A Lion Among Men Part 10

- 1 -

A L LION AT rest. rest.

How old was he now? Thirty-eight? Forty? How long had he been waiting to see some shade of the world other than grim yellow?

That oracle, who was blind with age, could see more than he could. d.a.m.n her.

Was she holding out on him? Running for the chapel just when they were closing in on the questions he most needed to ask? Where is the Grimmerie? Where was Elphaba's rumored son, Liir-where had he disappeared to? If anyone in Oz might know, it had to be Yackle. Yackle wasn't the only person who had cared about Elphaba-there was Lady Glinda, among others-but Yackle was the one who had been able to see into the darkness of Elphaba's life.

A vision like that-what he wouldn't give to have some...some sense of scope. Some perspicacity. But he could never see forward. Even the act of looking back-at how he had gotten himself hip-deep in muck, again and again-even that was hard for him to fathom.

Well, he wasn't giving up this time. He'd proved useless at his earliest tasks, like finding Jemmsy's father. A total loser and no mistake. He'd always run off at the first sign of trouble. But now there was nowhere left to run. It was this or prison.

So he let her see of him what she would, with her oracle's inner eye; she didn't need to hear him voice his reservations about himself out loud. There were things he would never say to any female, whether she was a Lioness or a human, a judge or an oracle, a petty wh.o.r.e or a pettier maunt.

A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him-so why bother?-but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible. Yackle would prove no exception, he was sure.

How different his life might have been if he had emerged from the Great Gillikin Forest right at the outskirts of the town of Tenniken instead of at Traum. Sure, now he knew: A talking Lion would have had a rough go of it anywhere under the Wizard's jurisdiction. Yet if Brrr had been able to deliver the medal of honor back to Jemmsy's father, he'd have had an early experience of reaching a goal. Of not being diverted.

But remembering what had happened in Traum-even thinking about it today-had been a mistake. Living with amnesia, the way those cretinous Bears in the Great Gillikin Forest did, was the only sensible strategy.

The word lionized lionized had more than one meaning. had more than one meaning.

His youth, his stupidity, had been no more than that. Stupidity was forgivable in the young. But when he'd lain down and played dead in Traum-it had been no more and no less than a collapse of his enfeebled sense of himself-he'd made himself into an emblem of complicity. "Remember the cowardly Lion," the humans had said in Traum. "He laid down his life for us."

Sunk in a fug of self-loathing, he'd bypa.s.sed Tenniken entirely. Paid the conductor extra to stay on to s.h.i.+z. (No other Animals rode the train that day, though, sealed into his own mortification, he hadn't noticed. Later, he wondered if some good burgher of Traum had bribed the conductor to allow Brrr to board at all, just to get him out of the vicinity.) Still, the sight of the outskirts of the ancient university town caught Brrr's attention, drawing him out of his funk. He peered through the grimy train windows. First, the great manufacturing plants. Brick factories with gla.s.s transoms, spewing noxious plumes out of zigzaggy smokestacks. Closer to the city-centre, terraced housing for millworkers. Their laundry yards swarmed with small human cubs, at play with their skipping ropes and stones.

And then into the close, gnarled, ancient university center of s.h.i.+z. Its separate colleges in promiscuous adjacency. Each boasted an ivy-clawed gatehouse through which pa.s.sersby could glimpse serene quadrangles...brilliant chapels, lecture halls...science labs chasing the latest developments in two dozen separate branches of enquiry.

The Lion had taken stock of the smart little city, the jewel of the province of Gillikin. He'd explored its nests of colleges and its clubs and its manicured parks and ca.n.a.ls, and then he'd set himself up in a better cla.s.s of residence. Not far from Ticknor Circus, with its array of bistros and bathhouses. A sunny, top-floor den in a purpose-built brick mansion block called Ampleton Quarters. Suite 1904. Fully furnished and featuring the most up-to-the-tiktok in water closets.

Was he aware that he might be trading on a reputation as the very Lion who had inadvertently advanced the Wizard's plans in the emerald trade, helping to squelch the spontaneous labor revolt? Innocent as he was, it would have been hard for him to discern the ways in which he was receiving undue advantage. His first time in a city-or the first time that he could remember. No other Lions seemed to live in Ampleton Quarters; but then, he tended to hurry to his flat, and avoided the biweekly tenants' meetings because he didn't want to be bullied into serving on any committees.

He kept his mouth closed as much as possible. And comparatively speaking, a Lion cuts a fine figure; the world admires a glossy mane, a sultry-surly growl. One can make an impression without saying much, and Brrr learned that he was not bad-looking, as Lions go.

