Page 193 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Dorothy’s departure from Oz was arranged so hastily that Little Daffy and Mr. Boss were absent—out of town, engaged in their harvesting expedition in the Sleeve of Ghastille. They didn’t get to say farewell, or anything saltier.

Before dawn, Brrr escaped his royal guards and commandeered a hansom cab so he could make his good-byes to Dorothy in person. He met Rain and Mister Mikko in the insalubrious courtyard of a private atelier in the Lower Quarter, a back-neighborhood place Mister Mikko had located where they might attract less attention. Mister Mikko commandeered the book. An elderly chatelaine, Miss Pfanee, opened the gate to the few who had gathered. She curtseyed low when she saw the Cowardly Lion among the delegation. His presence had not been advertised. But when she caught sight of Rain gleaming green in the predawn gaslight, she gasped and fled and didn’t come back.

Amid the wheelbarrows and compost and some rangy geraniums put out to die but refusing, so far, Rain settled on an old blanket and touched the Grimmerie for the first time since the pine barrens above Mockbeggar Hall.

Mister Mikko stood on one side, almost asleep from the strain of his new responsibilities. Dorothy knelt at the other, Toto gnawing the edge of one of her heels. Rain pulled back the cover. The book flew open to a blank page—at least it began blank.

They didn’t know the word for a watermark, but a faint green huzzle of light seemed to radiate from the page—so dimly at first that they thought it a refraction cast by a drop of water balanced upon a nearby leaf. A zigzag—a Z escaped from the O, thought Rain. The edges of the image were blurred, as if they were made of the smallest bits of paper, the kind of airy nothings that fly in the light when the pages of a book are turned. Ozmists of the page, perhaps.

“It’s almost Elphaba, isn’t it,” said Dorothy tearily.

“Nonsense,” said Mister Mikko, who had taught Elphaba Thropp in the good old days, back at Shiz. “It’s nothing at all like Elphaba. It’s the soul of a deceased bookworm, nothing more. Let’s get this over with.”

“She’s not coming back,” said Dorothy, “and I’m not either.”

Rain flipped through the pages, which were docile enough under her touch. On the Extermination of Pests. No! Dorothy was a hot ticket, but hardly a pest. To Call Winter upon Water. There it had all begun, for Rain: the beginning of a coherent memory of her own life, not just a collection of incidents. For Tomfoolery, Its Eradication or Amplification. Please.

Was there a spell To Make the Heart Whole, Regardless?

She better be careful before she mischiefed herself—or Ozma—into disaster.

She laughed when she saw the next page. Gone with the Wind. Well, Dorothy had arrived via a mighty big windstorm the first time, no? Maybe it was time to call it up again.

“Are you ready?” she asked Dorothy.

“Next time I want a holiday,” said Dorothy, “I’m going to try overseas. The Levant, maybe. Or the Riviera. Or the Argentine pampas. Over the great ocean to meet the China people. All this gadding about Oz has confirmed in me a taste for travel.”

“Overseas. Please.” Rain looked up from where she was bent over the book. She knew herself well; she wasn’t the type to mouth pithy sentiments suitable for crocheting. All she could think of to say was, “Dorothy, next time? Take out some travel insurance.”

“Right. And I’m going to choose my fortune cookie a little more carefully next time too. Now listen. Rain.” Ever tit for tat with Dorothy. “Before it’s too late? Don’t give up on Tip. I mean Ozma. There’s so much ahead for you still. I wish—”

“Don’t wish,” said Rain, “don’t start. Wishing only…”

“And about your grandmother,” said Dorothy. “I don’t know if—”

“I don’t want to talk, I have work to do.”

“I just mean,” said Dorothy, smiling painfully, “there’s no need for her to come back. I mean, look. Here you are.”

Rain glanced around herself miserably. The Lion and Dorothy were gazing at her with watery grins. She wanted to throw a potted geranium at each one of them. “I’m going to send you on your way before you feed me any more of your nonsense,” she barked.

Dorothy then turned to Brrr. “I used to like the Scarecrow best,” she began.

He gruffed at her, “So did I. Now are you ready to take some advice from a Cowardly Lion? Make your way safely home. With our royal blessing. But when you get there, don’t surrender, Dorothy. Never surrender.”

“You didn’t, did you,” replied Dorothy. “Local Lion Makes Good. Well, first thing I’m going to do when I get back is find out what happened to Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, bless ’em. And if San Francisco is in as much of a mess as the Emerald City, well, I’ve learned something from Little Daffy about setting a bone. I’ll pitch in. Singing all the way, of course.” She was making fun of herself to settle her nerves. “We might’ve made a nice duo, Brrr, but courage called you elsewhere.” They didn’t speak again, but it took them a few moments to pull out of each other’s grip.

Rain began to intone the spell. A small local windstorm kicked up from the cobbles. For a moment it looked like the Ozmists, once again, but it was grittier. An updraft lifted Dorothy in the air as if she were flying high in the elevator she’d never stopped describing to anyone who would listen. All that was left of Toto, as Dorothy snatched him up, was a little pointed turd, which Mister Mikko kicked into the compost. No one had time to say goodbye to the dog. The basket in which Toto had traveled was left behind on the ground, rocking in the force of their disappearance.

Still, Tip remained in Madame Teastane’s. Maybe, thought Rain, Tip is only waiting until the right moment to steal away. And then what? And then what? Crack open the Grimmerie and—and what? We’d do what? Steal from the truth and lock each other in disguises again? That could do no good.

But weeks went by, and then months. No message arrived.

When to stay any longer would be to accept paralysis as permanent, Rain readied to make her departure from the Emerald City. Once the warm weather settled in she would leave by foot. Alone. She sent word to the Cowardly Lion. He replied by messenger. Perhaps he’d experienced one too many good-byes. As casually as sharing a loaf of bread, Brrr deeded Rain the Grimmerie in its blue sack. “You’re the only one who can use it,” he wrote. “It’s too dangerous to have in town. I don’t want to know what you do with it, just don’t bring it back to me. Love, Brrr.”

A packet in brown paper, done up in string, slid out of the sack after the book. Rain opened it. A medal that said COURAGE on it. Brrr making fun of himself? The ribbon was of ivory silk with a silver thread. No doubt he’d supervised the design. She turned it over. Oooh, fancy, a bit of engraving. RAIN, it said. WHO KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME PAST, PRESENT & TO COME.

The matinal hour suited her now. Ever since the day Dorothy had made it out of Oz—safely, one hoped, though if ever a girl was trouble prone it was La Gale of Kansas—Rain found that she preferred to walk the streets as night was shifting toward dawn. Perhaps at that hour a native greenness in the atmosphere hovers below the registration of our easily blinded eyes.

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