The witch of maracoor, p.20
The Witch of Maracoor, page 20
The aperture was wide enough for Gardius to get through. He launched clumsily from the pedestal of the potbellied stove and nearly slammed into the wall of the building across the alley, but curveted up into safer skies. No doubt he’d be drawing attention of men on the ground. They’d be racing inside now and discovering the princess’s absence from the stage. Then combing the building.
Ozma handed Rain the wicker basket and climbed out the hatch. Some muscle memory of being boy may have helped; or maybe that didn’t enter into it. Rain passed the basket through once Ozma was steady outside and ready to grab it, and then Rain followed her. Quick work to descend, like climbing down a tree.
Scarly had retreated to a nook in the alley to indulge in a cigarette. She was hanging back because Palace help were forbidden to be seen with smoke or drink in public. An alley could scarcely be deemed a public thoroughfare, but she didn’t want to push the matter. The matron of the salon staff was already on Scarly’s case for speaking before being spoken to. Scarly needed to keep her nose clean and her breath sweet, so she had sprigs of mintgrass and lemon parsley in her apron pocket, at the ready to obliterate traces of her disobedience.
She was grinding the butt against a paving stone and preparing to continue her circuit around the perimeter of the theater when she heard a hushed giggling above her. She ducked back into the shadow of the stage door overhang but peered out. The princess royale and the self-advertising Witch of Maracoor were straddling some hitherto unnoticed windowsill and kicking themselves free into the air. Scarly thought Rain looked like a salamander upon the red brick, making her way down the outside wall on iron brackets hammered in place by someone in the building trades. Struts for a ladder devoid of the parallel uprights. And the uninstalled Throne Minister, dressed as a man no less, followed the witch. Scarly drew in her breath.
All her life she’d been the sideline pair of hands, the silent observer, the hauler of coal shuttles, the collector of pails of ash and buckets of night slop, until at last she’d graduated to supervising the gloves of Palace guests, their parasols and sometimes their pistols. Scarly’s poise was improved and she’d learned to hold her chin level and not to duck her eyes floorward as often. But though Rain had once taught Scarly to read, the parlor maid’s tongue had proved uneducable. Accents are disguisable only through silence. By remaining mute she’d encouraged palace operatives to believe she might be either simple or perhaps somewhat deaf. So Scarly kept her own counsel and she heard more than she understood. And forgot very little of it.
What the disappearance of Ozma might mean to the delicate balance of powers within the Palace was certain—total mayhem and nothing less. Unless senior staff collaborated on some fiction of Ozma’s being indisposed, truth would out. Maybe Scarly could buy the princess royale some time to get to wherever she seemed intent in going as she descended the iron rungs on the building’s back wall. When the disappearance was noticed, Scarly could invent some tissue of possibility, some unverifiable lie—she’d seen Ozma jump in a carriage and order the driver to take her . . . somewhere. But without knowing where Ozma and Rain might be headed, anyplace Scarly could suggest to divert the inevitable posse might be too close to the actual destination. She’d keep quiet and listen—she was used to that.
More to the point, Scarly had only a few minutes to decide if she wanted to become implicated in this breakout without being invited to be a collaborator. Her fondness for Rain derived from the days at St. Prowd’s, when the scholar child was pale and incidental—a poor girl, let’s face it, nearly as poor as Scarly but set up with a firmer backbone—a witch in embryo even then.
And Scarly had hidden behind her professional backstairs reticence when she first encountered Tip as a boy. Once able to imagine a turn in Tip’s path, she’d daydreamed about his recognizing little scullery maid Scarly as his True Only One. But she’d found herself turning even shyer when he became tricked out as Ozma. Scarly had felt bewildered and, perhaps, betrayed. She’d felt obscurely insulted, as if he’d done it to avoid having to disappoint her. Even though she knew Tip and Rain had become heartbeats-in-tandem, one to the other.
