“It’s awfully pretty,” Liir said of the shell. His heart was beating as if he were in a court of law—a court of recriminations and, maybe, pardons. “Can you hear anything in it?” He inched forward on his knees, only a scosh.
The girl put the thing up to her ear and listened. Then she turned away to ramble after her companions through the shattered archway of the porch and into the open-roofed ruin of the building. The verdant creature—perhaps an otter?—scampered after her. Candle’s face had fallen but her weeping remained silent, at least for now.
“I think that went pretty well,” said the Lion.
“Is the child all right?” asked Liir. His eyes followed her as she crossed a patch of gloaming light, the sort that gilds every feature at the last minute. She looked normal as a copper farthing. Not a sign of green in her skin, not at this hour, not in this sunset attention. “Is she all right, do you think?”
“Begging pardon, it’s been a long day. It’s been a long year,” said Brrr, “and believe me, I’m no expert. But I’d say she’s right as rain.”
2.
Liir caught Candle’s hand as they hurried up the sandy steps to their sanctuary. “She’ll need to adjust,” he said. “We have to give her time.”
“We’ve given her all those years. I have no more moments to spare.”
Their daughter had gone ahead wispily, surlily perhaps. Liir tried to see this hideout anew, as if through Rain’s eyes, realizing that he had no notion of what she’d ever seen before. Stowed away in Lady Glinda’s entourage as she’d been. And who knows what else she’d witnessed on the road.
The place where he and Candle had washed up—how improbable it seemed. Perched high over the pass that led from the Sleeve of Ghastille toward central Oz. A nameless hill, so far as they knew—in sillier moods Liir sometimes referred to it as Mountain Objection. Travelers watching their footing below would have no reason to lift their eyes; in any case, the spot was camouflaged by overgrowth.
The place may have been established as a guard keep or a pilgrim’s destination. But when Liir and Candle had found it—they were hunting for a cave in which to hunker down, out of sight—it’d been abandoned for decades. Longer, maybe. For some community of cliff dwellers time out of mind, this outpost had been home. Home, or maybe an inn for passersby, for the underground warren was supplied with small cells and the remains of bedsteads and mattresses.
The ruin aboveground, through which Liir and Candle now walked, looked designed for some public function. At this stage in its collapse, the wall facing southwest was gone. The pavers of the great formal floor lay open to the sky. All that was left of the outside wall were the stumps of a line of columns. Like a lower jaw full of bad teeth. Ivory, grey, eroded. The opposite wall, hugging the hill that rose behind it, featured columns leading to the ribs of a missing roof and a dais of some sort.
In the few unionist chapels Liir had ever bothered to visit, the lectern had always stood at the far end of a rectangle, opposite the vestibule and porch. Here totemic sculptures and a sort of throne were inset against the hill wall, in the long side of the box, rather than tucked into the far apse. The carvings between the intact columns faced the broken columns and the sky and valley beyond, as if visitors on giant birds might swoop in for an audience.
Now he and Candle caught up with Rain. She’d paused at the altarpiece or whatever it was, and there she stood, tracing her hands over the surface.
At first Liir was puzzled. After an initial glance at the graven images, years ago, he’d ignored them except as hooks for bleeding a wild lamb or muttock, ledges for drying berries and onions. But Rain had set her pink shell in a niche, just so. The supports of the ledge were carved like shells too. He’d never noticed.
The shelf capped a panel of carved marble. Like a blind person, Rain was feeling the sculpture with a curiosity and openness she hadn’t shown to her mother or father.
A type of fish-woman, perhaps a lake mermaid of some sort. Her lower half tapered into a scaley tale and fins. From each of her hips flared a pair of spinnerets. Her arms and breasts were naked. Her face, set in profile against a dial or plate of some sort, gave the effect of a head on a coin. Liir didn’t know who she was—maybe some fishy variant of Lurline, maybe the invention of a bored unionist monk with a chisel and an appetite for breasts. But the creature looked in equal measure both beneficent and ferocious.
Rain’s hands touching the stern blank eye, the weatherworn stone breasts, the imbrications of those stony scales—his daughter made Liir see that the carving had character. He hadn’t noticed.
