Page 110 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

8.

Why the adjournment? From the point of view of the prosecution, it seemed to Brrr a clumsy move. The hiatus might allow that rumor—that Elphaba was somehow still alive—to gain weight and sway public opinion in Dorothy’s favor. Mister Mikko agreed and concluded that Nipp must have a sound reason for delaying. Might they be trying to dig up a witness, somewhere, someone who could confirm Elphaba’s death by revealing anything about the disposition of her corpse?

“Preposterous,” said Brrr. Who could it be? Back on that dreadful day, neither he nor Liir had been allowed up the stairs to the parapet where Elphaba had died. The only human souls who might give testimony about the scene of that tragedy were Dorothy herself and the Witch’s old Nanny, who had gone up after Dorothy had come down but who had refused Liir access. Brrr had assumed it was out of kindness; Liir had, after all, been a mere fourteen years old. And a young fourteen at that.

Could Elphaba’s old Nanny have been capable of a deceit of any magnitude? Concealing the Witch?… Brrr thought not. Even then Nanny had been stunningly unmoored from reality. Were she still alive, she’d be over a hundred years old now. At any rate, Kiamo Ko was a thousand-some miles away any route you took. They wouldn’t be putting Nanny or her ghost on the witness stand.

Then, he wondered, what about Chistery? The chief of the flying monkeys? As far as Brrr knew, Chistery was an anomaly in Oz. He’d begun life as an animal incapable of language, and yet he had managed to learn it, thanks to Elphaba’s ministrations and maybe to her magic. Brrr had no idea how old Chistery would be now, nor how long snow monkeys generally lived. He asked Mister Mikko his opinion, but the Ape bared his false dentures at Brrr and refused to get into a discussion about it. “I don’t even know my own expected life span,” he snapped; “how could I possibly be conversant on the life span of an invented line like a flying monkey?”

Even if he were alive, Chistery would likely be too old to fly all those miles to speak in confirmation of the Witch’s death, decided Brrr. And an Animal’s testimony would carry only so much weight.

The evening before the trial was set to reopen, Mr. Boss said, “In the absence of any other clue about why Nippy Nipp Nipp adjourned for two days, I’ve been wondering if emissaries of La Mombey have been working to get information out of Dorothy now that she’s been threatened with execution.”

“Information about what?” asked his wife.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “La Mombey must be as interested in locating the Grimmerie as the Emperor is. Maybe she thinks that only something as powerful as that book could have drawn Dorothy back to Oz, and that Dorothy knows something about its location. A threat of death might loosen her tongue.”

“Dorothy’s is one tongue that doesn’t need any more loosing,” said the Munchkinlander. But Brrr wondered if Mr. Boss had a point.

They made the mistake of walking back to their lodgings through the piazza outside Neale House. Flares had been set up so that the tradesmen could hammer together a kiosk of some sort. “They’re going to sell souvenirs that say THE JUDGMENT OF DOROTHY! Headbands or armbands,” guessed Little Daffy.

“They’re building her a little house she can ride back to Kansas,” said Mr. Boss.

They stopped joking then, as someone strung up a rope, and someone else tested the trapdoor. “They wouldn’t,” said Little Daffy, dabbing her eyes. “My own folk, coarsened so?”

At A Stable Home, she ventured to ask Dame Hostile, “Do you think Lord Nipp will order Dorothy to be hanged?”

“She’ll swing like a bell, ding dong, they say,” replied the widow. “And by the way, I’m giving notice to you lot. When you booked in, you concealed your association with that Dorothy. So I want you to clear out tomorrow. I don’t need this house to get a reputation for attracting lowlife.”

“But I’m a Munchkinlander!” cried Little Daffy.

“That’s pretty low,” said the dwarf, “though I’m not one to talk.”

“I’m retiring,” said the chatelaine. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

“We didn’t do anything to you,” said Little Daffy. “I know my manners. We clean up after ourselves. Look, I’ll bake you a coffee bread for the morning.” She was almost beside herself, to be treated this way by her own kind.

The only response from upstairs was a slammed door.

Brrr

had had enough. He repaired to his chamber, from where he could hear the distant sound of hammering and cheering half the night, as the laborers tested and retested their equipment.

Regardless of the reasons for the postponement, when the trial reconvened Neale House was even more crowded the next day. A thousand Munchkinlanders surrounded the building and spilled into the square by the front doors. The Animals that Munchkin farmers had cajoled or browbeat into joining them were largely of the junior variety—kits, cubs, pups in training harness. They were escorted by Ewes and Dames, in hooded expressions and the occasional going-to-town bonnet. The human factor in the crowd snickered and occasionally nickered. Even a jaded old Goat with a beard on her chin and a wen on her rump commanded little respect in a crowd of beer-barrel farmers.

“So far in this picture-pretty town, my size and presence has seemed more than enough to allow me to pass through any crowd,” murmured Brrr to the dwarf and his wife. “But the Munchkinlanders seem to be gigantic in menace, or is that just me?”

Mister Mikko said, “I’m turning back. This atmosphere reminds me too much of the crowds that gathered to hear about the Wizard’s Animal Adverse laws. I can wait till tonight to hear what develops. And if I happen to die today of hexus of the plexus or bonkus of the konkus, don’t think I go unwillingly. It’s been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.”

The room was filled to the rafters, literally, since Munchkinlanders sat straddling the beams. The atmosphere had gone grave. Nipp cleared his throat and took sips of water and cleared his throat again before harrumphing, “Due to circumstances on the international front, I’ve been required to speed up the trial. In the absence of further witnesses this morning, I’m going to ask the advocates to present their final arguments. I will then charge the jury with making a judgment of Dorothy Gale: guilty as charged or innocent of some or all charges. I retain to myself the privilege of listening to the jury’s advice and determining if it is sound. May I remind you all that the final arbitration of justice remains in the hands of the magistrate. Me. Dame Fegg, you may begin.”

The prosecutor, clearly, had been briefed about the change in calendar. She’d come cloaked in some sort of dark academic robe that set off her iron braids, this morning coiled and pinned to each temple with treacherous-looking hair swizzlers. In a voice rounded with theatrical tones, perhaps the better to carry out the windows, she called Dorothy to the chair for a final time.

The defendant emerged from belowstairs in the usual manner. No one lent a hand, but at least for her final turn on the stand she’d been allowed to appear in her own clothes, an ensemble that had no origin in Oz—a blue velvet skirt with shiny black jet piping at the hem that, at intervals, looped waistward in hand-stitched arabesques. Cut to the midcalf and girdled with a wide stomacher, it cinched a white linen blouse with mutton sleeves. A toque filigreed with spiky feathers and fake linen roses in blue and silver perched at a drunken angle upon her head. She clutched her gloved hands repeatedly as if in her distress she were about to burst into song.

“Lord Nipp,” began Dame Fegg. “Counsel Bailey. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Ladies and gentlemen of the gallery and beyond. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen of history: I address you all.”

Dorothy gave a little cough. “Yes, Miss Dorothy, I address you too,” said Dame Fegg in exaggerated courtesy, the first nasty giggle of the morning. Brrr rolled his eyes at Little Daffy and Mr. Boss.

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