Page 178 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“I take your point,” said Avaric. “I think I may need that elbow in the future? Thank you. Is there something special that you’d like His Sacredness to request of La Mombey?”

“There is indeed,” said Brrr. “I should like her to bring the corpse of Liir Thropp to the Emerald City so his family can bury him.”

“Mombey has murdered Liir Thropp?”

“Apparently. Well, it stands to reason. If the EC didn’t kidnap Liir from Kiamo Ko, Mombey’s men did. That must be how she managed to marshal the violence of those dragons. She got to him first after all. And to the Grimmerie.”

“If you had done what the court asked of you—find us the Grimmerie—Munchkinland would be suing Loyal Oz for peace instead of the other way around.”

“What His Sacredness is demanding in exchange for signing the treaty of surrender,” said the Cowardly Lion, “is Liir’s earthy remains. Are you sure you’re getting all this?”

That evening, the Lion told his companions—including Rain and Candle—that he’d negotiated the release of Liir’s corpse. Although what kind of achievement, really, did it count as? The dead are no less dead whether buried at home or abroad.

Around the brazier they’d set up underneath the struts of the bridge, they talked about Liir. Thirty or forty homeless citizens of the Emerald City listened as they shared stories of the Emperor’s nephew. Dorothy had known Liir for too short a time, back when he was fourteen or so. “I don’t remember much about him. I think he was sweet on me for a while. But in the end I probably wasn’t his type. Seems my lot in life.”

Her eyes tracked the dirty hem of her dress. She’d carried a torch for him from the age of ten, thought Brrr. Poor thing.

Candle said, “I saw Kynot this afternoon. He has been very kind to me. I told him we hoped to have a pyre to burn the body, if the corpse hasn’t corrupted so fully it has had to be burned already, or been buried in Munchkinland. The Eagle is calling veterans of the Conference of the Birds to attend as an honor guard.”

Rain said, “I’m not sure I want to be there. Am I required?”

Her mother said, “When have we required anything of you, Rain? Except to survive? You do as you see fit.”

The girl sat hollowly in the light of the fire until the fire slumped, and then she did too. The Lion tried to offer comfort, but she would have none of it. All night she lay on the ground shivering, and would take no blanket, as if trying to learn in advance what chill of the grave might be visited upon her father. Tay squirreled into her arms, half a comfort.

Three days later, a caparisoned and hooded cart was escorted by mounted guard through Munchkin Mousehole, the southern gate of the city, and through the Oz Deer Park and along the Ozma Embankment to Saint Glinda’s Square. In lieu of Candle, who had decided her place was at the side of her living daughter and not her dead husband, the Lion stood to receive Liir’s Black Elephant corpse.

In a silence broken only by the rush of the wings of pigeons as they pivoted about city skies now safe again, His Sacredness the Emperor of Oz emerged through some secret egress from Southstairs. The prison governor, Chyde, carried the Ozma scepter and Avaric, Margreave of Tenmeadows, the crown.

Mombey waited on the steps of the Aestheticum. In keeping with the gravity of the day she displayed herself as aquiline of nose, cheeks of pale ice. Her straight tresses, colored steel, almost violet, were looped and fixed in place with constellations of emerald set in mettanite.

It took Brrr a moment to realize that the attendant at her side was Tip.

3.

Walking back to where his friends were camping under one end of the bridge, the Cowardly Lion didn’t know if he should mention the presence of Tip. With the arrival of her father’s corpse and the need to attend to her mother, Rain already had so much on her mind. To say nothing of the work she’d taken on this week, to attend to the needy. Why that selfless labor, Brrr had no idea; Rain had hardly ever seemed conscious, before, of the sores of others—indeed, of her own sores, either. The Lion wondered if Rain’s summoning the Ozmists to help had put her in a position of noticing both what those ghost-bits had done, and what they couldn’t do.

So many burdens on her young back. She might not be able to tolerate the return of her friend Tip, for whom her affection had been no secret except, perhaps, to herself.

In any case, Tip would guess that Rain might be in the city as well. What else had he expected her to do after he set out to find her father and the Grimmerie? It wasn’t hard algebraics. He’d be looking for Rain here, if he wanted to find her.

But if he didn’t want to find her, was it doing her any good to help her find him?

In the end it was Dorothy who decided the Cowardly Lion on the matter. The Lion had walked her to a clutch of broken pipes protruding from the back of a collapsed Spangletown whorehouse. The dripping pipes were set high enough in the wall that larger creatures could wash without too much crouching, and since Dorothy still had a tendency to croon given half a chance, the Lion stood guard over her virtue, her modesty, and her critics while Dorothy sponged herself and performed a musical set for unbelieving rats and such harlots as hadn’t yet fled the district.

On the way back, Dorothy said, “I’ve been wondering what to make of myself here in the Emerald City.” The Lion, his mind on Rain, didn’t take in what she meant at first. “I mean,” continued Dorothy, “there seems no particular campaign to ship me out of Oz the way there was the first time. Everyone’s so distracted, and who can blame them? So I’ve been wondering if I should just go into some line of work, and settle down here. Back a ways we passed an old sandwich board advertising the eighteenth annual comeback tour of Sillipede at the Spangletown Cabaret. Did you see it? Do you think I might look her up, if she’s still alive, and maybe get some professional advice? I could perform on the boards, you know, and put a few pennies together.”

The Lion shook his head and heard his wattles wuffle. “What are you on about, Dorothy? We’re witnessing an historic change in government, not hosting a jobs fair for immigrants. A little perspective, if you please.”

“You’re not going to stick by me forever. The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow haven’t been popping up like vaudeville headliners to welcome me with a song-and-dance upon my return to Oz. Do you think I haven’t noticed? Life goes on, Brrr. We move on. I have so few choices, really, if I can’t get myself back home. Maybe that’s what growing up means, in the end—you go out far enough in the direction of—somewhere—and you realize that you’ve neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything.”

“I never use that word.”

“Neutered? Sorry.”

“No. I never say home.” And Brrr realized it was true, and that Dorothy was right, too. We don’t get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our license to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there’s no place remotely like home.

“We’

---