But being good-looking has its own penalties. The public will not let a comely face walk by anonymously; it must find out who owns it. By the end of his first social season in s.h.i.+z, Brrr had made the grade. He enjoyed the occasional off-night, back-alley shenanigans but he built a more formal life on the strength of his reputation as a hero.

He didn't consider marriage. He didn't have the stomach for it. Instead, he invested his little nest egg in a portfolio of diversified stocks managed by a s.h.i.+z bank called the Gold Standard. In the first few years it swelled agreeably. While the rest of Oz was still suffering the effects of the long drought, and farmsteads in Munchkinland were being repossessed for back taxes, the industrial base of Gillikin allowed waistlines to amplify and chins to double. Brrr grew prosperous, and lived like it. He kept to himself. Cultivating the reputation of a mystery presence about town, he avoided close contact of a genuinely intimate nature, and therefore-he hoped-he might be excused for failing to see the social coercion, the repression on which the s.h.i.+z haut monde was built.

He took in shows. He meandered through galleries. Without much attention to the topic at hand, he attended the occasional public lecture at Three Queens College or Briscoe Hall; it seemed to be something the well-heeled did did in a university town like s.h.i.+z. He never took notes, although sometimes he tried mentally to a.s.sess his compounded interest for the quarter while the lecturer was nattering on. in a university town like s.h.i.+z. He never took notes, although sometimes he tried mentally to a.s.sess his compounded interest for the quarter while the lecturer was nattering on.

Brrr especially enjoyed those presentations on the subject of art history, not least because the lights would go down when the gloriously colored illuminatums were to be cast upon a white plaster wall. In the darkened hall, no one could notice if Brrr was paying attention or not. Thus, freed of anxiety, he found he did appreciate the lectures. And he stayed awake, unlike some.

His earliest love was for ma.n.u.script pages. "A singularly fine example of the monk known to us now only as the Ur-Scribe. This from s.h.i.+z's most antique bound codex," droned the master. "Notice the three-ply wreathing adorning the left margin. Green foil made from the crushed talons of dragons, very rare; and observe the flecks of gold as well: a hint that the artist still possessed Lurlinist tendencies, though the early unionist text posits the Unnamed G.o.d's superior station."

"And the blue on the third strand?" asked a woman of a certain age, decked out in blue furs herself, fluffing a storm cloud around her chin.

"Perhaps a kind of alibi color, to throw those sniffing for heresy off the scent," replied the master. "We can only speculate."

"Perhaps he liked blue," said the aging dilettante. Her eye was bright and, yes, blue. "I certainly do. I find it...stimulating."

"If we might proceed," said the master wearily.

Brrr talked to the woman at the reception hour. "He's so distinguished, our guest scholar," she gushed, "but he thinks me cra.s.s. He won't won't find time in his research schedule to visit my newly decorated salon-oh, it's divine, eighteen panels of bleached pearlwood-and help me decide on what to hang. And where. I'm so cross with him." find time in his research schedule to visit my newly decorated salon-oh, it's divine, eighteen panels of bleached pearlwood-and help me decide on what to hang. And where. I'm so cross with him."

"Have you a fine collection?" asked Brrr.

"I've no eye to decide if it's fine or not," she replied. "Why don't you come have a look, tell me what you think?"

When he said he would, she introduced herself as Miss Piarsody Scallop. She was rather long in the tooth to be a Miss, and he wondered if he might have been invited to her home for reasons other than art appreciation. Nonetheless, he took a risk, and discovered Miss Scallop to be genuinely rich, and genuinely interested in-if paralyzed by-the ambiguities and obscurities of art.

Thus he finally found out that he did possess a native skill, that mysterious commodity known as a good eye. Cousin, perhaps, to perfect pitch, or a sixth sense. He became adroit at buying and selling small prints and sketches and advising ladies of leisure about the works gracing the walls of their salons. He could turn a tidy profit in the bargain, and he did. He lived off his interest and never touched his capital.

One evening, in the magnificent diamond-paned lectorium nestled next to the Deckens College chapel, he heard a t.i.tter in the room and sensed faces turning his way. He blushed without knowing why and waved a little, as if to show he had been paying quite close attention, thank you very much. He did did try to concentrate for the next few minutes, to deduce what had happened. The lecturer, a Madame Morrible from Crage Hall, was treating the audience to the benefit of her impressions of-what was it?-the Animal Adverse laws (or the Animal Courtesy acts if you used the jargon of punditry)-as they pertained to higher education at s.h.i.+z. try to concentrate for the next few minutes, to deduce what had happened. The lecturer, a Madame Morrible from Crage Hall, was treating the audience to the benefit of her impressions of-what was it?-the Animal Adverse laws (or the Animal Courtesy acts if you used the jargon of punditry)-as they pertained to higher education at s.h.i.+z.

