Page 11 of Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years 2)

Books have their own life, he thought. Let it take care of itself.

Turning to leave, he caught sight of Elphaba’s black cape. A bit worse for wear, its hems threadbare, its collar much sampled by moths. Still, it was thick, and the days would only get colder. He put it over his narrow shoulders. It was far too large for him, so he looped the ends around his forearms. He looked, he supposed, like a small silly bat with an oversize wingspan. He didn’t care.

The horizon was frosted with a greenish smear, as if ranks of campfires from distant tribes had divined the news already and were burning an homage to Elphaba before the sun could set on the day of her death.

He could smell her in the collar of the cape, and he wept for the first time.

LIIR DIDN’T BOTHER to say good-bye to Chistery. Let the Witch’s most beloved Flying Monkey take care of himself now. Why else had she taught him language, but so that he could keen when she was gone?

On the road, the Lion and that little yapper, Toto, lagged behind with the other two who had been waiting for Dorothy—the Scarecrow, the man of tin—both of whom gave Liir a serious case of the creeps. The wind was brutal and the streaky clouds massed to the east, and if Liir wasn’t mistaken, before long rain would fall.

Dorothy asked perfunctory questions, but she was more interested in making sure they didn’t lose their way. How would he know if they went off course, he asked her—it had been seven or eight years since he’d come from the mauntery with Elphaba, and he’d never left the neighborhood of Kiamo Ko in all the time since. Dorothy had much more recent experience of the greater landscape.

“Yes, well, those Flying Monkeys carried me the last bit,” she said

nervously, “and I can’t claim to have had my wits about me enough to have taken note of landmarks. Still, we’re going downslope, and that’s got to be right.”

“Everything is downslope of Kiamo Ko,” Liir told her.

“I like your confidence,” she said. “Tell me about yourself, then.”

He suspected his memories of young childhood were like anyone else’s: imprecise, suggestible, and largely devoid of emotion. He didn’t recall defining moments—maybe there weren’t any—but he did remember the sensation of things. The shafts of light slanting through the mullioned windows high up in the gallery, pinning silent maunts to their silent shadows on the stone floor. The smell of asparagus cream soup, a little maple syrup drizzled on top. The smell of snow in the air. Liir had been attached to Elphaba, somehow, he remembered that: he’d been allowed to play with his broken wooden ducky in the same room where she sat and spun wool.

“Was she your mother?” asked Dorothy. “I’m terribly sorry to have killed her if she was. I mean I’m sorry anyway, but more so if you were related.”

The girl’s directness was puzzling, and Liir wasn’t used to it. The Witch had never hidden her emotions, but nor had she explained them, and in many ways living with her had been like sharing an apartment with an ill-tempered house pet.

He tried to be honest, but there was so much he didn’t know. “I started out with her,” he said. “How, as a toddler, I came to be among the maunts, I can’t say. No one has ever told me, and the Witch wouldn’t talk about it. I remember other women from those times, Sister Cupboard and Sister Orchard, and some of the more playful ones, the novices, who kept their own names, Sister Saint Grayce, and Sister Linnet. But when it came time for Elphaba to leave, they wrapped up my small packet of clothes, too, and I was lifted up to a seat on a wagon, and we joined a party that went through the Kells, stopping here and there until we got to Kiamo Ko.”

“It’s awfully out of the way,” said Dorothy, looking around at the unpeopled slopes of pine and potterpine, and the slides of scree, and the scraggles of mountain lavender going to seed.

“She wanted to be out of the way. And besides, it’s where Fiyero had lived.”

“Your father?”

Liir was as doubtful of his paternity as he was of his maternity. “He had meant something to her, to the Witch,” he pointed out. “But what, I don’t know. I never met him. Can you imagine the Witch would sit down and pour out her heart to me?”

“I can’t imagine anything about her. Who could?”

He didn’t want to talk anymore. The death was too recent, the shock of it was beginning to wear off, and what began to show through was anger. “In a general sense, we’re going southwest, and then we’ll cut east through Kumbricia’s Pass,” he said. “I’ve learned that much by listening to Oatsie Manglehand when she comes through guiding a party. There are tribes around and about.”

“We saw no one,” said Dorothy, “not for miles.”

“They saw you,” said Liir. “They had to. That’s what they do.”

“Not nice, to be spying on us. We’re very chummy,” she said, putting on an aggressively friendly face. Any party of scouts witnessing it would do well to keep themselves hidden.

Before long the rain came, and he was glad, for it stopped their conversation, which had turned into prattle. A heavy rain, the drops like pebbles. He could see no shepherd’s hut out here, not even a clump of mountain arbor to shelter beneath. So rather than sit in the mud and let the rain wick through their undergarments, they trudged on.

Their confidence about their course ebbed, though, what with the shrouding of hilltops—all landmarks wiped out of view.

“Liir, I have no confidence in your sense of direction,” said the Tin Woodman, politely.

“Nick Chopper! You’re heartless!” said Dorothy.

“Ha bloody ha. And you’re an orphan,” he replied. “I’ll rust in this downpour. Does anyone think of that? No.”

“Don’t carp. I don’t deal well with conflict,” said the Lion. “Let’s sing a song.”

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