Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (49 page)

“I think so too,” said Little Daffy. “Which is why I think we need to be ready to liberate her if things get ugly.”

“I doubt they could get any uglier,” said the Lion. The mob would have no trouble wrestling Dorothy up on the scaffold, but they’d never get his big neck in a noose. They’d think of something else for him.

The mind went white-blank, and he didn’t speak for a moment for fear a tremble in his voice would betray him. “Do you have something in mind?”

“Just be on your toes. I mean that literaly.”

Hardly fifteen minutes into the break, a bel began to ring, and the crowd surged to reassemble at Neale House. But the doors to the hal remained closed. The crowd murmured, and Brrr picked up a frisson of something different. Funny how news has a vibration in the air al its own. Something had happened. Something was happening. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see, when the door finaly did open, that it wasn’t Nipp who emerged from the formal entrance but La Mombey herself.

The crowd broke into a cheer, rousing at first but subduing at the expression of their Eminence. A tal and striking woman, in this light she appeared more silvery blond and mature. Not unlike, Brrr thought, Dobbius’s portraits of the Kanraki, those mythical spirits of the ravines of Mount Runcible. He half expected La Mombey to open her painted lips and lead them in a reprise of the Munchkinlander anthem.

Mr. Boss must have been imagining the same. Sotto voce, he began to warble a few lines.

“‘Munchkinland, its truncheon lands on al who dare drop by…’ ”

“Shhh,” said his wife.

“Gentle patriots,” La Mombey addressed them. “Lord Nipp wil cal the proceedings to order momentarily. I beg your leave to address you on a matter of urgency in the meanwhile. It is my sad duty to tel you that our investigators have learned of disturbing developments. Word has come to the committees at Colwen Grounds that a new offensive against Munchkinland is soon to be launched. Not from the Scalps, where our noble Glikkun friends are holding the mountain passes as only they could do. Nor from Restwater, at least not that we can glean. No, the Emerald City is said to be commissioning new battalions to make skirmishes across the slopes of the Madeleines in Gilikin into the Wend Falows of Munchkinland. The Wend Falows are scrubby and inhospitable marches, but there is little in the terrain that could slow an army determined to cross it. Put frankly, our spies conclude that the aim of the Emerald City, after these several years of stalemate, is to up the ante. The enemy intends to press for a ful surrender of the government at Colwen Grounds and Bright Lettins by engaging us on a second front.”

She raised a staff and a surge of gluey white light pulsed from it. Brrr had forgotten that La Mombey was a sorceress of sorts. He could detect no evidence that a charm had been cast, except the charm of pyrotechnic dazzle, but the crowd oohed and ahhed, and people in the back began to applaud. “We wil not let this happen,” she said more fiercely. “In the defense of our homeland, today I declare a conscription of al Animals who originate outside our borders, including those born here whose parents or grandparents emigrated from Loyal Oz during the Animal Adverse laws. We gave you and your families succor when times were hard on you; we know you wil stand with us and defend us when times are hard on us. Consequently, since yesterday I have secured the bridges and gates of Bright Lettins with a spel to help you Animals avoid the temptation to flee your duties. Links of lightning, I suppose, designed to deter any deserters. A little aversion therapy, we could cal it. Folowing the close of this trial, Neale House wil become the center for enlistment and assignment for the Animal Army of Munchkinland. May I suggest that mothers and their young among us right now be impounded for release until their husbands and fathers and mates come to ransom them. Since so many eligible male Animals seem to have had prior engagements today. For their valor in service, let us chant, hoorah!”

“Hoorah,” shouted everyone except the Animals.

Brrr said, “What’s the word for the tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, al the time?”

“Fate’s foolery,” said Mr. Boss cheerily enough. “Give me one of those biscuits, wife. A surge in war fever always makes me peckish.” He fished in the basket and came up with two confections and a piece of paper. “‘Dorothy, take these two,’ ” he read. “Oh, don’t tel me, you poisoned the others? I don’t think I’m hungry anymore.” He put them back.

“Nonsense, don’t be sily,” she said but could explain no further, as La Mombey had swooped away and the doors to the hal were opening.

When the crowd was reassembled in the broad chamber, quieter than ever, Lord Nipp emerged, and then the barristers. The Owl looked terrified. No wonder. However the verdict went, Temper Bailey would probably end up in an Animal line of defense trying to hold the Wend Falows. Me too, if I’m not careful, Brrr thought.

