Page 97 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“The Munchkinlanders,” said Little Daffy, “call this season of the year Seedtime.”

“I can see why,” said Brrr. It seemed to belie the anxiety of wartime, to spit in its face, this bounty of Munchkinland. Mile after mile of pasture rilled with green fringe. Paddocks dizzy with birdsong and cloudy with bugs. Meadows patrolled by farmers, by the occasional tiktok contrivance on its wheels and pulleys and t

raction belts. “A Gillikin abomination in Munchkinlander fields is my partisan sentiment,” said Little Daffy.

“Machinery in exchange for grain. It’s called free trade,” said Brrr.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the traditional scarecrow. Any chance we’re going to run into your friend? Might he be heading to rescue Dorothy too?”

“Doubtful. He had the brains to make a clean break of the matter. Me, I’m too much of a coward.”

“Mmm,” said Mr. Boss, which was as opinionated as he got these days.

“No wonder this part of Munchkinland is known as the Corn Basket,” said the Lion. He had only ever seen the scrappier bits, the hardscrabble places that Animals had retreated to a generation or two ago, when Loyal Oz kicked them out of the law and commerce and the tonier echelons of the banks and colleges. Now he saw Animals in the fields, more than he’d expected. True, they were labor rather than management. But it was still work. “Do they comb off anything in the way of sharing the profits?”

“I couldn’t possibly say,” puffed Little Daffy. “I left Munchkinland years ago, before the infusion of new labor. Why? Are you looking for a farmhand position after we scope out this business about the trial of Dorothy?”

Well, he wasn’t. He’d done his share of farmwork on pocket handkerchief farms to the south. Barely subsistence enterprises. He’d hauled manure and brought in spattery little crops. He’d been paid in last winter’s carrots and he’d been loaned a flea-infused blanket to sleep under. No one had talked to him for seven years, and that had been fine with him. But had central Munchkinland always been so prosperous? He hadn’t noticed. Too distracted by self-loathing.

With every mile Little Daffy grew more cocky. She’d been born, she told them, up near the terminus of the Yellow Brick Road—Center Munch. From a family of farmers, of course. One of four or five siblings whose names she couldn’t now recall. She’d only traveled the Yellow Brick Road once before, when she was a teenager starting as a student nurse in Bright Lettins. “It was hardly more than a hamlet back then,” she said, “at the head of a tributary of the Munchkin River. I can’t wait to see it gussied up as a capital city.”

“It won’t look like the EC, anyway,” said the Lion. “This place is so different from Loyal Oz. I wonder that Munchkinlanders were ever willing to be ruled by the Emerald City.”

Little Daffy replied, “Nessarose Thropp rose to prominence by exploiting a provincial identity that Munchkinlanders had always felt, but suppressed. We never trusted Loyal Ozians even before the secession. We’re not like you.”

“Well, I’m an Animal,” said Brrr, “but I take your point.”

“I’m not like me anymore, either,” said the dwarf.

“And it’s not just the height thing,” said Little Daffy. “Lots of Munchkinlanders are tall as other Ozians.”

“Lots of us are taller inside our trousers than outside,” said her husband.

“Shut up, you,” said Little Daffy, but lovingly. At least he was verbal.

A few days later they approached the new capital over a series of low bridges spanning irrigation canals. Something of the feel of a holiday park for families, thought Brrr. Bright Lettins wasn’t gleaming and garish, like the Emerald City, nor ancient and stuffed with character, like Shiz, the capital of Gillikin. But it ornamented the landscape with its own brand of Munchkin confidence. From this approach, the effect at a distance was of a huddle of children’s building blocks: roofs of scalloped tile, blue or plum. Entering the city, the travelers found buildings made of stone-covered stucco painted in shades of grey and sand. Many structures were joined by arches over the street, creating a series of outdoor chambers, squares funneling into allées debouching into piazzas. Pleasing, welcoming.

And clean? Gutters ran under iron grills next to the coping in the streets, carrying away ordure of every variety. Windows clearer than mountain ice. The buildings ran to three and a half stories, by diktat apparently, though since they were Munchkin stories they weren’t very high.

“Where do taller people and Animals stay?” asked Brrr.

“Not here,” was the answer they got from chatelaine and inn master alike. After a while someone directed them to an Animal hostelry in a shabbier neighborhood. Reportedly the only place where Animals and humans could find rooms under the same roof, with a sign outside that read A STABLE HOME. The entrance for taller people and Animals was supplied at a side door marked OTHERS. “Well, I’ve been waiting almost four decades to decide who and what I am, and I’ve finally stumbled upon the answer,” said Brrr. “I’m an Other. But how are we going to pay?”

Little Daffy dug from some hidey-purse under her aprons a clutch of folded notes. “Whoa, have you been peddling poppy dust behind our backs?” asked Brrr when he caught sight of the wad.

“Before I left the mauntery several years ago, I dashed to its treasury,” she said. “I guessed that Sister Petty Cash abandoned her stash as she and the others were fleeing for their lives. I’ve never had the need to spend it yet.”

“Isn’t that theft?”

“I consider it back wages for thirty years of sacrifice.”

“I’m not complaining.”

The innkeeper was a dejected widow fallen on hard times. Taking in lodgers out of need. She resented them from the start. But rent was rent. “Your old fellow needs a rest,” she said to Little Daffy as she glanced over at where Mr. Boss was propped against a wall. “He’s not from around here. Sick, is he?”

“He’s a dwarf. He comes like that,” said Little Daffy. “It’s been a long trip. We’ll be grateful to take our key and find our room.”

“You two are just up the stairs. Next to my room, so I can keep an eye on you should you get up to anything.”

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