The less I see of you, my dear,
The more I bless my blessed luck.
Come near for a kiss, come near for a cluck,
I’ll climb aboard and blindly—
until they all told him to shut up.
Liir and Candle had made the trip through the passes north of the Sleeve of Ghastille so long ago that they hardly recognized the way back. Six, seven years ago, was it? And at a different time of year. Now, as the ragged travelers abandoned their hideaway, a cold wind gripped and pulled at their cloaks and manes and shawls. Liir looked back, squinting, at where the Chancel of the Ladyfish tucked itself against the slope. He nudged Candle to see. It was hidden to view, even though they knew where it was.
Mr. Boss insisted he wasn’t going to take the Clock into Munchkinland again. He didn’t trust those squirrely little people, except of course his wife. Who knew if General Cherrystone had put out a bulletin of arrest on the basis of the Clock’s having predicted some disaster involving the dragons in Restwater? The dwarf would rather take his chances in Loyal Oz, he said.
So the companions turned their heads west, toward the Disappointments and the oakhair forest. Maybe they were postponing the moment they would have to separate. That moment would come, soon enough, near one of the great lakes or the other. No one was certain about relative distances across the terrain, but in Oz you tended to show up where you needed to get, sooner or later.
The little detour, the loop west, would be their coda, at least for the time being. Who knew how much time they had left together? (Who ever knows?) Without naming it as such, they all felt the tug of their imminent separation. At least, all the adults did. What Rain thought, or Tay, or for that matter the Time Dragon hunched in paralysis up there, couldn’t be guessed at.
They lurched through upland meadows and past escarpments of scrappy trees, through lowland growths of protected firs, along streambeds partially glazed with ice. The warm snap had returned to the air a sense of the rot of pine needles and mud, but the air eddied with the sourness of ice, too.
They were walking into a trap.
Or they were walking home at last.
They didn’t know—who does?—where they were going.
But the world was specifically magnificent this week, in this place. Behold the diseased forest east of the Great Kells, called by some the Disappointments. Largely unpopulated due to barren soil—only scrub could grow in the wind off the Kells, and only tenacious and bitter farmers bothered to hang on. The few unpainted homesteads were scrappy, the sheds for the farmer’s goats identical to those for the farmer’s children. The companions avoided human settlements as they could, preferring to pitch camp amidst the deer droppings and rabbit tracks in the scrapey woods.
A rainstorm blew in then and parked over their heads. Their passage slowed down due to the mud, and they couldn’t build a fire. The little girl shivered but didn’t complain. Four or five days in, they came to a dolmen on which someone had painted destinations. One side was scrawled with VINKUS RIVER FORD, TO THE WEST, with an arrow pointing left. The other side read MUNCHKINLAND AND RESTWATER LAKE. Brrr was for turning east, but Liir stopped him.
“We’re not more than a day or two from Apple Press Farm in the other direction,” he told them. “Where Rain was born. We still have two months before Dorothy can travel down from the Glikkus to be put on trial. Let’s take a couple of days at the farm. At the least, we’ll have a roof over our heads. We can dry out. Warm up the child. Maybe something survived in the root garden after all these years.”
“I didn’t pack for a nostalgia tour,” said Mr. Boss, but Liir insisted. Candle agreed that they might enjoy a night or two with a fire in a hearth before proceeding cross-country toward Munchkinland. Since it was only a brief interruption of their progress, the company turned about, keeping the Great Kells to their left. The massed fortress of basalt and evergreen and snow looked inhospitable but breathtaking.
That night the rain let up for a spell. The company took turns singing around a campfire and telling stories. Nor told the tale of the Four Improbable Handshakes. Candle sang in Qua’ati, something long and inexpressibly boring, though everyone smiled and swayed as if entranced. (Except Rain.) Iskinaary barracked a raft of Goose begats, and Mr. Boss finally riled himself out of his somnolence to provide a few short poems of questionable virtue.
A certain young scholar of Shiz
Right before a philosophy quiz
Guzzled splits of champagne
So that he could declaim
“I drink, and therefore I is.”
