Turtle Heart moved his hands over the drawing in the dirt, flexing his palms, as if he were reading the map from above. “But here?” he said. “What is here?”
Frex wondered if he meant the air above Oz. “The realm of the Unnamed God?” he said. “The Other Land? Are you a unionist?”
“Turtle Heart is glassblower,” said Turtle Heart.
“I mean religiously.”
r /> Turtle Heart bowed his head and didn’t meet Frex’s eye. “Turtle Heart is not to know what name to call this.”
“I don’t know about Quadlings,” said Frex, warming to a possible convert. “But Gillikinese and Munchkinlanders are largely unionist. Since Lurlinist paganism went out. For centuries, there have been unionist shrines and chapels all over Oz. Are there none in Quadling Country?”
“Turtle Heart does not to recognize what is this,” he said.
“And now respectable unionists are going in droves over to the pleasure faith,” said Frex, snorting, “or even tiktokism, which hardly even qualifies as a religion. To the ignorant everything is spectacle these days. The ancient unionist monks and maunts knew their place in the universe—acknowledging the life source too sublime to be named—and now we sniff up the skirts of every musty magician who comes along. Hedonists, anarchists, solipsists! Individual freedom and amusement is all! As if sorcery had any moral component! Charms, alley magic, industrial-strength sound and light displays, fake shape-changers! Charlatans, nabobs of necromancy, chemical and herbal wisdoms, humbug hedonists! Selling their bog recipes and crone aphorisms and schoolboy spells! It makes me sick.”
Turtle Heart said, “Shall Turtle Heart to bring you water, shall Turtle Heart to lie you down?” He put fingers soft as calfskin on the side of Frex’s neck. Frex shivered and realized he had been shouting. Nanny and Melena were standing in the doorway with the pan of fish, silent.
“It’s a figure of speech, I’m not sick,” he said, but he was touched at the concern the foreigner had shown. “I think we’ll eat.”
And they did. Elphaba ignored her food except to prod the eyes out of the baked fish and to try to fit them onto her wingless bird. Nanny grumbled good-naturedly about the wind off the lake, her chills, her backbone, her digestion. Her gas was apparent from more than a few feet away and Frex moved, as discreetly as possible, to be upwind. He found himself sitting next to the Quadling on the bench.
“So is all that clear to you?” Frex pointed a fork at the map of Oz.
“Is Emerald City to be where?” said the Quadling, fish bones poking out from between his lips.
“Dead center,” Frex said.
“And there is Ozma,” said Turtle Heart.
“Ozma, the ordained Queen of Oz, or so they say,” Frex said, “though the Unnamed God must be ruler of all, in our hearts.”
“How can unnamed creature to rule—” began Turtle Heart.
“No theology at dinner,” sang out Melena, “that’s a house rule dating from the start of our marriage, Turtle Heart, and we obey it.”
“Besides, I still harbor a devotion to Lurline.” Nanny made a face in Frex’s direction. “Old folks like me are allowed to. Do you know about Lurline, stranger?”
Turtle Heart shook his head.
“If we have no theology then we surely have no arrant pagan nonsense—” began Frex, but Nanny, being a guest and invoking a touch of deafness when it suited her, plowed on.
“Lurline is the Fairy Queen who flew over the sandy wastes, and spotted the green and lovely land of Oz below. She left her daughter Ozma to rule the country in her absence and she promised to return to Oz in its darkest hour.”
“Hah!” said Frex.
“No hahs at me.” Nanny sniffed. “I’m as entitled to my beliefs as you are, Frexspar the Godly. At least they don’t get me into trouble as yours do.”
“Nanny, govern your temper,” said Melena, enjoying this.
“It’s rubbish,” said Frex. “Ozma rules in the Emerald City, and anyone who’s seen her, or paintings of her, knows that she’s from Gillikinese stock. She’s got the same broad band of forehead, the slightly gapped front teeth, the frenzy of curling blond hair, the quick shifts of mood—usually into anger. All characteristic of Gillikinese peoples. You’ve seen her, Melena, tell him.”
“Oh, she is elegant in her way,” Melena admitted.
“The daughter of a Fairy Queen?” said Turtle Heart.
“More nonsense,” said Frex.
“Not nonsense!” snapped Nanny.
