Book 4 - In the Vinkus

On the day the seven-year maunt was to leave, Sister Bursar took the huge iron key from her bosom and unlocked the store chamber, and said, “Come in.” She pulled from the press three black shifts, six camisoles, gloves, and a shawl. She also handed over the broom. Finally, for emergencies, a basket of simples-herbs and roots, tinctures, rues, salves and balms.

There was paper, too, though not much: a dozen pages or so, in different shapes and thicknesses. Paper was in ever shorter supply in all of Oz. “Make it last, make it important,” advised Sister Bursar. “You’re a bright one, for all your sulks and silences.” She found a pen. A pfenix feather, known for the endurance and strength of the quill. Three pots of black ink, sealed under knobby wristholds of wax.

Oatsie Manglehand was waiting in the ambulatory with the old Superior Maunt. The convent was paying a decent penny for this service, and Oatsie needed the fees. But she didn’t like the look of the sullen maunt that Sister Bursar ushered in. “This is your passenger,” said the Superior Maunt. “Her name is Sister Saint Aelphaba. She’s spent many years in solitary life and in nursing. The habit of gossip is lost. But it’s time for her to move on, and move on she will. You’ll find her no trouble.”

Oatsie looked the passenger over and said, “The Grasstrail Train doesn’t promise the survival of its party, Mother. I’ve led two dozen trips these past ten years or so, and there have been more casualties than I like to admit.”

“She leaves of her own free will,” said the Superior Maunt. “Should she wish to return at any point, we would take her in. She is one of us.”

She didn’t look one of anything to Oatsie, neither flesh nor fowl,

neither idiot nor intellectual. Sister Saint Aelphaba just stared at the floor. Though she seemed to be about thirty, she had a sallow, adolescent look about her.

“And there’s the luggage-you can manage it?” The Superior Maunt pointed to the small heap of supplies in the immaculate forecourt in front of the mauntery. Then she turned to the departing maunt. “Sweet child of the Unnamed God,” said the Superior Maunt, “you go from us to conduct an exercise in expiation. You feel there is a penalty to pay before you may find peace. The unquestioning silence of the cloister is no longer what you need. You are returning to yourselfi So we send you from us with our love and with our expectations of your success. Godspeed, my good sister.”

The passenger kept her eyes trained on the ground and did not answer.

The Superior Maunt sighed. “We must be off to our devotions.” She peeled a few notes from a roll of money kept in the recesses of her veils, and handed them over to Oatsie Manglehand. “This should see you through, and more besides.”

It was a healthy amount. Oatsie stood to earn a lot from escorting this taciturn woman through the Kells-more than from the whole rest of her party combined. “You are too good, Mother Maunt,” she said. She took the cash with her strong hand, and made a gesture of deference with her limp one.

“No one is too good,” said the Superior Maunt, but nicely, and retired with surprising speed behind the cloister doors. Sister Bursar said, “You’re on your own now, Sister Elphie, and may all the stars smile you on your way!” and she disappeared as well. Oatsie went to load the luggage and supplies in the wagon. There was a small, chunky ragamuffin boy asleep behind the trunk. “Off with you,” said Oatsie, but the boy muttered, “I’m to go too, that’s what they told me.” Vv’hen Sister Saint Aelphaba neither confirmed nor denied this plan, Oatsie began to understand why the payment to take the green maunt away had been more than generous.

The Cloister of Saint Glinda was located in the Shale Shallows, twelve miles southwest of the Emerald City. It was an outpost mauntery, under

the aegis of the one in town. Sister Saint Aelphaba had spent two years in town and five years here, according to the Mother Maunt. “You want to be called Sister still, now that you’re sprung from that holy prison?” asked Oatsie as she clucked the reins and urged the packhorses on.

“Elphie is fine,” said the passenger.

“And the boy, what’s he called?”

Elphie shrugged.

The coach met the rest of the caravan a few miles on. There were four wagons in all, and fifteen travelers. Elphie and the boy were the last to join. Oatsie Manglehand outlined the proposed route: south along the edge of Kellswater, west through Kumbricia’s Pass, northwest through the Thousand Year Grasslands, stopping at Kiamo Ko, and then wintering a bit farther northwest. The Vinkus was uncivilized land, Oatsie told them, and there were tribal groups to be wary of: the Yunamata, the Scrow, the Arjiki. And there were animals. And spirits. They would need to stick together. They would need to trust one another.

Elphie showed no sign of listening. She fiddled with the pfenix feather and drew patterns in the soil between her feet, coiling shapes like dragons writhing or smoke rising. The boy squatted eight or ten feet away, wary and shuttered. He seemed to be her page, for he managed her bags and attended her needs, but they did not look at each other, or speak. Oatsie found it strange in the extreme, and hoped it didn’t augur ill.

The Grasstrail Train set off at sunset, and made only a few miles before its first camp at a streambed. The party-mostly Gillikinese- chattered in nervous amazement at their courage, to go so far afield from the safety of central Oz! All for different reasons: for business, for family needs, to pay a debt, to kill an enemy. The Vinkus was a frontier, and the Winkies a beknighted, bloodthirsty folk who knew little about indoor plumbing or the rules of etiquette so the party regaled itself in song. Oatsie took part for a short time, but she knew there was hardly one among them who wouldn’t prefer to stay where they were and avoid the depths of the Vinkus altogether. Except perhaps that Elphie, who was keeping pretty much to herself.

They left the rich edge of Gillikin behind. The Virikus began with a mesh of pebbles spread on brown wet soil. At night the Lizard Star pointed the

direction: south, south along the edge of the Great Kells, to the dangerous gap of Kumbricia’s Pass. Pines and black starsaps stood up like teeth on every embankment. By day they were welcoming, sometimes giving shade. By night they towered, and harbored snatchowls and bats.

Elphie was often awake at night. Thought was returning to her, perhaps expanding under the fierce openness, where the birds cried in falling voices, and the meteors stitched omens into the sky. Sometimes she tried to write with her pfeni.x feather; sometimes she sat and thought words out, and didn’t commit them to paper.

Life outside the cloister seemed to cloud up with such particularity-the shape of her seven years past was already being crowded out. All that undifferentiated time, washing terra-cotta floors without dipping her hands in the bucket-it took hours to do a single room, but no floor was ever cleaner. Making wine, taking in the sick, working in the infirmary wing, which had reminded her briefly of Crage Hall. The benefit of a uniform was that one need not struggle to be unique-how many uniquenesses could the Unnamed God or nature create? One could sink selflessly into the daily pattern, one could find one’s way without groping. The little changes-the red bird landing on the windowsill, and that was spring-the leaves to rake from the terrace, and that was fall-they were enough. Three years of absolute silence, two years of whisper, and then, moved up (and outward) by the decision of the Superior Maunt, two years on the ward for incurables.

There, for nine months-thought Elphie under the stars, picturing it to herself as if telling someone else-she tended the dying, and those too clumsy to die. She grew to see dying as a pattern, beautiful in its way. A human form is like a leaf, it dies in a set piece unless something interferes: first this, then that, then this. She might have gone on as a nurse forever, arranging wrists in a pleasing pattern above starched bedsheets, reading the nonsense words of scripture that seemed to help so. She could manage the dying.

Then, a year ago, pale invalid Tibbett was carted to the Home for the Incurables. He wasn’t too far gone to recognize her even behind her veil and silences. Weak, unable to shit or piss without help, his skin falling in rags and parchment, he was better at life than she was. He selfishly required that she be an individual, and he addressed her by her

name. He joked, he remembered stories, he criticized old friends for abandoning him, he noticed the differences in how she moved from day to day, how she thought. He reminded her that she did think. Under the scrutiny of his tired frame she was re-created, against her will, as an individual. Or nearly.

At last he died, and the Superior Maunt had said that it was time for her to go and atone for her mistakes, though not even the Superior Maunt knew what they were. ‘When that was done?-well, she was still a young woman, she could raise a family. Take her broom and remember:

obedience and mystery.

“You can’t sleep,” said Oatsie one night as Elphie sat under the stars.

But though her thoughts were rich and complicated, her words were poor, and she merely grunted. Oatsie made a few jokes at which Elphie tried to smile, but Oatsie laughed enough for both of them. Big, full laughs. It made Elphie tired.

“Isn’t that cook a piece of work?” said Oatsie, and told some episode that seemed pointless, and she chortled at her own story. Elphie tried to enjoy, tried to grin, but above her the stars grew thicker, more like glittering fishspawn than salt; they turned on their stalks with a cursing, grinding sound, if only she could hear it. She couldn’t hear it; Oatsie was too coarse and loud.

There was much to hate in this world, and too much to love.

Before long they came to the edge of Kellswater, a murderous slice of water lying as if cleft from the side of a thundercloud. It was all gray, no lights on it. “That,” said Oatsie, “is why the horses don’t drink from it, nor travelers; that’s why it was never tapped in aqueducts and run to the Emerald City. It’s dead water. And you thought you’d seen it all.” Still, the travelers were impressed. A lavender heaviness arose on its western edge-the first hint of the Great Kells, the mountains that separated the Vinkus from the rest of Oz. From here the mountains appeared as thin as gas.

Oatsie demonstrated the use of the fog charm in the event of an attack by a band of Yunamata hunters. “Are we going to be attacked?” asked the boy who seemed to be Elphie’s page. “I’ll get ‘em dead before no one knows what’s on.” The fear rose up from him and caught on in

the others. “We usually do well,” said Oatsie, “we just need to be prepared. They can be friends. If we are friends.”

The caravan straggled by day, four wagons keeping their distance, accompanied by nine horses, two cows, a bull, a heifer, and various chickens without much personality. The cook had a dog named Killyjoy who seemed to Elphie a Makejoy instead, a panting, sniffy thing. Some people thought for a time he might actually be a Dog, in hiding, but they gave up that idea. “Hah,” Elphie said to the others, “have you spoken to Animals so seldom that you can’t remember the difference anymore?” No, he was just a dog, but a most glorious doggy dog, full of rages and exaggerated devotions. Killyjoy was a mountain breed, part Linster collie, part Lenx terrier, and maybe part wolf. His nose went up like a butter curl, in gray-black ridges and ribs. He could not be kept from hunting but he did not catch much either. By night, when the wagons squared off together, the cooking fire within, the animals just nearby, without, and the singing began at last, Killyjoy hid under the wagon.

Oatsie heard the boy tell the dog his name. “I’m Liir,” said the boy.

“You can be my dog, sort of.” She had to smile. The fat child was not good at making friends, and a lonely child should have a dog.

Kdlswater slipped back, out of sight. Some felt safer away from it. Almost hourly the Great Kells rose and thickened, the color now like the brown rind of a butterdew melon. Still the track meandered along the valley, the Vinkus River on its right, the mountains beyond it. Oatsie knew several places to ford, but they weren’t clearly marked. ‘While they searched, Killyjoy caught a valley grite at last. He bled and whined, and was treated for poison. Liir let him ride in his arms, which made Elphie faintly jealous. She was almost amused to note in herself such a turgid, old-fashioned feeling as jealousy.

