Page 26 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

She stood. Her back was sore from hunching over. She had been studying this one page for several hours! Mercy. Had she learned to concentrate at last? Perhaps she was ready to take some correspondence classes in, oh, table gooseball. Or poem writing. Or the foreign service.

She put the fingers of both hands spread out upon the tabletop—that seemed to be part of it, to stabilize herself. It was almost as if the book wanted her to succeed, wanted to be concealed; there was a sort of sharpening of focus upon each word as she spoke it, though she scarcely knew what the words meant. “Debooey geekum, eska skadilly sloggi,” she recited. “Gungula vexus, vexanda talib en prochinka chorr.” She didn’t think herself at all convincing, but the book didn’t seem to notice.

She reached the last syllables—and the book shuddered and jumped, as if someone had kicked the table from beneath. She put one knuckle between her teeth to keep herself from shrieking in surprise. Success! Or sabotage. Anyway, something. Something was happening.

The Grimmerie began to change shape. She couldn’t have said how. It was shrinking and growing at the same time, and the balsam-needle color of its spine seemed to be burning off. The book flexed and retracted. It took several moments before it returned to seeming lifeless, like most books. It was thick and square and yellow—the size, shape, and color of a bad cake. A kind of papery cover, a shiny scarf cut to order, was folded into the front and back boards and jacketed around the spine of the volume.

Glinda picked up the Grimmerie and shook it. It made no sound except the riffling of pages, which fluttered in a respectably bookish way. There was no warmth or life in it. She studied the cover as if she were Cherrystone looking for the Grimmerie. The author’s name was unintelligible gibberish. Big squarish letters above it, though, which must indicate the book’s title, said Gone with the Wind.

She humped it into a shelf next to her favorite books, A Girl’s First Guide to Coquettery and The Little Mercenary: A Novel of Manners. It looked quite at home. It certainly didn’t look like the Grimmerie.

She rang for tea. She was famished.

Tea arrived with bad news. Miss Murth looked at her balefully. Chef had been dismissed. Forcibly. “No,” said Glinda.

“While you were busy reading your book,” replied Miss Murth with spite.

“Where are the others? Rain? Puggles?”

“Rain is off at her reading lesson with the General. Puggles is trying to stake tomatoes upon the roof. Chef left him with several pages of instructions before he was carted away.”

Glinda dressed in haste and hurried downstairs, but she cast a last look at the bookshelf before she did. Gone with the Wind sat smugly in its place. What a good title for a hidden book, she thought. The Grimmerie has a sense of humor.

Any sense of accomplishment she felt at the successful completion of a spell soon evaporated in the granite presence of General Cherrystone. She paused at the door to the library, where Rain was sitting at a table, her bare legs swinging and her finger tracing letters in the pollen that had sifted through the windows and settled yellowly on the tabletop. Where the hell is that maid, thought Glinda madly, before remembering, of course, that the maid had gone wherever Chef had been sent.

Cherrystone lifted a finger to his lips. She fell silent but quivering at the doorway.

“That was decent work today, my little scholar,” he told the girl. “You’re becoming very good at your standing-up letters. Next time we’ll begin on the letters shaped like circles, or parts of circles. Don’t forget to practice.”

The child fled so fast that her dirty little soles flicked themselves at Glinda. Oh, standards, she thought. Then she pulled herself together.

“I have a bone to pick with you,” she said.

“Lady Glinda.” He didn’t rise as she came into the room. The absolute nerve of him! Leaving her standing as if she were a … a servant.

She pulled out a chair so hard it scraped the parquetry. “Miss Murth tells me you’ve dismissed Chef. You have no right to meddle with my people.”

“You’ve brought this upon yourself, Lady Glinda, by your endorsement of that provocative display last night.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not an impresario. This was no command performance. I didn’t know what entertainment that troupe was going to provide. I merely invited them. You welcomed the notion, yourself. Furthermore I have no idea what you mean by provocative. I thought the repertoire slight, coarse, and pointless.”

“I’m afraid there have had to be repercussions.”

“Are you setting me up as a collaborationist of some sort? That’s nonsense. I have retired to the country to write my memoirs.”

“And to learn to cook. I know. How is it going?”

“How am I to learn without Chef?”

“I’m sure, like your chambermaid learning to read, you’ve picked up some basics. It’s merely a matter of putting them together.”

“Cherrystone. This is intolerable. I want Chef reinstated at once.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. For one thing…” He paused, putting his hands flat on the tabletop, spreading them apart, as if smoothing a bedsheet, then bringing them together so their thumbs touched. “For one thing, he’s in no condition to take up cooking at the moment.”

Glinda gaped. “You—you—”

“He met with an accident.”

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