Page 145 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Not too little! I’m not the glass of fashion and the mirror of form I was in my springwater days!”

The travelers headed up the bank. Tip kept Tay safe in his arms. “You’re awfully sweet to a talky old Beaver,” said Rain. “Do you really mean you’d bring her a boat?”

“Well, if the opportunity presented itself.”

“Why are you so nice?”

“You make me nice. I’m pleased this all happened—that I ended up bursting out of your wardrobe instead of, say, Miss Ironish’s. Or Miss Igilvy’s.”

“Or Scarly’s?” She could risk making that almost-joke now that they had put so many miles between themselves and St. Prowd’s.

“Or Scarly’s.” He was sound and firm, and didn’t rise to the ribbing. “It’s just as Luliaba said. The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build. I might have gone in any direction once I escaped from Colwen Grounds. I might have gone to the Emerald City to throw myself on the mercy of the Emperor.”

“Smart move, avoiding that. For a deity, he isn’t widely known for his mercy.”

“Even ending up at Shiz, I might have found some sort of position at one of the colleges. Or hired out for that Bear, to help him in his shop in exchange for a mattress. I might even have come to St. Prowd’s before you’d been moved out to the annex. Really!—doesn’t coincidence hurt the sense of reason? What’s the likelihood that I’d have escaped the court of La Mombey, where I’d already heard of the Grimmerie, only to stumble across you, who seem to be one of its closest relatives?”

“We don’t do probability theory until third year at St. Prowd’s, but I’d guess about ozillion to one.” She trained her eyes on the tall grasses to select the best path across the plateau rising west of the Vinkus River. Butterflies hung like slow confetti as far as the eye could see. “The chances are so slim, in fact”—she paused as the thought consolidated—“that it might make me wonder if La Mombey had charmed you to find me.”

“Well.” He was taken aback by that. No easy riposte to offer. Finally he shrugged and said, “If she did, we have something to thank her for at last. But you’d expect she’d also have charmed me to kidnap you and take you back to her, so that even if she didn’t have the Grimmerie, she’d have you in custody. Then if the Emperor’s men found the book first, at least they wouldn’t have you, too.”

“Maybe she did charm you to do that,” said Rain, though she didn’t really believe it. “You just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“If she did, then you cast a stronger charm upon me,” he said.

“Stop that. You sound like one of the silly schoolgirls on the second floor.”

They walked in sunlight, in shadow, speaking and not speaking. The hours were long and their feet hurt, and their stomachs rumbled like thunder. They postponed fretting about what they would find at Kiamo Ko; it couldn’t be helped from this distance, not yet. Gradually the sentinel mountains emerged from heat haze, to supervise their progress. First filmy banks, easily mistaken for a low storm front on the horizon; then icy translucencies; then, too soon—all too soon—the silhoutte of Oz’s natural ramparts. The Great Kells.

Foot ahead of foot, step step step. They were in little need of omens. They trusted to the charm of chance. Why not? It had done them no harm so far.

2.

From the east the Kells rose, wrinkled solidity, and scored to two-thirds of their height by innumerable aromatic conifers. Few low valleys, but as Rain and Tip climbed they kept finding pockets of higher pastureland. Hung tarns. Sudden upland meadows where Arjiki tribespeople had been settled forever.

Like the chancel above the Sleeve of Ghastille, these villages were often invisible to climbers until the last few steps, and then the settlements would appear as if sprinkled there by the wind. The huts were made of stone and the roofs of thatch and grass, bundled in bristly fagots and weighed down by rocks tied into place. The first village on Knobblehead Pike was Fanarra, said the villagers, pointing to it and naming it. Tip and Rain could understand little else but the mountain courtesy that gestured, “Come, eat. Here, sleep. Blanket.” They treated Tip and Rain as a married couple, bedding them close, which Rain didn’t mind and Tip didn’t seem to either, as far as Rain could determine. Upon leaving the village they noticed other couples not much older than they were. They saw an infant in a sling who wailed every time the teenage mother hit it.

“That isn’t right,” murmured Tip as they passed.

“Send it down the everlasting sea in a little coracle, it’ll be fine,” said Rain. Tip didn’t talk to her for a while after that.

Fanarra led, another day’s steep hike, to Upper Fanarra, where the welcome was equally warm. Someone slaughtered a young goat and it was roasted at night, and the whole village celebrated. Tip sang a Munchkinlander spinniel that was intended to be comic, but the villagers closed their eyes and listened with painful care as if it were a voice from the beyond.

Silly me tender, silly me sweet,

Tickle me under the bandstand.

Handle me merciful, handle me neat

And I’ll tickle you under the waistband.

“I think Tip is tipsy,” said Rain that night, so he tickled her.

The villagers of Upper Fanarra responded eagerly to the mention of Kiamo Ko, and by wheeling motions they suggested it wasn’t a day or two farther on, three at most. Coming up for late summer now, thought Rain. Probably autumn arrived earlier in the high hills. Rain and Tip needed to warm themselves around a breakfast campfire for a few moments before starting out.

“I’m still thinking about that little baby,” Tip confessed. “I wish we had taken it with us.”

“We can’t even hold our liquor, can we,” said Rain, “how are we going to hold a baby?”

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