Skeins of memory whirled around her like cigarette smoke, unstable and pungent. Her rheumy distractible mother and her barleycorn father, and all those siblings who thought she was putting on Palace affectations when she came home once a season with city treats. Her voice, comically rustic in the Emerald City, was now deemed posh and artificial when heard again at the family kitchen yard. She had no cool mattress where she could lie down as herself, unmocked and serene. She couldn’t win with anyone, in any place.
So did that make Scarly more or less likely to see Rain and Ozma, nearly as homeless as herself but for different reasons, as an item to be cherished or as yet another indignity, this time something she could eradicate? She’d stood at Ozma’s side with distant affection, and now Ozma appeared to be skiving off without signing the register. It didn’t seem fair—and yet when had life ever been fair, only in children’s stories and sometimes not even then.
When Ozma and Rain hit the yard by the stage door, they sized one another up. Rain corrected the angle of Ozma’s stiff and outlandish hat. Ozma wet her hand and began to thumb away the soot from Rain’s cheek. “Hey, blend it in more,” said Rain, “it’ll just increase the disguise.”
“What will they think, a young gentleman dallying in an alley at this hour with a woman not of his class,” said Ozma.
“They’ll think what they always think, and they’ll be partly right. Shall I take the basket, as I’m the female lead, at least to the audience in the street?” It was too weighty for a loaf of bread, and a heaviness rolled inside it. “What you got in here, firearms?” asked Rain, switching the basket to her other hand.
“Not today. No, it’s Tay. Your rice otter. You left him for me, remember? I was going to give him back to you if—if we were goodbyeing.” She glanced sideways at Rain. “Now you can’t have him back. You can only borrow him. For the next few days anyway—who knows how long this exeat will last.”
Rain’s fever broke just about then. All her clothes went damp on the inside.
They passed within a foot of Scarly in shadow. In shadow and holding her breath.
Into Goldhaven Square, which was busying itself of an autumn evening, the well-heeled on their evening strolls, regarding the shop windows and one another. Ozma offered Rain her arm. Rain took it. Gardius would track them from rooftops, no doubt. A child rolled a hoop across a street; a nanny scolded such impertinence. A soprano began to do scales in an upstairs window. Leaves shivered in a sudden breath of wind, and a few yellow tags fell to the pavement. Unutterably ordinary.
4
They muttered with their heads close together, walking in the dusk along the Royal Mall, toward the Ozma Fountain and the Shiz Road.
“You’ve shrunk, as a woman,” said Rain. “You used to be three inches taller than me, when you were Tip.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ozma. “More likely you’ve had a growth spurt.”
“Are we going anyplace special or are we just out on a stroll until we get picked up by your security detail?”
“You don’t think my disguise as a man is convincing? After all those decades of practice? I’m shattered.”
“Be serious. I didn’t go through hellwater to joke right now.”
Ozma shrugged. “Brrr will quietly put out teams to hunt for the green girl, guessing I’ll be with you. So we daren’t go back to Kiamo Ko. I think even Shiz, where we met, would be dicey. We could head to your father’s home.”
“Nether How? No. I don’t want to draw him into this. He’ll tell the truth if he’s approached, so best not to involve him.”
“What about the mucklands of Quadling Country. Isn’t that where your mother is from?”
“Not an option,” said Rain firmly. “And I don’t suppose we should stay here.”
“Too risky, you’re right. So where?”
For now, they settled on where they’d be least suspected of going—the heart of Gillikin Country. Shiz, the provincial capital, proved a great temptation as a hideout, because that was where Tip and Rain had first met. But it seemed smart to resist, to keep west of those haunts—the fleshpots of ephrarxia! Safer to head into the Pertha Hills. True, that was home territory of the industrial barons, those reactionaries who wanted to find Shell Thropp and return him to the throne, or some parallel boss. But for just that reason, the north would seem an unlikely place for Ozma to secret herself. Estates and farms and lots of rolling meadow and woodland. Fox hunting country. Enough ornamental and native greenery to cloak Rain, too. Perfect.
Glinda’s old stomping grounds, as it happened.
Whatever would Glinda think of all that had happened? Or, come to consider it, Elphaba herself? Where was she now?
