Page 138 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Tip ran for it. The girls continued to squeal or feel faint or profess to be quite vexed indeed. The omnibus was less capacious than it had looked, and instead of four horses for which it had been designed, its shaft and harnesses were fitted to two world-weary donkeys.

“I can take ten of you, no more,” said the driver, a thin mean man with toothbrush mustachios and a sorry case of pinkeye.

“Surely you can manage eleven?” said Tip. “There are eleven girls, and this isn’t a downpour but a deluge.”

“I’ll take ten, or none. It ought to be six, but as these young ladies are all asparagus stalks I’ll make an exception. I’ll make four exceptions. But I won’t kill my beasts for you lot. It’s always the last young miss who hobbles the enterprise. Call it superstition, them’s my terms.”

Tip looked out of ideas. “It’s all right,” said Rain. “I’ll walk.”

So off went the driver, promising to deliver the scholars to the front door of St. Prowd’s within half an hour. Rain and Tip stood a foot or two from each other, soaking but hardly chilled, looking and feeling clueless.

Rain said, “It’s not going to let up for a while, by the looks of it. If we’re going to get in trouble anyway, let’s duck into that shop around the corner. SKURVY BASTARD’S.”

They found it was closed and the storefront for lease. But the one past the newsagent’s, which said BROKEN THINGS OF NO USE TO ANYONE BUT YOU, looked open.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter if I’m fired, as I never applied for the job in the first place,” agreed Tip at last, and they splashed through the gauze of rain and stamped through the puddles, and hurtled down the slick stone steps into the basement shop.

It was empty of customers, but at the sound of the bell on the door the proprietor emerged through a curtain of strung grommets, washers, nuts, and crimped watch springs. It was a male Bear, thinner than a Bear ought to be. A Bear brought down by hunger and stooped, maybe arthritic too, with age. He wore a shaggy bathrobe and had a muffler wrapped around his throat.

“Well, that’s a nice pair of water rats the gutter has splashed down my steps this time,” he said, not unkindly. “How may I be of service?”

“We’re ducking the rain, actually,” said Tip.

“Ducks like rain, but I take your point. Be my guest. If you find something of interest, sing out. In the meantime, don’t mind me; I’ll settle myself here and read the racing forms.”

In time their eyes became accustomed to the gloom. “Of course, Loyal Oz wouldn’t dare race talking Animals now,” said the Bear. “These are antique forms. I just like to see if I can find any of my relatives. It makes me happy to see them referred to in print. I found one reference to my old auntie Groyleen, who I thought had perished in the skirmishes following the Mayonnaise Affair. She must be dead by now, of course, but in the form she was handicapped at seven to one, not bad for an old dame as she must have been even then. Don’t mind me, I’m mumbling.”

They wandered about. The ceiling was low, and many of the items were tall, so the high bookcases or old apothecaire’s cabinets or postal boxes or discarded card catalogs, grouped back to back, built a series of chambers and secret vaults. It reminded Rain of something, but she couldn’t think what. “Look, a set of wizard’s globes,” said Tip. “They must have had their ether extinguished or they’d be valuable. Valuable and dangerous.”

Rain thought, but she didn’t ask, How do you know what they are? “Here’s a set of illuminatums,” she said, reading the cover. “Views of Barbaric Ugabu, with Discreet Commentary by a Missionary.” She wasn’t too old yet to stop being proud of how well she could read.

“Your wares come from all over,” said Tip to the Bear.

“So do my clients,” he replied.

“And this is a stuffed scissor bird. I think they’re extinct now.”

“Well, that one is extinct, anyway.”

The Bear shuffled to his feet and poured himself a cup of tea. “You’re standing on a flying carpet,” he said.

“Is that so?” asked Tip and Rain at once.

“Assuredly so. Full of flies.”

Oh, but the place was musty. In one alcove a number of old tiktok contrivances stood in various stages of evisceration for spare parts. “The tiktok revolution never quite happened, no matter what the Tin Woodman said,” commented the Bear. “Who needs a rebellion in labor when honest laborers are hunting for a job? I’m speaking of humans, of course; most of the Animal workforce migrated to Munchkinland during the Wizard’s reign. If they could afford the punishing fees to process their applications.”

Rain guessed that the Bear wasn’t one of them. “You’re doing all right,” she said, unargumentatively.

“I’m one of the luckier ones,” he replied. “I suffer a sort of amnesia, you see, and I am happiest among artifacts and antiques. Times gone by are more comforting. I don’t understand these days.”

“Not many do,” murmured Tip.

They came across a creature made of skarkbone ribs and hooks. Some of it must be missing, for it was impossible to imagine how it might have stayed erect. In another corner, more or less intact, was a carved wooden man, quite tall, with an enormous porcelain pumpkin balanced on skinny shoulders. “That one arrived with an actual pumpkin head,” said the Bear, watching them over the tops of his spectacles. “Too many mice were making a home in his brains, though, and the pumpkin rotted. As my skull has done too. So when I came across that dreadful piece of porcelain I couldn’t resist sticking it on top of the wooden man, in memory of whatever weird individual that tiktok thing once was. Jack Pumpkinhead, a certain rural type.”

“It can’t be tiktok without gears and sprockets and flywheels, can it?” asked Rain, remembering what she had seen of the Clock of the Time Dragon.

“There’s more than one way to animate a life story,” remarked the Bear.

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