Page 109 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“I had no choice but to head to the west,” said Dorothy. “But I had no intention of doing the Wizard’s dirty work for him. Doesn’t that count for something? It was either leave town or take on a job as a chambermaid in one of the seedier neighborhoods of the EC.”

“Nonsense,” said Fegg. “There’s always choice.”

“No, I’m not explaining it correctly. I mean, for myself, I had no choice. For it had dawned on me how dreadful the accidental squashery of Nessarose Thropp had been. I wanted to apologize to the closest survivor for my inadvertent part in her sister’s demise. That’s why I went west. That, and for no other reason.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Fegg looked offended. “The Wizard, by your own admission, asks you to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, and you carry out his plans with cunning and immediacy, and then you claim you had no culpability in the matter? It’s preposterous.” She gave a sneer that could have won her an acting award.

“Hey now, wait,” said Dorothy. “The coincidence of the Wizard’s aims and my experiences at Kiamo Ko, the Witch’s castle, is no proof of my guilt.”

Coincidence again, thought Brrr. Not proof, but not helpful, either.

Temper Bailey spoke up again. “Let’s hear more from the Lion. He was on that mission too, was he not?”

Nipp turned a cold eye on Brrr and nodded.

The Lion thought: If this does end poorly, what happens to Dorothy—? To me?

He said, “I wasn’t present at Dorothy’s commission from the Wizard. I can’t confirm what he said to her. I do concur that the Wizard asked me to kill the Witch too, and about their private meetings with the Wizard, both the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman reported the same. We proceeded to the west not to fulfill the Wizard’s request but to lend succor to our companion on the road, who we all could see was young and innocent if not a few sequins short of a diadem, if you know what I mean.”

Dorothy pulled a face at that.

“And what can you tell us about the murder of Elphaba Thropp?” asked Temper Bailey.

“I can tell you precious little about her death; I don’t answer to its being called a murder,” said the Lion. “I was locked in a kitchen larder with the Witch’s son, Liir, and by the time we’d escaped the room and dashed up the tower stairs to the parapet of the castle, Dorothy was already descending the stairs, weeping her eyes out.”

“I cried so hard,” said Dorothy, “I looked like I’d thrown that bucket of water over myself.”

“And so the question is,” said Brrr, “what happened up there? Did Dorothy kill the Witch? Either on purpose or by accident? All any of us know about the matter is that the Witch is done with. She’s gone. But was she killed?”

The room fell silent. Dame Fegg turned to Dorothy and so did Temper Bailey. Several hundred Munchkinlanders paused in their knitting or their munching of small round breakfast pastries. The Chimpanzees held their fans still.

“I shall remind you that you are under oath to answer honestly,” murmured Lord Nipp, almost as if afraid to break the spell of the question.

Dorothy put her face in her hands, a sloppy gesture given the length of her sleeves. When she lifted her teary cheeks, her upper lip was creamy with mucus; it looked as if she had applied a depilatory unguent. “I believe in taking responsibility for what happens,” she admitted. “I believed it six years ago, and that’s why I went to Kiamo Ko, to confess my part in the death of Nessarose Thropp. And I confess my part in the death of Elphaba Thropp too, to the extent I can be sure that it happened. But when I threw a bucket of water at the Witch, to save her from burning to death in her black skirts, what happened was a huge plume of smoke and a sizzle, as of fatback on a griddle, and the Witch collapsed amid the drapes of her skirts and the billows of smoke. The acrid stench and the burning in my eyes made me turn away, and I vomited in terror and surprise, and when I looked back—well, she was gone.”

“Killed,” said Fegg.

“Gone,” said Dorothy.

“Is that the same thing?”

“Who can say?”

“Very good question,” said Temper Bailey. “Who can say? Were there witnesses?”

“Only Toto, and he used to be the strong silent type,” said Dorothy.

“Oh, now, let’s not start that sniffling again,” scoffed Fegg.

“The Witch’s old Nanny finally made it up the stairs, and she swept me away while she cleaned up,” said Dorothy. “I never went up there again, and I never examined the scene of the death. I was a witness at her disappearance—and, sure, maybe it was a death. But wouldn’t there have been a corpse?”

“Of course there was a corpse,” snorted Dame Fegg. “You’ve proven yourself to be an unreliable witness any number of times. In your glee and relief you just didn’t check, or you’re pretending not to have checked.”

The room seemed to rock a little; maybe it was the heat, or maybe that Dorothy carried personal earthquakes with her to deploy at will. Brrr sat up straight. Temper Bailey emitted a series of small who-who-whos, but whether that was a stutter or an admission in Owlish that he was not wise enough for this particular job was hard to say.

“Before you kill again,” said Dame Fegg, “I will see you put to death.”

Lord Nipp had to pound his gavel repeatedly. When silence returned at last, he called a halt in the proceedings for two days. He made the suggestion that Animals should be invited to hear the final assessments and the judgment of Dorothy, and Munchkinlander farmers should roundly encourage their lodgers and farmhands to show some civic spirit and witness the conclusion of the trial. After all, a cow had been killed in the Glikkus. There was such a thing as solidarity.

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