Page 70 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“It doesn’t show truth to pagans,” said Mr. Boss. “Why would you believe it when you can’t believe in a god you can’t see?”

“We housed you and fed you through months of rains. You won’t deny us a look at the future. Quadlings, when they’re able, can sometimes see the present, but this Clock tells the truth of all things.”

“I never said that,” swore the dwarf, stamping.

“You never did,” agreed the berdache, batting his eyelids. “But I can see the present, and I know that is what you think.”

The companions were in a bind. They couldn’t leave without paying the Quadlings of Qhoyre something for a year’s lodging and board. Cursing up a head of steam, the dwarf made valiant effort to rev the old girl up. Put on a little demonstration. All things being equal and buyer beware, and so on.

“Come on,” said Rain on her haunches, bouncing up and down like the monkeys she played with. “Come on!”

The Clock obeyed nobody’s deepest wishes. Mr. Boss couldn’t get a shutter to open, a crank to turn, a single puppet to appear and blow a kiss at the assembled crowd. “It’s done for,” he declared. His furrowed expression showed him to be sincere. The Quadlings had no choice but to offer him their condolences on the death of the future.

“It died just like that god who slid off the world and lost his name,” said the berdache. “Never to mind. Is pretty dragon anyway.”

“The Unnamed God isn’t a person,” said Little Daffy, out of some final spasm of feeling for her religious past.

“And fate isn’t limited to a tiktok dragon’s sense of theatrics,” added the Lion.

“Nor the spell of any magic book,” offered Ilianora.

The Quadlings began to bow and wave the companions off. They didn’t want philosophics. They’d wanted a bite at the future, and were wi

lling to live without it the way their ancestors had done. The berdache walked them a little way out of town, on the northern ramp off the elevated road. “Perhaps the world is to heal,” he said. “The vegetable pearls healthier this spring than I ever to see them. Perhaps the rice otters to learn their old way and go green as before, now there are pearls to help harvest.”

“Too much mystery for an old fraying hairdo like mine,” muttered the dwarf, disconsolate. “So long, chumpo.”

“Lord Chumpo,” said the berdache, rushing to give out embraces. Ilianora turned her head and beckoned Rain to walk with her. But Rain was getting too big to order around. Her head was higher than Ilianora’s elbow now—almost as high as her breast.

I7.

Their spirits lifted as they left Ovvels behind. Such was the power of the sun that even under the jungle canopy a year’s worth of monsoon drippage burned off in a matter of days. The companions didn’t find the passage tough, only slow, as they had to clear undergrowth every quarter mile.

Brrr had hoped, once they began to move again, that Ilianora’s mood would improve, but she continued to seem vexed. It took him a few days of watching her watch the girl before he was able to frame his thought.

The girl was growing up. Their Rain. That’s what was agitating Ilianora.

Growing up, and growing beyond them.

Rain had not been theirs, not for a moment. Brrr could still read with a parental eye how the world could present itself to a young girl like Rain. And how Rain might respond, this girl who seemed, increasingly, to be interested in learning to read everything except how human beings talked to one another.

“She’s all right,” said Brrr, splashing through the lily pads, the floating beehives. And Rain was all right. But Ilianora—he had to face it—was not.

That night, he thought another, more common thought. Maybe it’s that time of Ilianora’s life. Maybe it hurts Ilianora to admit that Rain isn’t her daughter. That there will be no daughter now. Not even if Ilianora could unstitch the seam and find a human male as another husband. The vegetable pearls were not growing for Ilianora.

I8.

They’d been told they’d leave the mucklands behind soon enough, and the road would climb some sandy slopes, and eventually debouche into the Sleeve of Ghastille. This broad and fertile valley led northeast, marking the border between the Vinkus and Quadling Country. The berdache of Ovvels had insisted that the companions would find few inhabitants in the valley, but they must beware nonetheless.

“If it’s so fertile, why is it uninhabited?” Mr. Boss had demanded. The answers had been incoherent. The natural landscape between the Great Kells to the west and the Quadling Kells to the east proved low and dry and well drained. Surely it seemed an ideal route for the Yellow Brick Road? Back in the day when it was being laid out? And why had any human travelers to the Thousand Year Grasslands to the west chosen to brave the inhospitable track over Kumbricia’s Pass rather than this lower and more welcoming approach?

It didn’t take long for the companions to see why. The pass was a set of gentle crescents around foothills that abutted the horizon from east and west. From slope to slope, at this time of year anyway, an ocean of carmine red flowers took their breath away. Poppies.

“I know about poppies,” said Mr. Boss. “Grim business, even for me, who likes a tidy profit if I can turn one.”

“I know about poppies,” agreed his wife. “All kinds of useful applications that you can rarely take advantage of because of side effects. We were forbidden to use them in the surgery when we could even get them, which was seldom.”

Brrr felt their effect at once. The odor was of scorched cinnamon, savagely beguiling. In the freshening light and the wind that swept west from the swamplands and the grasslands, the air pushed the pollen heavily ahead of them. It inflected the day no less than fog or rain or brutal heat might have done. The travelers struggled through the endless carpet. Were anyone to try to follow them after all this time, too bad: the tracks of the cart were swallowed up as the blossoms closed ranks.

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