The cook was angry that Killyjoy preferred someone else’s company more than his-he shook his ladle overhead as if summoning the wrath of angel chefs among the stars. Elphie thought of him as a butcher cook, as he seemed to have no scruples about shooting rabbits and eating them. “How do you know they’re not Rabbits?” she said, and she wouldn’t touch a bite.

“Quiet, you, or I’ll cook that little boy instead,” he answered.

She tried to raise with Oatsie the notion of firing the cook, but Oatsie would not listen. “We’re coming in to Kumbricia’s Pass,” she said, “my mind is on other matters.”

They couldn’t help but feel the unsettling eroticism of the landscape. From the eastern approach, the Kumbricia Pass looked like a woman lying on her back, her legs spread apart, welcoming them.

Up in the slopes, the pine boughs shaded the sun, the wild pears tangled their twisted branches together as if wrestling. A sudden dampness, a new private climate-the bark ran wet, the air sank heavily against the skin like half-laundered toweling. Once inside the forest, the travelers could not see the hills. Everything smelled of ferns and fiddle-greens. And on the shores of a small lake stood a dead tree. It harbored a community of bees, at their work of chamber music and honey.

“I want to take them with us,” said Elphie. “I’ll talk to them and see if they’ll come.”

There had been bees in the kitchen garden at Crage Hall, and again at the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows. Elphie was entranced by them. But Liir was terrified, and the cook threatened to disappear and leave the group traumatized by an inability to do a really topnotch bechamel sauce in the wilderness. Discussion was waged. An old man in the party, heading westward to die because of some midnight vision, ventured as to how a little honey would improve the tasteless sparrowleaf tea. A Glikkun mail-order bride agreed. Oatsie, of sentimental enthusiasms when least expected, voted for honey. So Elphie climbed the tree and talked to the bees, and they came along in a swarm, but most travelers stayed in the other wagons, suddenly scared of every fleck of dust that flitted against the skin.

They sent out a request, using drums and mist, to attract the attention of a hired rafiqi, for caravans were not allowed to move through the lands of different Vinkus tribes without a guide to negotiate permissions and fees. Bored one evening, and responding to the gloom, the travelers fell to discussing the legend of the Kumbric Witch. Who comes first, the Fairy Queen Lurline or the Kumbric Witch?

Igo, the sick old man, quoted the Oziad, and reminded them all of how creation worked: the Dragon of Time created the sun and the moon,

and Lurline cursed them and said that their children wouldn’t know their own parents, and then the Kumbric Witch came along and the flood, the battle, the spilling of evil in the world.

Oatsie Manglehand disagreed. She said, “You old fools, the Oziad is just a frilly, romantic poem of older, harsher legends. What lives in folk memory is truer than how some artsy poet says it. In folk memory evil always predates good.”

“Can this be true?” asked Igo, with interest.

“Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, ‘Once in the middle of a forest lived an old witch’ or ‘The devil was out walking one day and met a child,” said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some education as well as grit. “To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her-is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”

“It certainly is true that tales of the Kumbric Witch abound,” agreed Igo. “Every other witch is just a shadow, a daughter, a sister, a decadent descendant; the Kumbric Witch is the model further back than which it seems impossible to go.”

Elphie remembered the ambiguous scroll painting of the Kumbric Witch-was it she?-found in the library of Three Queens, that summer long ago: standing in shiny shoes, straddling a continent, nursing or choking a beast.

“I don’t believe in the Kumbric Witch, even in Kumbricia’s Pass,” boasted the cook.

“You don’t believe in Rabbits either,” snarled Elphie, suddenly annoyed. “The question is, does the Kumbric Witch believe in you?”

“Temper,” sang out Oatsie, and turned it into a singalong song. Elphie stamped away. This was too much like her childhood, discussions with her father and Nessarose about where evil begins. As if one could ever know! Her father used to orchestrate proofs about evil as a way of persuading his flock to convert. Elphie had come to think, back in Shiz, that as women wore cologne, men wore proofs: to secure their own sense of themselves, and thus to be attractive. But surely evil was beyond proof, just as the Kumbric Witch was beyond the grasp of knowable history?

The rafiqi arrived, a thin, balding man with battle scars. There might be trouble from the Yunamata this year, he told them. “The caravan comes after a season of dirty forays by cavalry from the Emerald City. Winkie roundup,” he complained. It wasn’t clear if he was talking about a local argument over a drunken slight to a Vinkus maiden or about a slave trade and resettlement camps.

The camp was broken, the lake left behind, and the silent forest continued for a half a day. Sunlight speared through the canopy from time to time, but it was a thin, egg yolk light, and seemed always to be off to the side, never spotlighting down on the path ahead. It was eerie, as if Kumbricia herself were moving along beside them, hidden, unbidden, passing from tree to tree, sliding behind rocks, waiting in shadowy depths, watching and listening. The ailing old man wailed nasally, and prayed to emerge from this mystery wood before he died, or his spirit might never find its way out. The boy wept like a girl. The cook wrung the neck of a chicken.

Even the bees stopped humming.

In the middle of the night the cook disappeared. There was consternation among all except Elphie, who didn’t care. Was it a kidnapping, or a sleepwalking episode, or a suicide? Were the angry Yunamata near, and watching? Was it Kumbricia herself taking revenge on them for discussing her so glibly? There were many opinions, and the breakfast eggs were runny and inedible.

Killyjoy did not notice the cook’s disappearance. He snuggled, grinning in his coma-sleep, closer to Liir.

The bees went into some sort of mysterious hibernation inside the joint of tree trunk brought along to make them happy. Killyjoy, still smarting from grite poison, slept twenty-two hours a day. The travelers, afraid of being overheard, stopped talking altogether.

Toward the evening the pines at last began to thin, and the forest to shift to stag-head oak, which with its broader branches let in more of the sky-a pasty yellow sky, but at last a sky-and then there was a cliff edge. They had climbed higher than anyone had quite realized; beneath and

beyond stretched the rest of Kumbricia’s Pass, a journey of four or five days. Beyond that was the beginning of the Thousand Year Grasslands.

No one was sorry for the light and room that the sky afforded. Even Elphie felt her heart lift, unexpectedly.

In the middle of the night the Yunamata arrived. They brought gifts of dried fruit and sang tribal songs, and made those who would dance get up and dance. The travelers were more terrified of their hospitality than of the attack that they had expected.

As Elphie thought about it, the Yunamata seemed soft, compliant folk, only as fearful and fearless as schoolgirls-at least that was all they showed. They were cavorting, opinionated; they reminded her of the Quadlings with whom she had grown up. Perhaps ethnically they were distant cousins. Long lashes. Narrow elbows. Babylike supple wrists. Oblong heads and thin concentrated lips-even with their foreign tongue they made her feel at home.

The Yunamata left in the morning, complaining rudely about the runniness of the breakfast eggs. The rafiqi said that the Yunamata would make no further trouble. Even he seemed disappointed, as if his employment hadn’t been required.

There was no word about the cook. The Yunamata didn’t seem to know anything about him.

As the caravan continued its descent, the sky opened up again, brisk and autumnal, wide as remorse. From thcrc to thcrc!-the eye could hardly take it in. The plain below, compared to the mountains, seemed level as a lake. The wind made strokes across it, as if spelling things in a language of curls and stripes. No wildlife was visible from this distance, though there were tribal fires here and there. Kumbricia’s Pass was left behind, or nearly.

Then a Yunamata messenger came on swift leathery feet, arriving from the Pass behind them, to share the news that a body had been found at the base of a cliff. Perhaps it was the cook; it was thought to be a man, but the surface of the corpse was so swollen with lesions that the particulars were lost. “It was the bees,” said someone, full of rage.

“Oh, was it?” came Elphie’s calm voice. “They’ve been asleep for so long. Wouldn’t there have been screams if they’d attacked a man in the

middle of the night? Did the bees sting his throat first, to swell his vocal cords shut? Very talented bees, those.”

“It was the bees,” was the mutter, and the implication was clear. You too.

“Oh, I forgot the size of the human imagination,” Elphie said meanly. “How very large it is, after all.”

But she wasn’t upset, not really. For Killyjoy was back to himself, at last, and the bees woke up too. Perhaps the high altitudes at the top of the Kumbricia Pass had given them such sleep. Elphie began to prefer their company to the rest of the travelers. As they woke up, coming down from the heights, she felt herself more and more awake, too.

The rafiqi pointed out on the horizon several mounding coils of smoke. At first the travelers guessed they were windstorms, but Oatsie soothed them and alarmed them: It was evening fires for a large encampment. S crow. It was autumn hunting season, though nothing had been seen of any game bigger than a hare or a grass fox (its brush a wild swipe of bronze on melting golden meadow, its feet in black stockings like a serving maid’s). Killyjoy was ecstatic with the possibilities of encounter; he could hardly bear to rest at night. Even in his dreams he twitched with the hunt.

The travelers feared the Scrow more than they had the Yunamata. The rafiqi did not say much to allay their fears. He was more tentative than it had first seemed; perhaps the job of negotiating among suspicious peoples required caution. Liir idolized him hopelessly, after only a few days of travel. Elphie thought: Such silly things, children-and so embarrassing-because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

She felt in herself a jolt of pleasurable expectation over the thought of approaching the Scrow. Along with so much else, she had forgotten what pleasurable expectation was. As night fell, everyone seemed more alert, out of fear and excitement. The skies throbbed with turquoise, even at midnight. Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless grass below into a hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the chapel, just blown out but still glowing.

If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, it might be the best way to die.

It was noon when the caravan pulled up to the edge of the Scrow camp. A committee of Scrow had ridden to their domestic margin, where the sand-colored tents petered out into untrampled grass-men and women alike sat on horseback, about seven or eight of them, in blue ribbons and ivory bangles. Also, obviously senior, was a huge slab of an old woman carried in a palanquin of some sort, its frame all hung round with tambours and clinking amulets and gauzy veils. She let the rafiqi and the tribal paladins trade compliments or insults. After a while she grunted a direction and her curtains were withdrawn so she could see. She had an overhung lip, so large that it doubled back on itself like an upside-down spout on a pitcher. Her eyes were ringed with kohl. On her shoulders sat two dyspeptic-looking crows. Their feet were shackled in gold links and attached to loops in her ornamental collar, into which the old woman had dribbled traces of the fruit she had been eating as she waited. Her shoulders were speckled with crow droppings.

“The Princess Nastoya,” said the rafiqi at last.

She was the filthiest, least-educated princess anyone had ever seen, yet she had some dignity; even the most ardent democrat among the travelers genuflected. She laughed raucously. Then she bade her bearers lug her away to someplace less tedious.

The Scrow camp was arranged in concentric circles, with the Princess’s tent in the middle, prettied up with extensions of faded striped baldaquins on all sides. It was a little airy palace in silks and cotton muslin. Her advisors and concubine-husbands seemed to live in the nearest circle (and a scrawny lot the husbands were, thought Elphie, but perhaps they were chosen for timidity and scrawniness, to make her seem ever the larger). Beyond the Princess’s settlement ranged four hundred tents, which meant maybe a thousand people altogether. A thousand humans, with their poached-salmon skin, their moistly protruding eyes (but sensitive, in lowered gazes, to avoid being met), their handsome generous noses, and big buttocks, and wide rolling hips, men and women alike.

