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“Them? Hah,” said the dwarf. He plugged one nostril and mimed shooting a plug of mucus out of the other one. “Haven’t the brains among them to come in out of the rain.”
“Then it’s a charm—I’ve always guessed it. Some sledgehammer of a charm, that can read the world’s secrets correctly decade after decade.”
“Ninety-nine point ninety-seven percent accuracy,” said Ilianora. “That’s what the advertising panel says, anyway.”
“Hush, daughter,” said the dwarf, in a more kindly tone than before. “Pour me some water, will you?”
“Whose spell is as strong as that?” asked the Lion, becoming interested despite himself. “Whose spell could teach a puppet machine to spill secrets like that?”
“One whose name I don’t give out, as I don’t give out my own,” said the dwarf. “Ooh, this water is good. I’ve always wondered why the grand viziers of magic in the Emerald City—that is, if there are any—didn’t just get to work devising a spell to purify the whole of Kellswater. Reduce Loyal Oz’s dependence on foreign water. That lake is nearly as large as Restwater and if made potable could irrigate all of Loyal Oz. That would liberate the EC from its obsession with truculent Munchkinlanders, who, as I hear it told, never never shall be slaves.”
“One of the folktales I heard in my youth,” said Ilianora, “held that the ancient old demon-witch, Kumbricia herself, lives in the depths of Kellswater, or died there, perhaps, despoiling the supply for all time.”
“You and your tales,” said the dwarf. “One of the folktales I heard in my youth is that folktales are idiotic. Anyway, the cause is beside the point.”
“Sniff out the cause, and you conceive the solution,” said Yackle. “But who knows. Mr. Boss, Mr. Boss, if you won’t show Sir Brrr where in Oz the Grimmerie might be hidden—for that’s really what he is here to learn—then do some good for me, your old partner and nemesis on the hems of Elphaba’s life. Show me how I might die. I’ve told to this Lion all that I know. Let me reap some small benefit in return.”
“The Lion works for the Emerald City,” said the dwarf. “I should reward you for dealing him information that the EC might find useful? I’ve no opposition to the Emperor of Oz per se, but I’ve no affection either. Live and let seethe, that’s my motto.”
“The Clock is off-limits, anyway; w
e’re locked in,” remarked Ilianora, arranging a trio of white ribbons in her white hair. “This is probably the safest site in central Oz right now.”
“A sanctuary or a trap,” said the Lion. “I’ll bark the door down if I want to. As I said. But Mister Boss-man, why are you on the ‘hems’ of Elphaba’s life, as Mother Yackle puts it?”
“You’re here to interrogate the old brickbat, not me,” said the dwarf. “En’t that right? Give me that chair, you, so that I can look out the window and see if the armies are in sight.” He scrabbled up on the seat and raised himself on his toes.
The Lion could have told the dwarf what was visible: a low bolster of smoke to the southwest. The smoke must be heavy. Tendrils of it lifted up, like the heads of dark swans, then ducked down again. There was no acridity in the air, though. The wind must still be from the north or northeast.
“They’re burning the oakhair forest,” said the dwarf. “Pushing the Munchkinlanders farther south, away from the lake, I guess.”
“Unless the wind swings around,” said Ilianora, standing beside him. “Then it might smoke the Munchkinlanders out into the open. They’d be mowed down like wheat by a scythe.”
“We don’t take sides,” the dwarf reminded her. “Not in our brief.”
“We can take the side of mercy without being compromised,” she replied. “Surely?”
“If it don’t compromise our mission, why not?” He munched his sandwich with gusto. “Knock yourself out with mercy, honey.”
“Mr. Boss,” she said. “The Messiars may have gotten their idea of a smoke-out from the dragon. Their fellow infantrymen were blinded by smoke from our Clock—and driven into the obsolete lake.”
“It appears Fate may have caught up with those who advertise as Fate’s voice,” said Yackle, not, Brrr thought, without a touch of satisfaction. Even smugness. Professional jealousy among oracles!
“Ha,” replied the dwarf, grousing. “Fate. Some call it fate. Some call it lunch.”
“You fault your own profession?” Yackle seemed to be enjoying this. “Shame on you.”
“Fate brought you here,” said the Lion. “You must admit that.”
“Listen,” said the dwarf, “consider a pack of nursery children on a church picnic. They are about to mount a grassy hilltop. Clouds gather while one of them stops below to tie the laces of a lisping junior. Then lightning strikes at the crown of the hill. Say it strikes the meanest child, the one who wouldn’t pause to help and so has forged on ahead. Or say the cruel child has already passed to safety, so lightning kills the kindly laggard child, who is second up the slope. Or say, even, that both who act, either in churlishness or charity, cross the upland meadow safely, so it is the innocent toddler who is killed. Any of those three deaths are possible without a moral being drawn. Do you think that lightning has chosen its victim on the strength of character?”
“Then where does fate come in?” asked the Lion. “Wouldn’t this Clock of yours have been able to name what was to happen? Or any blind old oracle worth her salt?”
“Fate is only fate once it has happened. Even our own deaths are only theoretical until we croak.”
Ilianora pursed her lips as if trying to decide whether to join the conversation. She did. “There is a fourth child at the base of the hill who can read the weather enough to know that lightning is likely. The child can rush forward to chase all the others off the mound, and she risks being killed in the process. If that brave child is slain by lightning, it is sullen fate at work. But the other children’s lives have been altered. History has been vexed by the intercession of a bit player. It is what we hope for, and what we dread, too. Isn’t it?”
The dwarf replied, “I dread nothing but garlic muffins. Listen, the child who can read the portents of weather may well have hurried the others back down the slope into the jaws of a manticore, itself sensible about lightning and waiting out the storm in the down-slope shrubs.”