And
A sweet cultivated young Winkie
Could do civilized things with her pinkie
Which excited young men
Who cried, “Do me again!”
Though the pinkie emerged somewhat stinky.
“That’ll do,” said Nor, Candle, and Little Daffy, all at once.
Even Liir, without a whole lot of confidence in his tone, tried to dredge up some scrap of song he had sung when he was in the service. He could only get a bit of the one called, he thought, “The Return of His Excellency Ojo.”
Sing O! for the warrior phantom phaeton
Carrying Ojo over the mountain
His saturnine sword was the scimitar moon
Soon, thundered Ojo, vengeance soon!
This went on too long and no one could tell what Ojo was trying to achieve, and Liir said that was pretty much standard operating procedure for the military. But then Little Daffy recalled something from her own childhood.
Jack, Jack, Pumpkinhead
“How does it go now?” She tried again.
Jack, Jack, Pumpkinhead
Woke to life in a pumpkin bed
Made his breakfast of pumpkin bread
Fell and squashed his pumpkin head
Went to the farmer and the farmer said
Pumpkins smash but can’t be dead
Plant your brains in the pumpkin bed
Grow yourself a brand-new head.
That’s what he said he said he said
’Cause the farmer liked his pumpkin bread.
Rain admired that one and clapped her hands.
“That’s a nursery ditty from a soundly agrarian society,” said the Lion, “no doubt about it.”
“Do you have a song to sing?” Candle asked of Rain.
“I knew about a fish once that was locked in a apple-shaped room in the ice. But I don’t know what happened to it.”
They waited in case she might remember; they waited with that affectionate and bothersome patience with which elders heap expectation on the shoulders of the young. When Rain spoke again, though, she seemed not to be aware of their appetite for anything more about the fish. She said, “I don’t know what happens to us.” She said it as a question.
“Oh well,” said Candle. “None of us knows that.”
“What happens to us is a joke, and don’t pretend otherwise,” said the dwarf.
“What happens to us is sleep,” said Liir firmly. “Time to go have a pee, Rain. I’ll walk you a little way out.”
Tay didn’t let Rain go anywhere without scampering after her, no matter how asleep it had seemed to be. It woke itself up when Rain moved, and it followed Rain and her father to a blind of scattercoin, where Liir turned his head just far enough to simulate modesty, but not far enough to allow Rain to escape his peripheral vision.
They wandered about for three more days, slogging through mud and sluicing through rain that sometimes preferred to be snow. Between low tired hills, through unnamed valleys formed by streams threading down from the Kells for ten thousand years. “You ought to know if we’re closing in on the farm,” said Liir to Candle as they blundered along shallow slopes. Their ankles all ached from the slant. “You can see the present.”
“This isn’t the present anymore,” said Candle. “Apple Press Farm is in our past now, and one hill looks much the same as another.”
Finally they discovered the right arrangment of
slopes and dips, and they began to drive down ancient agricultural tracks kept clear by animal passage. They came upon a tapering winter meadow. A thwart-hipped woman with a basket and a set of rusting loppers was moving about the weird beautiful verdant green glowing wetly in the thin snow and the thinning rain.
“As I live and breathe,” said Little Daffy.
The woman turned, straightened up, her hand on her hip. “So the prodigal turncoat returns to the nunnery,” she said. “It’s hallelujah time; get the bacon out of the larder and trim off the moldy bits.”
“Nice to see you too, Sister Doctor,” said Little Daffy. “What are you doing here?”
“Double the work I’d be doing if you hadn’t scarpered,” said Sister Doctor. “If you’ve come home for forgiveness, you’re going to have to fill out quite a bill of penitence first. Who are your traveling companions?” She took a pair of spectacles from her apron pocket and reared back a little to see the Clock at the meadow gate. “Not that thing again? And the Lion—Sir Brrr, I remember, I’m not that gaga yet—and the dwarf too. So you’ve joined a cult, Sister Apothecaire.”
“It’s Little Daffy now,” said the Munchkinlander. “I’ve left the mauntery.”
