Page 121 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“He wasn’t here when she was born—” began Liir, but stopped. Candle hadn’t said when Trism was or wasn’t at Apple Press Farm. Maybe Trism had seen little green Rain even before Liir had taken her into his own arms.

“It doesn’t matter how they know,” said Iskinaary. “It could have been some oracle, it could have been some Wood Thrush squealing in exchange for clemency. What matters is that they’ve put it together. The conjunction in your household of a twelve-year-old girl and the Grimmerie is, I fear, a dangerous giveway.”

“If I could read the book, I might find a spell to make it invisible,” said Liir. “But I can’t read it.”

“Have you let Rain try?”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You don’t trust her. Nice father.”

“I don’t know what damage the book might do to her. I certainly couldn’t risk it.”

“Well, what do you propose we do?”

Not for the first time, Liir wondered just what he’d done to deserve the Goose’s loyalty. Iskinaary could take wing any day he liked. But he lived without family or flock, dogging Liir’s years like a retainer. “We’ll wait until my sister and my wife wake up, and we’ll talk it over with them.”

“They won’t ask my opinion,” said the Goose, “but I’ll give it anyway. Birds beware roosting in the same nest for more than a season. It may be time—”

Rain was hurrying around the house, Tay at her heels as usual, so Iskinaary stopped. “You’re a whip-poor-will in a hurry,” said the Goose.

“Some tree elves are bathing down on the shore of the south lake. I haven’t seen a tree elf since I lived at Mockbeggar, and then only once, from far off. These ones are singing some song and their voices come over the water like crinkly paper music. Don’t you hear it?”

The Goose and the man exchanged glances. Once more needing to be the heavy, the Anvil of the Law, Liir said as mildly as he could, “I don’t think you better go there, sweetie.”

“Oh, I’ll just—”

“He said no,” snapped the Goose, and dove at the girl’s legs. And maybe that’s why he stays around, thought Liir. He’s willing to provide that bite of discipline I can’t manage.

5.

It was summer, they needed no fire. They kept Rain indoors and quiet while the elves were in the neighborhood. “Sort out your collections,” said Liir. “No, you can’t bring a sack of rocks with you, or a cup of acorns. Take your favorite out of each collection and leave the rest behind. We’ll come back and get them another time. Hush your crying. We’re trying to draw no attention to ourselves. To keep still, like little mice under the eyes of a hawk.”

As far as the family knew, the tree elves and the renegade trolls never did take the measure of the hearthhold at Nether How. But after a full day of discussion and two days of preparation,

the family was ready to leave their cottage home.

Heavy hearts, heavy tread, but very light luggage. They took little with them. The broom they would trust to the eaves, but they couldn’t leave the book. Maybe they’d come across Mr. Boss and somehow persuade him to take the Grimmerie back. Holding it from all those avaricious and willing readers of magic was taking its toll.

They started their trek on foot. They’d span the Vinkus River and then the Gillikin River before they’d need to say their good-byes.

Crossing the Vinkus looked problematic until they met a boatman. He charged punitively to steer his small vessel across the waters pummeling down from the slopes of the Kells, but he delivered them safely. On the other side, they found that the crescent of land between the Vinkus and the quieter Gillikin River was now under cultivation. Perhaps, Liir guessed, Loyal Oz was trying to make a go of supplying its own needs of wheat, corn, barley. A few grousing laborers disabused Liir of any notion of success, though. The storms that blew high over Nether How settled down here, and the snow came early and stayed deep.

At a crossroads of sorts on this undulating river plain, wagon carts rolling by from six or eight different directions, in and out as if along spokes of a wheel, the family members made their good-byes. Briskly, to the point. In a sense, they all followed Rain’s lead, her brusqueness steadying the adults, helping them avoid long faces and soggy remarks.

“You are a child of Oz,” said Liir to his daughter. “Your mother is Quadling, your grandmother was a Munchkinlander, and your grandfather from the Vinkus. You can go anywhere in Oz. You can be home anywhere.”

Liir turned north toward Kiamo Ko. The Grimmerie was under his arm. Iskinaary hustled like a civil servant self-importantly at his side. Candle—resentful but understanding of their strategy—walked a few steps ahead. Liir could see her try to control the shaking of her shoulders. He thought, Anyone who can be home anywhere really has no home at all.

6.

So, some days later, on an early autumn afternoon of high winds and intermittent squalls, with her aunt Nor at one side lurching under a luggage bundle, and Tay scampering at her heels, Rain came into the Gillikinese city of Shiz.

7.

Why do you think your child will thrive at St. Prowd’s?”

In her time Nor Tigelaar had faced insurrectionists and collaborationists and war profiteers. She’d endured abduction and prison and self-mutilation. She’d sold herself in sex not for cash but for military information that might come in handy to the resistance, and in so doing she’d come across a rum variety of human types. She didn’t think, however, she had ever seen anyone like the headmaster or his sister, who both sat before her with hands clasped identically in midair about six inches above their laps. As if they were afraid they might absentmindedly begin a duet of self-abuse in their own receiving chamber.

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