Page 96 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

They darted beneath the cart and between the legs of the Lion, spooking him badly but spooking Tay worse. They caught the otter for a moment, pinned him to the ground on the edge of the bluff, and played with him prettily as they readied to gore him. Brrr twisted in his shafts. The others screamed and waved their arms. Rain dashed forward, between the grunting terrors, and thwacked one of them over the forehead with her shell. It didn’t break, but blood gushed forth from an eye socket of that creature.

The rice otter broke free and dove for Rain’s leg, snaking up her thigh onto her shoulders. The second hog charged Rain. The Lion was nearest and the first to arrive in defense. Shooting his claws, he raked half the pelt off the warthog, which grunted in fury and surprise. Rain fell back into the arms of Candle and Liir. As the Lion twisted about to check for the first warthog, in case it was readying for another feint, the Clock on the wagon overbalanced. The replacement axle, carved from the sallowwood dragon wing, buckled at last. A wheel caved inward. The snout of the dragon reared up at the sky as if trying, one final time, to escape its tethered post upon this theater of doom. Its broken wings flapped, but there was no wind to catch, not in this open air tomb-land. Slowly, and then faster the Clock hurtled down the slope toward Kellswater. Wheels and shaft, temple of fate adorned with a clock face at midnight and dragon up top—and the Lion still laced to it.

The dwarf managed a partial rescue. Dragged down the bluff, still he managed to pull his dirk from some inner pouch and slash the leather harness. On sands that shifted, conspiring with gravity to drag them to their wet grave, Brrr scrabbled for a purchase. The Lion escaped, the dwarf leapt clear, but the Clock careered off the bluff. Brrr turned in time to watch the wheels, the carriage, the theater, and finally the Time Dragon disappear into oily deeps. The last thing they saw was its red red eye, until black liquid blinked out whatever final vision it might have enjoyed.

“Ladyfish got ’m at last,” murmured Rain.

And when the Lion had caught his breath—some hours later—he thought: maybe that’s why the Clock told the dwarf to avoid taking on a girl child as an associate. It could see in that decision the chance of its own destruction. When we disobeyed it—it shut down. It wouldn’t accept the Grimmerie anymore. For the Clock, then, it was only a matter of time.

II.

That was the end of the company of the Clock of the Time Dragon. Four days later they prepared for a parting of ways.

The dwarf expressed no preferences. Cross-country to Munchkinland or north, deeper into Loyal Oz—it made no difference now. The Clock was extinct and the Grimmerie deeded to Liir. “Come to Munchkinland,” suggested the Lion. “Without the Clock to slow us down or the book to guard, what harm might come to us? If we need to outrun a border patrol, I can easily carry you and Little Daffy on my back.” He held back from saying, “Your stint as a kindergarten supervisor is over.” He owed his life to the dwarf.

In any event, Munchkinland would be safer for the Lion, who in Loyal Oz might still be considered AWOL from his mission to locate the Grimmerie. Brrr intended to light out to Bright Lettins or to Colwen Grounds or wherever the trial of Dorothy would be staged. He had always thought Dorothy a bit of a blockhead, but not a malicious one. Maybe he could help her. It would be good to help someone. He was beginning to accept that he couldn’t do as much for his own wife as he’d have liked. He couldn’t remove from her history, by force of either comfort or magic, the fact that she’d spent some of her girlhood in prison. He couldn’t repair her. But he could, just possibly, do for Dorothy what he couldn’t do for Nor.

Whom he now would leave behind. But not, they both promised each other, for good.

Little Daffy, for her part, was eager to return to her home after all these years. She’d emigrated as a child, entering the mauntery after a stint at a home for incurables in the Emerald City, but she was returning a married woman in this time of trial. She was ready to stand at the ramparts of her homeland and spit in the eye of any gangly Emerald City Messiar who might deserve it. As long as she had a ladder to stand upon, for the height.

She kept her husband close to her side. What would he do, who would he turn out to be, now that the Grimmerie was traded to Liir, and the Clock of the Time Dragon was history? Maybe he’d find her Munchkin cousins affable, and he’d adjust to domestic life. Maybe when the troubles were over, they’d settle in her childhood home of Center Munch or even in Far Applerue, nearer the Glikkus. Perhaps Mr. Boss would find he had an affinity with the troll-people of the Glikkus, who didn’t farm but mined emeralds for their livelihood. Little Daffy didn’t know. The Clock wasn’t there to advise them. They would have to make it up as they went along.

