Page 72 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

But Ilianora couldn’t make herself move to comfort the girl. It was too horrible. She was frozen too.

By the time night fell, Ilianora was huddled against Brrr as he pulled himself up to a crouch. Little Daffy made some gloppy soup with a garnish of poppy pollen sprinkled on top. Mr. Boss was energized by the fact that the doors of the Clock had swung open, though once he refastened them they went right back into their old paralysis. Still, the fact they could still open seemed to be a useful kick in the butt. As he set to doing something of a tune-up, he whistled as he worked. Tunelessly.

“What happened?” asked Ilianora when the meal was done, and Brrr was cleaning the bowls with his tongue.

“Something was following us,” said Rain. “I don’t know what it was.”

“What did it look like? Soldiers?” asked Little Daffy.

“No. More like, um, spiders,” said Rain. “But more up-and-down than spread out. Their legs not so wide and curved like umbrella ribs, but more straight. Like what Murthy used to call a side table.”

Brrr said, “You had a dream of being attacked by a matched set of occasional tables? That reminds me of my setting up my first digs in Ampleton Quarters, back in the Shiz days. Green in judgment and all that. A case of nerves about being unpracticed at both sex and society was nothing compared to fretting that the wall hangings and the upholstery didn’t see eye to eye.” He knew he sounded berserk. He was trying to make light of Rain’s experience, whatever it had been.

“They wasn’t tables. They was beasties of some sort.”

“I suppose you took their names down, Rain, and all became quite cozy,” said Little Daffy. “You and your little party animals.”

“What did they want?” asked Mr. Boss. “You? Or the book?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t call ’em to me, but they came. They been following for a while I guess but I forgot to tell you.”

“Call me superior, but frankly I don’t think it’s likely you can see things we can’t,” said Little Daffy. “What were we saying earlier about conscience? In my day a girl who told tales would get a right smart spanking on her fanny.”

“You wasn’t looking. You was sunning.”

Ilianora roused herself. “Rain’s not pulling a fast one. I saw it happen. I saw something happen. Something came at the Clock, though whether it was for her or for the Grimmerie I don’t know.”

“They was the things that came to scrabble into the Clock the day I got locked in for safety,” said Rain. “The spiderish things from the jungle’s edge.”

The group fell silent. Brrr twitched his tail around exploratively, to see if it landed on something. No doubt he would scream like a schoolgirl if he touched … it. “Are they still here?” As baritone a voice as he could manage.

“They is all gone.” Rain began to cry a little. “I don’t know if they was good or bad or just hungry for something, but they is all gone. The rice otters got ’em.”

It was only then that they realized the rice otters had disappeared too. Hurried back to their swamp at last. All except for the one Rain had called Tay. It curled up on her lap and made itself at home, like a kitten. But its albino period was done. It looked like a mossy kitten entirely incapable of ripping a predator to shreds.

Brrr was consoled at the sight. He turned his attention to Ilianora, who continued to seem shattered at having witnessed an attack by an invisible foe. Anyone would be spooked by such a thing, he knew, but Ilianora—who shielded herself from notice by her veils—had been the one unlucky witness. She had withstood the opiate of the blossoms better than any of them. Why?

Well, she was sealed up, for one thing—actually and symbolically. That must be it. But having been protected by the suture, she was still vulnerable. The variety of despair brought on by panic and dread. She’d seen too much torture in her childhood. How well would she survive a genuine attack, one that had to be seen, that couldn’t be denied or filed away as delusion or fancy?

20.

The clouds skirted the bright moon in a well-behaved manner, so the companions pressed on through the Sleeve of Ghastille all night. They were eager to escape whatever the lure of poppies called up. Brrr, if he had put a name to it, would have said impatience with Ilianora.

Ilianora would have said panic, though panic had been dogging her footsteps since long before they entered the valley of the poppies.

Little Daffy regretted leaving such abundance of raw poppy material behind, but she went along grudgingly, making allowances for future needs.

Mr. Boss wanted his Clock to start working again.

Hugging Tay like a rag doll, Rain fell more silent than usual. She stayed closer to Brrr than to the others. He was the biggest even if the most squeamish.

Another day or two, another week, it was hard to tell, but things were improving. Maybe they were all just drying out after the wet year. Eventually other growth began to appear among the poppies—a stand of ferns here by the streamside, a clot of sunflowers. Then a few trees, the sort that can find a scrabblehold in sandy soil. The sound of birds up in the greeny shadows. Real birds at their private lessons, then flying high and free against outrageous blue.

The sandy road began to lead along a series of ridges. Brrr had to step carefully lest the ground begin to slide. Though not quite dunes, the slopes were certainly unstable.

Worrying about the apparent conspiracy of the world against the girl, whether Rain knew it or not, Ilianora was a mess of nerves. So Brrr wasn’t surprised when she lost it big-time one afternoon nearing sunset. Mr. Boss was just loosening the Lion from his tethers as the Clock perched on a sedgegrass knoll. Little Daffy was snipping some wild runner beans into a salad. Suddenly Tay set up a careering lollop as if bit by a stag-head beetle. The rice otter went plunging over the edge of the rise. Ilianora followed it with her eyes—more spiders?—to see Rain walking through grass forty, fifty feet down the steepening slope, toward a fell tiger of some sort who was emerging from the shadows of a copse of birches and terrikins.

“Brrr!” cried Ilianora, for she couldn’t sprint that fast, and the Lion could. Brrr was slow to twig, though. “Brrr! She has no fear!”

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