"Exceptions are always possible," insisted this Madame Morrible, fluttering one hand to simulate the sparkle-dust of mercy while waving the other hand in the Lion's general direction. "The Animal who serves our beloved Wizard is accorded all the privileges he so richly deserves. The creature called cowardly by some has had the courage to accept the epithet. Another name for cowardice is the courage of no convictions. A true hero can tolerate being called a coward for one's country. No?"

He wasn't quite able to follow the gist of this. He wasn't ashamed. He'd had no education, after all; it was a miracle he could walk into a place like this and hold his head up! He applauded with the rest of them, but he couldn't think of a single remark to make during the Q-and-A period.

He got up to stretch, collect his greatcoat and huge bespoke dove-grey evening gloves. He turned to mumble appreciatively to the lady on his left and he saw that she was moving away quickly as if to avoid having to chat. He turned again, and the gentleman on his right was doing the same.

He looked the room over, in that way one does, pretending to expect to find one's best beloved, or at least a crony, and readying to sigh loudly, a public display of regret, dash-it-all!-and at last it dawned on him that he was the only Animal in the room.

On reflection, walking home, he concluded that this had been the case, in the circles in which he traveled, for some time. He had never noticed.

Still, he didn't yet have the wherewithal to know if he had become a laughingstock. He began to pay attention. Was including Brrr on a guest list a sleight-of-mockery to amuse the disdainful? An Animal in Society-in these days, in these hard times, with the Animal Courtesy acts!-had he become a joke? A beloved old joke? Was treating him like a hero a part of the joke? It might be just so. His allowing it to happen-showing up at dinner parties as the outre guest, dandified and powdered and beribboned-that was his part of the joke, people a.s.sumed. He had no shame. Good for him. He was a token of the Wizard's clemency and understanding.

Perhaps they weren't as cruel as they seemed. He pondered it. The Cowardly Lion? Sure, it sounded like a slur of sorts, but he'd looked on it as almost a kind of stage name, a t.i.tle. He'd a.s.sumed they meant it affectionately. He had been very young when he'd made his name, after all.

Then, at last, and who knows how, the word began to get out that he'd been paid for playing dead all those years ago.

The Traum ma.s.sacre. The journalist in the train's dining car, all those years back, had coined a phrase, the Cowardly Lion. The tag was an insult in remission, ready to metastasize in the public consciousness now that Brrr had established himself as a public figure.

The Lion who wouldn't fight. The pesky Glikkuns who were mowed down. The big old peaceable p.u.s.s.ycat. The dead trolls. The wussums with his wittle Wion's tears.

Ah, but Brrr would have survived the shame of it a little better had he not taken the purse.

He'd been too wet, too inexperienced, too d.a.m.n hungry to think twice about accepting it. In the end, as the stink of a questionable past began to bloom around him, it wasn't as much the cowardice people commented upon, but that Brrr had been paid handsomely.

We all make mistakes. But we're not supposed to profit from them.

What could he do next? The rumors kept doubling the amount of the sum he'd been awarded. If he'd had anything like such an initial investment, he'd be the wealthiest Animal in Oz by now. In gossip, presumed wealth is always overestimated by garish exponentials. That in itself was a burden to him.

He couldn't give the money back to the hard-up burghers of Traum; that would be to acknowledge some sort of wrongdoing, and he'd done nothing wrong except to be young and ignorant.

Besides, he could never afford to give back the amount of money folks now said he'd earned on his first day in human society.

In any case, giving publicly to charity was thought unseemly. He'd only be able to contribute anonymously. And while this might help his soul, it wouldn't salvage his reputation.

He tore his mane out at nights, sleepless and distraught. But he kept accepting invitations, for suddenly to drop out of society might also signal a sense of failure, of guilt. The soirees became ugly but he kept showing up, in part to prove he wasn't scared to show up.

Then one evening, as he stood under the stone portico of the Sir Chuffrey Opera Palace, waiting in a queue of the great and the good for the next available landau, Brrr was approached by a young blueblood. "The Cowardly Lion! You're the Lion from the labs at s.h.i.+z University," he said. "Aren't you? The little orphaned cubling! Doctor Nikidik tried to sever your language stem. I was there. I remember."

"I was never in s.h.i.+z as an infant," he replied, affronted, though as he spoke he realized he couldn't be sure of this. Who remembers their own infancy?

