Page 37 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

After a light supper that was rather like a picnic—they all sat on Glinda’s bed and got crumbs everywhere—they made their good nights and Miss Murth blew out the candle.

“Miss Murth. Are there evening prayers for a child?”

“Lady Glinda,” said Murthy through the dark, “you never assigned me the task of raising this child. Give her whatever childhood prayers you remember. My own prayers are private ones.”

“I know, you’re praying for my immediate death, by my own hand, food poisoning myself. Very well. Rain, here is what we said in the Pertha Hills, when my mother would tuck me in.”

The memory, like ice forming, was slow to arrive. In the end, Glinda said,

Sweet and sure the lilacs bloom,

And the heather, and the broom.

Every mouse and mole rejoices

When the sparrows raise their voices.

“That’s not a prayer, that’s a nursery rhyme, and you’ve got it all wrong,” snapped Murthy.

“God bless us, every one. Except you,” said Glinda.

20.

The weather remained clear but stifling. Glinda and Miss Murth were allowed to sit in the parlor daily and play cards in the presence of four armed men. Rain was called once or twice for her lessons.

“Can you read enough to find out what’s happening?” Glinda whispered before Rain left. “Snoop a bit?”

Rain rolled her eyes and didn’t answer.

On the third night of the intolerable situation, Rain waited until lights were out. Then she interrupted Glinda’s continuing attempt at devotional doggerel by saying, “The teaching man was called away while we was doing our letter writing and no one else was in the room. Somefin was happening so I creeped to the door and then snucked out. I went round by the barns. No one saw me.”

“Entirely too dangerous. Don’t do that again or I’ll slap you. What did you see?”

“That weren’t no thunder we hear at nights. It’s dragons in the dairy barns up the slope.”

Glinda sat straight up in the dark.

“It’s true. They got dragons for them boats I think. I heard Cherrystone yelling at someone for treating one of ’em beasties wrong. The lad got his foot crushed and they had to cut it off. Dame Doctor Vutters is living there now, like us. In the shed with the mattocks and grub hoes and stuff. It’s her surgery.”

“Dragons!” Miss Murth sounded as if she would have wept had she been less desiccated. “Lurline preserve us!”

“They’re big as houses,” said the girl, “and they glint gold even in the shadows. But they stink and they spit and strike out like catses.” She pounced a forearm and made the cry of a shrike.

Glinda plumped her pillows up in the dark. “It’s beginning to make sense. Why we’ve been crowded into a room that faces only east. And why they burned down the fields around here. They don’t want news of the dragons getting out to the Munchkinlanders.”

“And why Cherrystone was so angry after that puppet show, with the dragon in the lake!” said Murth excitedly.

“I thought you weren’t watching. You were supposed to be minding the girl.”

“We peeked. So put us in prison.”

“We’re already there.” Glinda bit her lip. “I assume they’re flying dragons—I’ve never seen a dragon, so I don’t know if there are other varieties. Do they have wings, Rain?”

“Like great sloppy tents. When they stretches ’em, they goes to the ceilings of the barns! They disturb the pigeons, who poop on ’em. Then they eats the pigeons.”

“Perhaps this makes sense of the vessel designs as well,” added Murth. “Those stumpy masts, and the odd twin prows. They may not be entirely sailboats, b

ut boats to be pulled by dragons in harness. The dragon may slot between the double-breasted prow.”

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