Most of the caravan travelers stayed glued to the doors of their wag. ons, imagining crime just beyond the nearest tent. But Elphie found it impossible to keep still, with all this newness beckoning. When Elphie walked, there were gasps, and the adults shyly retreated out of her path. But only ten minutes had passed before there were sixty children in a noisy crowd, following behind, running ahead, like a cloud of midges.

The rafiqi advised caution, advised return to the camp; but childhood in the Quadling badlands had made Elphaba not only bold, but curious. There were more ways to live than the ones given by one’s superiors.

After the evening meal, a delegation of erect old Scrow dignitaries approached the Grasstrail Train and entered into a lengthy palaver with the rafiqi. In the end, the rafiqi translated the message: a small band was invited-requested-(ordered?)-to the Scrow shrine. It would take an hour by camel. For her sin of skin color, presumably, or possibly for having had the nerve to take a solitary stroll through the Scrow tent city, Elphie was told to join Oatsie, the rafiqi, Igo for his venerable age, and one of the financial adventurers-named Pinchweed, or maybe that was just a nasty nickname.

By the light of sallowwood torches, the camels, in glittering caparisons, lurched and lumbered on a worn track. It was like going up and down a staircase at the same time. Elphie sat above the grass, a vantage point over the great ffickering surface. Although the ocean was only an idea sprung out of mythology, she could almost see where it came from-there were small grasshawks launching themselves like fish leaping out of the spume, nipping at the fireflies, pocketing them, then falling back in a dry splash. Bats passed, making a guttering, sputtering sound that ended in an extinguishing swoop. The plain itself seemed to bring forth night color: now a heliotrope, now a bronzy green, now a dun color skeined through with red and silver. The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar. Nothing more need have happened; it seemed enough to Elphaba to find herself capable of such a weird ecstatic response to soft color and safe space. But no, on-on.

Eventually Elphie noticed a plantation of trees, carefully tended in this devastating openness. First a stand of scrub spruce, contorted by the winds into gnarled figures of split bark and hissing needles-and the pagan odor of sap. Beyond, a rise of higher hedges, then, yet higher trees.

It was the circular pattern of the Scrow encampment again. The party passed into it in silence, as through a maze, along curving corridors of whispering brush, moving from outer to inner circles lit by oil lamps hammered to carven posts.

Within, at the center, was the Princess Nastoya girded in a native costume of leather and grass made all the more effective by a length of striped purple and white toweling she must have bargained from some traveler or other. She stood, distracted and breathing heavily, leaning on stout walking sticks; around her, sarsen stones like gapped teeth resembled a stone cage through which she could hardly pass, given her bulk.

The guests joined the hosts in eating, drinking, and smoking on a pipe with a bowl carved like a crow’s head. Crows ranged all around on the tops of the sarsens, twenty, thirty, forty? Elphie’s head spun, the moon rose, the plain at night, invisible from the secret garden of the green maze, wheeled about like a child’s top. She could almost hear the spinning. The Scrow elders chanted in a drone.

When the drone died out, the Princess Nastoya raised her head.

The huge wattles of old flesh beneath her small chin wobbled. Her toweling fell to the ground. She was naked and old and strong; what had seemed like boredom was revealed as patience, memory, control. She shook the very hair off her head and it uncoiled down her back and disappeared. Her feet moved massively, as if seeking the best purchase, like columns, like pillars of stone. She dropped her arms forward and her back was a dome; still her head was up, her eyes the brighter, her nose working mightily; she was an Elephant.

An Elephant goddess, Elphie thought, her mind recoiling in terror and delight, but the Princess Nastoya said, “No.” She spoke through the rafiqi still; he had obviously seen this before, though with the alcohol he stuttered and had to search for words.

One by one she asked the intentions of the travelers.

“Money and commerce,” said Pinchweed, shocked into honesty:

money and commerce and pillage and plunder at whatever cost.

“A place to die where I can rest, and my spirit go abroad,” ventured Igo.

“Safety and movement, out of harm’s way,” said Oatsie spunkily, by which it was clear she meant: out of men’s way.

The rafiqi indicated that Elphie’s own answer was still needed.

In the presence of such an Animal, Elphie could not stay aloof. So she spoke it as best as she could. “To retire from the world after making sure of the safety of the survivors of my lover. To face his widow, Sarima, in guilt and responsibility, and then to remove myself from the darkening world.”

The Elephant told the others, except the rafiqi, to leave.

The Elephant raised her trunk and sniffed the wind. Her rheumy old eyes blinked slowly and her ears moved back and forth, raking the air for nuance. She pissed hugely in a steaming flow, with dignity and nonchalance, eyes firmly latched on Elphaba.

Through the rafiqi, the Elephant then said, “Daughter of the dragon, I too am under a spell. I know how it may be broken-but I choose to live as a changeling. An Elephant is a hunted thing in these times. The Scrow approve of me. They have worshipped elephants from the time before language, the time before history began. They know I am not a goddess. They know I am a beast who chooses magical incarceration as a human over the dangerous liberty of my own powerful form.

“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis,” she said, “those who are the most themselves are the victims.”

Elphie could only look, she could not speak.

“But the choice to save yourself can itself be deadly,” said the Princess Nastoya.

Elphie nodded, looked away, looked back.

“I will give you three crows as your familiars,” said the Princess. “You are in hiding as a witch now. That is your guise.” She spoke a word to the crows, and three mangy, evil-looking things came and waited nearby.

“A witch?” Elphaba said. What her father would think! “Hiding from what?”

“We have the same enemy,” replied the Princess. “We are both at risk. If you need help send the crows. If I am still alive, as an old matriarch monarch, or as a free Elephant, I’ll come to your aid.”

“Why?” asked Elphie.

“Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face,” she answered.

The Princess said more. It had been years-more than a decade- since Elphie had been able to talk to an Animal. Who, Elphie asked the Princess, had enchanted her? But the Princess Nastoya wouldn’t say-in part as self-protection, for the death of the enchanter could sometimes mean the revocation of binding spells, and her curse was her safety.

“But is life worth living in the wrong form?” said Elphie.

“The interior doesn’t change,” she answered, “except by selfinvolvement. Of which be not afraid, and also beware.”

“I have no interior,” said Elphaba.

“Something told those bees to kill the cook,” said the Princess Nastoya, with a glitter in her eye. Elphaba felt herself go pale.

“I didii’t!” she said. “No, it couldn’t have been me! And how did you know?”

“You did, on some level. You are a strong woman. And I can hear bees, you know. My ears are keen.”

“I would like to stay here with you,” said Elphaba. “Life has been very hard. If you can hear me when I cannot hear myself-something the Superior Maunt could never do-you could help me do no harm in this world. That’s all I want-to do no harm.”

“By your own admission, you have a job to do,” said the Princess. She curled her trunk around Elphaba’s face, feeling its contours and truths. “Go and do it.”

“May I return to you?” asked Elphie.

But the Princess wouldn’t answer. She was tiring-she was an old old thing even for an Elephant. Her trunk went back and forth like a pendulum on a clock. Then the great nose-hand came forward and set itself with wonderful weight and precision on Elphaba’s shoulders, and curled a bit around her neck. “Listen to me, sister,” she said. “Remember this:

Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”

Elphaba could not answer, so shocked was she at the touch. She backed away when dismissed, her mind all but out of her.

Then the return on camels across the shuddering colors of night grass: hypnotic, vague, and distressing.

Yet there was blessing in this night. Elphaba had forgotten blessing, too-like so much else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kiamo Ko was just a week away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no way to go through the water-that would be death- But her feet went Out anyway- They hit the water hard, the water hit hard back- The water turned to ice as she ran-foot by foot of ice under foot

by foot of hurry. A silvering plate formed instantly, cantilevering forward, making a cold safe bridge to the island-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” he said, “with you.”

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

“Where else can I go?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

Sarima,” said her youngest sister, “wake up. Naptime’s over. We have

a houseguest at supper, and I need to know if we have to kill a hen.

There are so few left, and what we give the traveler we miss all winter in

eggs. . . What do you think?”

The Dowager Princess of the Arjikis groaned. “Details, details,” she said, “can’t I train you to figure out anything for yourself?”

“Very well,” snapped the sister, “I shall decide, and thenyou can go without your morning egg when we’re one short.”

“Oh Six, don’t mind me,” said Sarima, “it’s just that I’m scarcely awake. Who is it? Some patriarch with bad breath, who plans to bore us with tales of the hunting he did fifty years ago? Why do we allow it?”

“It’s a woman-more or less,” said Six.

“Now that’s uncalled for,” said Sarima, sitting up. “We are none of us the blushing nymphs we once were, Six.” From across the room she saw herself reflected in the wardrobe glass: pale as milk pudding, her still pretty face nestled in the puddles of fat that fell according to the laws of gravity. “Just because you’re the youngest, Six, and can still locate your waist, there’s no need to be unkind.”

Six pouted. “Well, it’s just a woman, then: so chicken or no? Tell me now so Four can hack off its head and get to plucking, or we won’t eat before midnight.”

“We’ll have fruit and cheese and bread and fish. Is there fish in the fishwell, I suppose?” Yes, there was. Six turned to go, but remembered to say, “I brought you a glass of sweet tea, it’s there on your vanity.”

“Bless you. Now tell me, without sarcasm if you please, what’s our guest like, really?”

“Green as sin, thin and crooked, older than any of us. Dressed in black like an old maunt-but not all that old. I’d guess about, oh, thirty, thirty-two? She won’t give her name.”

“Green? How divine,” said SarIma.

“Divine isn’t the word that comes to mind,” said Six.

“You don’t mean green with jealousy-you mean actually green?”

“Maybe it’s from jealousy, I could not say, but she is surely green. Genuine grass green.”

“Oh la. Well, I’ll wear white tonight so as not to clash. Is she alone?”

“She came in with the caravan we saw down in the valley yesterday. She stopped here with a little company of beasts-a wolfdog, a hive of bees, a youth, some crows, and a baby monkey.”

“What’ll she do with all of them in the mountains in winter?”

“Ask her yourself.” Six wrinkled her nose. “She made me shudder.”

“Half-set gelatin makesyou shudder. When’s dinner tonight?”

“Seven chimes and a half. She turns my stomach.”

Six left, having run out of expressions of disgust, and Sarima had her tea in bed until her bladder complained. Six had banked up the fire and drawn the curtains, but Sarima pulled them back to look down into the courtyard. Kiamo Ko boasted corner turrets and towers, built on massive circular salients thrusting upward from the stone of the mountain itself. After the Arjiki clan had wrested the building from the waterworks commission, they had added toothy crenellations for defense. Despite the reworkings, the plan of the house was still simple. It was built in the general shape of a U, a central hall with two long narrow wings thrusting forward around a steeply pitched yard. When it rained, the water churned over the cobbles, and slipped out under the carved gates of iron oak and jasper panels, past the sickly cluster of village houses nestled up against the castle’s outside walls. At this hour the courtyard was charcoal gray. Cold and filthy with scraps of hay and bits of leaf flying in the wind. There was a light in the old cobbler’s shed, and smoke spinning from the chimney that badly wanted repointing-like everything else in this decaying manse. Sarima was glad the guest hadn’t been shown into the house proper. As Dowager Princess of the Arjikis, she enjoyed the privilege of welcoming a traveler into the private chambers of Kiamo Ko.