It was a Margreave's son, deep in his cups, slurring his words and making a scene. "Brrr. Is that right? I remember-the doctor named you Brrr because you s.h.i.+vered like a kitten with the flu." Only it came out "s.h.i.+vered like a s.h.i.+tten."

"Nonsense," said Brrr. "This is my first episode in s.h.i.+z. I should remember an earlier visit."

"The cage," prompted the inebriate, "a cunning little cage! I remember because your name was p.r.o.nounced like the first syllable of berserk berserk."

Avaric Tenmeadows, the Margreave's son, it turned out, had attended some cla.s.ses with Elphaba. The dreaded Wicked Witch of the West, as she'd come to be known. On the day in question, she'd witnessed the dustup, swore the Margreave's son. She had!

Heads turned. The Witch was big news just then, because her sister, Nessarose, recently had orchestrated the secession of Munchkinland from Oz. The Thropp family was in dudgeon, both sisters alike. No one yet had taken any measure of their baby brother.

Overnight-as the rickshaws and buckboards and broughams pulled sloppily into the rain-the Lion's reputation was tarnished in another way. Suspicious through a.s.sociation. Complicit. A familiar...

The Witch had rescued the poor little cub from the experiment, said a letter to the editor, signed Anonymous (a pensioner). Anonymous (a pensioner).

No, it was a pair of fey boysies called Crope and Tibbett, said someone in a gossip column. The Witch actually wanted the cub killed so she could drink its baby Animal blood.

No, the Witch had hexed him, that poor little Brrr.

Are you kidding? He'd been hexed at Brrrth. Ha-ha.

I wish I'd been hexed with a trust fund like his.

Within a few weeks, vaudeville comics on the variety stages of Ticknor Circus were mocking Brrr's precision in speech. When he made an attempt to talk street-thuggy, they mocked that even more.

What astonished him-when he had achieved the distance from the events to interpret them without rages-was the extent to which a comic accusation could, by dint of repet.i.tion, begin to be taken as received wisdom. The Witch, after all, was on her way to becoming feared and despised, but she was still only a distant threat. Whereas if the Lion was her familiar-hah! It made the threat of the Witch seem more like a joke.

When the joke faded, the sentiment remained. The bemused tolerance that had attended his myopic insistence on being a civilized Animal in s.h.i.+z began to evaporate. His silvered tray was empty of calling cards; the morning post brought fewer and fewer requests to call, to dine, to take a promenade through the Scholars' Arbor, to attend a charity function at considerable cost. He was stuck with a stock of expensive old mettanite engravings he couldn't s.h.i.+ft, and he owed a bundle on them.

Miss Scallop began to be not at home to him, when, on her receiving afternoons, Brrr came to call.

In the week that no such invitations arrived, and the columnists grew snarkier in their insinuations, Brrr finally saw what others had seen many months, even years, before. Things were not going well for talking Animals in general, and for a talking Animal with a tainted reputation, for having been defended by the Witch, a known enemy of the state-well, if he didn't get out soon, it would be his own fault.

One morning over coffee, a political cartoon showed a dandified Lion mincing along with banknotes stuffed in his beribboned mane. The caption read: Quivery Brrrr.What's up with her?What's she prefer?What makes her purr?No loyal CatShould act like that.The heart of a curIn expensive fur.

The offending newspapers slapped to the floor, the Lion made his plans quietly-there were no friends to share them, after all-and then he disappeared from s.h.i.+z, leaving three months' rent owed on Suite 1904.

He needed to avoid the Emerald City to the south, so he couldn't go there. If anything the Animal Adverse laws were stricter in the capital. Yet, though some free Animals were said to be migrating westward into the Great Kells, the Lion could summon no enthusiasm for the wilderness outback of the Vinkus. He'd become too accustomed to his creature comforts. And he had no interest ever in revisiting the Ozmists or the Bears, or any other denizens of the Great Gillikin Forest. Shame? Been there, done that, as the wags said.

Instead, therefore, he made his way cross-country to the southeast. He wandered about, doing odd jobs and stealing from barns when hunger required it. In the best of times, a Lion can't cause trouble in rural neighborhoods and get away with it for long. And these were not the best of times by a long stretch. So he lived in an unsettled way. He roamed the lower slopes of the Madeleines, hunger in his guts, burrs from hack-thistle in his pelt.

