Page 103 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The word on the street. Elphaba Lives!

Nor’s handwriting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

t will be all right. Maybe Candle. Maybe Trism. Maybe something will work.

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

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

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

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

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

He found a basket.

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