Page 74 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Little Daffy found the Grimmerie a few feet away, lying where it had been pitched. Hidden in the shadow of the dragon’s ripped wing, as if the last act of the failing tiktokery had been to protect the magic book.

The Clock might be sprung at last, its mechanism despoiled after a century of charm, but the book remained closed to prying fingers.

“Let’s right the old lady, anyway, and see if we can cobble together a repair,” said Brrr. He wept a little, as if the dragon had been a companion too, and dissected one of its wings to remove a sallowwood humerus. With his little knife the dwarf fashioned enough of a substitute axle to manage.

They dragged the dead Clock through the last few miles of the Sleeve of Ghastille. In a shadowy meadow where the brook widened out, they paused to breathe the air less thick with poppy dust.

Brrr noticed it was autumn again. More than a year had passed since they had taken Rain from Lady Glinda. The twisted bows of pretzel puzzle trees were raging with hornets doing their anxious final dance. The leaves were falling, red and gold. They fell into the open mouth of the theater. When the sun began to set over the Great Kells and its light struck the stage, the earthquake event glowed as if it had been further plagued by a conflagration.

After a pick-me-up supper had been prepared and mostly ignored, and they were sitting around a small fire of their own, the company of the Clock without, it seemed, the Clock to cohere them, Brrr asked of Muhlama, “On whose agency have you been trying to rope us in? You weren’t a team player when last we met, as I recall.”

“Still not,” she said, yawning. “I’ve turned my back on my tribe, as you did on yours, Sir Brrr. But I never took up with humans. Yes, I’ve heard all about your later … accomplishments.” She had lost none of her power of condescension, he saw, almost affectionately. She continued. “I have no money on the matter of governments either way. I owe no loyalty to the grandees of the Emerald City or to the pipsqueaks of Munchkinland.” Little Daffy glowered at her in defense of her people, but Muhlama was impervious to a Munchkin glower.

“Someone sent you,” prompted Brrr.

“Someone asked me to come,” she agreed. “Someone said you might be in danger. I thought it might be amusing to watch. I had owed you something, after all.”

She had. Brrr’s dalliance with her had given her the alibi to leave the line of succession of the Spice Tiger camp. To escape the destiny of leadership h

er father, Uyodor H’aekeem, had required of her. Brrr saw that much more clearly now, since he too hadn’t been above using others as pawns for his own ambitions. “I was happy to help,” he said. “Way back then.”

“I made you happy to help,” she admitted. She flicked her tail in a way that reminded him of her seduction, the sordor of it, the ardor of it. But her tail was a commentary on Animal relations, not a come-on. “You freed me from my own prison. These years later, the moment arrived for me to try to do the same for you.” She looked sideways at Ilianora, who appeared as if carved out of ivory, staring at the flames, and added drily, “If that’s your wife, perhaps I didn’t come soon enough.”

“Tell us what you know,” he said. “Has the invasion by Loyal Oz been successful? Has Haugaard’s Keep fallen? Is the Emperor still blathering on his throne? It’s been a year since we’ve lost touch with the news.”

She limned it in quickly. “The Munchkinlanders defended their positions for as long as they could, but eventually they had to abandon the lake. All but the eastern fort. For a while it’s looked as if Loyal Oz will keep Restwater, requiring a retrocession of that edge of Munchkinland. Perhaps, folks said, to avoid further incursions, the Munchkinland Eminence would settle the matter, accepting the loss of the lake in exchange for political integrity of the rest of Munchkinland.”

“The EC only ever wanted water,” said the Lion.

“Not true. They also need the grain supplied by the breadbasket of Oz, in central Munchkinland,” Muhlama argued. “They need enough of a détente that commerce can begin again. There’s been a certain amount of unrest and deprivation in the Emerald City while Oz is engaged in this civil war.”

“So what’s the problem?” asked Brrr. “They sue for peace.”

“The Emperor,” said Muhlama, and yawned. “Shell Thropp. You remember him? I see you do. The younger brother of those sister witches, Elphaba and Nessarose. He has declared himself divine. He has promoted himself god.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Mr. Boss, his first comment in hours.

“The Munchkinlanders had enough of godliness after their years under the yoke of Nessarose,” replied the Ivory Tiger. “They’re commonsense when it comes to commerce, but they get their backs up when it comes to dogma. They won’t negotiate with a god. Who could? So just as it seemed a peace might be brokered, the Emperor had to go do a pious makeover and provoke the humble Munchkinlanders, who never ever shall be slaves. It’s not money. It’s some dim little ember of self-respect that won’t die out in the stout breasts of Munchkinlanders.”

“I’m not that stout,” said Little Daffy. “I’d say pleasingly plump.”

“The plumper, the pleasinglier,” said Mr. Boss, laying his head thereupon.

“Who is leading this Munchkinlander resistance to a brokered settlement?” asked Brrr. “When Nessarose was killed by that house of Dorothy…”

“I remember that,” said Little Daffy. “I was there that day.”

Brrr continued. “… the first response upon liberation was to revoke the rights of the Eminences of Munchkinland and centralize control. No? I remember someone named Hipp, or Nipp, who named himself Prime Minister.”

“I didn’t read history, ancient or modern,” said Muhlama. “I’m a creature of the hills and shadows. As you ever knew. But the Eminenceship is not entirely dead. Titles never die, they just go somnolent. Some crone or crony of the old Wizard of Oz has emerged to claim authority, if I have it right. Someone named Mombey. A kind of witch.”

“Hasn’t the Emperor called in all magic utensils, hasn’t he forebade the casting of spells? I thought the time of witches was done,” said Brrr.

“It’s never done,” said the Tigress. “Besides, you’re forgetting the Emperor doesn’t have the rights to legislate about magic in Munchkinland. That’s part of what they’re fighting against.”

“I’m going to bed,” said Ilianora, and she crept into the shadows of the useless Clock, pulling the ratty leather wing over her head like a blanket. “Come, Rain, settle with me. There’s no need to hear gossip about government. It’ll only give you gas.”

“It’s my belief that Munchkinlanders will launch a counterinvasion,” said Muhlama. “Won’t that be fun? Overrunning the EC with pudgy little ferret people? They have a dynamic military commander who has managed to hold on to Haugaard’s Keep, after all. A steeltrap farmgirl now goes by the name of General Jinjuria. She calls herself the Foill of Munchkinland.”

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