These were years of loping along, fits and starts. He would take a job on a farm-he wasn't above hauling a wagon if it meant dinner-but the farmer was inevitably brutal, or stupid beyond tolerance, or offensive, or a sorry joke of a human being. Brrr didn't think of himself as losing losing his jobs, but leaving them when the moment was ripe. (That moment so often came the moment he was fired.) his jobs, but leaving them when the moment was ripe. (That moment so often came the moment he was fired.) Once he discovered a pride of Lions trying to make a small conclave for themselves in some caves on the eastern slopes of the Madeleines. They had never been to s.h.i.+z, nor to anyplace more thrilling than the nearest market town. Nor had they any memory of abandoning a cub in the Great Gillikin Forest as Brrr had been abandoned. They were not his family, they attested. Far from it. None of their number could commit such a heinous act. Furthermore, they didn't keep up with Lion tribes in other free-range zones.

At least, that was what they said at first. One evening on watch, a distinguished old auntie Lioness allowed that communiques among the outlying prides had once been common. "There were human campaigns to separate prides of Talking Beasts from the rest," she insisted. "The great WOO has never trusted Animals. I heard from a relative in the Great Gillikin Forest that the usual single poachers were being joined by a more systematic cohort of army hunters. They were intent on eliminating the larger Animals who might get wind of the Animal Adverse laws and mount an attack in defense of their citified kin. The Forest is not all that far from s.h.i.+z, as you must know."

"As far as I understood, Animals in the wild have little to do with their domesticated cousins."

"Every pride is different, dear," she answered softly, "as every Animal is."

"Have you ever known a pride that abandons its young?"

"Not willingly. I did hear once of an attempt to cull Lion cubs from their mothers," she continued, more blithely than he could have thought possible. "For use in laboratory experiments, whatever those those are. One queries if said mothers relinquished their cubs in exchange for their own liberty. are. One queries if said mothers relinquished their cubs in exchange for their own liberty. I I never would of course." never would of course."

By now Brrr was cynical enough to look at her sharply. Was she revealing a hidden secret of this pride? Might they all have been lying to him? Could she herself...?

But this pride, to the last one of them, was marked by a dark tuft of fur at every chin, and he had no such marking.

So all she was revealing was the capacity of a Lion even to entertain the thought of such a betrayal, even if by someone else.

He didn't bid the auntie good night, for he didn't think it would be one; and it wasn't.

Still, he learned from this pride of tuft-chinned Lions a certain coherence of att.i.tude. A Lion pride could be a kindly casual crowd. They didn't indulge in aimless ancestor wors.h.i.+p, but unlike the court of Queen Ursaless, they didn't forget each day as it happened, either. They were wary of others and tended to avoid large groups of nomadic Animals, even those they might easily disperse by a show of claw. Not precisely pacifists, but not the fierce Lion of human legend, either.

For quite a while they admired Brrr and treated him like a respected cousin visiting from the glamorous, dangerous city. He amused them with tales of goings-on, quite a few of them true. He settled with them, a raconteur-at-large, a personality that brought their humble forest lives some distinction. He made an effort to court a few young Lionesses (one at a time, of course), but his overtures were rebuffed. He was too foreign, too silver of tongue, for them to take seriously. He thought he could wear them down-wear them all down-by his amused tolerance, his capacity for sticking around. He could make himself indispensable.

But eventually the Lions began to mock his drawing-room parlance, and not in an affectionate manner. He was too gilded a lily for their rustic clan. If he could not mate because none would mate with him, he would be bound sooner or later to fight for tribal dominance, and-oh, the idea of it-they could never allow a dandy such as Brrr to lead their pack. He should think of moving on. Soon.

So once again he would have to get up and leave, before things got ugly.

By the time this thought occurred to him he had been with the pride of Lions some few years, and the departure was more painful to contemplate than he'd imagined.

Evacuating a sordid situation was beginning to become a habit.

During a night plagued by insomnia, he steeled himself to go. The sad dawn came, a soft-yolk sun blearing through vermilion clouds. Like an effect of the later period of the great la Chivarra. And there was a watery softness to the weather. Maybe it would be all right.

How old was he now? He pondered as he stretched the sleep-kinks out. Haven't I earned the right to a decent life? Or could that ever be a right?

He had nothing to pack, no satchel, no clothes. He'd abandoned all his fine rags in Ampleton Quarters, Suite 1904. Naked as a brave Animal, he looked left and right across the clearing one final time. No one was awake but for a shy cub who was nuzzling a makes.h.i.+ft dolly in her mouth.

"I'm off, then," he said to the little thing. She turned her head and closed her eyes as if she hadn't heard.

"Don't be such a little coward," she purred to her fake baby.

- 2 -

WHAT A piece of work he'd become! He acknowledged that. A ludicrous figure padding his way overland, with no particular destination, nor much of a yen to settle on one. piece of work he'd become! He acknowledged that. A ludicrous figure padding his way overland, with no particular destination, nor much of a yen to settle on one.