After bathing, snc urcsscu in a wniic snut won wniic piping, and put on the beautiful torque that had arrived, like a message from the Other Land, from her dear departed husband several months after the Incident. Out of habit Sarima shed a few tears admiring herself within the flat embrace of its jeweled, segmented collar. If it was too dressy for this itinerant, Sarima could always drape a napkin over it. But she would still know it was there. Even before her tears had dried she was humming, looking forward to the novelty of a guest.

She peeped in on the children before going down. They were jumpy; strangers always did that to them. Irji and Manek, twelve and eleven, were almost old enough to want to bust out of this nest of venomous doves. Irji was soft and cried a lot, but Manek was a little bantam, always had been. If she let them go off to the Grasslands with the clan, in the summer migration, they both might have their throats slit-there were too many clansmen to claim leadership for themselves or their sons. So Sarima had kept her boys near.

Her daughter, Nor, long-legged and thumb-sucking at nine years old, still needed a lap to crawl into before going to sleep. Dressed for the meal, Sarima was inclined to forbid it, but relented. Nor had a delicate lisp and she said wunning in the wain for running in the rain. She befriended stones and candles and blades of grass that grew against all logic in the cracks of the coping stones around the windows. She sighed and rubbed her face against the torque and said, “There’s a boy too, Mama. We played with him in the mill yard.”

“What’s he like? Is he green too?”

“Nah. He’s all right. He’s a big baby-fat and strong, and Manek was throwing stones at him to see how far they would bounce off him. He let him do it. Maybe if you’re so fat it doesn’t hurt?”

“I doubt it. What’s his name?”

“Liir. Isn’t that a queer name?”

“It sounds foreign. And his mother?”

“I don’t know her name and I don’t think she’s his mother. He wouldn’t say when we asked. Irji said he must be a bastard. Liir said he didn’t care. He’s nice.” She moved her right thumb to her mouth, and with her left hand felt the cloth of Sarima’s gown just below the torque, until she found a nipple, and she ran her thumb over it lovingly as if it

- white

were a small pet. “Manek made him pull down his trousers so we could make sure his thing wasn’t green.”

Sarima disapproved-on the grounds of hospitality if nothing else-but was compelled to ask, “And what did you see?”

“Oh wellyou know.” Nor turned her head into her mother’s neck, and then sneezed from the powder with which Sarima kept her chins from chafing. “Stupid-looking boy’s thing. Smaller than Manek and Irji. But not green. I was so bored I didn’t look much.”

“Neither would I. That was very rude.”

“I didn’t make him do it. Manek did!”

“Well, no more of that. Now let’s have a story before sleeping. I’ve got to go down soon, so a short one. What do you want to hear, my little one?”

“I want to hear the story of the Witch and the fox babies.”

With less drama than usual Sarima rattled through the tale of how the three fox babies were kidnapped and caged and fed to fatness, in preparation for a cheese-and-foxling casserole, and how the Witch went to get fire from the sun to cook them. But when the Witch came back to her cave, exhausted and in possession of father flame, the foxlings outwitted her by singing a lullaby to make her sleep. When the Witch’s arm fell, the flame from the sun burned the door off the cage, and out the foxlings ran. Then they howled down old mother moon to come and stand as an unmovable door in the entrance of the cave. Sarima ended with the traditional back-and-forth. “And there the wicked old Witch stayed, for a good long time.”

“Did she ever come out?” asked Nor, doing her line from an almost hypnagogic state.

“Not yet,” said Sarima, kissing and biting her daughter on the wrist, which made them both giggle, and then lights out.

The stairs from Sarima’s private apartment ran without railings down into the castle keep, hugging first one wall and then, after the corner, another. She descended the first flight full of grace and self-possession, her white skirts billowing, her torque a yoke of soft colors and precious metals, her face a careful composition of welcome.

At the landing she saw the traveler, sitting on a bench in an alcove, looking up at her.

She made it down the second ffight to the flagstoned level, aware of

the cynicism that seethed beneath her loyal remembrance of Fiyero, aware of her overbite; of her lost prettiness; of her weight; of the silliness of being the doyenne over nothing but irritating children and backbiting younger sisters; of the thin pretense of authority that scarcely masked her fear of the present, the future, and even the past.

“How do you do,” she managed.

“You are Sarima,” said the woman, standing, her stalactite of chin thrust forward like a rotted swede.

“Likely to be!” she said, glad of the torque; it seemed like a shield now, to protect her heart from being punctured by that chin. “Greetings to you, my friend. Yes, I am Sarima, mistress of Kiamo Ko. Where do you come from, and how are you called?”

“I come from the back of the wind,” said the woman, “and I have given up my name so often I don’t like to bring it out again for you.”

“Well, you are welcome here,” said Sarima as smoothly as she could, “but if we have nothing else to call you by, you will have to be Auntie. Will you come in to dine? We’ll be serving out soon.”

“I won’t eat until we speak,” said the guest. “Not under your roof in false pretenses for one night; I’d rather lie at the bottom of a lake. Sarima, I know who you are. I went to school with your husband. I’ve known about you for a dozen years or so.”

“Of course,” said Sarima then, things clicking. The old, treasured details of her husband’s life came rushing up. “Of course Fiyero talked of you-and of your sister, Nessie, right? Nessarose. And of the glamorous Glinda, with whom I think he was a little in love, and the playful inverted boys, and Avaric, and solid old Boq! I had wondered if that happy time of his life was always to be self-contained, always his and never mine-you are good to have come to call. I should have liked a season or two at Shiz, but I didn’t have the brains, I fear, nor my family the money. I would have remembered you in a minute, well, the color of your skin, there’s nothing like it, is there? Or am I too provincial?”

“No, it’s unique,” said the guest. “Before we say ten sentences of polite nonsense to each other, I have to tell you something, Sarima. I think I was the cause of Fiyero’s death-“

“Well, you’re not the only one,” interrupted Sarima, “it’s a national pastime out here, blaming oneself for the death of a prince. An opportu

nity for public grieving and atonement, which I secretly believe people enjoy just a little bit.”

The guest twisted her fingers, as if to pry open a space for herself in Sarima’s opinions. “I can tell you how, I want to tell you-“

“Not unless I want to hear it, which is my prerogative. This is my house and I choose to hear what I want.”

“You must hear it, so that I can be forgiven,” said the woman, turning her shoulders this way and that, almost as if she were a beast of burden with an invisible yoke on her.

Sarima did not like to be ambushed in her own home. Time enough to consider these sudden implications. When she felt up to it. And not until. She reminded herself that she was in charge. And thus she could afford to be kind.

“If I remember rightly,” said Sarima-her mind was racing with memory-“you’re the one, Fiyero talked of you, of course-Elphaba, that’s it-you’re the one who didn’t believe in the soul. I remember that much, so what’s to forgive, dearie? I know you’re travel weary-it’s impossible to get here without being travel weary-and you need a good hot meal and a few nights of sleep, and we’ll chat some morning next week?”

Sarima linked her arm with Elphaba’s. “But I’ll preserve your name from them, if you like,” said Sarima. She walked Elphaba through the tall warped oak doors into the dining hall and called, “Look who’s here, Auntie Guest.” The sisters were standing beside their chairs, hungry and curious and impatient. Four had the ladle in the tureen, snm , Six had dressed in a hostile puce; Two and Three, the twins, looked piously at their prayer cards; Five was smoking and blowing concentric rings toward the platter of yellow eyeless fish they had dragged up from the underground lake. “Sisters, rejoice, an old friend of Fiyero’s has come to share fond memories and enliven our lives. Welcome her as you do me.” Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, as the sisters all resented and despised Sarima. Why had she married someone who would die so early and condemn them not just to spinsterhood but to deprivation and denial?

Elphaba didn’t speak through the entire meal or look up from her plate. She devoured the fish, though, and the cheese and the fruit. Sarima deduced from her eating habits that she had lived under a rule of silence at meals, and wasn’t surprised, later, to hear about the mauntery.

They took a glass of precious sherry in the music room, and Six entertained them with a wobbling nocturne. The guest looked miserable, which made the sisters happy. Sarima sighed. The one thing that could be said about the guest was this: She was older than Sarima. Perhaps, for the short while of her stay, Elphaba would come out of that sulk and lend an ear to hear how troubling and trying Sarima’s life was. It would be nice to chat with someone not in the family.

A week passed before Sarima said to Three, “Please tell our Auntie Guest that I’d like to see her tomorrow for elevenses in the Solar.” Sarima thought that Elphaba had had enough time now to get the measure of things. The suffering green woman was in some sort of slow-motion thrall, or fit. She moved jerkily, stalking about the courtyard, or stamping in to meals as if trying to poke holes in the flooring with her heels. Her elbows were always bent at right angles, and her hands clenched and unclenched themselves.

Sarima felt stronger than ever, which wasn’t very. It did her some good to have a contemporary around, however thwarted she might be. The sisters disapproved of Sarima’s cordiality, but the higher mountain passes were already closed for the winter, and you just couldn’t send a stranger packing into the treacherous valleys. The sisters conferred in their parlor, as they busied themselves knitting hateful gray potholders for the undeserving poor at Lurlinemas. She’s sick, they said; she’s inert, unfinished (even more than they were, was the unspoken corollary, an immenseiy gratifying notion); she’s damned. And is that fat balloon of a boy her son, or a child slave, or is he one of her familiars? Behind Sarima’s back they called the woman living in the cobbleshed Auntie Witch, echoing the old legends of Kumbricia, which were viler-and more persistent-in the Kells than elsewhere in Oz.

It was Manek, Sarima’s middle child, who was the most curious. One morning, as the boys all stood on a battlement pissing over the side (a game poor Nor had to pretend no interest in), Manek said, “What if we peed on Auntie? Would she scream?”

“She’d turn you into a toad,” said Liir.

“No, I mean would it hurt her? She looks like water gives her thi aches and shakes. Does she even drink it? Or does it make her insides hurt?”

Liir, not an especially observant child, said. “I think she doesn’ drink it. Sometimes she washes things, but she uses sticks and brushes We better not pee on her.”

“And what does she do with all those bees and the monkey? An they magic?”

“Yeah,” said Liir.

“What kind of magic?”

“I don’t know.” They stepped away from the dizzying drop and No came running up. “I have a magic straw,” she said, holding up a browi bristle. “From the Witch’s broom.”

“Is the broom magic?” said Manek to Liir.

“Yes. It can sweep the floor real fast.”

“Can it talk? Is it enchanted? What does it say?”

They got more interested, and Liir bloomed and blushed unde their curiosity. “I can’t tell. It’s a secret.”

“Is it still a secret if we push you off the tower?”