Still so much to see, so much to take in, and he was thirty or there-abouts—halfway through his life, assuming the Emperor’s assassins didn’t find him out at last and cut his life short.
Candle couldn’t hold back any longer. She wrenched away from Liir and moved forward to kneel beside Rain. He could see the similar shapes of their skulls, but the girl’s shoulders were tight, as if wound onto her spinal column like a wing nut, whereas Candle had tended toward a sexy fullness of form the past few years.
“I like this one,” said Candle in her soft, bruised voice. Her hand reached out to touch a star-shaped protrusion humping along with others in a welter of runes. For all Liir knew, this row of roughs was only the pattern-block of an anonymous instructor of ancient carving. He didn’t care. He had an aversion to magic, implied or actual.
“Me too,” said Rain, “but this better.” She chose from a protected cubby a small freestanding stone Liir had never noticed. He neared to look over her shoulder. About the size of a breviary, the display side was polished smooth as milk pudding. In it was carved something impossibly small and delicate. Liir couldn’t imagine the human hand that might manage such particularity, nor the instrument that such a hand might use. A relief of a vaguely animal-shaped creature. A sort of snouted feather, a legless head of a pony erect on a curved spine or tail. An inch high, no more. “What is it?” asked Rain.
“I don’t know,” said Candle.
“Pure fancy, I suspect,” said Liir, trying out the pedagogical function of fatherliness. “Nothing living can stand upright without at least two legs.”
“A tree can. What’s this?” The girl pointed to another shape carved into the lintel, a protrusion too peculiar for Liir to compare to anything else.
“An accident of the artist’s adze? Or maybe it was once something remarkable, but wind and rain took away its character over time. So now it’s just a mystery.”
“Wind and rain?”
“They blow from the west, clear cross the hall, or from the south. Sometimes—once a year—a storm with tiny teeth of salty sand, which rub at these carvings.”
“I never knowed of storms that could change off the face of a creature.” Rain looked surprised at the idea of the ravage of the world. “How many storms was it?”
“Hundreds of years of storms,” Candle answered her. “More years than I could count. We’ve only been here a handful of years, and the damage was done when we arrived. Nothing’s changed since we got here, but the sand comes and settles. I brush it off with feathers when the great wind subsides.”
Rain made her fingers like feathers, brushing, brushing. “What is this place?”
“It’s your home,” said Candle, and extended her hand to touch Rain’s hand—to cover it as Rain had covered the star shape.
This was a venture too bold. “I got no home,” said Rain, and pulled away and walked into the dark doorway that led to the stairs and the catacomb apartments in which Candle and Liir had hid, and lived, through the time it had taken seven rainstorms to deposit seven skins of sand upon the evaporating stone.
3.
Just before they’d met Muhlama yesterday, Ilianora had cried out to the Lion that Rain had no fear. Rain had heard this, and she knew it was wrong. She had plenty of fear, all right. For instance, she didn’t trust these two new people in their hilltop hideaway. The man was possessed by something aggravated, something
with the intensity of hornets. He tried to disguise it, but she could see. The woman was no calmer, even though she looked like a Quadling, and Rain’s exposure to Quadlings in Ovvels had led her to consider them kindly and placid. Up till now.
I’ll have no part of this, she thought, though she knew she had little choice.
She found Brrr downstairs, pacing in and out of stone doorways, checking out the lodgings. “Time was I might have expected the sheets turned down and a chocolate bourbonette placed upon the pillow,” he said. “But since there are no sheets or pillows, I suppose hoping for a chocolate bourbonette is a waste of energy. Rain, where should we sleep?”
“Far away from here.”
“Tiss toss, somebody’s cross. What’s gotten under your skin?”
“En’t nothing under my skin but my underskin.” She threw herself down on the floor, purposefully hard so she could bang her coccyx and try out a cuss. Tay twisted its head at her, confused.
Brrr had learned enough not to take the bait. He said nothing.
“How long are we here? When are we going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t yet really understand where we’ve arrived. Shall we go help with food, and see what we can learn?”