Wherever, Rain hoped that they might both be proud of her. Not that she’d do anything differently if they weren’t. She’d moved on from the payment of dues.
Becoming aware, perhaps, of a new course of talent in her. Something not like flying, not at all. Neither was it like being able to spit up spells and tame the moment. It was more like—she was able to think of it now without getting angry at herself—more like being able to hold a hypothesis about how something seemed. Not what it was or wasn’t, but how it impressed itself upon her.
This was a new notion. Perhaps other kids got this at seven. She was a late developer. The cultivation of the emotions—not just feeling, but registering the feeling.
Perhaps there was no use, really, for noticing the nuances of emotion. But it reminded her she had survived all this. She was still alive. Despite everything.
“Moongirl,” said Ozma, “you’d better watch that gap in the paving. You’ll break your ankle and then I’ll have to carry you.”
“Or leave me behind.”
“That’s not in the cards, either. If I don’t have you, there’s no reason to abandon my position in the Palace.”
“Why haven’t you taken the throne yet? You’re not a minor.”
“You talked about amnesia. I suppose my being magicked into the form of Tip was another sort of amnesia. I never knew I was living decades as a lad. Part of Mombey’s spell, maybe. Also, we moved every few years. If I happened to make friends in any new quarter, we left before I could notice that they were growing up and I wasn’t. Oz is big that way. We also went north—some time in Fliaan, some time in Quox. Mombey could shape-shift somewhat, but she didn’t age either, or she kept coming back to her preferred form, which was somewhat slinky. Since she was my only benchmark, and I had no real education, I just floated along like a fish, getting older but getting no wiser.”
“Who says fish don’t get wiser?”
“Don’t change the subject. What happens now if I step forward and release Brrr from his regency and become the Throne Minister? There are some who will never believe I am Ozma. Why should they—some days I can hardly believe it myself. There’ll be cries for me to assert myself. And in those decades of a somewhat mothy, protracted boyhood, I learned nothing about our nation’s history. So in order to be qualified as a head of state, I’ve been studying up. The Ozmas! Endless. I will be grilled on them, and I’ll need to prove my stuff. Ozma the Bilious, Ozma the Scarcely Beloved, Ozma the Librarian, Ozma Contortia, Ozma Glikkusia. That’s the one who annexed the Glikkus from the dwarves.”
“I didn’t know the Glikkus was annexed.”
“Right. And that brings up the current political situation internationally. Leave aside the likes of Lord Avaric and your great-uncle, Shell Thropp. In the past two years, they’ve discovered poxite in the Scalps. The dwarves were always so drunk with ambition for their diamonds that they never noticed poxite. Which is used in explosives, did you know that? Firearms and worse. Now the Nome King is showing signs of wanting to press a prior claim on that part of Oz, liberate it from colonial oppression. Whoever is going to argue for military action to prevent it has to know the history of the conflict and the region. I’ve been up to my ladylike eyelashes boning up on matters of state. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it when I’m ready. I’m not ready yet. My duties are clear, and I accept that; but can’t I allow myself to recognize my life as open-ended and—and mine—at the same time?” Ozma clutched Rain’s arm harder. “Because there is this, too. I wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t going to be ready, until I knew better where this—this between us—where it stood.”
“After you figure it out, will you be ready to take a husband?”
Ozma laughed. “Who knows. Would you be ready to take a wife?”
Gardius had been smart enough to keep his distance until Ozma and Rain had cleared the walls of the Emerald City. How much easier this, thought Rain, than sneaking out of the gates of Maracoor Crown not so long ago! Beyond the Shiz Gate, the dwarf dragon came bouncing down to earth, cheery and ready to play fetch. He’d mastered the art of not roasting the stick he wanted Rain to throw. But by the time they’d reached a more rural district northwest of the walls of the Emerald City, it seemed prudent to send Gardius away. However docile he was trying to be, he was too roguishly himself to be able to pass in society as a dog. He wouldn’t accede to Rain’s repeated request of him to piss off until finally she had to buy a loaf tin in a country store and threaten to muzzle him again.