The trapdoor opened and Dorothy began to climb up, but nerves, it seemed, were finaly getting to her. She paused on the ladder, half into the hal, and swayed. Maybe she’d caught sight of the scaffold out the windows at the rear of the room. The Chimpanzees hurried forward and put a gloved hand under each of her armpits and more or less hauled her out. “Oh, my,” she said. “I sure hope it’s not my time of the month.”

“Nothing good ever happens to that girl,” said Mr. Boss.

“The judgment is caled forth,” said Lord Nipp, and the jury proceeded into the room. The foreman handed a twist of paper to the magistrate. Then folowed a bit of symbolism derived from older systems of jurisprudence in Munchkinland, Brrr guessed. Lord Nipp put the paper inside one half of an empty, hinged wooden bal and clapped the bal closed to make a ful sphere. The judgment of Dorothy was imprisoned inside it. Next Nipp withdrew from under his table a round cage of metal bars, like a birdcage, that spun on a central axis. Through a hinged door he popped the wooden bal, and then latched the door and spun the cage.

“Oh don’t, it makes me dizzy,” said Dorothy. “And Lord knows I’m dizzy enough already.”

“You’re teling me,” whispered Mr. Boss.

“It reminds me of faling in the elevator, down in the dark, spinning around and about,” said Dorothy. She put her hands out as if to steady herself. The crowd in the hal began to murmur a low note, holding the drone throughout the building and beyond it. The bal clacked against the bars of the cage, making erratic syncopation against the dark hummed note. “I don’t feel quite myself,” said Dorothy. “But then I think that’s customary in Oz.”

The rotating cage slowed down and stopped. Lord Nipp opened the door and removed the bal. “Let justice be served,” he said. Then he unscrewed the two halves of the bal and took out the verdict.

There’s no element of chance to this gesture, thought Brrr. In an older time perhaps more than a single bal danced and battered against others. But time eliminates alternatives until there’s only one eventuality, sooner or later.

Maybe that was the point.

“The opinion of the jury,” said Lord Nipp, glancing up from the folded paper, “accords with my own. I have no need to amend it. The court of Bright Lettins finds the miscreant Dorothy Gale guilty of al charges. The magistrate of this court concurs. She shal be put to death to defend the honor of Munchkinland.”

Dorothy swooned and nearly fel into the open trapdoor. Little Daffy was on her feet and at Dorothy’s side before anyone else could move. “I’m an apothecaire, and I was Matron’s Assistant at the Respite of Incurables in the EC. Before the troubles,” she added. She felt Dorothy’s pulse and put her hand on Dorothy’s head. “Wouldn’t it be just our luck if the murderess dies of a heart attack before she can be put to death? Just like what was suggested of Nessarose Thropp. Ironical in the extreme.” To the Chimpanzees who had rushed forward to help, Little Daffy barked, “Move aside, Monkey boys, she needs air if she’s to survive long enough to be kiled.”

“Clear the front of the room,” cried Nipp. Temper Bailey obliged by flying through the open window.

Little Daffy motioned to Brrr to approach. “We’re losing her. Quick, quick. Mr. Boss, Lord Nipp—Dame Fegg! In the name of justice! Air at once. I’ve left my apothecaire’s satchel with my coleague just below the scaffold. We must get her on the Lion’s back; he can rush her there.” The magistrate and the barrister helped drape the insensate defendant on Brrr’s back.

Little Daffy slapped her husband’s rump and said, “Up, you too,” and Mr. Boss scrambled right onto Dorothy’s spine, his bowlegs splayed out on either side of her, clamping her in place. “To make sure she doesn’t fal,” said Little Daffy. “A hand up, please. Your Lordship, arrange that a vial of smeling salts be brought to the scaffold. It’s of utmost urgency. If we’re not careful, she just might slip away from us.” Then, to Brrr, “Off, you,” and pointed her finger. Finaly Brrr understood her scheme. He hoped he wasn’t too old to clear the windowsil, and in fact he scraped his loins rather badly in the effort. He emitted more of a yowl than a roar. The Munchkins in the aley scattered in terror as Brrr, Little Daffy, Mr. Boss, and the unconscious captive bolted into their midst. His heart pounding, Brrr tossed Munchkins aside like ninepins, and passed the scaffold, its ligature looped to a peg and swaying in the force of his rush. He careered around the edge of the crowd. Whatever shocking charm La Mombey might have set upon the bridge across the Munchkin River, to keep Animals from leaving before conscription, he would push through it. The charm couldn’t hurt half as much as his scraped underside already hurt. So what if links of lightning might neuter him: execution by firing squad would accomplish the same thing.

