A Lion Among Men Part 23

- 6 -

YACKLE GROANED and made to sit up; Ilianora on one side and Brrr on the other helped her. She murmured unintelligibly. Then she spit on the floor, something thin and bubbly-liquid lace. and made to sit up; Ilianora on one side and Brrr on the other helped her. She murmured unintelligibly. Then she spit on the floor, something thin and bubbly-liquid lace.

"I thought you were dead," said the Lion.

"More's the pity," she replied, "not yet, but I may have seen my way out at last. I've had a Sighting, and maybe the truest one I ever had. But you have to help me. Get us out of this h.e.l.l-nook."

Brrr glanced at Ilianora and raised an eyebrow. "Lucky you," he said to Yackle. "I've already cleared the doorway."

"It's very quiet here," observed Yackle. She turned to Ilianora. "Where are your friends? They haven't left without you, have they?" She became alarmed and turned back to Brrr. "It depends on them-on the Clock-I have seen it."

"Don't worry; they won't have left without me," Ilianora replied. "Give me your arm, old auntie."

Yackle was irritable with fretfulness. "Are the sisters still in Council, or have they fled in advance of the approaching army? Help me on these steps, will you? I seem to have caught a tremble in my knees."

"We're here, on either side," said Brrr. Yackle reached out her dry twiglike hand and squeezed the muscle of his right forward limb.

"Well, go ahead, you, and stop them if they are trying to flee without me," said Yackle. "I'm not going to miss this omnibus!"

Brrr and Ilianora glanced at each other. Brrr nodded, and s.h.i.+fted his arms so he could support Yackle, supplying both a handhold and a backrest. Ilianora hurried down the steps ahead of them.

Shadowpuppet stuck close to Brrr's side.

"I must rest a moment-a st.i.tch in my side," said Yackle. She leaned her forehead upon the stone wall and closed her sightless eyes.

"Was it upsetting? Your Sighting?"

Yackle said, "You gave it me."

"I beg your pardon."

"You told me. You cued me to that line-'You have to leave the way you came in.' You told me that was for me. And I saw that it was true-it is true for me, and it is true for you as well."

"None of this will hold up in a court of law." But he knew that she would hear the sweet mockery in his voice as encouragement.

"I'll tell you what I saw as it pertains to you. If you want."

"For a lark, for a joke, to pa.s.s the time while armies are converging upon us...sure, what the h.e.l.l."

She reached her hand out, searching for his paw. He took it.

"The hunt for a Lion cub in the Great Gillikin Forest," she told him. "Several decades ago, I'm guessing; I was never good at counting years. Male humans wanted a cub for experimental use in a lab of some sort. I saw a day of floating leaves. You know, the forest in the fall, all red and gold. I saw a circle of men closing in upon a pride of Lions. Most of them scatter, but there is a nursing mother, too tired to run, and her mate stays by her side. A family group. Around them come the men. Beating the bushes, using nets and snares, carrying for defense those hot charred stakes pulled from a portable furnace. Closing in, closing in. That Lion king, that paterfamilias, he is alert, leaping back and forth. The noose is tightening. The Lion family breaks up, hoping to cause confusion, diversion, hoping some might survive. The father and the cub escape before the explosion."

Brrr is calmer than he's ever been in his life. "And the mother?"

"The gelignite is lit. The rocks split and tumble skyward. The mother is crushed when they rain back to earth. She protects the other cub with the arch of her rib cage, though her spine is broken. The men take him away from her breast."

Brrr says, "Umm-the other cub?"

"Yes," says Yackle. "There are two in the litter. The escaped one is already looking like both the parents, with that tuft of dark fur at its chin. Did yours ever come in?"

"No."

"I suspect it was scared out of you."

"I suspect so." His voice was exceedingly calm, almost as if he were still practicing to learn how to talk, with very very concentration.

"You have to leave the way you came in," she finished. "That's not just for me, Brrr. It's for you, too. You arrived in a family, unlike me who arrived on a wing and a prayer. You are not supposed to be so alone."

"I have no family." No Cubbins, no Muhlama, no Piarsody Scallop, no Jemmsy, no allegiance to the yoke of his probation officer. Certainly no family feeling with a pride of tuft-chinned Lions who, it seemed, removed themselves to the Madeleines and saw fit to deny any relations.h.i.+p.

"You have time," she told him. "It's yours to do with what you choose."

"They turned me out," he said. "Again and again. They all did."

"I have to wait for magic," she said. "You don't have to. Don't wait for anyone else. Do it yourself."

