Page 107 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“That took up a few valuable moments of my life,” said Nipp to Temper Bailey witheringly.

“I’ve established the innocent nature of Little Daffy and proven she isn’t lying to protect the accused,” said Temper Bailey.

“I was a maunt,” said Little Daffy. “I took vows not to lie.”

“You also presumably took vows of commitment, and you seem to have thrown those over when they got inconvenient,” snapped Dame Fegg, indicating Mr. Boss, who was holding his wife’s hand. “I recommend that we count as inadmissible anything the little Munchkinlander dandelion sings.”

“She’s as tall as you are. I’ll snap your legs, you,” said Mr. Boss, “and then you’ll see who is little,” and so he was tossed out of court for rudeness.

“I don’t believe we can consider the testimony of a witness so young and impressionable as Little Daffy evidently was,” said Nipp. “Please strike her remarks from the record.” But since he’d neglected to appoint a court reporter no one moved to obey.

“I’m as young today as she was then,” said Dorothy. “If she was too young then to be taken seriously, you can’t try me now. I’m a minor.”

“You’re a middle-aged woman by our count, even if you look like a big lummox,” snapped Nipp. “We’re not taking that up again. Over to you, Dame Fegg. And let’s hurry this up. We’re going to break at lunchtime and reconvene tomorrow, and I’m uncommonly ready for lunch.”

Dame Fegg spent the next ninety minutes grilling Dorothy on her knowledge of Munchkinland. The prosecutor seemed to be trying to trick Dorothy into giving away some scrap of privileged information about the geography and politics of Oz, but either Dorothy was a canny defendant or she genuinely remained, even now, largely clueless about how Oz was organized. She floundered along, Dame Fegg darted and carped, Nipp groaned and made noises with his implements. Whenever deference was shown to Temper Bailey, his questions couldn’t seem to provoke Dorothy into proving her innocence. By the time Nipp sounded the bell and closed the proceedings for the day, the whole exercise seemed pretty much a waste of time to Brrr. Still, as the crowd of spectators filed out of the courtroom, the buzz was loud, argumentative, laughing. It was going over well as an entertainment, anyway. And so maybe it would be a successful trial, depending on whose measure of success you chose to adopt.

7.

At a café, in the shade of aromatic fruit trees unruffled in the breezeless evening, they discussed the day’s proceedings with Mister Mikko, who had been persuaded to leave the Reading Room behind and dare the public agora.

“I still wonder what this trial is intended to achieve,” said Little Daffy. “It’s one thing to build up a villain to help concentrate a sense of national purpose and struggle. But I should think the divine Emperor of Oz and his chief commanding officer, General Cherrystone, already qualify as enemies of the Free State of Munchkinland. Finding out whether Dorothy is now sixteen or sixty-one doesn’t seem worth the public fuss. What good does it do anyone to persecute this poor girl?”

“The Free State of Munchkinland can’t get at Shell, more’s the pity, and their engagement with Cherrystone seems at a permanent standstill,” observed Mister Mikko. “This exercise against Dorothy is meant to siphon off national frustration. Give the Munchkinlanders a sense of achievement.”

Brrr said, “So this isn’t going to be a fair trial? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Of course it isn’t. The very premise of the accusations is bizarre. Conflating the deaths of both sisters! Though Elphaba Thropp was born in Munchkinland, she maintained no political association with her sister Nessarose, and Elphaba ignored the opportunity to seize power once her sister was dead. And a Munchkinlander court prosecuting anyone for the murder of the Wicked Witch of the West? Absurd. The west is deep in Loyal Oz. The premise is prejudicial and proves that what’s wanted here isn’t a trial but a conviction.”

“I’m with you,” said Mr. Boss. “Nothing cheers folks up like a public beheading.”

“I’m no student of history,” said Little Daffy, “but I don’t like the way this has all lined up. Mombey and General Jinjuria, two strong defenders of Munchkinland, concentrating the attention of the country upon a legal assault of another female? The real enemies of Munchkinland are the man in the Emerald City and his chief officer at Restwater.”

“Total bitch gripe,” agreed Mr. Boss. “You’ve never seen that before? And you lived with maunts for several decades? What were you, blind?”

“She has a point,” said Mister Mikko, who after all had taught history back in his day. “Shell in his eme

rald towers, and Cherrystone holed up in Haugaard’s Keep … two powerful men in Oz, after the forty-year history of the Wizard’s oppression that beleaguered my parents’ generation, and their parents’, too. It’s been sixty years since Pastorius was deposed, and so maybe sixty-five, is it, since the last Ozma died? A lot of rule by men in a land with a long tradition of matriarchy.”

Little Daffy said, “That’s it exactly. If Munchkinlanders needed to take against someone to prove their strength, you’d think they’d nominate someone who stood in for the Emperor of Oz a little more keenly. This Dorothy seems a pale substitute.”

“She’s what turned up,” said Mr. Boss. “You’re not going to rear back and change her gender for the sake of a more satisfying trial.”

“But Little Daffy has a point,” insisted Mister Mikko. “Since Ozma the Bilious died leaving her husband the Ozma Regent and the baby, Ozma Tippetarius, there’s been only one female minister of Loyal Oz as we know: Lady Glinda. And she ruled well but all too briefly.”

Brrr said, “But what’s the point of the prosecution of Dorothy?”

Mister Mikko responded with a tone of gentle irony. “The fight to retake Restwater won’t be won in the court of public opinion.”

“Then what is really going on here?” asked Brrr. “It seems important to figure out, if only to find a way to defend the hapless Dorothy.”

They sat, confounded, fiddling with the silverware until the dwarf said, “I often thought the displays of the Clock of the Time Dragon were intended to divert the attention of the public from the Clock’s real mission: to serve as the secret vault that housed the Grimmerie. I wonder if this trial isn’t so much a public relations exercise as a diversion. Is something going on elsewhere on the war front that La Mombey doesn’t want us to be noticing? The Clock might have given us a clue. Damn its rotted soul.”

On their way back to the dubious comforts of A Stable Home, they passed a beer garden. Over their pints, little lager louts were singing something clangorous. The words were slurred.

Ding dong, the bitch will swing

Like a clapper on a string

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