“I suppose you have.” Sister Doctor snapped the spectacles closed so fiercely that one lens popped out and lost itself in the snow. Rain and Tay dug it out for her. “Are you here to sing a few pagan carols and pass the basket? You’ll get neither coin nor comfort from us.”
“I always admired your largesse,” said Little Daffy. “But what are you doing here?”
“Trying to keep the community together, that’s what. When the army of Loyal Oz advanced on the mauntery two years ago, we had no choice but to flee. It didn’t go unnoticed that you absented yourself at the first opportunity. We assumed you must have hurried back to your homeland.” She said homeland as if she were saying bog.
“I went back to release our guests from their locked chambers,” said Little Daffy, “and I apologize to no one for that. I fell on the stairs, and by the time I came around, your dust on the horizon had already settled. Thanks for the show of sorority. Sister.”
“Well, let bygones be bygones and all that,” said Sister Doctor with a new briskness. “In a panic, missteps are taken. Have you come to rejoin your community?”
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“Where else would we be? The mauntery was burned to the ground.”
“Sister Doctor. The mauntery is made of stone.”
“Well, I mean the roofs and floors. The furniture, such as it was. There’s nothing to return to without a massive rebuilding effort. And our divine Emperor of Oz isn’t about to channel funds into the repair of a missionary outpost that he ordered to be torched. So we’ve crowded in here.”
“How did you come to find this place?”
“It always belonged to the mauntery,” replied the maunt. “Back in the days of the Superior Maunt, as you may remember, some skilled artisans among us used this outclave as a place to hide a printing press. We circulated broadsides anonymously, warning against the increasing theocracy of the Emperor. Ha! If we only knew. And him divine, can you credit it. Not a smart career move for a bunch of unmarried women trying to live out of the limelight. And with Lady Glinda our sponsor, no less. Oh, a great vexation for her too, I’ll wager, unless she swanned her way through it.”
Brrr looked at Little Daffy to see how she was taking the news of her former community. The little bundle from Munchkinland seemed at home, having this discussion with an associate who had been both a comrade and an adversary. The Lion said, “News of the old gang is all very well, but we’re sore and soggy here and more than a bit peckish. I hope you’re going to invite us in.”
At this Sister Doctor seemed to recover her sense of stature. “Well, we have less than we ever had, but of what we have, we share willingly. I wonder if winter broccoli appeals?”
“A hot bath would appeal more,” said Liir.
Sister Doctor took out her spectacles again, wiped the rain off them, and peered at him through the intact lens. “I thought I recognized that voice. It’s Liir, isn’t it—the one they say is Elphaba’s son. Oh, now the soup is on the boil. What are you doing with this lot?”
“Hoping for supper, maybe.”
“I’ll get you something, something for all of you.” She threw her implements together in her basket and looked over her shoulder. “It isn’t safe to come into the farm, though. Let me organize something and I’ll be back.”
“Why not safe?” asked Mr. Boss. “We can defend ourselves against maunts in the wilderness.”
“Eat first; we’ll talk later. Just hunker down here, and come no farther.”
“Well, we’re not going to push down the barricades, but I say, we have a child with the chills. A hot posset would be most—”
“That’s an order,” said Sister Doctor. Little Daffy put her hand on the dwarf’s arm, and he fell silent, although he growled like a bratweiler. “Build a fire, that won’t hurt,” added the maunt. “There’s a mess of drying firewood stacked up a half mile on, near where the orchard peters out.”
They walked through the apple orchard—candelabrum of branches sporting sprigs of snow, not all that unlike apple blossom—and Liir remembered the instance of magic he’d witnessed here. Using the power of her music and her own musky capacity, Candle had called up the voices of the dead to help the Princess Nastoya lose her human disguise and to revert to her Elephant nature, and so finally to die the way she wanted and needed.
Now, to return to this orchard…! Another season, another crackling moment in his life. Rewarding, not morose. He reached for Candle’s hand, and she squeezed his in return. Maybe everything would be all right. Sooner or later.