The light had moved on over the mauntery. Daylight, with its s.h.i.+fting dusty tremulous clarity, fell lengthwise down the shaft of the broad, foursquare stairwell. Yackle and the Lion and the gla.s.s cat. Elsewhere in the mauntery, a cold silence, patiently waiting for-for what was to come. Whatever it was.

"Come on," she told him.

The stairs finished at a broad terrace that itself debouched through arches into a cloistered courtyard open to the sky. Favoring his shoulder, Brrr's body leaned left, and his eyes trailed heavenward, noting the battalions of clouds that surged east. They were thick and grey enough to make the few blue patches look like water features-lakes, inlets, impossible seas-picked out in landma.s.ses painted the grey of wet papier-mache.

"It is a map of Oz," he said, for a moment forgetting about the blindness of Yackle. But then he turned his attention to the structure in the center of the courtyard. "Sweet Ozma," he growled, "that's a stick of furniture and a half, en't it?"

The Shroud of the Cowardly Lion

- 1 -

BRRR DELIVERED Yackle safely onto the cobblestones of the courtyard. He could feel the quickening of her pulse; it matched his own. He was aware of Ilianora standing to one side, neither demure nor deferential, just a handmaiden to her own life. The sun struck the silvery st.i.tching in her veil. If she was a eunuchess, she was a striking one, coming forward to offer Yackle her arm. Yackle safely onto the cobblestones of the courtyard. He could feel the quickening of her pulse; it matched his own. He was aware of Ilianora standing to one side, neither demure nor deferential, just a handmaiden to her own life. The sun struck the silvery st.i.tching in her veil. If she was a eunuchess, she was a striking one, coming forward to offer Yackle her arm.

"Well, there you are," said the dwarf, poking his head out of a window halfway up. "Never known the gears to stick, ever. But I think I just fixed it. Maybe it was balking until you arrived. What took you?"

"A vision took me," said Yackle in a theatrical voice.

"Visions, schmisions," said the dwarf. "We got the corner on that market, darlin'."

"This is quite an operation you got here," said Brrr.

"The Clock of the Time Dragon, at your service. Well, not at your your service," said the dwarf. He pulled himself out of the window and scrambled down the side. "All this time we've been pulling history out of a hat, and we never crossed your path before?" service," said the dwarf. He pulled himself out of the window and scrambled down the side. "All this time we've been pulling history out of a hat, and we never crossed your path before?"

The thing was ma.s.sive-mounted on a flatbed cart, three times as high as Brrr standing upright. From a distance, he guessed it would resemble a stupa of some sort, an ornately carved portable omphalos, but close up one could see the ticky-tack aspect.

"It's due for a once-over-lightly," admitted the dwarf, as if he could guess the Lion's opinions. "Every little while we replace the fabric, do some touch-up work. But we've been on the road lately."

"Can't tell by me," said Yackle, urging Ilianora forward with little twitchings on her sleeve. The elderly maunt reached out and stroked the folded leather wing of the dragon, whose head and forearms finished the steeple-top scare of it all.

"Don't fondle the merchandise," growled the dwarf.

"You are going to start it up," said Yackle.

"I don't take orders," he replied.

"Do what the lady says," growled Brrr.

"I'm not giving you an order, Mr. Boss," Yackle told the dwarf. "It's a prophecy. You're going to start it up for me before you leave here. If you're anxious to be on your way, and who isn't, I might add, you'll get it up to speed pretty d.a.m.n zippy."

"You may as well," said Ilianora to the dwarf. "She might be right."

"You're the one don't believe in prophecies. What's got a hold of you, Missy Malarkey?" said the dwarf, but affectionately enough. He petted Ilianora's hand a little.

"Come on, Mr. Boss," said one of the boys, "armies on the way and all that. We're getting wanderl.u.s.t."

"Oh, is that what you call it, boy genius? Well, the gear's unstuck, so we'll push off then."

"Wind it up," says Yackle. "I know more than you do, today at least, and it knows more than I do."

The dwarf made a rude gesture he knew blind Yackle couldn't see.

Brrr swelled his chest. "Mr. Boss, I didn't throw out my shoulder and crash down the door so we could linger here exchanging pleasantries. I want to get out before the armies arrive, too. Now, I notice there is a well in the corner of the courtyard that is far too large for me to hide in but would accommodate you nicely, if you're scared of soldiers." Then he did something he'd never done before and, sweet Ozma, hoped he'd never have to do again. He opened his mouth and picked up the dwarf by the largest, densest part of his body-his considerably broad shoulders-and he began to carry him, as a mama cat would her kitten, across the courtyard.

