Page 104 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

Brrr oughtn’t to have been surprised to see Little Daffy approach the bench. She had murmured something once about having seen Dorothy. “I suppose I have an obligation to make myself known to you. I am called Little Daffy. My name originally was Daffodil Sully, but I was known for some years as Sister Apothecaire, a unionist maunt housed at the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows, in the southern corner of Gillikin.”

“And how do you know the accused?” asked the magistrate.

Little Daffy looked sideways at Dorothy Gale. “I can’t say I know her. I’m merely answering your call to identify myself as someone who has crossed paths with her before. I was present in Center Munch on the day when Dorothy first arrived in Oz. The day that her house tumbled out of the sky and killed Nessarose.”

The mumble in the room grew louder. It was one thing to have an Animal or an illegal immigrant questioned by a magistrate. But a Munchkinlander present at the death of Nessarose Thropp! Brrr wasn’t sure if the susurrus suggested admiration, disbelief, or alarm. Little Daffy gave a curt nod to Dorothy and said, “When it comes time to discuss what happened that day, I’ll put my bootblack on my brogans, same as anyone else.”

Nipp sent them back to their seats but ordered their continued attendance through the duration of the trial. They’d be called to testify in time. Probably not today, he suspected. There were other matters to get through first.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a recital of previous cases that had been heard in Bright Lettins. Dame Fegg had enjoyed quite a career of prosecution. Each description of her most famous wins was met with bursts of applause. The matters at hand involved hexed chickens, tax evasion, one or two cases of lechery. Interesting enough, but they didn’t seem pertinent to the task of trying Dorothy for murder. Temper Bailey, on the other hand, had never won a case.

After catching Little Daffy’s eye and signaling that he should be roused if something interesting began to happen, the Lion put his head on his paws and slept. He didn’t waken until the magistrate concluded proceedings for the day with a loud bang of the gavel. “You didn’t miss anything. The good stuff starts tomorrow,” said Little Daffy.

“Oh, Brrr,” said Dorothy over her shoulder, as she was prodded toward the trapdoor by the Chimpanzees. “It makes such a difference to me that you would come to my defense.”

“If you knew my record of accomplishments in the years since I last saw you,” said the Lion, “you wouldn’t feel so cheery. But I’ll do what I can, Dorothy. I never understood you for a single moment, but in the choice between wishing you ill and wishing you well, I wish you well.”

“I should think so,” said Dorothy, and she opened her mouth as if to say more, but the Chimpanzees slammed down the trapdoor, narrowly missing the crown of her head.

6.

By the time Brrr and Little Daffy arrived the next morning, the room was full to bursting. After Lord Nipp entered and called Dorothy from the musty holding pen below, Dame Fegg minced forward and said, “Since we’ve concluded the opening statements, may I begin to question the witness, Your Honor?”

“One moment,” said Lord Nipp. He fished out a paper from beneath his robes. “Dorothy Gale, you claim to be sixteen years old, and you certainly look and sound like a child of that age, if rather big by local standards. Can you tell us how old you were when you first arrived in Oz and murdered Nessarose Thropp?”

“I take exception to that definition of my actions,” said Dorothy, “but letting that go for a moment, I will tell you: it was 1900 when the twister came through our parts. I was ten years old.”

“And you say you are sixteen now. That’s six years older. Yet by my figuring, and believe me I have counted it frontward and backward since I left here yesterday, it is about eighteen years since you spent a few months in Oz.”

The girl looked flummoxed. She counted on her fingers for a moment. “I didn’t go far in school. Eventually the teacher said I was too fanciful and sent me back to the farm. But here, I can do these sums…”

“Nessarose Thropp and her sister Elphaba have been dead for eighteen years,” said Nipp sternly, as if this were proof enough of Dorothy’s guilt.

“But how odd. How irregular! The last time I was in Oz I was ten years old. Big for my age, but even so. And this time around I am sixteen. That is six years older, you’re right about that. And you tell me that those witch sisters have both been gone for about eighteen years? How can this be?”

“Maybe time moves slower in Kansas,” said the magistrate.

“Time crawls in Kansas. But some say Kansas is a state of mind.” She sat up and pushed her bosom forward as if she’d just remembered she wasn’t a little girl anymore. “It’s uncanny. Perhaps I’ve become mentally unfit.”

Dame Fegg delivered a moue in the direction of the jurors to make sure they caught Dorothy’s admission.

The accused brightened up. “We can work this out. I just need to know how you count time in Oz. What year did I first arrive?”

The court waited for her to explain. A fly drove itself insanely around an upper windowpane.

“You arrived the year that you arrived,” said Lord Nipp evenly, patiently, the way a parent responds because to some child’s question of why?

“Yes. But what was the year named? I mean, at home I was born in 1890 and I was ten years old when the cyclone came and drove the farmhouse from Kansas to Oz, so that was 1900. Was it the year 1900 in Oz? The year I made my first visit? And so what is this year called? I mean, if anything ought to be universal, time ought to be.”

The magistrate said, “I’m not here to be your tutor, Miss Gale. Nonetheless, I’ll tell you that you seem to be relying on a system of naming years that is unfamiliar to us. In Oz we have no universal method of notching time or assigning arbitrary numbers to year-spans. I’m told that the Quadlings live quite comfortably without any system at all, since the climate there more or less precludes seasonal variation. The Gillikinese and the Emerald City refer to the passage of time in terms of the reigns of the various Ozmas or, since the Wizard first arrived, the various reigns of the Throne Ministers. The first, the seventh, the twelfth year of the Emperor Shell’s reign, and so on. Here in Munchkinland the length and disposition of our months vary according to cycles of the moon. In years of a jackal moon, for instance, we skip the month of Masque, out of some old superstition no one remembers. In years when the sun casts no shadow on Seeding Day, we add seven weeks of agricultural season called the Corn Time. If it rains too much in the spring we just skip over Guestlight. So, our years being irregularly shaped, they don’t line up for easy counting. No one tries to do it.”

“Besides,” added Little Daffy, speaking from the sidelines, “if I might add a word, arithmetic has its own cultural moods. In the mauntery, for instance, any span of years more than six we counted as a decade. It doesn’t always mean ten years. It just meant ‘looks about like ten years, sooner or later.’ ”

“To say nothing of the fact,” added Brrr, as long as this was turning into a colloquy, “that when nothing seems to be happening, you can’t tell if time is stuck a little. Six years might go by—call it a decade or call it the blink of an eye—but until something else happens to make you pay attention, it doesn’t matter what you call it. If there’s no reason to notch the memory, why waste time counting dead time?”

&nb

sp; The magistrate said, “I didn’t ask for opinions from the floor.”

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