Liir considered. “What do you mean?”

“Will you tell us or we’ll do it.”

“Don’t push me off the tower, you oafs.”

“If the broom is magic it’ll come flying by and save you. Beside5 you’re so fat you’d probably bounce.”

Irji and Nor laughed at that, despite themselves. It made a ver funny picture in their minds.

“We only want to know what secrets the broom says to you,” sai’ Manek with a big smile. “So tell us. Or we’ll push you off.”

“You’re not being nice, he’s company,” said Nor. “Come on, let’s g find some mice in the pantry and make friends.”

“In a minute. Let’s push Liir off the roof first.”

“No,” said Nor, beginning to cry. “You boys are so mean. Are yoi sure that broom is magic, Liir?”

But Liir by now didn’t want to say any more.

Manek tossed a pebble off the roof and it seemed a very long tim before the ping of impact.

Liir’s face had, in a matter of moments, developed deep black pockets under the eyes. He held his hands down by his sides like a traitor at a court martial. “The Witch’ll be so mad at you that she will hate you,” Liir said.

“I don’t think so,” said Manek, taking a step forward. “She won’t care. She likes the monkey more than she likes you. She won’t even notice if you’re dead.”

Liir gasped for air. Although he had just peed, the front of his baggy trousers turned dark with wet. “Look, Irji,” said Manek, and his older brother looked. “He’s not even very good at being alive is he? It’s not like it would be much of a loss. Come on, Liir, tell roe. What did the damned broom say to you?”

Liir’s upper torso was going in and out like a bellows. He whispered, “The broom told me-that-that-you’re all going to die!”

“Oh, is that all,” said Manek. “We already knew that. Everybody dies. We knew that already.”

“You did?” said Liir, who hadn’t.

“Come on,” Irji said, “come on, let’s catch some mice in the pantry and we can cut off their tails and use Nor’s magic straw to prick their eyes.”

“No!” said Nor, but liji had swiped the straw from her. Manek and Irji went clattering, loose-limbed as marionettes, along the parapet and down the stairs. With a huge, aggrieved sigh, Liir composed himself and adjusted his clothes, and followed them like a condemned dwarf laborer in the emerald mines. Nor stayed behind, her arms folded defiantly, her chin working with frustration. Then she spit over the edge and felt better, and chased after the boys.

At midmorning, Six showed the guest into the Solar. With a smirk behind Auntie’s back, she deposited a tray of cruel little biscuits, hard as slate, on a table covered with a carpet gone brown and patternless. Sarima, having made her way through what she could of her daily spiritual ablutions, felt ready.

“You’ve been here a week and it’s likely to be longer,” said Sarima, allowing Six to pour out some gallroot coffee before dismissing her. “The trail north is snowed in by now, and there’s not a safe haven between here and the plains. The winters are hard in the mountains, and while we can make do with our stores and our own company, we treasure a change.

Milk? I do not know exactly what you had-intended. Once you had visited us sufficiently, I mean.”

“There are rumors of caves in these Kells,” Elphaba said, almost more to herself than to Sarima. “I lived for some years at the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows, outside of the Emerald City. Dignitaries would visit, and while we were often under a vow of silence, nonetheless people would talk of what they knew. Monastic cells. I had thought, when I was done here, that I might take myself to a cave and-and-“

“And set up housekeeping,” said Sarima, as if this were as usual as marrying and bearing babies. “Some do it, I know. There’s an old hermit on the western slope of Broken Bottle-that’s a peak nearby-they say he’s been there for some years, and has reverted to a more primitive moment of nature. Of his nature, I mean.”

“A life without words,” Elphie said, looking in her coffee and not drinking it.

“They say this hermit has forgotten about personal hygiene,” said Sarima, “which, given how the boys smell when they go unwashed for a couple of weeks, strikes me as nature’s defense against marauding beasts.”

“I didn’t expect to be here for a long time,” Elphie said, twisting her head on her neck like a parrot and looking at Sarima in an odd way. Oh, beware, thought Sarima carefully, though she tended to like this guest:

Beware, she’s taking the direction of the discussion into her own hands. This won’t do. But the guest went on: “I had thought that I would have a night or two, maybe three, and could find myself a hidey-hole before winter set in. I was working on the wrong calendar, I was thinking of how, and when, winter came to Shiz and the Emerald City. But you’re six weeks ahead here.”

“Ahead in the autumn and behind in the spring, alas,” said Sarima. She took her feet off her hassock and placed them on the floor, flatly, to indicate seriousness. “Now, my new friend, there are some things I need to say to you.”

“I have things too,” Elphie said, but Sarima went on this time.

“You will think me an unpolished person, and you are right of course. Oh, when I was selected to be a child bride, a good governess was hired from Gillikin to teach me and my sisters how to use verbs and pronouns

and salad forks. And lately I have begun to master reading. But most of what I picked up about polite behavior was from what Fiyero was good enough to instruct me in when he returned from his education. No doubt I make social mistakes. You have every right to snigger behind my back.”

“I am not given to sniggering,” snapped Elphaba.

“As it may be. But I still have opinions, and I’m observant even if unschooled. Despite my sheltered life, married at the age of seven as you may know, raised and reared behind castle curtain walls. I trust my own sense of things and won’t be dissuaded. So let me continue,” she said, as Elphaba tried to interrupt. “There is plenty of time and the sun is nice in here, isn’t it? My little hideaway.

“It seems to me that you have come here to-shall we say-relieve yourself of some sad business or other. You have the look about you. Don’t be startled, my dear, if there’s a look I do recognize, it’s the look of someone carrying a burden. Remember, I listen to my sisters, year in and year out, as they graciously share with me all the ways they hate me, and why.” She smiled, amused at her own wit. “You want to throw down your burden, throw it down at my feet, or across my shoulders. You want perhaps to weep a little, to say good-bye, and then to leave. And when you leave here you will walk right out of the world.”

“I will do no such thing,” said Elphie.

“You will indeed, even if you don’t know it. You will have nothing left to tie you to the world. But I know my own limits, Auntie Guest, and I know what you’re here for. You told me. You told me in the hall, you said you felt you were responsible for Fiyero’s death-“

“Don’t. Just don’t. This is my home, I am a nominal Dowager Princess of Duckshit, but I have a right to hear and I have a right not to hear. Even to make a traveler feel better.”

“Don’t.”

“But I don’t want to burden you, Sarima, I want to unburden you with the truth-if you permit me, you are the larger, the lighter; forgiveness blesses the donor as well as the receiver.”

“I’ll overlook that remark about my being the larger,” said Sarima. “But I still have the right to choose. And I think you wish me ill. You

wish me ill and you don’t even know it. You want to punish me for something. Maybe for not being a good enough wife to Fiyero. You wish me ill and you fool yourself to think it’s some therapeutic course of tablets.”

“Do you know how he died, at least?” said Elphaba.

“I know it was a violent action, I know his body was never found, I know it was in a little love nest,” said Sarima, for a minute losing her resolve. “I don’t care to know who it was exactly, but I have heard enough about that vile Sir Chuffrey to have my strong opin-“

“Sir Chujfrey!”

“I said no. I said no more. Now I have an offer to make of you, Auntie, if you will have it. You and the boy may move into the southeast tower if you like. There are a couple of big round rooms with high ceilings, and good light, and you’ll be out of that drafty cobbleshed, and warmer. You’ll have your own staircase to come and go into the main hall, and you won’t bother the girls and they won’t trouble you. You can’t stay in that cobbleshed all winter. The boy has been looking pale and blubbery, I think he’s always cold. You’re there on the condition, I’m afraid, that you accept my firmest word on these matters. I don’t care to discuss my husband or the affairs of his death with you.”

Elphaba looked horror-struck, and beaten. “I have no choice but to accept,” she said, “at least for the time being. But I warn you, I intend to befriend you so thoroughly that you will change your mind. And I do think you need to hear things, you need to talk about them, as I do-and I can’t leave into the wilderness until I have your solemn promise of-“

“Enough!” said Sarima. “Call the porter from the gatehouse and have him bring your luggage to the tower. Come, I’ll show you. You haven’t touched your coffee.” She stood. For an awkward moment there was respect and suspicion, in equal measure, simmering on the carpet like the dust in the sunbeams. “Come,” Sarima said, more softly, “at the very least you need to be warm. You must be able to say that much of us country mice here at Kiamo Ko.”

As far as Elphaba was concerned, it was a witch’s room, and she reveled in it. Like all good witch’s rooms in children’s stories, it was a

room with bowed walls, following the essential form of a tower. It had one broad window that, since it faced east, away from the wind, could be unbarred and opened without blowing everyone and everything out into the snowy valleys. Beyond, the Great Kells were a rank of sentinels, purple-black when the winter sun rose over them, draining into blue-white screens as the sun moved overhead, and going golden and ruddy in the late afternoon. There were sometimes rumbling collapses of ice and scree.

The winter gripped the house. Elphaba learned soon enough to stay put unless she was sure another room had a warmer fire. And except for Sarima, she didn’t care for the other human company the house afforded. Sarima lived in the west wing, with the children: the boys Irji and Manek, the girl Nor. Sarima’s five sisters lived in the east wing-they were called numbers Two through Six, and if they had ever had other names they had withered away from disuse. By right of their unmarriageability, the sisters claimed the best rooms in the place, although Sarima had the Solar. Where Liir curled up to sleep Elphaba did not know, but he reappeared every morning to change the rags at the bottom of the crows’ perch. He brought her cocoa, too.

Lurlinemas drew near, and out came some tired decorations from which the gilt had all but vanished. The children spent a whole day tying baubles and toys to the archways, making the grown-ups bump their heads and curse. Manek and Irji took a saw and without permission went beyond the castle walls to claim some boughs of spruce and sprigs of holly. Nor stayed behind and painted scenes of happy life in the castle on sheets of paper that she and Liir had found in Auntie Witch’s room. Liir said he couldn’t draw, so he wandered off and disappeared, perhaps to stay clear of Manek and Irji. The house fell still until there was a flurry of copper pans thrown about the kitchen. Nor went running to see, and Liir arrived from some hiding cubby to look too.

It was Chistery. The monkey was having a fit, and all the sisters, baking gingerbread, were throwing gobbets of batter at him, trying to knock him off the wheel that hung, noisy with swinging utensils, above the worktable.

“How’d he get in here?” said Nor.

“Get him out, Liir, call him!” said Two. But Liir had no more authority over Chistery than they did. The monkey flew to the top of a

wardrobe, then to a huge dried goods canister, and he pulled open a drawer and found a precious store of raisins, which he stuffed in his mouth. Six said, “Go get the ladder from the hall, you two, and bring it here,” but when they had, Chistery was back on the wheel, making it whirl and clatter like a roundabout at a carnival.

Four put a lump of mashed melon in a bowl. Five and Three took off their aprons, ready to rush him when he came down. Chistery was still eyeing the fruit when the door smacked open against the wall and Elphaba came lolloping in. “All this commotion, how can you hear yourselves think?” she cried, and then took in the sight of Chistery, suddenly abject and remorseful, and of the sisters, poised to ensnare him in their floury aprons.

