Page 20 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

What had those farmers done? Where had they gone while their livelihoods were being torched?

The carriage passed a vegetable garden that for the fun of it, she guessed, had also been ravaged. A scarecrow shrugged its shoulders at the sky, presiding over ruin, as if asking the Unnamed God the reason for such wantonness.

Murth’s tears were real tears. She was a fool, after all, if a dear one. For herself, Glinda felt ready to take some training with a halberd.

Before long—not soon enough—they had cleared the worst of the damage and were beginning the descent into Zimmerstorm. Its town hall steeple, its pitched roofs clad in the blue-grey tiles of the region—it all looked more or less correct. A mercy.

Glinda directed Zackers to halt the trap in the village square. “We shall take our tea, my companion and I,” she told Zackers. “Your company is not required.”

He stood on guard at the street door of the local tearoom anyway.

Then Lady Glinda had the most unfortunate experience of realizing—very slowly, picking up cues as if they were bug bites—that the residents of Zimmerstorm didn’t fully believe the testimony of those who’d been dismissed from Mockbeggar. They harbored a suspicion that Lady Glinda was in collusion with the occupiers.

She could hardly blame them. She was Gillikinese herself, of course, and she had had high-ranking association with the Emerald City. And she couldn’t mount an explanation in public—former Throne Ministers didn’t do that. Besides, who would believe her? She just had to sit in stony silence as the cabbage-faced Munchkinlander hostess grunted and scowled and made as if to dump the tea in her lap. “A biscuit,” Glinda begged.

“No biscuits,” snapped the proprietress. “Your military friendsies scarfed ’em all up. For ’emselves.”

“Perhaps a roundlet of toast?” wondered Miss Murth.

The toast came about twenty minutes later. It had been burnt inedible. As burnt as the cotton fields.

“Perhaps a constitutional,” suggested Lady Glinda.

“That’s five farthings, Mum,” said Sour Peasant Woman.

Lady Glinda wasn’t in the habit of carrying coin. Miss Murth had none to carry. How embarrassing to have to petition Private Zackers to pay the establishment. I won’t make that mistake again, Glinda thought.

Still, while Zackers was settling up, Glinda and Murth got ahead of him, across the village square. A miniature escape! Oh, hilarity.

“Into the lending library, Murthy,” said Glinda. “Quickly now. Move your arthritic hips or I’ll run you down.”

The librarian was a retired Munchkin on a stool. She recognized him though she didn’t know his name. “I’m looking to borrow a book that can teach one the essentials of preparing a meal,” she said. “For dining, I mean. For human dining.”

“Books en’t going to teach that, Lady Glinda,” he said. “Mothers teach that. Closest I can help you with is a volume on animal husbandry, which has an illustrated index on slaughtering your own livestock.”

“I think not,” she murmured. Turning, she saw a notice board behind his desk. A scroll was posted with nails. She peered at it. A crude drawing with a handwritten announcement. She hadn’t brought her reading glasses. “Miss Murth, can you decipher that message?” she asked.

Miss Murth could not. “You want something read, you should’ve brought Rain,” she said, somewhat cruelly.

“I can read that for you, Lady Glinda,” said the librarian. “It says that the Clock of the Time Dragon is coming through in the next week or so, weather and the military situation permitting.”

“It looks like a chapel on wheels of some sort.”

“It’s an entertainment, Mum. Sort of a puppet show for adults. You en’t never seen it?”

“Nor heard of it.” She intended frost in her tone, but thought better of it. “My dear man, would you tell the managers of this traveling enterprise to make their way to Mockbeggar Hall? I do believe that if the soldiers had something to look forward to, we might keep them from doing any more damage than they have already done, for instance, today.”

Luckily, this Munchkinlander wasn’t as suspicious as the tea-wife in the shop. “Can’t say them traveling clocksters will listen to me,” he replied. “But I can pass on the word and see what they’ll do. They operate with cheeky diplomatic immunity, far as I’ve heard. Cross these parts every few years, don’t matter if it’s Wicked Witch of the East or the old Eminent Thropp or that mean old Zombie Mombey in charge. They seem pretty fearless. I’ll give ’em your message.”

“You’re too kind,” she told him. Here came Private Zackers, looking red under the collar.

“You were nice to my sister, that time she lay in childbirth a month too long,” said the librarian softly. “You put a cloth to her brow. Don’t pretend you forget.”

She turned away, confused by an accusation of charity. “How impertinent!” hissed Murth on her behalf.

I0.

Day after day as different plantings came to flower, blossoms patterned the gardens and the meadows with a shifting palette. Now the eggy frill of late forsythia, now the fringe of fern. Now the periwinkle mycassandrum on the hillsides, until pale daisies overtook the lavender, and then wild dusteria the daisies. The leaves on the trees flexed their palms wider. Let me in, said the sun. Let me out, said the tree.

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