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The Ozmists reared—twenty, thirty feet in the steamy air.
“Scratch that last question,” Brrr called in a loud voice. “Never mind. We’ll soldier on as we are. You are dismissed.” Hoping that he and Cubbins could be dismissed, too.
But the Ozmists replied, There is little time left—the act of our compressing into community unsettles the vapors. You ask the impertinent question all Bears ask, and you will pay the price. Ozma is not dead. But you bring us no news of our lost Oz—you break the contract. You will pay.
Cubbins’s small jaw dropped. “News!” he remembered. “News of the Northern Bears.” But he was young: nothing in the life of the Bears had changed since he could remember.
Brrr wanted to say, Lie to them, tell them anything! But he didn’t dare. The Ozmists were everywhere and could apprehend the faintest whisper.
“News,” said the Lion, trying by his tone to communicate an instruction to fabricate—another first—“Cubbins, give them, you know, the news. The newest news!”
Cubbins looked wildly about as if trying to see modern history in the making among the jeweled rash of phantoms. His eye fell on the stack of books that Brrr carried, and he grabbed the top one. “I have—to hand—the latest news—here!” He read the title: “Ozma Initiata: The Birth of the Throne Line.”
But even Brrr could tell this was history, not current events.
“Or…or…” Cubbins tore through a second book. “Animal Magic, or, The Secret Spell of Language.” He whipped pages filled with charts. “A grammar textbook. You know, language is always changing, they say: ever new. Refreshing itself—”
As if a compression of thunderclap had been unpacked, a low sound began from the center of the wheel. The Ozmists swayed their rotating mass laterally across the marshy ground, passing over and (it seemed) through the Lion and Cubbins until the Animals were in the center of the swarm and the noise became deafening.
Bear, if you don’t believe in keeping your bargain, we thrust you out before we make you one of us!
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said the Lion, trying to stand before the small cub—but the Ozmists were everywhere, and there was not enough Lion to encircle Cubbins. The sound of the Ozmists raked through them both, but Cubbins held his paws over his ears. Then the Ozmists disappeared into the rising vapors from a visible marshland. In their place rose curtains of brainless flies and midges, deterred for a moment by the honey but ready, Brrr guessed, to turn and attack them.
Cubbins was already scrabbling up the slope, which now seemed to permit it. With flummoxing of limb and tail, the Lion followed. Soon he’d overtaken the young Bear.
This is what it feels like to be a piece of shit, thought Brrr; being pummeled on all sides by the world, forced forward, outward, into naked stink and light. But he and Cubbins danced as they ran, a sense of relief and escape energizing them. They avoided the steam of salt geysers that were sprouting up through invisible fissures, but they couldn’t avoid the hot rain that pelted down.
His eyes closed against the sting, Brrr smacked into boulders and tree trunks and clawed his way through brambly growth. By the time they emerged from Cloud Swamp, day was dawning in the teeth of an ordinary rainstorm.
“What did we get from that exercise?” he asked Cubbins, once he felt able to speak without his voice breaking.
“Wet,” said Cubbins.
“Well, yes. But from the Ozmists?”
Cubbins looked at Brrr. “I don’t believe in Ozmists,” he said. “Bears don’t, you know.”
The Lion snarled, as if to say: No time for your funning, Cubbins! The Bear’s eyes looked back at him, flat, less glossy than before. Perhaps it was the overcast sky.
“They said Ozma is still alive somewhere,” ventured the Lion.
“People can say all sorts of things,” said Cubbins. “Where did you get those books?”
“From…” But he couldn’t finish. Didn’t Cubbins remember?
Cubbins was pawing them and looking at the spines. “Ozma Incognita. That sounds interesting. What are you doing with these books?”
“I don’t know,” said the Lion after a while. “I don’t have much use for them.”
“I’ll take them off you. I like the idea of books,” said Cubbins. “Here’s another one with color plates—look! Lurline and Preenella: A Fairy Tale of the Poor. How stupendous! We don’t see books around the Great Gillikin Forest often, you know.”
“You don’t say.” He tried to keep a wobble out of his voice.
“If books show up anywhere in the woods, they’re usually not far from a trap of some sort. Bait, you know. Humans plant books in the woods, hoping to attract the urban talking Animals who have gone to ground here, escaping the Wizard’s laws against them. I suppose you’re aware of this?”
“I suppose.” He sighed.
“And hunters, perhaps with guns, waiting nearby.” Cubbins was turning the pages. “If you picked these up from the woods, you’re lucky you didn’t get snared in some beastly iron-jaw thing with rusty teeth.”