“What the hell is this?” she said.

“No need to yell,” said Two sulkily, quietly, but they put down their aprons.

“I mean, what is this? What is realiy going on here? You all look like Killyjoy, with blood lust in your faces! You’re white with rage at this poor beast!”

“I think it’s not rage, it’s flour,” said Five, which made them giggle.

“You filthy savages,” said Elphie. “Chistery come here, come down here. Right now. You women deserve to be unmarried, so you don’t bring any little savage creepy children into the world. Don’t you ever lay a hand on this monkey, do you hear me? And how did he get out of my room anyway? I was in the Solar with your sister.”

“Oh,” said Nor, remembering, “oh, Auntie, I’m sorry. It was us.”

“You?” She turned and looked at Nor as if for the first time, and Nor didn’t like it much. She shrank back against the door of the cold cellar. “What were you skulking about in my room for?” said Elphie.

“Some paper,” said Nor faintly, and in a desperate, all-or-nothing gamble, said, “I made some paintings for everybody, do you want to see, come here.”

Chistery in her arms, Elphaba followed them into the drafty hall, where the wind under the front door was making the papers flutter against the carved stone. The sisters came too, a safe distance behind.

Elphie got very quiet. “This is my paper,” she said. “I didn’t say you could use it. Look, it has words on the back. Do you know what words are?”

“Of course I do, do you think I am slow?” responded Nor sassily.

“You leave my papers alone,” said Elphaba. She and Chistery then flew up the steps, and the door to the tower slammed behind them.

“Who wants to help roll out the gingerbread?” said Two, relieved that skulls hadn’t been knocked together. “And this hall looks very pretty, chickadees, I’m sure Preenella and Lurline will be impressed tonight.” The children went back into the kitchen and made gingerbread people, and crows, and monkeys, and dogs, but they couldn’t do bees, they were too small. When Irji and Manek came in, dumping snowy greens on the slate floor, they helped at the gingerbread shapes too, but they made naughty shapes that they wouldn’t show the younger children, and they kept gobbling up the raw dough and laughing hysterically at it, which made everyone else testy.

In the morning the children awoke and ran downstairs to see if Lurline and Preenella had been there. Sure enough, there was a brown wicker basket with a green and gold ribbon on it (a basket and a ribbon that Sarima’s children had seen many years in a row), and in it were three small colored boxes, each one with an orange, a puppet, a small sack of marbles, and a gingerbread mouse.

“Where’s mine?” said Liir.

“Don’t see one with your name on it,” said Irji. “Look: Irji. Manek. Nor. Guess Preenella left it for you at your old house. Where did you used to live?”

“I don’t know,” said Liir, and started to cry.

“Here, you can have the tail of my mouse, just the tail,” said Nor kindly. “First you have to say, May I please have the tail of your mouse?”

“May I please have the tail of your mouse,” said Liir, though his words were almost unintelligible.

“And I promise to obey you.”

Liir mumbled on. The exchange was eventually completed. From shame, Liir didn’t mention the oversight. Sarima and the sisters never took it in.

Elphaba didn’t show her face all day, but she sent down a message that Lurlinemas Eve and Lurlinemas always made her ill, and she was tak

ing a few days in solitary comfort, and she wanted to be disturbed neither with meals, nor visitors, nor noise of any kind.

So while Sarima took herself off to her private chapel to remember her dear husband on this holy day, the sisters and the children all sang carols as loudly as they could.

A few weeks later, when the children were having snowball battles, and Sarima was concocting some medicinal toddy in the kitchen, Elphie left her room at last and skulked down the stairs and knocked on the door of the sisters’ parlor.

They didn’t like it, but they felt obliged to welcome her. The silver tray with bottles of hard liquor, the precious crystal carried on donkey all the way from Dixxi House in Gillikin, the prettiest and red-richest of native carpets on the floor, the luxury of fireplaces at both sides of the room, each blazing merrily-well, they would have toned it down some had they had any warning. As it was, Four hid in the sofa cushions the leather volume from which she had been reading aloud, a racy history of a poor young woman beset by an abundance of handsome suitors. It had been a gift from Fiyero once, the best gift he had ever sent the sisters-also the only one.

“Would you like some lemon barley water?” said Six, ever the servant until the day she died, unless by luck everyone else died sooner.

“Yes, all right,” Elphaba said.

“Do take a seat-this seat here, you’ll find it most comfy.”

Elphie didn’t look as if she wanted to be comfy, but she sat there anyway, stiff and uneasy in that quilted cocoon of a room.

She took the tiniest sip possible from her drink, as if suspecting hellebore.

“I suppose I need to apologize for that flurry over Chistery,” she said. “I know I am your guest here at Kiamo Ko. Ijust flew off the handle.”

“\Vell, you did just that,” started Five, but the others said, “Oh, think nothing of it, we all have days like that, in fact for us it usually happens on the same day, it’s been that way for years . .

“It’s very taxing,” Elphie said with some effort. “I spent many years under a vow of silence, and I haven’t always learned how-loud-it is

permissible to get. Besides that, this is a foreign culture, in a way.”

“We Aijikis have always been proud of being able to speak to any other citizen in Oz,” said Two. “We are as equally at home with the ragged vagabond Scrow to our south as with the elite in the Emerald City to our east.” Not that they’d ever been out of the Vinkus.

“A little nibble?” said Three, bringing out a tin of marzipan fruits.

“No,” Elphie said, “but I wonder what you could tell me of your sister’s particular sadness.”

They sat poised, tempted, and suspicious.

“I enjoy my chats with her in the Solar,” said Elphie, “but whenever the talk gets around to her departed husband-whom as you may realize I myself knew-she is unwilling to discuss a thing.”

“Oh, well, it was so sad,” said Two.

“A tragedy,” said Three.

“For her,” said Four.

“For us,” said Five.

“Auntie Guest, take a little orange liqueur in your lemon barley,” said Six, “it comes from the balmy slopes of the Lesser Kells and is quite a luxury.”

“Well, just a drop,” said Elphie, but didn’t sip it. She put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward and said, “Please tell me how she learned of Fiyero’s death.”

There was a silence. The sisters avoided casting glances at one another, busying themselves with the pleats of their skirts. After a pause, it was Two who said, “That sad day. It stings in the memory still.”

The others adjusted themselves in their seats, turning slightly toward her. Elphaba blinked twice, looking like one of her own crows.

Two told the tale, without sentiment or drama. One of Fiyero’s business colleagues, an Arjiki trader, had come through the mountain pass at the first spring thaw, on the back of a mountain skark. He asked to meet with Sanma and insisted her sisters be around to support her at his woeful news. He told them how, on Lurlinemas, he had received at his club an anonymous message that Fiyero had been murdered. There was an address in a disreputable area-not even a residential neighborhood. The clansman hired a couple of brutes and broke down the door of the warehouse. Inside was a small apartment hidden upstairs, a place of assig

nation, obviously. (The clansman reported this without flinching, perhaps as a power-mongering maneuver.) There was evidence of struggle and massive quantities of blood, so thick in places that it was still tacky. The body had been removed, and it was never recovered.

Elphaba only nodded, grimly, at this recounting.

“For a year,” continued Two, “our dear distraught Sarima refused to believe he was really dead. We would not have been surprised at a ransom note. But by the following Lurlinemas, when no further word about it had arrived, we had to accept the inevitable. Besides, the clan had gone on as long as it could with an ad hoc collaborative leadership; they demanded a single chief, and one was put forward, and he’s served well. When Irji comes of age he may claim the rights of progenitorship, if he’s bold enough; he is not yet bold at all. Manek is the more obvious candidate, but he’s only second in line.”

“And what does Sarima believe happened?” said Elphie. “And you? All of you?”

Now that the grimmest part of the story had been told, the other sisters felt they could chime in. It emerged that Sarima had for some years suspected Fiyero of having an affair with an old college chum named Glinda, a Gillikinese girl of legendary beauty.

“Legendary?” Elphie said.

“He told us all how charming she was, how self-effacing, what grace and sparkle-“

“Is it all that likely he’d gush on and on about a woman he was committing adultery with?”

“Men,” said Two, “are, as we all know, both cruel and cunning.

What better ruse than to admit fervently and often that he admired her?

Sarima had no grounds on which to accuse him of slyness and deception.

He never stopped being attentive to her-“

“In his cold, morose, withdrawn, embittered fashion,” interjected Three.

“Hardly the thing one reads about in novels,” said Four.

“if one read novels,” said Five.

“Which we don’t,” said Six, closing her lips over a marzipan pear.

“And so Sarima believes her husband was carrying on with this- this-“

“This dazzler,” said Two. “You must have known her, didn’t you go to Shiz?”

“I knew her a bit,” Elphie said, her mouth forgetting to shut itself. She was having a hard time keeping up with the multiple narrators. “I haven’t seen her in years.”

“And it is clear in Sarima’s mind what happened,” said Two.

“Glinda was-for all I know still is-married to a wealthy older gentleman named Sir Chuifrey. He must have suspected something, and had her followed, and found out what was going on. Then he had some thugs kill the bastard. I mean poor Fiyero. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“It’s entirely plausible,” Elphie said slowly. “But is there any proof?”

“No proof at all,” said Four. “If there were, family honor would have required a retributive murder of Sir Chuifrey. But he may still be in robust good health. No, it’s only a theory, but it’s what Sanma believes.”

“Clings to,” said Six.

“And why not,” said Five.

“It’s her prerogative,” said Three.

“Everything’s her prerogative,” said Two sadly. “Besides, think of it. If your husband were murdered, wouldn’t it be easier to bear if you thought he deserved it, even just a little?”

“No,” Elphie said, “I don’t think it would.”

“Neither do we,” admitted Two, “but we think that’s what she thinks.”

“And you?” Elphie asked, studying the pattern in the carpet, the blood red lozenges, the thorny margins, the beasts and acanthus leaves and rose medallions. “What do you think?”

“We hardly can be expected to subscribe to a unanimous opinion,” said Two, but she barreled ahead anyway. “It seems reasonable to suppose that unbeknownst to us, Fiyero had gotten involved in some political enterprise in the Emerald City.”

“A stay that was to be a month became four,” said Four.

“Had he political-sensibilities?” said Elphaba.

“He was the Prince of the Arjikis,” Five reminded them all. “He had connections-responsibilities-allegiances-who of us could guess at them? It was his duty to have opinions on things we shouldn’t need to know about.”

“Was he sympathetic to the Wizard?” said Elphie.

“Are you saying was he involved in any of those campaigns? Those-pogroms? First the Quadlirigs, then the Animals?” said Three. “You look surprised that we should know about these things. Do you think we’re so very removed from the rest of Oz?”

“We are removed,” said Two. “But we listen to talk. We like to feed travelers when they come to stop. We know life can be rotten out there.”

“The Wizard is a despot,” said Four.

“Our home is our castle,” said Five at the same time. “Some removal from all this is healthy. We retain our moral fiber, unsullied.”

They all smirked, simultaneously.

“But do you think Fiyero had an opinion about the Wizard?” Elphaba asked again, pressing with some urgency.