“I can’t learn anything.”
Brrr decided to consider morbid self-loathing something of an advance in the consolidation of Rain’s character. “Well, if you’re enjoying a little hissy-mood, why don’t you come along and find more to disapprove of upstairs?”
“You can leave me here to die.” She stretched out on her back and put an arm over her head. She made an unconvincing corpse, though Brrr knew that with enough practice—sixty, seventy years on—she’d get it right.
“Well, I’m going to sleep here. I think this room is kind of cozy. I like how a little natural light comes in through that slit. I bet you can see stars on a cloudless night, inching by.” She didn’t look. “But while there’s work to be done for supper, it’s cowardly to shirk down here. So now I’m going above. You can do as you like.”
“I know that.”
He had to suppress a smile. A vexed Rain was slightly more coherent: there was more of her on display. He knew she’d follow eventually.
Back outside, in a summer kitchen beyond the nave of the sacred fishy lady, Liir and Candle were scrubbing some turnips. A rusty kettle hanging on a hook bubbled, a rich onion broth. Ilianora—Brrr couldn’t yet think of her as Nor, which was how Liir addressed her—was mashing carrots with a pestle. Little Daffy and Mr. Boss were collecting from the compartments of the Clock anything that might be of use. Scissors, forks, banged-up pewter plates. Dried herbs. Candle’s eyes went wide and delighted at the sight of oregano and pumperfleck.
Brrr was no better at dicing cubes of salted grite than he was at the preparation of radish roses. His arthritic paws were devoid of opposable anythings. Settling to take some of the evening wind onto his jowls, he closed his eyes to listen to the murmur of human malcontent. It was comfortingly so like his own.
When Rain cried out, because splashed by moiling soup—so she’d emerged, no surprise there—Brrr opened his eyes. They focused to pick out a statue of an iron goose framed in a collapsing archway of unpruned peony hedge.
The bush was past its prime. Like the rest of us, he guessed. Then the statue kinked a leg and spoke.
“None of my business, of course, but have you paid any attention to the question of whether or not your dinner guests are being followed?” He appeared to be addressing the peonies, since one could not tell on whom his glazed eye was fixing.
“We’ll get to that,” said Liir to the Goose. “We’ll talk after we eat. If you’re so concerned, launch yourself and take a loop around once or twice. Settle your mind about it.”
“Couldn’t be bothered to exercise myself. The moment your incarceration arrives, I take to wing with a song in my breast and the old heave-ho.”
“Ever the optimist,” Candle said to the newcomers, shrugging. “This is Iskinaary. Liir’s familiar.”
“Not as familiar as all that,” protested the Goose.
“I never knew a Bird to shelter with humans,” said Brrr.
“I never knew a Lion to mind his own business,” snapped the Goose.
“Don’t let the Goose vex you,” said Liir. “We haven’t had company for so long, he’s forgotten how to be cordial.”
“You’ve forgotten how to be suspicious,” complained the Goose. “These vagabonds come creaking like the Walking Dust of St. Satalin’s Graveyard and you don’t worry it’s the opening salvo of an ambush attempt?”
“Muhlama has promised to stalk the perimeter tonight before she slinks away in the morning,” soothed Liir. “No need to ginger up the atmosphere, Iskinaary. This feast has been postponed for too long. You were there when the little girl was born. You can manage to be glad she’s back. No?”
“This is all my fault. I saw the Clock from the air, we sent Muhlama to investigate since she was passing through. I’m sorry I opened my mouth. But the girl is trouble, Liir, and dragging trouble in her wake. Mark my words. And I’m not crazy about the otter.” At Liir’s lowered brow, the Goose hurried on, “Not that I mind, of course. I love trouble. The spice of life and proud progenetrix of all progress, yes yes. Don’t mind me.”
“I think someone’s being sentimental,” suggested Liir. “We’ve never had reason to see how a Goose gets sentimental before. High emotion is nothing to be ashamed of, you know.”
