Page 51 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Ilianora carried the scythe the boys had sometimes wielded and she knocked down what bracken she could. If shadier, the woods were stiller, too. More spiders. Brrr hated spiders, but Rain scurried sideways to peer through each fretted oculus.

“What are you looking for?” he heard Ilianora ask her once.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “The spider world. The world the spider sees. The other world.”

“Little goose.” Ilianora takes such a fond tone when trashing the dreams of the young, Brrr observed. “Little monkey. Little moron. There is no other world. This world is enough.”

“Of course no one asks me my opinion about other worlds,” growled Mr. Boss. “I who actually have traveled a good deal wider than some.”

“Well?” Rain rarely addressed the dwarf. “What would you say?”

He glowered at the girl, as if she were responsible for the Clock having suffered its rigor mortis. “Ah, what I could say, were I free to spill the beans.”

“Don’t fill her head with nonsense,” snapped Ilianora. “It’s unkind.”

“What about that Dorothy?” asked Rain. “En’t she from the other world?”

“Who told you anything about her?” asked the dwarf.

“Murthy did. When Lady Glinda was busy twisting her hair with that hot fork.”

“I knew it,” said Brrr, shaking his natural curls.

“Wherever she was from, Dorothy was a stooge of the Wizard,” said Ilianora. “She did his bidding, from what I heard. She killed Auntie Witch—”

She paused. Brrr rarely heard her mention Elphaba Thropp. He knew his wife well enough to guess that the phrase Auntie Witch, rising to her own lips, had startled her. He swished his tail in his wife’s face to amuse her. She blinked at him in a noncommittal way.

“Dorothy could have come from anywhere,” he drawled. “There’s a lot of Oz untraveled by the likes of Ozians. More outback than city centre in Oz, no? And beyond the sands, Fliaan and Ix, and other murky badlands too impossible to imagine.”

“That’s not what Murth says,” protested Rain. “She says Dorothy was from the Other Land. You can’t get there by a cart. Just by magic.”

“It’s a one-way ticket, honey,” said Mr. Boss. “Trust me on this one.” He turned his pocket out as if looking for a chit for the return voyage: nothing.

“Dorothy went back, though.”

“Hah. They probably topped her and tumbled her in some hole. And made up another story. Just like they did to Ozma. People will believe anything if it’s impossible enough.”

“Don’t,” said Brrr. “Let Rain learn the world the same way we all did.”

“The scientific method of child rearing? Analysis by trial and terror?” The dwarf cracked his knuckles. “Move aside, Lion. I’m going for a walk. I can’t sit here and listen to you corrupt a child with the limits of logic. You’re all boobs and bobbycats.”

He humped himself straight through the big spiderweb that Rain had been examining. Then he turned around and said, “Look, little wastrel girl. I’m on the other side. And what’s the news? It stinks over here, too.”

The Lion whispered to his spouse, “Is he going to hold against Rain until she’s old enough to jab him one between the eyes?”

“Who likes being cut out of the future?” she replied. “The Clock is giving no opinions—so how does he learn his way?”

“The same as the rest of us. Dread, shame, and luck.”

When he came back, forty minutes later, Mr. Boss had a wife in tow. His own wife. An unregenerate Munchkinlander whom Brrr believed he’d met before. The woman, like many of her kind, was compact, half as wide as she was tall, slightly bowed of leg, a f

ace like a dented saucepan. Some sort of weed in her hands—she’d been collecting herbs, maybe. She stumped forward into the clearing with the confidence of a woodcutter.

It took him a moment to place her. “Sister Apothecaire. As I live and breathe. I thought you’d taken a vow of chastity?”

“I accidentally left it behind in the mauntery when you carried me off in that cart six months ago. Oh well. Whoever finds it can keep it; I’m through with it. Anyway, mind your own beeswax.”

Ilianora turned to look. “It’s good to see you so recovered.”

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