“He kept his own counsel,” snapped Two. “For the sake of sweet Lurline, dear Auntie, he was a prince and a man!-and we were nothing bitt his younger, dependent sisters-in-law! Do you think he would confide in us? He could have been a high-level crony of the Wizard for all we know! He surely would’ve had liaisons with the Palace, he was a prince. Even if only of our small tribe. What he did with those liaisons-how are we to say? But we don’t think he died as the victim of a jealous husband. Maybe we’re sheltered, but we don’t. We think he got caught in the crossfire of some fringe struggle. Or he was found out in the act of betrayal of one excitable group or other. He was a handsome man,” said Two, “and none of us would deny it, then or now. But he was intense and private and we doubt he’d have loosened up enough to have an affair.” By the smallest gesture-a sucking in of her abdomen and a squaring of her shoulders-Two betrayed the foundation of her position: How could he have succumbed to this Glinda’s charms if he had been able to resist his own sisters-in-law?

“But,” Elphie asked in a small voice, “do you really think he was a spy for someone?”

“Why was his body never found?” said Two. “If it had been a jealous rage, his body needn’t have been removed. Perhaps he hadn’t died yet. Perhaps he was taken to be tortured. No, in our limited experience, we think that this smacks of treachery of a political stripe, not a romantic one.”

“I-” said Elphaba.

“You’re pale, dear. Six, please, a beaker of water-“

“No,” said Elphaba. “It’s just so-one never thought at the time- I never. Shall I tell you what little I know of it? And perhaps you can mention it to Sarima.” She began to pace. “I saw Fiyero-“

But, at the oddest possible moment, family solidarity kicked in. “Dear Auntie Guest,” said Two, in a responsible tone, “we are under the strictest orders from our sister not to allow you to tire yourself by chatting about Fiyero and the sad circumstances of his death.” Clearly Two had to work to get this out, as the appetite to hear what Elphaba had to say was huge. Stomachs were rumbling for the meat of it. But propriety won out, or fear of Sarima’s wrath if she were to find out. “No,” said Two again, “no, I’m afraid we mustn’t express undue interest. We may not listen and we will not tell Sarima what we hear.”

In the end, Elphaba left them, drooping. “Another time,” she kept saying, “when you’re ready, when she’s ready. You see it’s essential; there’s so much grief she could be released from-and that she herself could lift, too-“

“Good-bye for now,” they said, and the door closed behind her. The fires in the twin fireplaces mirrored back and forth across the room, and they took up positions of frustrated worthiness, at having to obey their older sister-curse her to hell.

Ice crusted the roofs, dislodged tiles, and dripped dirtily into the private chambers, the music room, the towers. Elphaba took to wearing her hat indoors to avoid the random icy dart on her scalp. The crows were mildewy around the beak and had algae between the claws. The sisters finished their novel, and collectively sighed-for life, for life!-and began to read it again, as they had done for eight years. In the fierce updraft from the valley, the snow seemed as often to be rising as falling. The children adored it.

One glum afternoon Sarima bedecked herself in red woolen wraps and, out of boredom, went wandering through musty, disused rooms. She located a staircase in a trapezoidal, slanting shaft-perhaps this high

alcove leaned against the side of the gable you couldn’t see, she wasn’t good at imagining architecture in three dimensions. She mounted the stairs anyway. At the top, through a crude grillwork, she saw a figure in the white gloom. Sarima coughed so as not to startle her.

Elphaba was bent almost double over a huge folio laid out on a carpenter’s work bench. She turned, surprised but not very, and said, “We’ve had the same inclination, how curious.”

“You’ve found some books, I’d completely forgotten,” said Sarima. She could read now, but not well, and books made her feel inferior. “I couldn’t tell you what they’re all about. So many words, you’d hardly think the world deserved such scrutiny.”

“Over here is an archaic geography,” said Elphie, “and some records of usufruct pacts among various families of the Arjiki-I bet there are leaders who would be very happy to see these. Unless they’re outdated. Some texts that Fiyero had in Shiz-I recognize them too, the life sciences course of studies.”

“And this big thing-purple pages and silver ink, how grand.”

“I found it on the floor of this wardrobe. It seems to be a Grimmerie,” Elphie said, running her hand down a page only softly buckled with moisture. It made a pretty contrast, her hand on the vellum.

“What is that, besides beautiful?”

“As I understand it,” Elphie said, “a sort of encyclopedia of things numinous. Magic; and of the spirit world; and of things seen and unseen; and of things once and future. I can only make out a line here or there. Look how it scrambles itself as you watch.” She pointed to a paragraph of hand-lettered text. Sarima peered. Though her skill at reading was minimal, she gaped at what she saw. The letters floated and rearranged themselves on the page, as if enlivened. The page was changing its mind as they watched it. The letters clotted together in a big black snarl, like a mound of ants. Then Elphaba turned a page. “Here, this section is a book of beasts.” There were elegant, attenuated drawings in blood red and gold leaf, on the front and rear elevations of (it seemed) an angel, with notes in a fine hand on the aerodynamic aspects of holiness. The wings flexed up and down and the angel smiled with a saucy sort of sanctity. “And a recipe on this page. It says ‘Of apples with black skin and white flesh: to fill the stomach with greed unto Death.”

“I remember this book now,” Sarima said. “I do remember how it came to be here, I even put it up here myself; I had forgotten. Well, books are so easy to set aside, aren’t they?”

Elphie looked up, her eyes leveling out under her smooth, rocklike brow. “Tell me, Sarima, please.”

The Dowager Princess of Kiamo Ko was flustered. She went to a small window and tried to open it, but encrustations of ice prevented her. So she sat down in a flump on a packing crate and told Elphaba the story. She couldn’t remember exactly when, but it was a long time ago, when everyone was young and slim. Beloved Fiyero was still alive but he was off in the Grasslands with the tribe. Complaining of a headache, she was home in the castle all alone. The bell at the drawbridge sounded and she went to see who it was.

“Madame Morrible,” Elphaba said. “Some Kumbric Witch or other.”

“No, it was no madame. It was an elderly man in a tunic and leggings, with a cloak badly in need of attention by a seamstress. He said he was a sorcerer, but perhaps he was just mad. He asked for a meal and a bath, which he got, and then he said he wanted to pay by giving me this book. I told him with a castle to run I didn’t have much time for frivolity, reading and such. He said never mind.”

Sarima drew her robes about her, and traced a pattern in the cold dust on a nearby stack of codexes. “He told me a fabulous tale and persuaded me to take this thing from him. He said that it was a book of knowledge, and that it belonged in another world, but it wasn’t safe there. So he had brought it here-where it could be hidden and out of harm’s way.”

“What a load of tripe,” said Elphie. “If it came from another world I shouldn’t be able to read any of it. And I can make out a little.”

“Even if it’s as magic as he says?” said Sarima. “But you know, I believed him. He said there was more congress between worlds than anyone would credit, that our world has attributes of his, and his of ours, a kind of leakage effect, or an infection maybe. He had a long fringy whiteand-gray beard, and a very kind and abstracted manner, and he smelled of garlic and sour cream.”

“Indisputable proof of other-worldliness-“

“Don’t mock me,” said Sarima blandly, “you’ve asked me, so I’m

telling you. He said it was too powerful to be destroyed, but too threatening-to that other place-to be preserved. So he made a magic trip or something and came here.”

“Kiamo Ko called to him and he couldn’t resist her attractions-“

“He said we were isolated, and a stronghold,” said Sarima, “and I couldn’t disagree! And what did it mean to me to take another book? We just lugged it up here, and put it with the rest. I don’t even know if I told anyone about it. Then he blessed me and left. He walked with an oak-thorn staff over the Locklimb Trail.”

“Can you really say you thought the man who brought this here was a sorcerer?” said Elphie. ‘And that this book comes from-another world? Do you even believe in other worlds?”

“I find it a great effort to believe in this one,” said Sarima, “yet it seems to be here, so why should I trust my skepticism about other worlds? Don’t you believe?”

“I tried to, as a child,” said Elphie. “I made an effort. The mothy, gormless, indistinct sunrise of salvation world-the Other Land-I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t focus. Now I just think it’s our own lives that are hidden from us. The mystery-who is that person in the mirror-that’s shocking and unfathomable enough for me.”

“Well he was a very nice sorcerer, or madman, or whatever.”

“Maybe it was some agent loyal to the Ozma Regent,” said Elphie. “Secreting some ancient Lurlinist tract here. Anticipating a revival of royalism, a Palace coup, worried about the kidnapped, sleep-charmed Ozma Tippetarius, coming in disguise to hide this document far away, but still retrievable

“You are full of conspiracy theories,” said Sarima. “I’ve noticed that about you. This was an elderly gentleman, very elderly. And he spoke with an accent. He surely was a wandering magician from some other place. And hasn’t he been right? The thing has sat here, forgotten, for what, ten years or more already.”

“May I take it and look at it?”

“I don’t care. He never said not to read it,” said Sarima. ‘At the time I perhaps couldn’t read at all-I forget: But look at that beautiful angel there! Do you really mean to say you don’t believe in the Other Land? In an afterlife?”

“Just what we need.” Elphaba snorted as she picked up the tome. ‘A post Vale-of-Tears Vale-of-Tears.”

One morning, after Six had tried and given up once again at some sort of lessons for the children, Irji suggested an indoor game of hide-and-seek. They drew straws and Nor lost, so she hid her eyes and counted. When she got bored with waiting she called out “One hundred!” and looked about.

She tagged Liir first. Though he liked to disappear alone for hours at a time, he was bad at hiding when it was required of him. So they hunted together for the older boys, and found Irji in Sarima’s Solar, crouching behind the velvet ruffles suspended from the perch of a stuffed gryphon.

But Manek, the best at hiding, couldn’t be found. Not in the kitchen, the music room, the towers. Running out of ideas, the children even dared to go down into the musty basement.

“There’s tunnels from here all the way to hell,” said Irji.

“Where? Why?” said Nor, and Liir echoed.

“They’re hidden. I don’t know where. But everybody says so. Ask Six. I think because this used to be a waterworks headquarters-it did. Hell burns so hot they need water, and the devils tunneled up to here.”

Nor said, “Look, Liir, here’s the fishwell.”

In the center of a low-vaulted room, damp with moisture beaded up on its stone walls, stood a low well with a wooden lid. There was a simple device with a chain and a stone for shifting the lid sideways. It was child’s play to uncover the shaft.

“Down there,” said Irji, “is where we get the fish we eat. Nobody knows if there’s a whole lake down there or if it’s bottomless, or if you can go down right to hell.” He moved the rushlight about, and there was a round of black water shining back a reflection, in chips and circles of chilly white light.

“Six says there’s a gold carp in there,” said Nor. “She saw it once. Biggest old thing, she thought it was a floating brass kettle bobbing to the surface, and then it turned and looked at her.”

“Maybe it was a brass kettle,” said Liir.

“Kettles don’t have eyes,” said Nor.

‘Anyway, Manek’s not here,” said Irji. “Is he?” He called, “Hello, Manek,” and the echo rolled and dissolved in the wet dark.

