Page 86 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Even you’ve bought into the propaganda? You were there.” Liir spat. “You didn’t kill any witch! You and I were locked in the scullery.”

“Figure of speech. We were talking about the Scrow.”

Relenting, Liir continued. Through his years of tending the dying Princess, the new chieftain, a fellow named Shem Ottokos, had learned something about the magic of disguises. Liir had meant to apply to the Scrow for sanctuary, and Ottokos had agreed to extend it. But only if Rain could be suitably hidden so as to bring no trouble to the Scrow or to herself should she ever be found.

“Hidden how?” asked the Lion.

“You haven’t understood? You’ve been traipsing around with my daughter for who knows how long, and you’re that clueless?”

“I know she walks a bit askew from the rest of us,” said Brrr, as gently as he could. He knew what he knew, by now, but wanted to hear it spoken.

“She was born green,” said Liir. “That’s like being born with a bull’seye painted on your forehead. Ottokos did his best, but he couldn’t manage the spell to conceal her stamp of bloodline. Iskinaary, who kept a watch on the comings and goings around the Scrow camp, spotted a caravansary approaching with some EC personnel. So I lit out with the child in the opposite direction—by now Rain was about a year old, maybe—and I circled overland back toward Apple Press Farm. Back toward Munchkinland. I didn’t really know where to go, where we could be safe—”

“Welcome to Oz, where nowhere is safe,” said the Lion.

“I stopped at the mauntery in the Shale Shallows and was reunited with Candle. We were beside ourselves with fear for our green Rain. We were young. I mean, I was twenty-four, roughly, but a young twenty-four. A stupid twenty-four. We set out without a destination, just to keep moving. A chance encounter with—with a snake charmer on the road—it provided us our only hope, and we arranged to have Rain disguised as a pale human of uncertain lineage. Then, as we approached Munchkinland’s border, I thought of Lady Glinda, who had helped me several times before. We presented ourselves at Mockbeggar Hall, and Lady Glinda deigned to see me. She took a good look at Rain, and persuaded us that the safest place to hide the girl would be in her own household. Among the staff. So hidden that Rain herself wouldn’t know about her origins, and couldn’t give herself away.”

So that was how it had happened. Lady Glinda, the protector of Elphaba’s granddaughter. Well, it sort of figured.

“That was the best thing to do for a young child, I suppose.” The Lion’s tone was supercilious; he could hear it himself, and couldn’t help it.

“Hey. She’s still alive,” said Liir. “It’s almost ten years later, and she’s still alive. Candle was apprehended and let go, and I’ve been an outlaw since I was a teen, but Rain—Rain was safe.”

The Lion said, “They were never looking for her. They wanted the Grimmerie. They still want it. The highest secrets of magic that Oz has ever

held are contained in that wretched book. They couldn’t care a twig about a stupid angry little girl. And you made her that way, by giving her up. You squandered her childhood.”

“What gives you the right of superiority? So you walked her home from school. Kudos. We’re grateful, or haven’t we mentioned it? But note that she is alive to be walked, Sir Brrr.”

Liir had a capacity for cold rage, Brrr observed, just like Elphaba’s own. But Brrr hadn’t come here to be woodshedded. “How alive, exactly? She’s more like an otter in human shape than she is like a girl. Look, I mean, really. Lady Glinda? She couldn’t raise a child. She couldn’t raise an asparagus fern.”

“Well, you can yield Rain back to us and give us a second chance. Stop circling about her with your big furry mane, keeping her chained to your heel.”

“She’s been abandoned one time too many,” snapped Brrr. “Listen, I don’t mutter about you behind your back. And I don’t lock any doors. She can walk your way any time she wants. She’s a child and she’ll come to trust who she can, in her own good time. I don’t have anything to do with that. But I’m not leaving her alone with you here till she’s ready.”

They were all but shouting at each other. They stood en garde, panting, though their concern for the child’s welfare was mutual. “You’ve been so thoughtful,” said Liir, seething. “Hauling Rain off with the Grimmerie. When the Emperor of Oz has been seeking it on and off all these years. That’s a really secure situation for a child?”

“Don’t think the irony hasn’t escaped me. With the Emperor calling in all magical totems. Isolating us for easier location. You think I’ve enjoyed becoming a sitting duck just to tend to your daughter?”

Liir was nonplussed. The book was a huge part of the problem. “How much longer can the Grimmerie be kept out of the Emperor’s hands, especially now that its charmed vault has come to its untimely end?”

Brrr shrugged. At least Liir’s tone was more moderate. The Lion paced around the fourth corner of the Clock. Liir followed. They looked up at the clock face just as a small bird, a Wren, came pock-pocking down out of the sky. She landed without the mildest sense of alarm upon the dragon’s snout. The man and the Lion looked up at it, and their jaws dropped, for several reasons.

The Lion was agog because the clock face, which had read one minute to midnight since the first moment he’d seen the Clock two years earlier, now read midnight.

“We meet again,” said the Wren to the Lion; it was the humble bird who had warned them to flee the Emperor’s soldiers on the Yellow Brick Road.

As for Liir, he didn’t dare believe he recognized the bird. Wrens, after all, look rather alike, at least to human eyes. But as the Wren spoke, Liir knew her to be Dosey, whom he’d last seen a decade ago after the Conference of the Birds had swum the skies over the Emerald City crying Elphaba lives! Elphaba lives!

Dosey said, “Mercy fritters, but I’ve been winging your way for a week! Begging pardon, gents, but your Goose just told me you were having a bit of a chinwag down this way. I thought you’d want to hear what I have to say. The message comes direct from General Kynot. I translate from High Eagle. ‘Apparently a few months ago, the impossible happened. She’s back.’ ”

“She’s back?” said Liir.

“Elphaba?” said the Lion, his blood hurrying at once, so he could get himself out of the way.

“If you please, sir, not Elphaba. Dorothy,” replied the Wren. “Dorothy Gale.”

8.

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