Page 108 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Back and forth until the bitch is dead!

“What has gotten into my countrymen?” said Little Daffy.

“Don’t dawdle and gawk, you’ll only draw attention,” said Brrr, his old irritable-bowel thing threatening to flare up. “Eyes front, move along.”

“It’s just that the melody is so jolly,” said Little Daffy. “True, we used to hold singing festivals, but the texts weren’t so rabid.”

“Climate of the times,” said Mr. Boss. They hurried past.

When the court convened in the morning, the room was full to capacity. Lord Nipp instructed the Chimps to wave large rush fans. The casement windows were cranked open to their fullest, and more spectators gathered outside. There, the sight lines being poor and the sun hot, a pretty penny was to be made passing among the crowd selling cups of lemon barley. Mister Mikko, who was waiting outside, would later report that the atmosphere seemed a cross between a state funeral and a harvest festival, morbid and giddy at once.

Since yesterday Dorothy had been allowed a change of clothes, but the selection offered her hadn’t been the kindest. She seemed to be wearing a dirndl of some sort, cut for someone with the proportions of a Baboon. The sleeves were so long they could have been tied together in a bow. She looked like a child in her father’s nightshirt.

Dame Fegg dove into questioning at a gallop today, returning to the subject of Dorothy’s prior arrival in Oz. “You say that Glinda Chuffrey gave you Nessarose’s enchanted shoes and advised you to tiptoe out of town?” asked Dame Fegg. “She has a great deal to answer for herself, that Glinda. Those shoes should have belonged to the treasure-house of Munchkinland.”

“I can’t speak to Glinda’s motives,” said the defendant. “She simply told me that the Wizard of Oz could help me, and that the Yellow Brick Road would lead me to him. For all I knew she was in the tourist business and wanted me to see the sights.”

“She gave you no armed guard, no escort, no inkling that Munchkinland was devolved from Loyal Oz?”

“I don’t think so. But it seems such a long time ago, and of course everything was so new. And I did love those shoes. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

“Maybe, Miss Dorothy, you have never paid enough attention.”

The crowd chortled quietly at this line, as if it were the end of a scene of some parlor farce on a stage at Shiz. But Brrr thought Dame Fegg had made a mistake. Hitherto she had not addressed Dorothy as “Miss.” Having started now, she wouldn’t be able to retreat, and that accorded the girl a little more dignity than she seemed to deserve, given her ridiculous getup.

“Dame Fegg,” piped up Dorothy, “if you were suddenly, magically carried off to my home of Kansas, how long do you think it would take you to pick up on our ways?”

“That calls for speculation,” said Dame Fegg.

“You’re not asking the questions, Miss Dorothy,” said Lord Nipp. Aha, thought Brrr, there it is: she has graduated to Miss Dorothy. In her zanily earnest way, she’s commanding the respect of her enemies despite themselves. Brrr would never call it charisma but oh, Dorothy had charm of a sort, for sure.

Dame Fegg proceeded to grill the girl about the Yellow Brick Road Irregulars, as in popular lore they had become known. Having spent his life timid enough over every living thing, and a few gloomy stationary things as well, Brrr had his concerns about being tarred by association with Dorothy. But he was a Lion, after all. A Lion among Munchkins. And thanks to good dental hygiene he had all of his natural teeth. So he straightened up and tossed his head to make of his mane a more impressive quiff, to make himself look stouthearted, even if it was all public relations.

“And the Scarecrow was so dear and so helpful,” said Dorothy, “and then the Tin Woodman such a sweetheart. And the Lion, when he showed up, a total mess.” She smiled at him as if she weren’t out to ruin his reputation, that is if he had had a reputation he cared about. “If I ever get you back to San Francisco with me, I think you would all fit in there just fine.”

“At what point did you let them in on your secret background as a regicidal maniac?” asked Dame Fegg.

“I object. Leading the witness,” said Temper Bailey, who most of the time looked as if he were napping on his perch.

“They called her a witch, that Nessarose,” explained Dorothy. “It took me a while to cotton on to the fact that she was governor as well.”

“In your single-minded campaign to deprive both Munchkinland and Loyal Oz of its entire bank of leaders, you collected a mob of collaborators,” pushed Dame Fegg.

“May I speak?” said Brrr, and stood. He was roughly ten times the girth and weight of either Lord Nipp or Dame Fegg, so they couldn’t object, though Dame Fegg focused her pious squinty bloodshot eyes on him with contempt. “Dorothy didn’t entice me with plans of sedition or the overthrow of any government. Truth to tell, I was rather at loose ends at that stage in my life. I wanted to put behind me the shame of some poor choices and some dead-end experiences—”

“Please, spare us the melodrama,” said Lord Nipp. “We’re a court of law, not a guidance counsellorship.”

“We went to the Emerald City, Your Lordship, to see if we could find a way to help Dorothy return home,” said Brrr. “As I heard it told, no one in Munchkinland had had any bright ideas about that.”

“That’s true enough,” said Dorothy. “But at least no one put me under arrest, that time.”

“And then the Wizard of Oz, so called, enlisted you in the assassination of Nessarose’s sister,” said Dame Fegg.

“Well now, that much I can’t deny,” said Dorothy. “The Wizard said the Wicked Witch of the West was tremendously evil and needed to be stopped. I was young and didn’t think to ask ‘stopped from what?’ He said she deserved to die. He wouldn’t entertain my request for help until I’d killed her.”

“Now we’re getting

somewhere.” Dame Fegg was steely with purpose.

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