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“Shadowpuppet! Were you spying on the Witch? Were you in the Wizard’s employ? How could you—how you could—a traitor—a turncoat—”
“The word you want,” said the dwarf, “is fink. Or, if you’re being fancy, collaborationist.”
Brrr felt he suddenly understood what it might mean if he said I am beside myself! The world contorting again, long after he had thought it possible to learn anything new. It was like being back in the Great Gillikin Forest, suddenly recognizing that the musical repertoire of humans that he was overhearing was in fact language, implying meaning, implying a secret world he might uncover. The bone-icing creepiness of realizing that an Animal can masquerade as an animal! He hadn’t known it possible.
“Oh, we all have our disguises,” said Shadowpuppet irritably. “You think only a big Cat can practice sedition?”
The Cat hissed at them all. The dwarf continued, “No need to get so worked up over it, Mister Lion. The episode depicted by the Clock didn’t involve you, far as I could see.”
“No, it didn’t,” said Brrr. “But I took on Shadowpuppet as my pet—”
“Hah,” said the Cat. “No, sir, I took on you as an assignment. To end my long career in a last bout of usefulness, and look—I’ve all but been thrown out on my ass.”
“Assignment for whom?” asked Brrr.
“The regimes change, the posts are filled and vacated and refilled. I can hardly remember the current personnel. Think you’ll take my deposition? Think again. Anyway, as if I owe you an explanation?”
“You do,” said Ilianora. “If you informed against the Witch, you were an agent in the death of Fiyero
Tigelaar. And he was my father.”
“Was he now,” said the Cat. “Pity, that.”
“Nor?” said Yackle, turning her head toward Ilianora. “Nor Tigelaar? Fiyero’s daughter?”
“Nor was a girl, and that girl is dead,” said Ilianora. “That girl died in Southstairs Prison…I go by the name of Ilianora now.” She dropped her veil back from her forehead. “If a Cat can skulk around disguised as a cat, a girl can certainly disguise herself as a woman.” Her tone was cool and not particularly flummoxed.
Brrr had never known Fiyero, but long ago he had traveled to the Emerald City with the boy sometimes thought to be Fiyero’s illegitimate son. “Ilianora, listen: The Witch’s boy—Elphaba’s charge—was looking for you some years back. Did he ever find you?”
“Liir?” said Ilianora. “Liir, you mean? Is he still alive?”
“Twenty years ago he was,” said Brrr.
“Ten years ago he was still alive,” said Yackle. “He’d be, oh, twenty-nine or thirty by now. Excuse me for hurrying this along, but why don’t you ask the Clock?”
“It does no good to ask the Clock,” said the dwarf curtly. “The clock only reveals what it will.”
They all turned to look at it again.
“You’d be thirty-five then,” said Brrr. “Or so. You were older than Liir, right?”
She didn’t answer. Her face was in her hands. The news that someone had once hunted for her seemed to be seeping in.
“You have someone who cares for you,” said Brrr. “Somewhere. You don’t need to languish in thrall to a dwarf. You don’t owe him anything.”
“Don’t mind me,” said the sergeant-at-hand. “I didn’t snitch on any Winkie prince. I don’t take sides. I mind my own business. Little me and my own ten toes, each more blameless than the one next door.”
• 3 •
Y ACKLE WAVED her hands loosely in the air, as if casting spells or shooing chickens. She began to get excited. “Open your trove, Mister Boss, and let me at it.”
“You’re off your rocker,” began the dwarf.
“Don’t deny me my last moment.” Yackle rubbed her eyes with her fists, impatiently. Brrr thought: She’d force her eyes to focus one last time, if she could.
“Show’s over,” growled the dwarf. “You’ve agitated my virgin missus. En’t that enough trouble for one day?” He began to slap up the hinged stages and secure the shutters. “We gave it a chance, and it’s paid us with a scrap of useless history. Who cares if that friable Cat once worked for ye olde Wizard of Oz? He’s long gone, and it’s Emperor Shell on the throne now. All that bunk of espionage and assault is ancient history and does no one any good, least of all the Cat, with its fragmented tail.”
The Clock disobeyed the dwarf and clattered its central stage open again.