She was glad, however, she’d collected in a few private pockets a little bit of the poppy dust from the great red flourish in the Sleeve of Ghastille. She was finding that, used in moderation, it came in handy at moving her poor aggrieved husband ahead.

The companions made their good-byes in a grove of oakhair trees. Long strands of new growth, acorns forming at the tips, dropped a kind of silent rain among them. An outdoor room laced with harp strings. As the companions stood there, reluctant to take their leave of one another, a breeze scurried along the floor of the forest. It strummed the strings of the oakhair fronds, a soft and jangled music, an orchestral evocation of the mood that had settled upon them.

“You’ll be better off the farther away from the fighting you get,” the Lion told Liir. “But, taking a leaf from Sister Doctor, don’t tell me where you’re going. It’ll be safer for you if we don’t know.”

“I don’t know myself,” said Liir. “I have an idea or two, but time will have to tell. We wish we could come with you to the defense of Dorothy. But it’s too dangerous.”

“No joke,” replied the Lion. “If you show yourself in Bright Lettins, the Munchkinlanders might impress you to take the Eminenceship of Munchkinland whether you want to do it or not. You’d give Munchkinland an edge. Your investiture would render void the claim that the Emperor Shell is making upon Munchkinland. It wouldn’t be safe for you, and certainly not safe for Rain.”

“We aren’t done keeping her hidden,” agreed Liir.

“We’ll never be done with that,” added Candle. “I think that will be our curse.”

Nor knelt down before the Lion and spoke as if to her knees, not her husband. “I don’t want you to go, but it’s for the best. You do the work at the trial that I would do if I could. The public statement is beyond me, in any venue. And I may be useful yet in helping take care of Rain. If Liir and Candle are ever recognized, if they’re accosted in any way, I’ll be able to stand in for Rain. She is my niece, after all.”

“I know,” said Brrr. “She is closer to you than I am.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Nor, “and furthermore it isn’t true. No one is closer to me than you are. But she’s in greater peril. She will be grown one day. She may be safe sooner than we think. We’ll meet up again.”

Liir took his sister’s hand as he disagreed with her. “Dear friends. While the country is at war, no living citizen is safe. If we choose to find one another again—and we may never have that choice—let’s agree to use the Chancel of the Ladyfish as a mail drop. We can leave notes for one another on paper weighed down by Rain’s favorite stone—that one with the tiny carving of the question mark sporting the head of a horse. Agreed?”

They all nodded. In this treacherous land, the chapel seemed as safe a rendezvous point as any other.

“It’s time to go,” said Liir.

“Check anytime a Goose flies overhead,” said Iskinaary to the Lion. “If I lose my bowels in your direction, it’s not personal.” He ducked his head under a wing, pretending to work at a nit, to save face in the face of strong feeling.

Rain wouldn’t come forward to say good-bye to Little Daffy or to Mr. Boss. And she wouldn’t look at Brrr. But she seemed to understand that there was a need to move on, even if she didn’t understand why. She put her grandmother’s broom on the ground. She set her shell on the ground next to it. She walked forward to the Cowardly Lion. She didn’t stretch her arms for a hug—how does a girl hug a Lion? Her arms lay straight at her side, as if she were a member of a military guard on duty. She sloped forward and she fell woodenly against the Lion’s cheek and mane and brow. She didn’t cry, but leaned upright against his face as he cried for both of them.

The Judgment of Dorothy

I.

By night the Lion and his pair of comrades crossed into Munchkinland without incident. They’d skirted to the north, avoiding Haugaard’s Keep and those aggrieved lake villages. Restwater and the Pine Barrens were behind them. It felt pretty damn good to be pacing a well-maintained stretch of the Yellow Brick Road. The Free State of Munchkinland might be nearing insolvency, but trust little farming people to keep their blue roofing tiles scrubbed clean of birdshit and their tomatoes staked as if they were prize philanthriums.

---