“We have a Cowardly Lion and a Sentimental Goose, is that it? No thank you,” said Iskinaary. “I’m not interested in the position.” He curled his neck like the hoop of an iron rail marking out the edge of an ornamental border and he nipped viciously at his breast. “I’ll dine alone on my own nits, thank you.”
The humans sat cross-legged on a blanket. Under the circumstances Little Daffy offered a brief grace in a general sense, addressed to Sender. The slop was good as well as plentiful. Brrr ate with his tongue rather than a spoon. He was getting too old to fuss with a spoon at every meal. Rain sulked and wouldn’t touch a bite.
When they were done, Candle suggested that she and Rain might take a knife to the peonies and cut some to arrange on the shell altar. Tay slunk after, docile as an old family collie. After they’d wandered away, Liir ventured softly, “Before they come back, in case it’s upsetting to Candle, can anyone tell me about Rain?”
“She’s a bothersome girl, more trouble than she’s worth,” said Mr. Boss. He’d hardly spoken since they arrived. Well, observed Brrr, ever since the Clock took its tumble, Mr. Boss has gone very silent indeed.
Liir’s fixation on the girl seemed to annoy the dwarf, who continued, “What you see when you look at Rain is all there is. You can’t get milk from a salamander. I want to know what’s going on down there.” He swept his hand skyward to the north and east. “We’ve spent a year with Quadlings who wouldn’t know a current event if it rolled over and squashed their granny. I can see you’ve removed yourself from the cocktail party circuit, but you must hear something in your aerie up here, if you have an assortment of winged foreign correspondents. What’s the news out of Oz?”
“Since when?” asked Liir.
“When we left Munchkinland more than a year ago,” replied Mr. Boss, “Lady Glinda was confined to Mockbeggar Hall. Her country estate on Restwater, as you may know. An army of Loyal Oz had gotten halfway up the lake, heading inland, but its armada was destroyed by a spot of magic. A dragon escaped and flew south, we think, and that’s the last we heard for certain.”
Some bad memory there, thought Brrr, seeing Liir pale at the mention of the beast. Evenly enough, though, Liir replied, “We’ve seen or heard no sign of any dragon.”
The dwarf snorted. “Yes, Lord Limp in the Lap, but what about the armies bucking about Restwater?”
“We came here to get out of the path of armies.”
The Goose suddenly snapped to life again and hissed at Liir. “You’ve invited them to stay the night and y
ou’re suddenly above gossip? Has the arrival of that child mischiefed your mind? Listen, little man,” he told the dwarf, “the last we heard, General Cherrystone had taken the lake, even storming Haugaard’s Keep. The Munchkinlanders cleverly vacated their stronghold so they could isolate and contain Cherrystone once he took it. They have him holed up there. He retains lake access but he can’t move farther inland toward Bright Lettins, the new capital. Some fortresses are harder to quit than they are to breach.”
The dwarf said, “Smart. And…?”
The Goose went on. “Tit for tat, the Munchkinlanders have formed an alliance with the Glikkuns to their north, and appropriated the emerald mines in the Scalps. Easy enough to defend those mountain passes. And the Glikkuns have cut the rail line into Loyal Oz. You can hardly be surprised. They’ve been taken advantage of by the Emerald City for decades. It’s all stupefyingly predictable. The Glikkuns, those trolls, are natural allies to the stumpy Munchkinlander folk.”
“You should talk,” said Little Daffy. “You’re not any taller than I am.”
“Who’s leading the Munchkinland government?” asked Brrr, to keep the conversation civil, and also to find out.
The Goose gargled and hootled. “Liir himself would be eligible for Eminence in Munchkinland, should he ever claim the seat. His aunt, the so-called Wicked Witch of the East, having been the last Eminent Thropp.”
Liir shrugged. “Not interested in the job. Anyway, I’ve changed my name to Liir Ko, so maybe I’m not eligible.”
“Since the Emperor of Oz, Shell Thropp, was Nessarose’s younger brother,” said the Goose, “it’s on the basis of a blood claim to the position of Eminence of Munchkinland that the Emperor validates his invasion. You’d pass muster too, Liir.”
“But names,” said Brrr. “Who’s holding Munchkinland together?”