“Maybe Manek went down to hell in one of those tunnels,” said Liir.

Irji swung the lid back on the fishwell. “But you’re it, Nor, I’m not going to look down here anymore.”

They gave themselves the creeps, and raced back upstairs. Four yelled at them for making too much noise.

Nor found Manek at last on the stairs outside the door to Auntie Guest’s rooms. “Shhh,” he said as they came near, and Nor tapped him anyway, saying, “You’re out.”

“Shhh,” he said again, more urgently.

They took turns looking through the crack in the weathered grain of the door.

Auntie had her finger in a book, and she was mumbling things to herself, sounding them out this way and that. On the dresser next to her squatted Chistery, in an uneasy, obedient silence.

“What’s happening?” said Nor.

“She’s trying to teach him to talk,” said Manek.

“Let me look,” said Liir.

“Say spirit,” said Auntie in a kind voice. “Say spirit. Spirit. Spirit.”

Chistery twisted his mouth to one side, as if considering it.

“There is no difference,” said Auntie to herself, or maybe to Chistery. “The strands are the same, the skeins are the same; the rock remembers; the water has memory; the air has a past for which it can be held accountable; the flame renews itself like a pfenix. What is an animal, but made of rock and water and fire and ether! Remember how to speak, Chistery. You are animal, but Animal is your cousin, damn you. Say spirit.”

Chistery picked a nit off his chest and ate it.

“Spirit,” sang Auntie, “there is spirit, I know it. Spirit!”

“Spit,” said Chistery, or something like it.

Irji shoved Manek aside and the children almost fell through the door trying to see Auntie laugh and dance and sing. She picked up Chistery and hugged him, and said, “Spirit, oh spirit, Chistery! There is spirit! Say spirit!”

“Spit, spit, spit,” said Chistery, unimpressed with himself. “Spite.”

But Killyjoy woke from a nap at the sound of a new voice.

“Spirit,” said Auntie.

“Speared,” said Chistery patiently. “Spared. Spored. Sput spot sput. Spat spate spit, speed spurt spot.”

“Spirit,” said Auntie, “oh, my Chistery, we’ll find ourselves a link with Doctor Dillamond’s old work yet! There is a universal design among us all, could we get in deeply enough to see! Everything is not In vain! Spirit, my friend, spirit!”

“Sport,” said Chistery.

The children couldn’t stop laughing. They clattered down the stairs and fell into the dormitory, and giggled into the bedclothes.

They didn’t mention what they saw to Sarima or the sisters. They were afraid Auntie would be stopped, and they all wanted Chistery to learn enough language so that he could play with them.

One windless day, when it seemed they must get out of Kiamo Ko or expire of boredom, Sarima had the idea that they go skating on a nearby pond. The sisters agreed, and dug out the rusting skates Fiyero had brought back from the Emerald City. The sisters baked caramel sweets and prepared flasks of cocoa, and even decorated themselves with green and gold ribbons, as if it were a second Lurlinemas. Sarima adorned herself in a brown velvet robe with fur tippets, the children put on extra trousers and tunics, and even Elphaba came along, in a thick cloak of purple brocade and heavy Arjiki goatskin boots, and mittens, carrying her broom. Chistery lugged along a basket of dried apricots. The sisters in sensible men’s tribal overcoats, belted and latched, drew up the rear.

The villagers had cleared the snow off the center of the pond. It was a ballroom dance floor of silver plate, engraved with the flourishes of a thousand arabesques, mounded round with pillows and bolsters of snow to provide a safe repose for skaters who forget how to brake or turn. In the fierce sunlight, the mountains looked razor sharp against the blue; great snowy egrets and ice griffons wheeled high above. The ice rink was already noisy with screaming urchins and lurching adolescents (taking every opportunity to tumble and heap each other cozily in suggestive positions). Their elders moved more slowly, processionally around the

ice. The crowd fell silent as the household of Kiamo Ko approached, but, children being children, the silence didn’t last for long.

Sarima ventured out onto the ice, her sisters in a knot around her with linked arms. Being largish, Sarima was nervous of falling, nor were her ankles strong. But before long she had remembered how things went-this foot, then that, long languorous strides-and the uneasy meeting of social classes was accomplished. Elphaba looked like one of her crows: knees out, elbows flailing, rags flapping, gloved hands raking for balance.

After the adults had had enough excitement (but the children were only still warming up) Sarima and the sisters and Elphie collapsed on some bearskins that the citizenry had spread out for them.

“In the summer,” said Sarima, “we have a huge bonfire and slaughter some pigs, before the men descend to the plains, or the boys ascend to the slopes to guard the sheep and the goats. They all come into the castle for a chew of pork and a few tankards of ale. And of course, any time there’s a mountain lion or a particularly nasty bear, we let them into the keep until the beast is killed or wanders away.” She smiled with noblesse oblige in an abbreviated way, off into the middle distance, though the locals were ignoring the castle folk by now. ‘Auntie dear, you looked quite the sight in that robe, and poking along with that broom.”

“Liir says it’s a magic broom,” said Nor, who had run up to throw a handful of granular snowflakes into her mother’s face. Elphaba turned her head quickly and tugged her collar up to avoid ricocheting snow spray. Nor laughed unkindly in a beautiful phrase like a woodwind, and scampered away.

“So tell us how your broom came to be magic,” said Sarima.

“I never said it was magic. I got it from an elderly maunt named Mother Yaclde. She took me under her wing, when she was alert enough, and gave me-well, guidance, I suppose you’d call it.”

“Guidance,” said Sarima.

“The old maunt said the broom would be my link to my destiny,” said Elphie. “I assume she meant that my destiny was domestic. Not magic.”

“Join the sisterhood.” Sarima yawned.

“I never knew if Mother Yackle was completely mad or a wise, prophetic old hen,” said Elphie, but the others weren’t listening, so she lapsed into silence.

After a while Nor came flinging herself into her mother’s lap again. “Tell me a story, Mama,” she said. “Those boys are nasty.”

“Boys are vexing creatures,” agreed her mother. “Sometimes. Shall I tell you the story of when you were born?”

“No, not that,” said Nor, yawning. ‘A real story. Tell me about the Witch and the fox babies again.”

Sarima protested, knowing full well that the children considered Auntie Guest a witch. But Nor was stubborn and Sarima relented, and told the tale. Elphaba listened. Her father had taught her moral precepts, had lectured her about responsibility; Nanny had gossiped; Nessarose had whined. But no one had told stories to her when she was young. She pulled herself forward a little so she could hear over the noise of the crowd.

Sarima recited the tale with little dramatic involvement, but even so, Elphaba felt a twinge when she heard the conclusion. ‘And there the wicked old Witch stayed, for a good long time.”

“Did she ever come out?” recited Nor, eyes gleaming with the fun of the ritual.

“Not yet,” answered Sarima, and leaned forward, pretending to bite Nor on the neck. Nor squealed and jiggled herself away, and ran to rejoin the boys.

“I think that’s shameful, even if it’s just a story, to propose an afterlife for evil,” said Elphaba. “Any afterlife notion is a manipulation and a sop. It’s shameful the way the unionists and the pagans both keep talking up hell for intimidation and the airy Other Land for reward.”

“Don’t,” Sarima said. “For one thing, that’s where Fiyero is waiting for me. And you know it.”

Elphaba’s jaw dropped. When she least expected it, Sarima always seemed ready to rush in with a surprise attack. “In the afterlife?” said Elphie.

“Oh, what you do take against,” said Sarima. “I pity the community of the afterlife when they’re asked to welcomeyou in. What a sour apple you always are.”

She’s crazy,” said Manek knowledgeably. “Everyone knows that you can’t teach an animal to talk.”

They were in the abandoned summer stable, jumping off a loft, making puffs of hay and snow billow in the patchy light.

“Well, what is she doing with Chistery then?” asked Irji. “If you’re so sure of it?”

“She’s teaching him to mimic, like a parrot,” said Manek.

“I think she’s magic,” said Nor.

“You, you think everything’s magic,” Manek said. “Stupid girl.”

“Well, everything is,” said Nor, launching herself away from the boys as a further editorial comment on their skepticism.

“Do you really think she’s magic?” said Manek to Liir. “You know her better than any of us. She’s your mother.”

“She’s my Auntie, isn’t she?” Liir said.

“She’s our Auntie, she’syour mother.”

“I know,” said Irji, pretending full immersion in the topic to avoid another jump. “Liir is Chistery’s brother. Liir is what Chistery was like before she taught him how to talk. You’re a monkey, Liir.”

“I’m not a monkey,” said Liir, “and I’m not magicked.”

“Vv’ell, let’s go ask Chistery,” said Manek. “Is this the day that Auntie has her coffee with Mama? Let’s go see if Chistery has learned enough words to answer some questions.”

They scampered up the stone spiral staircase to Auntie Witch’s apartment.

True, she was gone, and there was Chistery nibbling on some nutshells, and KIllyjoy dozing by the fire, growling in his sleep, and the bees doing their ceaseless chorus. The children didn’t like bees much, nor did they care for Killyjoy. Even Liir had lost interest in the dog once he had children to play with. But Chistery was a favorite. “Sweet thing, oh the little baby,” said Nor. “Here, you little beast, come to Auntie Nor.” The monkey looked doubtful, but then on knuckles and capable feet he swung across the floor and vaulted into her arms. He inspected her ears for treats, peered over her shoulders at the boys.

“You tell us, Chistery boy, is Auntie Witch really magic?” said Npr. “Tell us all about Auntie Witch.”

“Watch Witch,” said Chistery, playing with his fingers. “Which wretch which?” They could have sworn it was a question, the way his forehead wrinkled like eyebrows.

lire you unaer a spell?” saia Manek.

“Spell ill. Spoil spell,” answered Chistery. “Spill all.”

“How do we spoil the spell? How do we turn you back to a boy?” asked Irji, the oldest but just as caught up as the others. “Is there a special way?”

“Why way?” said Chistery. “We woo, we weigh woe. Why?”

“Tell us what to do,” said Nor, petting him.

“Do, die,” said Chistery.

“Great,” said Irji. “So we can’t break the spell you’re under?”

“Oh, he’s only babbling,” Elphaba said from the doorway. “Look, I have visitors I didn’t even invite.”

“Oh hello, Auntie,” they said. They knew they shouldn’t be there. “He’s talking, sort of. He’s magicked.”

“He mostly just repeats what you say,” said Elphaba, moving closer. “So leave him alone. You’re not allowed here.”

They said, “Sorry,” and left. Back in the boys’ room, they fell on the mattress and roared until they wept, and couldn’t say what was so funny. Maybe it was the relief of having escaped without harm from the Witch’s rooms, even though they had no business there. The children decided they were no longer scared of Auntie Witch.

ey were tired of being housebound, but finally it was raining out

instead of snowing. They played hide-and-seek a lot, waiting for the rain to lift so they could go outside.

One morning, Nor was it. She kept finding Manek easily, because Liir always hid near him and gave him away. Manek lost his patience. “I always get caught, because you’re so hopeless. Why can’t you hide well?”