Page 140 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

She attended to her lessons the best she could. She did better and better at them. The weather brightened. She was finishing her first full year with something that approximated honors. Astounding, given the paucity of her primary schooling. Miss Ironish remarked, “You’ve gone from preverbal to canny in record time,” though it didn’t entirely sound like a compliment.

Soon the school was abuzz with plans for the annual festival of Scandal, a city-wide hullaballoo dating to pre-Wizardic days but suppressed during his realm, due to excessive merriment and mild bawd. At recess older girls nattered to the newbies about it. A King and Queen of Scandal were elected from

among the most smoldering of college students at Shiz. Comic pillorings of local magistrates and fellows at college were promised, as well as mock public punishments of random attractive passersby, administered with sprayed water or cushiony paddles. Food stalls everywhere. When the sun went down, candles would be lit in colored lanterns, magicking up the leafed-out tree boughs of Railway Square and Ticknor Circus. Music to dance by, to thrill by, to ignore. And the girls would be allowed to attend for a while, even to wander about, always under the hawkish eyes of their teachers of course.

The closer the day arrived, the less Rain was sure she wanted to attend. She hardly understood frivolity. The way everyone laughed when a bird shat once on Madame Chard’s hat—but then even Madame Chard laughed. Rain had thought it was neither funny nor not-funny. Women wear hats, birds excrete. The comedy of it seemed impoverished. Therefore, the idea of manufactured hilarity, having a good time by design or intention—well, bizarre. If not impossible or counterintuitive.

Still, she supposed, since she couldn’t grasp the concept, perhaps that was good enough reason to agree to attend. Something new to learn. She could always beg off early and sneak away. Ever since the day of the rainstorm she seemed to have a special dispensation for roaming by herself, as if she alone of all the St. Prowd’s girls was homely enough not to need close supervision on the street. She looked at herself in the mirror. She seemed merely to exist, neither prettier than an umbrella rack or a potted palm, nor less pretty.

Tip met her in a hallway between lessons; he was carrying a valise to Miss Ironish’s study. “Are you going to lark about tomorrow at that silly festival?” she asked him.

“I’ll have to wait to get my instructions for the day,” he said. “Miss Ironish may be going to see her brother, who has been given a few days off from his training exercises. He is hoping for a pass to the Emerald City for some rest and recovery. I may be required to accompany her as a chaperone.”

Rain’s regret must have showed on her face before she could mask it. Tip said, “I’d rather skive off with you and see what’s going on in the town centre.”

“If I see our friend the Northern Bear, I’ll give him your regards,” she said airily.

“Pit,” said Madame Chard from her doorway, “what are you doing loafing about in the hall? Miss Rainary, your books await you. We’re at Lesson Seventeenish. Making the Least of Fractions.”

The next day Rain’s fears proved reliable; Miss Ironish did commandeer Tip’s company for her excursion. They would travel by the rail line, recently completed, between Shiz and the Emerald City. It would cut their travel time in half, and they would return in under a week. Madame Skinkle would serve as proctress-pro-tem. “Honor her as you would myself,” advised Miss Ironish before alighting the carriage that would take her to Railway Square. Since none of the girls particularly honored Miss Ironish, the instruction seemed easy enough to follow.

Rain saw that Scarly was also traveling in attendance of Miss Ironish. “I hope you all have a very fine time,” Rain muttered as the carriage pulled away.

“What’s that, Miss Rainary?” asked Miss Igilvy.

“Nothing at all. Are you going to the silly affair in town?”

“Yes,” said Miss Igilvy. “Shall we be chums, after all? I’m going to wear my dotted morpheline with the lace trim. What will you wear?”

“Clothes, I suspect.” That was intended to put Miss Igilvy off, but it didn’t work. Rain was saddled with Miss Igilvy half the afternoon and into the evening. But she wasn’t so bad. Out of some sour mood, Rain even took her into the shop. The Northern Bear didn’t recognize Rain, and when she found the folded map tossed aside on top of an overstuffed and listing bookcase, she took it to the counter. “Would you sell me this?” she asked.

The Bear looked at it and named a modest price. Rain hesitated. But the Bear would never miss it. Another theft. She handed over a guilty coin.

“That kind of dive is what Miss Ironish would have us pass by,” said Miss Igilvy as they left. “Miss Rainary, we’re skirting the main events. It’s getting dark enough, they’ll have lit the trees. I can hear the music. Enough of antique tiktokery and old maps. We’re now, and here.”

The festival seemed to Rain overloud and feverish, sort of desperate. A fiddler and three country dancers made a ruckus in the square, and barmaids from local establishments were going about with tankards of ale or barleywater. Miss Igilvy and Rain caught up with a couple of the girls who were about to commence to one of the colleges in the fall. “It’s so different this year,” complained a droll young woman whose name Rain had never learned. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“It’s a lack of men, you moron,” said her mate. “Look about you. Even the college boys are in short supply. They’ve been pulled for military duty. If you’ve come to the party hoping to snag a snog, I believe you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

The whole town seemed to have turned into an extension of the experience of life at St. Prowd’s—that is, without the distraction of lessons. Rain found it taxing and crude. “I think I’ll go back,” she said to Miss Igilvy. “Can I safely attach you to these graduates?”

“Shhh, the Lord Mayor is going to speak.”

The Lord Mayor of Shiz looked quite a bit like the Senior Overseer of St. Prowd’s. But what a girth of belly!

“There is a reason to celebrate on every given day,” he said, once the crowd had quietened down. “We shouldn’t go about the business of beating our breasts because of the hardships placed upon us by the war. And yet, as we dance and sing and feast and frolic, we should be mindful of our soldiers called up to duty. And we must remember, as all living and sentient creatures do, that the life we have today may be utterly changed by tomorrow.

“Change approaches as inevitably as the seasons. I urge you not to succumb to the rumors of threat to Shiz that abound this week, but savor every moment the Unnamed God confers upon you. What will happen next week, next season, next year, we will take in its turn. Meanwhile, in the shadow of the hallowed buildings of this ancient university, let us know ourselves to be alive. Whether we are the next generation to study peaceably in this haven or we are the final generation, let us study what we can. Learn what we can. Deliver what we have to whomever comes after, whether they sit in rubble and ashes or strut in finery upon the streets during Scandal Day.”

He had to blow his nose, and his wife led him off the stage. No one had the slightest idea what he was talking about.

Madame Chard, the next day, offered a little enlightenment. “I went into a pub—only to visit the conveniences,” she admitted, “and the talk I heard there would have cured your bacon, believe me. In wartime all kinds of nonsense circulates, and we know from history that the enemy will use rumors to terrify the brave patriots at home. Still, you young ladies are old enough to take in what is being said, I believe, if you promise not to frighten the younger girls with the news. It’s being whispered that Shiz has been selected as a new target by the Munchkinlanders. No one knows how an attack will come, as of course our brave army is holding the Munchkinlanders off in the Madeleines.”

“Holding them off?” asked Miss Igivly. “I thought we were invading them.” Miss Igilvy isn’t as frivolous as she seems, thought Rain.

“Tactics, strategies; ours not to question the military mind,” replied Madame Chard. “But spies among us may be targeting Shiz for special attack. Perhaps localized explosions to frighten the populace. We shall stand firm. We shall not be moved.”

By the time Miss Ironish returned home a few days later, many of the girls had been moved. Their families had swum up out of nowhere to collect their precious daughters. Graduation was held in the dining hall, since the chapel was too large and would have pointed up the thinning of the ranks.

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