Page 144 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“She sounds very important indeed,” said Rain politely. “A charwoman at some fine hotel, perhaps?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“Don’t make a fool of me. I just saved your life, remember?”

So he told her. “I was in the household of the infamous Mombey, who serves as Eminence of Munchkinland, and who directs the war of defense against the mongrel Ozians.”

“Mongrel Ozians?” Rain had to laugh. She was quite a mongrel herself, part Quadling, part Arjiki, part Munchkinlander.

“They invaded Munchkinland,” Tip reminded her, but then he shook his head. “Oh, but that’s only part of why I left. I couldn’t bear the endless posturing. The Emperor of Oz may be a demiurge or whatever he has named himself, but La Mombey herself is a sorceress of no mean skill.”

“Do you think she has found the Grimmerie?” asked Rain.

“All I know is that she has had her people looking for it,” said Tip sadly. “For the book, and for the descendants of the Wicked Witch of the West, for in their hands the book would reveal its secrets most quickly, and Mombey is in urgent need of some sort of surge in the attempt to beat back the Ozians. Whether she got the book first or the Emperor’s men did, I can’t tell; but if it’s truly in the custody of one or the other of those adversaries, things will change before long.”

“Yes, they will,” said Rain. She told him who she was, and that she was heading for Kiamo Ko to see if her parents were still alive, since they had had the Grimmerie last. Then, because Tip clearly hated divulging secrets of his past as much as she did, she kissed him on the mouth so there would be no more talking for a while.

She collected the kisses one by one by one, but she didn’t count them.

God’s Great-Niece

I.

A good season to walk. Later—and not all that much later—Rain would look upon the six weeks it took them to find their way to Kiamo Ko as the happiest period of her young life.

They forded the Gillikin River easily enough, swimming when they had to, wading the rest of the way. When they reached the Vinkus River, a more treacherous waterspill channeled between obdurate yellow cliffs, they feared they’d been stopped. Spent days walking first north and then south along its banks, becoming desperate. Tay responded to their

anxiety and made a whimpering sound but wouldn’t plunge into the water until they were ready to forge ahead too.

Finally, at a stretch where the river widened and slowed, they came across a beaver dam. How the colony had managed to build against such force was hardly short of miraculous, thought Tip. Rain, less inclined to consider anything miraculous, remarked that if they could interview a talking Beaver they might learn a good deal.

Such a moment presented itself once they were almost across. What had looked like detritus caught up against the brackwork of fortifications on the far side turned out to be a lodge. And, “Hullo there, don’t step too hard or you’ll bring down the ceiling on my mother-in-law,” said a Beaver, turning a fish over in her paws and eyeing them with wariness and courtesy alike.

She introduced herself as Luliaba. The lodge was empty at this hour except for her aging mother-in-law, who wanted to be put to the sea in a coracle and allowed to sail to her doom, but she was too beloved by the clan and so they had locked her in her room, the better to cherish her.

“Put to sea?” said Rain, to whom the phrase seemed excessive.

“Term we have, in Beaver lore,” said Luliaba companionably. “The mortal goal of our species is to build a dam big enough to flood all of Oz, as legend says once happened. Then all the rivers would flow together, making the mythical sea of story and song, and on the other side of that misty rainbow all the Beavers who’ve gone before will be having a fish fry, and waiting for us there. She’s anxious to git going, y’see. She’s been learning off new marinade recipes that have come in fashion since her lollymama and lollypapa died, and she’s afraid she’ll go soft in the noggin and forgit them before she gets there. The dear.”

“She thinks all that, she’s already soft,” said Rain, for whom the mystery of the silent animal had more potency than that of the chattering classes.

“The notion of a world of water, it always makes me feel ill,” said Tip. “But tell us how you came to build this magnificent barricade.”

“I’m chief engineer on this job site,” said Luliaba. “And I don’t mind saying that the sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation upon which to build. Two big ole stag-head oaks, uprooted upriver upmonth, floated into view one morning pretty as you please, and lodged for a while against some rocks you can’t see. About a third of the way out. Before they could work their way free, we’d established the underwater salients, using cedar logs we had stripped and at the ready. Cedar don’t rot under water like some woods, you know. By sunset the first day we’d begun the breakwater to slow the pressure moving against the twiggy firmament. Come a couple more days, we’d already completed the initial span. Your basic herringbone. Long since subsumed by upgrades done by artisan builders, of course. But the essentials we git all in place on day one.”

“Let me out!” cried the mother-in-law from below.

“Can we bring her something, maybe? A present?” asked Tip. “In exchange for your letting us cross over?”

“Bring me a gun!” cried the mother-in-law. “I’ll shoot my way out, or shoot my brains out if that don’t work!”

“A tasty flank of otter would be awful welcome.” Luliaba leered at Tay.

“We’ll be going now,” said Rain.

“Take me with!” came from inside the lodge. “I’ll be good! I won’t foul the nest any more than I can help it!”

“If we come back this way, we’ll try to bring you a little coracle,” called Tip, looking at Rain and shrugging.

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