Page 164 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Trism drew himself up. He’d gone thicker. A barrel cage for a chest instead of a butter churn. Still, he’d maintained his military trim, a strong stomach and tight waist, and his bearing was all that the Emerald City home guard had taught him years ago.

But he was working for the enemy.

Depending on who was the enemy.

Trism answered quickly enough. “I came over, I fled Loyal Oz after—after you know what.”

“I don’t entirely know what.”

“After we torched the dragon stables in the Emerald City, and we fled by night,” he said. “After we became lovers for a moment. After I followed you to that farm—”

“Apple Press Farm.”

“I remember its name. You weren’t there. After all that.”

All that might have happened with or against Candle, all that she had never told Liir about, never spoken about.

After all this time, though, here stood Trism. If Candle had prese

rved her feelings for Trism as her own secret, Liir found he had uncovered new reserves of patience to let those feelings remain unknown. Perhaps another skill of Elephants that we so-called humans would be wiser if we could learn.

“You left, under whatever circumstances,” said Liir. He hadn’t moved off the table since he’d been put there, and he was rolling in his excrement, that which the helpers had not been able to reach to scrape away. There was so much of interest to smell in manure, but in any case, Trism didn’t seem offended.

Liir tried to work his huge pie-plate front hooves to the floor, to close the gap that Trism still maintained.

“You left,” said Liir, “and you went over.”

“They were always looking for you. As soon as they’d figured out who you were. You were behind the flight of the Birds, and the Emperor sorted that out easily. And of course Cherrystone knew what the Emperor knew. They put us together soon enough, you and me, and they had me followed, hoping I’d lead them to you. They thought I couldn’t resist your charms enough to save your skin.”

“I was never very supple, but I seem to have sidestepped them a good many years running.”

“Yes, and sidestepped me.”

“I didn’t know where you’d gone, Trism.”

“And you had a wife. You told me about Candle but you never told me about a wife. You had a wife and a child on the way.”

Liir supposed Trism had a point. “If it makes any difference to you, I didn’t know she was my wife at first. Though that’s a bit of a story to explain.”

“I remember. She told me once. You think I have ever forgotten a scrap about you? A single blessed word?”

No, Liir didn’t think that, not any longer. He could smell that it was true. “But why did you come here? If I could go underground in Oz for ten or fifteen years, why didn’t you?”

“Can you fathom what they did to me, looking for you?” Trism didn’t know which of Liir’s Elephant eyes to look into; you couldn’t look into both at once. Then Trism turned around and raked up his tunic and dropped his leggings to his knees, and bent over the sideboard with its medicines and the scrub brushes. His behind was still high and beautiful, if puckered on the flanks of it, and Liir reached forward and caressed it with his nose, traced its cleavage. But then, as Trism rolled a little onto his right side, Liir saw that his mate was not baring himself for mortification or attention. The skin on the forward side, from the second rib down to his left calf, was vitrified pink, hairless as a boiled ham.

“Cherrystone did this,” said Trism, and pushed Liir’s attentive nose away and dressed himself. “Under the Emperor of Oz, your uncle Shell Thropp, Cherrystone did this to me. Cherrystone. Do you think I would stay in Oz where I could be caught again? Slowly peeled away with hot knives? Until I had decided to seek you out and lead them to you, betray you to protect myself from being shaved like a carrot? I’m lucky this is all they took off.”

“You did that for me,” said Liir.

“Don’t look for satisfaction. None of us knows why we did what we did back then. I know why I’m doing what I’m doing now. And I’m here to ask you to listen to Mombey’s request, and help us.”

Liir listened. His ears were big enough now to hear anything.

“Your uncle, taking a leaf out of the old tricks of one of his predecessors, the Wizard of Oz, has been launching an attack on the Animal armies, which have been pushed entirely out of the Madeleines into the Wend Fallows. Another foothold in Munchkinland, see. Shell has ordered the construction of small-scale aerial balloons filled with light gas. He’s sending them over the hills to explode upon impact as they descend. The panic is immense and the Animals are close to scattering, or worse yet, surrendering. If we lose the Wend Fallows, the EC Messiars will be in Colwen Grounds in a matter of days, and it’s all over.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised the Animals didn’t scatter at the first chance.”

“Many of them remember their parents having to flee Loyal Oz a generation ago, under the Wizard’s Animal Adverse laws. They harbor an old grievance, and when Animals fight, they fight fiercer than humans. But few creatures, human or Animal, will fight to the death to defend the honor of a dead generation. So the strictest of Mombey’s human commanders are in charge of the Animals, and the Animal conscripts receive a more merciless punishment for going AWOL than I did.”

---