted it to rest along his forearm. It was a pretty corpse, and now he could see it had been a girl. Its umbilical cord was an unholy mess. Maybe Iskinaary had helped to sever it. It didn’t bear thinking about.

 The corpse twitched and cried, and stretched a little. He wrapped it from stem to stern, forehead to toes, making sure its dab of a nose had access to air. Then he carried it closer to the fire, in case corpses liked to be a little warm before they were fed milk.

 Elphaba had kept a basket rocking at her feet, once: a basket was just the thing. Was there an old onion basket somewhere in the keeping-room belowstairs? He’d find a basket.

 He found a basket.

 He fed her by dripping goat’s milk through a cheesecloth into her pursing mouth. She took the false sucket well enough. She had Candle’s Quadling face, already: those beautiful rhomboids that made such splendid cheekbones.

 Of course Candle would flee, if she’d given birth to a child and thought it had died. Imagine the panic. Of course she would. Maybe she’d go back to the mauntery, as the Superior Maunt had suspected she would. At least for a time: to recover herself. What an ordeal she’d had. The lonely pregnancy, the lonely delivery, and then—whatever it was that had happened with Trism. And all of Liir’s absences. Of course she would flee.

 She might come back. She might.

 He sat with the infant most of the night. For a while he spread out the cape and even managed to sleep a little—he kept her in the basket, though, so he wouldn’t roll over onto her by accident and crush her.

 In the first black wash of dawn, he woke up comforted with a different thought. Candle could see the present. Perhaps she’d known he was almost home. What if she had fled—what if a guard of Commander Cherrystone’s battalion had indeed found the farm, and she’d led them away, diverted their attention? Drawn them off scent? The mother bird pretends to have a broken wing, to lead predators away from her nestlings in the grass. Candle had as much instinct as a mother bird.