She took the tarot card with a picture of a book on it, and in the white space of the sky around the image, she inscribed the words Don’t worry. Where am I now? Not gone. Then, so the card couldn’t fall out, she wrapped it in a length torn from her apron strings. She tied the ends of the apron string around Gardius’s neck like a collar.
Leading him out behind a carriage house where they’d stopped for the night, she held his nose between her hands. She let the dragon lick her nose and ears and mouth. She licked him back. Then she said:
Have I come to think in questions?
Have I come to make suggestions?
Scaeti scaetiri, periouranos.
We break ourselves out of our prison.
You go back to Liir and Trism.
Scaeti scaetiri, periouranos.
At first Gardius looked as if he intended to buck the requirements of enchantment. He had the strength of will to pull it off. But perhaps seeing Rain use a skill of which she was still so clearly frightened made his dwarf dragon heart tender.
Or, more probably, thought Rain, he leaves of his own free will.
She watched him lumber into the sky, a great flying lummox the size of a waffle cart. As a kind of departing signal he flared a few bursts of flame to say goodbye. Not a great move, Ozma opined, for anyone who might be watching and taking notes. We better duck for cover. Come here, shelter with me. Mmm.
They’d got an early start next morning. Rain had taken from Ozma those gentleman’s gloves and covered her green hands with them, and she dragged her shawl around her brow. She’d perfected this hooded maneuver while escaping the city of Maracoor Crown. Then she blued her green nose and chin with pollen from the flowers Lucikles had given her in Ithira Strand. It wasn’t an absolute makeover but she could pass more easily.
Those flowers, they had not yet faded. Maybe they never would. Maybe she would give them to Ozma someday.
Producing a staggering clutch of banknotes from a leather fold, Ozma practiced deepening her voice, and she approached a local stable. And my, the carriage that such cash could secure. Silvered handles on the lockable door. Dark drapes. They reveled in the privacy, lying back in blankets upon the leathery banquette, though they didn’t dare to act out the parts of a randy bon vivant dragging his woman away for a weekend in the playgrounds of the Pertha Hills.
But no carriage driver or ostler could be trusted for long, since cash worked in more than one direction. So outside of a town called East Spillabout, Ozma dismissed the conveyance. Following a hearty lunch of sausages and onion porridge, they left the public house out a back door. The sky was newly washed after a passing autumn shower. A washerwoman smoked a pipe while she wrung out bar cloths; two children played catch with a rolled-up ball of stockings. Life had its little continuities that knew nothing of a fleeing potentate and a curiously colored young witch. And how good that was to realize.
Ozma and Rain continued on foot for a while, skirting the center of town. Out of sight of villagers, Rain could lower her shawl and be somewhat green in the light. Ozma could remove her top hat and even loosen the chignon a little.
Tay perched on Rain’s shoulder as if a day hadn’t gone by.
“We should probably come up with a new name for you,” said Rain. “Ozma is going to prove something of a liability if we’re trying to pass unnoticed.”
“Any ideas?”
Rain thought. “I’ve been away, and met some folks. There’s Tesasi. You could be Tesasi. Or maybe Scyrilla. Or Poena?”
“Those sound too foreign. Better an everyday name, like Maretta or Chane. A scrub girl’s name, familiar in any schoolyard.”
“So not Dorothy, then.”
“Ha! No, thank you. What about Tippa? Too weird?”
“Almost. But we can give it a go.” Rain took her hand, Ozma’s hand, to see if it was Tippa’s hand. Maybe it was.
They paused on the grassy verge of the periphery road. Which way to go? To the north, they could make out the slopes of the Pertha Hills. Stockbroker Stables, some called it. To the east, rain showers smeared the horizon. The fugitives wouldn’t think south; for now, they’d left the Emerald City behind. While from the west, immediately above a sloping cornfield, a pair of flying creatures made an elegant descent to examine the late harvest. They dropped slanting through the air like two soft rags of paper. “Herons?” asked Ozma—asked Tippa—pointing.