"Oh, all right," growled the dwarf. "Everyone's going nasty on me."

"We're on edge," said Ilianora. As if to authenticate the worry, the boom of cannon was heard in the distance.

A moment later the cannon sounded again, four, five times in sequence, and a hail of roof tiles rained into the courtyard. "Sister Hammer is going to be none too happy," said Yackle, ducking her head. "But have the maunts all fled?"

"Fled, and left us locked up like that? The nerve," said the Lion.

The dwarf climbed a small rack of stairs to the base of the Clock and disappeared inside a low painted door. Above the bartizans of the mauntery, above the Clock, new clouds of gunpowder smoke smudged a darker aspect across the celestial map of Oz. Brrr could smell the stink of saltpeter.

"Oh, for the eyes I once had," said Yackle. "You'll have to tell me what's happening, Sir Brrr."

"I don't read omens," he said, "en't that your job?"

They fell silent. The dwarf could be heard moving about, setting pendulums free from their catches, winding trip-gears, muttering to himself. Stumbling. "Ow. d.a.m.n it." Then he reappeared, breathing a little heavily and brus.h.i.+ng some sawdust off his elbows. "Well, that's that; she's cooking. Let's see what the old gal comes up with this time. I hope it en't a nice little tragic-comedy about the beheading of several boys and the skewering of a Lion by any advancing army or such."

"You don't know?" said Brrr. "You didn't set it up?"

"Of course I don't know," he snapped. "I'm the servant here. When did you ever know a dwarf to be in charge?"

They watched. Slowly the interior clockwork built up its reserves of power. Sounds of ticking and switching emanated from the depths of the cabinetry. There was a moaning, almost as of an orchestra tuning up, adjusting the parameters of its harmonies so as to accord.

Then the dragon began to lift its head. Notch by notch: in the costive silence you could hear the mechanism at work. Underneath the sequined scales a cleverness of hinges and loops was corralling the spine tighter, so the head of the dragon lifted, and the eyes began to burn red; the nostrils of the dragon dilated with a p.o.r.nographic l.a.b.i.al movement, issuing some hiccups of pale purple smoke.

"The dragon is smoking, too," said Brrr to Yackle.

"I can smell that much," she replied.

- 2 -

BRRR THOUGHT the dragon seemed uncertain what revelation to publish, if any. In a balcony to one side, made from half a porcelain teacup, a small puppet with a red mane emerged and mewed. the dragon seemed uncertain what revelation to publish, if any. In a balcony to one side, made from half a porcelain teacup, a small puppet with a red mane emerged and mewed.

"Is that supposed to be me?" said the Lion. As if disappointed in its reception, the puppet disappeared.

"You don't criticize the clock," said the dwarf. "What, you think it responds to notices in the evening papers? To notes from some splenetic director? Let it be." But he sounded confused himself.

"What's it doing?" asked Yackle.

"A marionette in an alcove now," said Brrr. He peered, squinted, to make sure he was getting it right. "With diamonds painted on his face."

"Steady," said Yackle, though whom she was addressing was unclear: maybe the marionette.

"Gone," said Brrr. "This is awfully patchy."

"You're asking a lot of the Clock," said the dwarf. "To make sense to both of you at once-not sure if it can handle the task-"

"Over here," said Brrr, "get this. Another arcade."

A red velvet curtain lifted, and a stage like a rounded dock slid forward on invisible rollers. The marionette with the blue diamonds on his face reappeared. The light strengthened enough so that one could see his fine rural tunic half slipped off his shoulder. His chest, though only a piece of polished poplar, managed to look s.e.xy, the blue diamond tattoos circling around one nipple and then dropping in single file toward his abdomen. "It's a man from the West, a Winkie I believe, in a costume suggesting money..."

But even Brrr's voice caught in his throat, to see the door of a cupboard open and a figure painted green, dressed in the black skirts of a novice maunt, step through.

"It's Elphaba, with the Winkie prince," said Brrr. "Couldn't be anyone else."

"No," said Ilianora. "The Clock wouldn't dare. I don't buy it."

Yackle kept her chin trained straight at the little stage as if she could tell exactly where it was, and what it must be showing. She gripped Ilianora's hand hard. "Steady, steady, steady," said the older woman to the younger.

"He's her lover," said Brrr. "The Witch's lover. Did she have a lover? Or is this propaganda?"