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“I will hold you to your promise,” she said, when she could speak, “or I will kill you.” Standing, she gripped the back of the chair as if she were at a Testimonial Pulpit. What was left of her irises rolled up into her head, slowly. It turned his stomach so far around he felt he could taste his own shit.
She didn’t begin to speak until there was nothing left but the whites of her eyes, like bloodshot stones embedded in her skull.
W HEN DID I first become aware of them? Of the witches of Oz?
No Good Old Days to Speak Of
• 1 •
Y OU CAN start with your own origins.” He kept his voice soft, almost a purr. “Name, place, and date of birth. The usual jolly rigamarole.”
“Well, I don’t know my origins.” Her voice sounded faraway. Maybe she was speaking slowly because she was manufacturing lies, or maybe it took her a while to reclaim a notion of the past. “Lost in the mists of time, I’m afraid.”
“You mock me, you mock the Court.”
“I mock nothing and no one. First thing I can remember, I woke from a stupor and I sat up. Like a newborn I was naked, stupid, and without control of my bowels and bladder. But I was resplendently wrinkled and I wasn’t blind the way babies are. My breasts pointed at my toes. I wriggled my toes and I tried to wriggle my breasts. I smelled of ginger and pearlfruit jelly and I was devilishly hungry, so I got up and began to explore. I found a mirror on a wall and noticed that I had eyes, and I saw the flaccid skin barely managing to hold these eyes in their sockets. I had moles on my earlobes, and my hair was lank and grey, and my back hurt. I could talk, so I knew how to curse. I was already well on my way to bodily corruption, you see.”
“But where were you—in a room, on a bed? What district?”
“Some room, some bed. Some hostel for indigents, I suppose. I didn’t linger to find out. I stole a robe and some slippers from a cubby in the washroom and I tottered out the door. I found myself in the city of Shiz in northern Oz. I appeared older than most of the sentient life that waddled or cycled or ambled by.”
“Did you remember your name?”
“Those who don’t have a name can’t remember it, can they? Sir Brrr? If I’d had a name before, I didn’t know it anymore. So I had to name myself. In a marketplace stall I found a portfolio of rotogravure prints and I examined the pages. The collection advertised itself as artistic interpretations of characters of folklore. I saw gnarled old Kumbricia, I saw the fairy queen, Lurline, and her sidekick, Preenella. I saw the dragon who dreams the world and the tiny pixie-mites who afflict the undeserving with plague. Then I came across a page showing an elderly dame with a walking stick and a jackal on a leash. She carried the moon in a basket on her back. It was pretty. The script said ‘Yackle Snarling,’ and though I didn’t know the story she features in, nor any story, I liked her name. Yackle. I didn’t know if ‘Snarling’ was her second name or her occupation, so I left it off.”
“Didn’t you see a doctor? Anyone propose it might have been a stroke?” He wasn’t being tender, just comprehensive. “Probably your mental gears just slipped. It happens to the feeble.”
“Those who don’t know the concept of medicine don’t think to consult physicians.”
He tried a more soothing voice. It came out snide. “A little therapy, or a stiff drink, and maybe the memory of your past life would return.”
“Maybe,” she replied. “But I don’t believe in past lives.”
“Any twinges about your lost childhood? Snatches of déjà vu, that sort of thing? Did you ever pick up something silly and common like, oh, bootlaces or, or…butter rolls…and stare at them in case they jogged your mind about your past?”
“I didn’t imagine the past, yet, so I didn’t miss it. It was as if I was freshly minted as a senior. Some are born blind, some cranky, some superior. Some”—and she waggled a finger at him—“are born green. I was born old. Old I came into the world, and older still will I leave it, if I can ever figure out how.”
He wrote in his notebook: Claims to have amnesia about her youth. Dotty? Honest? Clever? Canny strategy to avoid her legal liabilities?
“We’re here to do some discovery about your relationship with the Thropps,” he said. “Can we continue?”
“I thought you said it was Madame Morrible’s connections you were tracking down.”
“Madame Morrible. The Thropp sisters. There is some overlap, as you bloody well know. Now just start where you can, and I’ll cut you off if you ramble.”
“I don’t think I like you,” she said, “but since this is nearly a posthumous tea party to which I’ve been invited, maybe it doesn’t matter if I like you or not.”
“You came from your coffin to talk to me,” he reminded her. “You must have had something to tell me now, right? Got some beef you’re eager to turn into hash. I’m your willing audience. I’m all ears, I am.”
She cocked her head sharply. She wasn’t befuddled in the slightest. She just didn’t like him. It showed loud and clear. Not that he cared. He was only doing his job. “Get on with it, before those army boots start tramping back this way,” he said.
Was she ready to talk? She thought it over. Would she inadvertently give something away before she had finished vetting the Lion for a possible ally? So far he didn’t look promising. Sitting before her, waxing his mane with spittle, twirling it into points. She could hear the motion, her ears were that keen. He was behaving like a pantomime villain training his mustachios.
Maybe he was only a ruse, a warm-up. Maybe she’d emerged from her clammy bier for the one who would follow this oily character.
Oracle though she was, she couldn’t see in front of her own nose.
• 2 •
