“We had no idea we were at the end of a golden age,” Boq said, sighing. “When’s the last time you saw an Animal in the professions?”
“Ah, don’t get me started,” the Witch said. She couldn’t stay seated.
“Do you remember, you hoarded those notes of Dillamond’s. You never really let me know what they were all about. Did you make any use of them?”
“I learned enough from his research to keep questioning,” said the Witch, but she felt bombastic, and wanted to stop talking. It made her feel too sad, too desperate. Milla saw this, and with a brusque charity declared, “Those times are over and gone, and good riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we’re the thick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our parents on our backs. And we’re in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.”
“The Wizard doesn’t,” said the Witch.
“Well, Madame Morrible does,” said Milla. “Or so Shenshen told me in her last letter.”
“Oh?” said the Witch.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Boq. “Though from her bed of pain Madame Morrible continues to advise our Emperor Wizard on policy matters about education. I’m surprised that Glinda didn’t send Dorothy to Shiz to study with Madame Morrible. Instead she directed her to the Emerald City.”
The Witch could not picture Dorothy, but for a moment she saw the stooped figure of Nor. She saw a crowd of girls like Nor, in chains and yokes, drifting around Madame Morrible the way those schoolgirls had, all those years ago.
“Elphie, sit down again, you don’t look well,” said Boq. “This is a hard time for you. You didn’t get along well with Nessarose, I seem to remember.”
But the Witch didn’t want to think of her sister. “It’s a rather ugly name, Dorothy,” she said. “Don’t you think?” She sat back down heavily, and Boq relaxed on a stool a few feet away.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Actually we had a chat about it. She said that the King of her homeland was a man named Theodore. Her teacher explained that the name meant Gift of God, and that this was a sign that he was ordained to be King or Prime Minister. Dorothy remarked that Dorothy was a sort of backward Theodore, but the teacher looked it up and said no, Dorothy meant Goddess of Gifts.”
“Well, I know what she can give me,” said the Witch. “She can give me my shoes. Are you trying to say that you think she was a gift of God, or that she is some sort of queen or goddess? Boq, you used not to go in for superstition.”
“I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m having a conversation on word derivations,” he answered calmly. “Let others more enlightened than I ferret out the hidden meanings of life. But I do think it interesting that her name so resembles the name of her king.”
Milla said, “Well, I think she’s a holy little girl, ordinary and sanctified just as any child is, no more no less. Yellowgage, get your paws off that lemon tart, I can see you from here, or I’ll whip you from now to eternity. The Dorothy child reminded me of what Ozma might have been like, or might yet be like, if she ever comes out of the deep sleep she’s supposed to be enchanted into.”
“She sounds like a little fright,” said the Witch. “Ozma, Dorothy—all this talk about savior children. I have always detested it.”
“You know what it is?” said Boq, thinking carefully. “Since we’re talking about the old days, it comes back to me . . . I wonder if you remember that medieval painting I once found in the library at Three Queens? The one with the female figure cradling the beast? There was a sort of tenderness and awfulness in that painting. Well, there’s something in Dorothy that reminds me of that unnamed figure. You might even call it the Unnamed Goddess—is that sacrilegious or what? Dorothy has this sweet charity toward her dog, a pretty dreadful little beast. And whiffy? You wouldn’t believe how repugnant. Once she swooped the dog up in her arms and bent over it, crooning to it, in just the same pose as that medieval figure. Dorothy is a child, but she has a heaviness of bearing like an adult, and a gravity you don’t often find in the young. It’s very becoming. Elphie, I was charmed by her, to tell you the truth.” He cracked a couple of walnuts and eastern macarands, and passed them around. “I am sure you will be, too.”
“I would like to avoid her at all costs, at the sound of it,” said the Witch. “The last thing I’m in a mood for these days is to be charmed by juvenile purity. But I insist on recovering my property.”
“The shoes are very magic, are they?” said Milla. “Or is it just symbolic?”
“How do I even know?” said the Witch. “I haven’t ever put them on. But if I could get them and they could walk me out of this parlous life, I wouldn’t be sorry.”
“Anyway, everyone blamed the shoes for Nessa’s tyranny. I think it’s good of Glinda to have gotten them out of Munchkinland. The child is smuggling them abroad without even knowing it.”
“Glinda has sent the girl to the Emerald City,” said the Witch pointedly. “If the Wizard gets hold of them, it’ll be a license to march into Munchkinland. And you’re fools to sit on the fence as if it makes no difference whether he does or not.”
“You’ll stay for something, at least some tea,” said Milla soothingly. “Look, I’ve had Clarinda make a fresh pot, and we’ve saffron cream. Remember the saffron cream party after Ama Clutch’s funeral?”
The Witch breathed heavily for a moment; there was a pain in her esophagus. She did not like to remember those trying times. And Glinda had known full well that Madame Morrible was behind the death of Ama Clutch. Now as Lady Glinda she was part of the same ruling class. It was hideous. And Dorothy, whatever her origins, was still only a child, and they were using her to help rid Munchkinland of those damned totemic shoes. Or to get the shoes to the Wizard. Just as Madame Morrible had used her students as Adepts.
“I can’t stop here chattering like an idiot,” she cried, startling them, spilling the bowl of nuts to the ground. “Didn’t we waste enough time talking ourselves to death in school?” She grabbed for her broom and her hat.
Boq looked startled and almost fell backward off his seat. “Well, Elphie, why are you taking offense—?”
She was beyond answering. She whirled in a small cyclone of black skirts and scarves, and ran out to the road.
She hurried on foot along the Yellow Brick Road, hardly realizing that a plan was forming in her mind. But she was thinking so hard that for a while she completely forgot she was carrying her broom, and it was only when she paused to rest, and leaned on it, that she remembered it.
Boq, Glinda, even her father, Frex: how disappointing they all seemed now. Had these folks deteriorated in virtue since their youth, or had she been too naive then to see them for what they were? She felt disgusted with people, and longed to be home. She was too out of sorts to seek lodging in an inn or a public house. It was warm enough to stay outside and rest.
She lay awake at the edge of a field of barley. The moon rose, huge as it sometimes is when first breaking over the horizon. It backlit a stake with a crossbar, standing as if awaiting a body to crucify, or a scarecrow to hang.
