Page 161 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Here’s your coracle,” said Rain, handing her the button basket.

“I hope it floats, but where I’m going, it doesn’t really matter,” she replied, climbing in and rocking it a little. “Hmmm. Sound bottom, near as I can make out. Push me off, honeybunches, and let me go find my sweet Lurline and give her a little love nip on her holy ankle.”

As she rocked away on the vicious water, they heard her begin to sing.

O beautiful, to make escape

And leave this world behind.

Had I to stay another day

I’d lose my fucking mind…

Over the roar of the water they couldn’t hear any more after that, and were grateful for it.

8.

The corpse of the Black Elephant was hauled through the porte cochere of Colwen Grounds and around to the back. Here the ground sloped away, allowing access to some whitewashed stables, clean to clinical standards. All had gone according to plan so far. Various Munchkinlanders helped drag the cart into a stall with a bricked barrel vault ceiling, also white. They kept this place in fine fettle, but that was what Munchkinlanders were like.

Its formal name was Parliament House, though since no parliament had ever been convened everyone still called it Colwen Grounds. The ancestral home of the Thropp family, the place old Nanny had started out in domestic service as Cattery Spunge, late of the spindlemills. Back when she was young Nanny. Or young enough. When she’d been engaged to help raise Melena Thropp, the randy and irresponsible mother of Elphaba, Nessarose, and Shell, now Emperor of Oz.

No one from the Thropp line was here to see Liir return to his birthright at last. And maybe for the best. The humiliation of being a prisoner. What would Liir’s ancestor Eminence, Peerless Thropp, have made of this?

Taking it for a genuine corpse, the palace staff began to prepare the pyre. But La Mombey herself descended into the basements—they’d never known her to do that before—and required the corpse to be rolled over. The book in its sack wasn’t appreciably squished, and she grabbed it with both hands.

“Shall we continue our preparations to burn the corpse?” asked the grounds overseer.

Mombey said, “Do you smell the stench of death?”

“I don’t know what the stench of death is for a Black Elephant.”

“Believe me, you’d know if you smelled it. Hold the torches. It might pull through.”

“Can I take that for you, Your Highness?” asked her handmaid.

Mombey said, “Jellia Jamb, I can carry my own books to school, thank you very much. Don’t you ever touch this one.” She took the book in her arms and stalked away with it. The handmaid shrugged and made a face at the farm overseer. You never knew what Mombey was going to say or do; she was a different woman every hour of the day.

Not so different from the rest of the race of women, though, thought the overseer.

9.

At this point in the early autumn, the waters of the Gillikin River had fallen. Fording the great broad flat was almost a picnic. They were ahead of the seasonal rains by two or three weeks, maybe.

It felt good to be going somewhere again. Maybe I’m just a wanderbug, thought Rain. Everyone I care about most in the world is off and in trouble, and I’m noodling along on the road as if it’s my job.

Tay looked at her almost as if it could read her mind, accusatorily. Everyone you most care about? Hello?

Well, not everyone, she thought. Come here, you. And she carried Tay a stretch.

She remembered the marking stone that had shown a fork in the road, but she wasn’t sure that she had crossed the Gillikin River at the same place where she and Tip had done those weeks ago. Still, after they passed through a couple of fairly prosperous town centers and some dustier cousins, too, they came to a sarcen on which directions were painted, with arrows. Sitting on top of the stone was an Owl.

“Which way now?” asked Dorothy to the Owl.

“Depends, I suppose, on where you want to go.”

“Out of Oz, and the sooner the better,” said Dorothy, and then she recognized the voice. “Why, it’s Temper Bailey. What are you doing here?”

“Relocated after my professional humiliation.”

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