Page 95 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

“Well, that puts the tin hat on our hopes to practice our synchronized swimming,” said Brrr. “Oh well. No matter what they say about me in the columns, I never fancied prancing about the beach in a singlet and a cache-sex.”

“How could a lake be dead?” asked Rain. “Or how could it be alive, either?”

Little Daffy said, “Someone in the tribe of the Scrow told me that legend suggests Kumbricia the demon-goddess lives there. Or died there. Or something. Maybe she only has a summer home. I don’t remember.”

“Who is Kumbricia?”

“Stop,” said Candle. “Children don’t need to know stories like that.”

“Yes, they do,” said the Goose. “Kumbricia, little gosling, is the opposite number to Lurline, in the oldest tales of Oz. She is the hex, she is the curse, she’s always implicated when things go wrong…”

“She’s there when the shoelace snaps as you’re trying to outrun the horsemen of the plains,” said Nor.

“She’s what breathes the pox on the wheezy child for whom the poultice, oddly, won’t work,” said Little Daffy.

“She is the itch where you can’t quite reach,” said Mr. Boss.

“Stop,” said Candle. “I mean it.”

“Not before my turn,” said the Lion. “Kumbricia is the way the whole world arches its eyebrow at you before it smacks you down. Where is she, you ask? Not in the lake. Not in the pox. Not in the shoelace or the horse hooves. She’s in the interference of effects, nothing more than that. In the crossroads of possibility, giggling through her nose at us.”

“You’ll slice open the child with that nonsense!” Candle yelled at them. They almost laughed to hear her raise her high ribbony voice, but the expression on her face stopped them.

Apologetically, even though he hadn’t joined in, Liir said, “But then, on the other hand, there’s Lurlina. The soul of … of grace … grace, and—”

Mr. Boss wasn’t daunted by Candle. “No one believes in Lurline. A goddess of goodness? Forget it. She’s been taking a cigarette break since the year dot. She’s as gone as the Unnamed God. Pretty enough in the stories, to be sure, but once she finished breathing green into every corner of Oz, she vanished. No return in the second act, I’m afraid.”

“I hate you all,” said Candle. She grabbed Rain’s hand and Rain tried to pull away, but this time Candle wouldn’t let her.

“What you hate is the world,” said Mr. Boss placidly. “We’re just as blameless in talking about it as the pox is blameless, or the shoelace. What you hate is that your child is stuck here. Well, get used to it. The only exit is the final one.”

“To the bosom of Lurline,” muttered Little Daffy.

“And a scratchy bosom it is, I bet,” said the dwarf.

Liir opened his mouth again but found he couldn’t say anything more. There was no apology for the way the world worked. Only accommodation to it, while at the same time committing—somehow—not to give up. Not to give up on Rain, and her chances—whatever they might be. In fact, not to give up on anyone.

“I want to see the dead lake,” said Rain.

“Can’t hurt you if you don’t go near it,” said the dwarf.

But they’d been walking as they talked, and suddenly Kellswater opened up before them. The greyness of it under a fine blue sky seemed to deaden the entire district. The forest wouldn’t grow within a hundred yards of it. The margins of sand and tumbles of rock were desolate. No yellow pipers, no reeds, no bouncing sand-sprites. No breeze, no reflections. A scent of salt and iron, perhaps.

“I know a lot of families that would pay good cash to send their kids to a summer camp pitched on this shore,” murmured Mr. Boss.

“Enough, you,” said Little Daffy. “Do stop. It’s too hideous. Somehow.”

Iskinaary took wing again and circled about. They waited safely back on a limestone promontory some twenty feet above the lake. The Goose rose, banked, rose again. When he returned, he seemed shaken. “One senses almost a magnetic pull,” he told them. “On a sunny day I usually can ride the updrafts over a body of water, but this water works to the contrary. Let’s not linger here.”

“

Which way looks safest?” asked Liir.

“Northeast,” replied Iskinaary. “Keeping the lake on our left. We’ll come upon the oakhair forest that spans the divide between Kellswater and Restwater. That’s as far as we go together. If the forest isn’t filled with border patrols, those heading for a rescue mission might slip eastward here and find themselves back in Munchkinland, back near the banks of Restwater. With another big push. Shall we?”

They should, yes. They would. As they turned about to leave Kellswater behind, however, a couple of stray warthogs who must have been following them these past few days came charging up the slope from the underbrush.

The warthogs of Kumbricia: innocently troublesome, like all aspects of the world.

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