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The Lion’s voice was testy. “You are under order of the Emerald City Court of Magistrates to comply with my request for information. I don’t have to answer your nosy questions. I’m done auditioning for you. I’ve said all I have to say.”
“You didn’t tell me if you ever found the soldier’s father. As you promised. Do you keep your promises? I’m merely asking.”
“You think you can shame me? You’ll have to work harder than that.”
“Shame you? Hardly. I have no capacity for that,” she said. “No capacity and no interest. I’m not involved in shame. Morals are learned in childhood, and I didn’t have any such holiday called childhood. I’m merely curious.”
• 3 •
T HEY SAT in silence, both of them unwilling to yield, and after a while a maunt came in. She carried a plate piled with rye brisks smeared with a paste made of ground tadmuck and onions. Neither Yackle nor Brrr thanked her—neither was willing to be the first to show the weakness inherent in courtesy.
While the maunt fussed about with napkins and condiments, Brrr listened to the world.
The Mauntery of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows sat only a little distance from a forest of oakhair trees. Brrr knew that the higher branches of the mature oakhair tree developed long tendrils. In early autumn, the tendrils produced dense little acorns that swung until, finally, they were heavy enough to snap off and drop to the ground for seeding. Before they fell, though, the weight they exerted pulled their long threadlike stems tighter and tighter. When the wind arose from the south, if it ran close enough to the earth, it could produce a sound as of
thrummed harp strings. A kind of foresty moan. Lurlina, or whatever damn goddess was responsible for the development of flora in Oz, hadn’t bothered to tune the oakhair’s reproductive system. The sound was less like an orchestra agreeing on a common pitch and more like a bevy of banshees considering what creature to feast upon for their supper.
The sostenuto lingered. The transparent cat began to vibrate slightly, as if in sympathy, like the ringing of a wineglass struck with the blade of a knife. The noise an ornamental paperweight might make if it could purr.
The maunt left, closing the door soundlessly behind her, no doubt vexed that she’d been able to overhear nothing of the interview. The wind pulled longer, half-strangled moans out of the forest, until, to drown out the noise if nothing else, Brrr caved at last, and spoke first.
“I hate that sound.”
“What sound is that?” asked Yackle, pawing on the floor for a biscuit she had dropped.
“The oakhair chorus. Can’t you hear it? I thought the blind developed keener hearing as compensation.”
“I can’t hear it. I have other compensations,” she said. “Like a sense of taste. I don’t suppose that helpmeet supplied us with any gin? I found this little snack offensive.”
“Only water, I’m afraid. I could do with some ale.”
“You say,” said Yackle, “that your emergence into Traum was your first experience outside of the Forest. Are you sure of that?”
“No,” he replied. “It’s even been suggested to me that I could have wandered out when I was too young to perceive it. So what? That’s as good as if it hadn’t happened, right?”
“Perhaps,” she answered. “Or not.”
“You might well have had a childhood yourself,” he said. “Suppose you lived eighty years of some life choked with drama and feeling, and then you had a stroke or some other illness. When you came around, in that basement in Shiz, you were like a child again. The slate wiped clean. It’s been known to happen to the elderly, Animals as well as people.”
“No, no,” she replied. “Even those whose memories are corrupted by illness still have their pasts pocketed somewhere. But I have nothing to remember—no childhood to flee from. Don’t you understand? I think that’s why I can see the future—to the extent that I can. I suppose it’s your principle of compensation. I can’t remember the past, so I can remember the future.”
“All right, then. Prove it to me. Remember for me what is going to happen to me when I get back to the Emerald City with the information they want. Which you’re about to give me.”
He was playing with fire, but what was there left to lose? Not dignity—he couldn’t lose face with this harridan, who couldn’t see his face to begin with—or could see it all too clearly. One or the other.
“You don’t really want to know.”
“Or are you the scam artist that most oracles are? Look, I gave you my shame, which you asked for. Tell me about the Thropps, then. The Thropps.” He tapped his pencil on the notepad. “Or are you losing memory capacity so fast? The bucket leaking while we sit here? Your past draining away?”
“If I only had a past. I have no past.”
He grinned at her, wondering if she could intuit an expression. “And if I don’t get what I’m looking for, I have no future. So begging your pardon, can we hurry it up?”
• 4 •
H E WATCHED as she descended into what memories she had. The poor old macaroon. What possible good could come of her in the end? Of any of us, he amended.
Did her memories sting and surprise, as that sudden recollection of a cage had done, coming over him in Traum at the height of the troll massacre? And returning to him now. Always a cage, no?