He recalled an outdoor oven some distance from the farmhouse and sheds. They built a fire. The grate was hooded and the flue hooked, so the fire could burn in the intermittent rain. They rinsed some of the broccoli that Sister Doctor had left behind. They munched on woody florets, hoping for better. Rain sat closest and grew less grey. In an hour the maunt was back with a donkey on which were saddled baskets and bags with bottles of claret, a ham, ropes of onions and twists of sourswift. A tablecloth, once unbundled, revealed six loaves of onion bread and a caramel cake burned on the bottom. “Heaven,” said the Lion. “Don’t suppose you brought any port, or some cigars?”
“Maunts go through cigars like termites through doorsills. We have none to spare.”
“Thought you might say that.”
Beneath the saddlebags, Sister Doctor had piled four or five pelts and two woolen blankets. The rain had faltered again, but the shadows blued up in a frosty way. Liir was about to renew the request for indoor lodging, but Sister Doctor anticipated his request.
“You can’t be allowed to stay, I’m afraid,” she told them. “I was distracted by seeing Sister Apothecaire—Little Daffy as she styles herself now. I didn’t really take in the measure of the difficulty until I realized you had Liir with you. It’s too dangerous for you to come into the house. No one must know you are here.”
“You have stool pigeons among the maunts?” asked the Lion. “So much for your professed neutrality.”
“I’m protecting my sisters as much as I’m trying to protect you. We’ve been visited three times in the past two years by emissaries from the EC military to check and see who’s been through. I can’t vouch that every voice among our sorority is equally devoted to neutrality—how could I? How could I plead knowledge into all of their souls? Nor can I attest that they’d stand up to harsh questioning if the investigators sniffed out that we were hiding something. Better for all that you should move on.”
“What are they looking for?” asked Liir, and “When were they last here?” asked his half-sister, at the same time.
“You’ve eluded them for so long that some believe you are dead,” said Sister Doctor to Liir. “But they don’t believe you brought the Grimmerie into the Afterlife with you.
So they’re convinced they’ll find it sooner or later. You may have heard that the invasion of Munchkinland is stalled. General Cherrystone’s army has taken Restwater, but the struggle around Haugaard’s Keep is a standoff. The Munchkinlanders can’t reclaim the lake; nor can the EC forces advance as far as Colwen Grounds to finish their reannexation of Munchkinland. The Munchkinland farms won’t sell bread or grain to Loyal Oz until the invading forces yield Restwater and retreat.”
“Never yield,” hissed Little Daffy, almost to herself.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sister Apothecaire, Munchkinland won’t starve. But with no one to sell bread to, much of their unharvested grain just rots in the fields. The EC meanwhile hankers for bread but has plenty of water to drink. The term on a game board is called stalemate, I think.”
“How does this figure in surveillance of maunts?” asked the Lion.
“Isn’t it plain as the nose on your plain face? The EC once again ramps up its campaign to find the Grimmerie. In the hopes that it might reveal secrets of how to unleash a mightier force against central Munchkinland, and strike a blow at the heart of the government at Colwen Grounds. Finishing the job.
“In short,” she said, “if you lot thought you were out of danger, you’re sadly mistaken. Whoever travels with Liir Thropp courts danger, by association.”
“And you’ve given us broccoli, bread, and wine,” said Little Daffy. “Sister, thank you.”
“I maintain my vows.” She passed the strawberry compote for spooning upon the more burnt bits of caramel cake.
They told her what they’d heard about the legendary Dorothy making a comeback tour. Sister Doctor hadn’t been apprised of this, but she wasn’t much interested. “We haven’t had a reprisal of the Great Drought for some time now, but if it should come as soon as next summer, punishing the fields with blight, the Munchkinlanders have little left in their coffers to buy supplies from Loyal Oz, and trading agreements are suspended anyway. The uneasy balance settled upon now seems more or less peaceful—only a few soldiers die a week on one side or the other, in this skirmish or that—but one doesn’t know who will give out first, Loyal Oz or Munchkinland.”