Page 94 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

They walked single file. The farther from Apple Press Farm, the farther apart from one another they straggled. Even Tay kept a little distance from Rain. It was as if they had all taken in the message that there would be no safe harbor for them, not while the world was at war—so, presumably, not ever.

Liir tried to remember being Rain’s age—eight, nine, ten. Whatever it was. He had been in Kiamo Ko at that age, playing with Nor, surely? Or had Nor already been taken away by Cherrystone and his men? In any case, he’d been alone in his life, as alone as Rain seemed to be. He’d lived with his mother, with the Wicked Witch of the West (which might be the name of any mother, all mothers, he realized), but he’d lived apart, not unlike the way Rain kept apart from him and Candle. Of course Elphaba had shown little interest in him. Or if she had shown some kind of interest, he’d been too dull to read it as such—the way, presumably, Rain was too dull to recognize Liir’s love, even passion, for her.

What a mystery we are to ourselves, even as we go on, learning more, sorting it out a little.

The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life, and the older you get—the more specificity you harvest—the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. Rather the opposite, maybe. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

Would he ever know anything about Rain? Or would he have to accept that he would live in a world adjacent to hers, with her tantalizingly nearby, but a mystery always, growing into her own inviolable individuality?

Maybe it had been better, he caught himself thinking, if he had kept her close to his side, for even if she’d been ripped from his arms at the age of six, she would have known six good years of close fatherly affection—

No, he couldn’t think that; he couldn’t bear to. Even in an alternate history. He couldn’t tolerate the thought of her being taken from him. Even though he’d given her away.

There she loped, scuffing up snow, head down between her shoulders. He could walk the rest of his life. He would never catch up to her.

Iskinaary returned. “She was more right than she knew, that old crow,” he told Liir. “Menaciers four miles along, and on the very path we’re trudging. We’ll have to turn off. There’s a parallel track a mile to the west that looks less traveled; we should divert across country to it at once.”

They began to turn the Clock.

“We’re adjusting further and further off our goal,” complained Mr. Boss, but Brrr was hauling the cart, not him. And the Lion never minded veering off any track that led straight into the sights of marksmen.

“Later we’ll compensate and arc back eastward. If we continue to believe we should try to steal across the border into Munchkinland and be present to defend Dorothy,” said Brrr. “Though perhaps she won’t need our help. She seems to come equipped with all kinds of fatal architecture attached to her. First a farmhouse, and now this giant wrought-iron birdcage or whatever it is she was trapped in. The girl does wreak havoc on the physical universe. Why is that?”

“Shhh,” said Liir. “The soldiers may have fanned out since Iskinaary saw them half an hour ago.”

“I doubt they have,” sa

id the Goose. “They were playing cards. Five Hand Slut, if I could read the markings, though I don’t have the eye of an eagle. They didn’t look in any particular hurry, but I’ll go take another gander. If you hear a gunshot and a strangulated cry for ‘peace among all nations! peace in our time,’ find my corpse and turn me into a Goose-feather bolster, and use me to suffocate one of our foes.” He looked proud at the thought. “We have so many.”

Liir said, “Are you going to continue to plan your own memorial service or are you going to go on a reconnaissance mission for us?”

“That Dosey has made you all military again. If I were a different sort of Goose I’d find it kind of sexy,” said Iskinaary, and took off.

For the next ten days or so Iskinaary became their early warning system. Not until he came back from his rounds and sounded the all clear would they advance another three or four miles.

Liir hauled the Grimmerie on his back. When he tried to put it in a drawer in the Clock, or on a shelf, the drawer wouldn’t open or the shelf broke. The shutters wouldn’t latch, due to new swelling in the jambs. Even in its paralysis the Clock managed to have an opinion. The Clock didn’t want the Grimmerie anymore.

A winning tribe of pygmy warthogs came through one day, snuffling around the wheels of the conveyance and peeing all over the place. Tay hissed and leapt upon the dragon’s dead snout, and the Lion went upright even in his shafts, spooked. The wagon rocked and tilted and looked about to smash to one side till Nor whipped off her shawl. She gave the warthogs a cotton lashing at which they merely laughed before continuing to rootle on through the undergrowth.

Another afternoon, the companions surprised a bear doing something downright pornographic with a beeless hive of honey. Brrr almost said “Cubbins?” in case it was his old friend—but a Gillikin Bear wouldn’t have wandered this far south, and since this bear showed no capacity for shame he couldn’t be a talking Bear.

Nor took off her shawl again and wrapped it around Rain’s head, making a blinder for her eyes so she wouldn’t too closely examine the inappropriate.

“Really, that’s disgusting,” said Little Daffy. “Wildlife.”

“Disgusting? Inventive.” Mr. Boss had perked up for the first time in weeks, and he nudged his wife. “Maybe if we ever get to a trading post we can invest in a pot of honey, honey, and have a honeymoon.”

The Goose had become a bard of advice. “Good spot to camp,” he would report, or “Long slope ahead; we’ll have to take it slow.” Or “Rainclouds on the horizon; better stop the afternoon here where the fir branches will give us cover.” Or even “Skarks passing behind us, let’s pick up the speed in case they decide they want Lion steaks for supper.”

Day after day. The winter waned, but reluctantly, with glacial speed. Finally, the beginning of woodland blossom, those brave early ground-level markers like filarettes and snowdrops.

One afternoon Iskinaary reported that they were nearing the edge of a great lake. At first the companions imagined they might have veered back toward the east. But Iskinaary said he could see no sign of habitation, no coracles or villages. Just barren cliffs around flat black water bereft of whitecaps. Devoid even of avian populations. “Kellswater, then,” said the dwarf. “Uck. I’ve seen it once or twice before. It gives me the creeps.”

“Why?” asked Rain, whose experience of lakes had only involved Restwater.

“It’s a dead lake, dead as doormats. Nothing swims in it. Neither fish nor frog. Nothing living floats upon it, not a water skeetle or a lily pad.”

“We should make a swift detour,” said Nor. “That time the Munchkinlander rebels forced the EC Messiars back into Kellswater, the soldiers didn’t so much drown as—as melt. Kellswater possesses some of the properties of acid. Cold acid. It pulled their skin from their bones even as they thrashed, we were told.”

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