The plunge through rings of blue lightning was like being raked by sticks of fire on al inches of his body. It singed his whiskers and softened his claws, and the dewclaws dropped out and never grew back.

The sizzle did give a measure of extra bounce to the curl of his mane, he could feel it through the torment. He’d make a prettier corpse in a moment or two.

Little Daffy and Mr. Boss seemed unfazed by the charmed barrier. They sat like human clamps upon their human saddle, who had not been revived by the scorching light.

Four or five miles beyond the city limits, on the west side of the Munchkin River, the Lion paused under a stand of quoxwood trees. Dorothy fel with a heavy clump off his back. “Is she dead?” he asked.

“No,” said Little Daffy. “But I don’t expect the effects of my poppified pastries to wear off for a few hours.”

By the time Dorothy began to come around, they were a dozen miles north of Bright Lettins. Vilage lights to one side and another suggested happy settlements, but the Dorothy Gale Rescue Brigade hunkered down in a cart shed aside a field of lettuces. They ate the rest of the pastries and quite a bit of lettuce, and drank from a bottle of plonk that a farmer had hidden inexpertly beneath some burlap sacking.

“I hate your new hairdo,” said Mr. Boss to Brrr. “Makes you look more dandified than ever. Hey, how did it feel to bust through that charm? You carried it off like a pro.”

“It tickled,” said Brrr, “the way being jabbed with red-hot pitchforks soaked in brine tickles.” He had never thought to get a compliment from the dwarf. It was almost worth the unending agony under his pelt, as if he’d survived an attempt at the skinning of his hide. Taxidermy while you wait.

Dorothy began to stir. Her first inteligible words were, “Now that we’re alone, I can ask. Where is Lir?”

“Hidden in the outback somewhere,” said Brrr. “With wife and child.”

“I must stil be halucinating. Wife?”

“He’s older than you,” said the Lion. “Remember that.”

“So am I, now,” said Dorothy, dizzily. But a bit of prairie reserve crept into the pitch of her voice and the upward jerk of her spine. “Why did you rescue me?” she continued, when whatever passed for coherence in her had returned.

“I did it because I don’t like bulies,” said Brrr, “and they were bulies to their boots, everyone except Temper Bailey.”

“I did it because I don’t think you’re guilty,” said Little Daffy. “I
was
there in Center Munch, no lie, and I was about the age you are now. I
do
remember your arrival. Everyone hated Nessarose. It was liberation. You were a Hero of the Nation. It’s political expediency to name you a vilain now. Bald opportunism. You were being brought down only to drum up a patriotic fervor just before the Eminence announced another front is about to open in the war. Which means it isn’t going al that wel for Munchkinland, I should guess. Realy, do they think we are
morons
?”

“Evidently, the answer is yes,” said the Lion. “And you know, of course, their tactic wil work just fine. They’l find a way to make Dorothy’s escape from execution play into their war fever somehow.”

“As for me,” said Mr. Boss, “why did I help? Wel, I hardly knew what we were doing until we did it. But in a deeper sense, why did I come to Bright Lettins at al? Because I wondered if your return to Oz was caused by the colapse of the Clock of the Time Dragon.”

They al looked at him as if his thinking had, perhaps, colapsed.

“You two remember,” he said to the Lion and the Munchkinlander. “Rain suggested it. Lir’s child,” he explained to Dorothy. “One of the last things the Clock showed us was an earthquake. After it fel down that slope near the Sleeve of Ghastile. Near as I can tel, that happened just about the same time as the earthquake in the Scalps. Maybe the Clock’s insidious magic brought Dorothy back, against her wil.”

“Are you showing solidarity with something besides the Clock?” asked Little Daffy. “Senility hits at last.”

The dwarf grunted. “Least we could do is stand by her, since she never bought the ticket to come.”

“And I have no return ticket,” added Dorothy. “I don’t suppose there are any more of those pastries left? They leave a kick, but my, they are tasty.”