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“You haven’t given up, have you?”
“Look, if you’re going to trust me, you’ll have to trust me. I’ll do with your information as I see fit. And you know I don’t see very fit.”
“You see better than I do at this point.”
“A matter of opinion.” He closed his notebook. “I’m putting my pencil away. Just tell me.”
“It isn’t Liir,” she said. “It’s Liir and Candle together—it’s—their child. I need you to stand for her, if she needs standing for. As no one ever stood for you.”
“Their child,” he said.
“Born in Apple Press Farm, while Liir was absent. Nine years ago. When Candle left with that bundle, it was to draw the watching eyes away from the newborn. She left the baby for Liir to find; she swifted away to draw the hounds off scent.”
“So that is why you locked Candle in the tower with Liir? So she would have sex with Liir and perhaps conceive a child? Why would you care? Was it because you were never nine? No, not that. It was because you would never conceive a child yourself. You were too old when you were born. You were all dried up before you even got going.”
“Very sharp of you. I suppose I deserve this. I can tell you have had many dinner parties with cognoscenti who amuse themselves at guessing the motivations of others. But my motivation doesn’t matter. The thing happened, and now there is a child, a girl. And I have realized that this is why I can’t die. I was present at her conception: I was her godmother, in a sense. But I haven’t arranged for a guardian for her in my absence, as I tried to be one for Elphaba.”
“Why should she need a guardian?” The Lion’s voice was cold. “Some of us didn’t get any guardians at all.”
“And you would recommend that, based on your own experience?”
“I suppose she is special,” he said venomously. “History belongs to her, right? The next Munchkinlander Eminence in her minority? Prophecies tremble on her little shoulders? What did you say of Elphaba, that time you took a swig of the joy juice and had your first vision? Something like This child belongs to history, was it? Good and ill hangs in the balance, right? So she must be protected at all costs, right? She’ll save us all, just like little dead Ozma? The little darling? Right?”
Yackle could not take umbrage at his tone. She understood the rage masked as sarcasm. She rubbed her shoulder blades as if they were too heavy for her own spine. When she answered, her old lips quivered.
“It’s not that she is special,” said Yackle. “It’s not that she is chosen. It’s that she is ours. That’s all.”
He knew what the possessive pronoun meant. She is the one who is here, special or no. Whether to be glorified by history or abandoned by fate—to be accident’s victim or to be prophecy’s chosen child: It makes no difference. She’s the innocent on board. That was all. It came down to no more than that.
“They go to war, back and forth,” said Yackle. “The smallest indivisible part of a nation worth defending is not a field, a lake, a city, an industry, but a child.
“The child would be nine,” said Yackle in a softer voice, almost to herself. “A nice age for a child.
“That is,” she continued, “I have always assumed it might be. I myself was never nine. As you know. Still, it sounds a pleasant age.”
Brrr thought that none of his ages had been particularly pleasant. Still, at this remove, he wouldn’t have relinquished a moment of any of them.
“There, there,” he said. “Don’t get soppy on us. I’ve said I would listen, and I have listened. I’ve heard what you said. I didn’t write it down. I’ve put it”—he tapped his chest—“right here.”
The glass cat turned its head so quickly that the light winked from its ear tips. Brrr was rising from his chair and then dropping to his knees, awful creaking in his joints. He was curling up on the floor at the feet of the trembling old harridan. She was weeping into the edge of her shroud. He was purring, and rubbing his head against her ankles.
• 5 •
A KNOCK AT the door. Brrr sprang to a more dignified position at the arrival of Sister Apothecaire. “You must forgive me,” she said in tones that brooked no dispute in the matter. “Sister Hermit, walled up in the cenobitic tower, has broken her silence to drop down a message in a basket. An army vaster than she knows how to describe is fording the Gillikin River west of here.”
“I don’t follow,” said Brrr. “Which army, which direction?”
“West to east, so it must be the EC Messiars,” said Sister Apothecaire. As she was professed to neutrality, her tone was curt, but her sympathies lay with her own countrymen, so her eyes snapped like coal fire. “But there’s also a blaze happening to the south. Perhaps a band of the Messiars is burning the forest so as to destroy the blinds that can conceal snipers and guerrillas. They’ll force a Munchkinlander retreat to the south. In any case, the Messiars are meeting no resistance so far and will be here by sunset.”
“I am on their side,” said the Lion, to no one in particular—to himself, then.
“Bully for you. You can make the tea and crumpets for eight hundred.” Fear was turning her waspish. She continued in a rush. “The administrative troika of the mauntery has called an emergency Council—I mean, Sister Doctor of course, and her two assistants—of which I am not one, not in the business of governance. They will propose how we shall meet the ruthless invaders.”
“Hardly invaders,” Brrr corrected her. “This mauntery is not in Munchkinland.”
“In my book, an army intent on invading is an invading army no matter which side of the border you view it from. Sister Doctor may view things differently; that’s her prerogative. I’m simply staff.” Her head turned to the hall, and she called out, “Aren’t you attending? Please. You can come in here, if you will.”
“We have company?” said Yackle.
