Page 32 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

I8.

In truth, she’d begun looking over Chef’s shoulder—before he disappeared. A bit sullenly, she now peered in at the efforts of Puggles. She was starting to know just enough to be dangerous in the kitchen. She watched things being ladled out of cast-iron gorgeholds and dumped into porcelain kettles or copper skillets. She understood how a single squeeze of lemon could salvage a crime against cuisine, and how a misplaced spray of orange balsam could sabotage a masterpiece. About things like salt and sugar and blanched pepper she became more confused, as they all looked more or less snowy.

She had no time to waste, though.

“Grab a sheet of paper, Miss Murth. The pen is on the blotter. Date: 18th Highsummer comma, 11 of the clock. Dear Traper comma, Unable to wait for a kind offer to dine on the deck of the Emperor’s good ship Munchkinland comma, I propose instead—”

“Dear Traper?” Miss Murth’s outrage was controlled and magnificent.

“—that you join me for a meal in the knot garden. Stop. The prettibells are perfection and the roses aren’t too shabby either. Stop. I’ll cook. Underline the I’ll twice. Tomorrow night at eight question mark? Are you keeping up, Murthy?”

“Shall I sign it, Love and kissies, your little Glinda?”

“Don’t be absurd. I’ll sign it myself.”

“I’ve already signed it.”

Glinda snatched the paper and read Cordially, Lady Glinda, Arduenna of the Uplands.

“Exactly how I would have signed it. You have perfected my signature after all this time.”

“I aim to serve,” said Murth, aiming herself out the door.

“Miss Murth,” said Glinda.

Murth turned.

“Would you kindly try not to be so cheerless. It’s unsociable and it taxes the nerves. I do know what I’m about. I’m not the idiot you take me for.”

Miss Murth attempted a kind of curtsey that had gone out of fashion four decades earlier. Her knees clacked like ivory dominoes dropped on a plate.

Glinda in the kitchen. “Zackers.”

“Mum.”

She gave up on insisting on Lady Glinda. “In the absence of Ig Baernaeraenaesis, otherwise known as Chef, I’m attempting to put together a little meal. Do you know where the cookery books are kept?”

Zackers found a shelf under a window seat. Some parish committee’s collection: Munchkinlander Aunties Share Secrets of the Sauce. And Glinda liked this one, printed in larg

e type with droll and useful drawings: Avoid Prosecution for Poisoning: Cooking by the Book. Particularly well thumbed was Widow Chumish’s famous volume, Food You Can Actually Stomach. She grabbed all three and told Zackers she would send down a list of ingredients.

She was almost excited. The dishes, the pans, the wooden spoons! The heat of the stove would rosy up her cheeks and curl her hair. She hoped it wouldn’t also steam off the highlights. She had found more than one frizzle of grey nestled among the gold and wrenched it out, but now it was either dye the traitorous locks or resign herself to mid-age baldness.

Glinda with Rain. The Grimmerie lay on the games table, sweetly dull in its disguise. Glinda sat before it, and Rain stood at her side.

“Your interest in reading seems to inspire this book’s playfulness,” said Glinda. “I wonder if you could open this book to any page?”

The girl didn’t understand. Lurline, but she was a slow train to Traum!

“Now watch me.” Glinda banged open the cover. The merciless slabs of dense print on every page looked like torture. No pictures, no diagrams, very little white space on which to rest the eye and let the mind wander. Glinda riffled the pages to make the book’s point, whatever it was. “Now you do it.” She closed the book and pushed it toward Rain.

The girl paused, then opened the volume. It transformed under her hands, becoming the Grimmerie, proffering the page with the spell: To Call Winter upon Water.

“But you see, I don’t want to call winter upon water,” said Glinda, as if she were talking to a simpleton. She wasn’t sure if she was addressing Rain or the Grimmerie. “I’m looking for a recipe for starched muttock, maybe, or grip of lamb with a crawberry chutney to lend a sort of alto chromatic to the gaminess of the enterprise. A genteelly quibbling complement.” Or did she mean compliment? She had no idea what she was talking about. She couldn’t speak gourmandese. She just wanted to see Rain handle the Grimmerie.

The book, however, had its own notions. While Rain could slip the pages a little from the gentle steppe of parallel deckled edges, she couldn’t move them to reveal more than an inch or two. The pages husband their secrets; the book was only interested in suggesting how To Call Winter upon Water.

“Well, it prefers its opinions, I see.” The mistress of Mockbeggar sighed. “Personally I hate uppity books. Don’t you?”

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