A Lion Among Men Part 26

"Have you other work you must finish?"

There were so many campaigns he had left midway, out of shame and confusion. One couldn't fix much in one's messy past, of course. Perhaps none of it at all. He couldn't st.i.tch up history so that Muhlama returned to him. He couldn't go back and pull the trap off Jemmsy's leg. He couldn't apologize to Dorothy for his failing to warn her against the wickedness of the Wizard of Oz.

"It's hard to know what to do," he admitted. "I look at that great book of magic, and all the mechanisms set up to guard it from eyes that would steal its secrets. So much fate seems wound up around it, including whole lives-yours, Yackle's, maybe Elphaba's, maybe mine. With so much written in magic, how can we hope to become agents culpable for our own lives?"

Ilianora laughed. It was the first time she had laughed in years, guessed Brrr, for even she looked surprised to hear the sound coming out of her mouth.

"You and I think alike," she said. "How improbable. But I don't put much faith in a magic book. For everything that is revealed, more is concealed. What good is that Grimmerie going to do us? A magic book can ingest a troublesome old crone: so what? An army can't disappear into a book of magic."

"Fair enough," he admitted. "Can it bring a single dead soldier back to life?"

Ilianora was busy unlatching a satchel slung over her shoulder. She reached inside and withdrew a small notebook. "Look," she said, opening it up, fanning its blank pages in his direction. "This is a book, too, and precious little is written in it. It's just as accurate as the Grimmerie, and maybe more so. Don't be chagrined by its blankness. Be liberated instead. Go on, it's yours. I have never written a word in it worth saving, so what I give you isn't magic or the benefit of my thinking, but my belief in the blankness of our futures. Charms only go so far. Here, take it. Whether you write your own story in it or not, that's your affair."

He took it from her, mostly because she seemed eager to release it to him.

"A blank book for a court reporter to take depositions in?" Was he teasing her, just a little? He was.

"Take your own deposition," she said.

He looked sideways at her. Her veil came down farther over her forehead, hiding even the tendrils of hair that had been blowing across her forehead, but her chin was up. Her eyes were dry and true.

"You go on ahead, then," said the Lion. "We'll find a future uncharted by any tiktok charm. We'll make our luck as we go along. When I get back."

"Why?" asked Ilianora. "What are you doing now? Where are you going?"

He wasn't sure even what his answer would be; he waited to hear the words from his own mouth.

"The cottage there." They were pa.s.sing a small stone hut with a roof of oakhair thatch. A kitchen fire was still burning in the chimney, and beyond, in the light, a field of wheat rustled like gold on water. "One of the maunts mentioned that an elderly couple lives there, and their sons have gone off to war. The rain will come soon, and the wind, and an army will trample this field by tomorrow. I have learned enough about prophecy to say that for sure: Its future is drenched in blood. Let me harvest wheat before the catastrophe. I've done some agricultural work in my time. I can bring in that crop for them. Better they should have something to sell to the mill when the battle is history and their sons are dead. Better that wheat should go for bread. No? No?"

"Go, then," said Ilianora. "If you must. Someone might as well chase the schoolchildren away from the lightning-wreathed hill." She didn't look at him, but drew her veil tighter, and covered her mouth with it. Was she covering a smile-did she believe he was lying, out to betray the company of the Clock?-or did she think him a hero, for having so far-fetched a notion of charity?

Brrr bounded forward and pulled from the back of the Clock of the Time Dragon the shroud that Yackle had left behind. She wouldn't need it now. He dressed himself in it. Not a white flag of surrender but an advertis.e.m.e.nt of his neutrality. A plea to let him pa.s.s.

"Go," she repeated. "Bread for the aged and the desolate. It's as good a job as tending the book. Maybe a better one."

"We'll look for Liir," he said. "When I come back."

"We'll look for Liir." She was trying the idea on for size: the idea that someone might be left to her, after all her losses. Her color was high, making her own veils look like the glazed white paper in which s.h.i.+z merchants wrapped freshly cut flowers. Which made her a kind of bouquet. "You and I together? You'll catch up to me?"

"I'll catch up to you."

"Is that a promise?" But she wouldn't have heard an answer even if he had given one. The dwarf was braying out that the boys should push, push, put their backs into it. The dragon's sallowwood limbs were creaking and its leather wings fell to flapping in the commotion, like a bellows swung about in a circle. A mile or two off, the music of war went tintinnabulary. Clarion horns of the hunt sounding, thunder of horse hoofs on stony ground, shatter of artillery, the clamorous ringing of swords.

Louder than any of that: men roaring like beasts.

The Lion turned into the wind, on the run once more. Neither an envoy of the EC, just now, nor a foot soldier of the underground opposition. Not even a neutral protector of oracular justice and magic hopes. He was a free agent, a rogue Lion, just as he'd started out in the Forest. A rogue Lion with the beginning of an education.

He headed for the sag-roofed, slipshod cottage. He had so little time. He would frighten the old couple there with an offer of help. It was neither the least nor the best he could ever do. It was simply an action that didn't follow obviously from all his earlier campaigns. It was an exercise in refusing to barter. It was an exercise in refusing to play dead. And that was the only way he could imagine how to vex history.

A plodder, he watched his feet on the ground. Had he turned to look up, to review the map of Oz in the clouds, he'd have seen the first stain of battle smoke rising against the white. Lightning was waiting in the heavens, of course. Sooner or later, the lightning comes to us all. In the meantime, for a moment, the clouds had rearranged themselves, and he might have said that they looked like a flying creature, a shadow angel, all light and impermanence. But the clouds suggested this only to themselves, while he kept his head down, bent to his task.

Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart Could have recovered greenness?

-George Herbert, "The Collar"

Acknowledgments.

I'd like to thank a coterie of early readers for giving such useful comments. Mistakes that remain are mine. The readers include David Groff, Betty Levin, Andy Newman, and William Reiss of John Hawkins and a.s.sociates; and at William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, Ca.s.sie Jones and Johnathan Wilber.

Douglas Smith's devotion to the exercise of ill.u.s.trating the Wicked Years is an inspiration to me to continue writing the books just to see what he'll come up with.

FOUR YEARS AGO, to prepare for writing Son of a Witch, Son of a Witch, I reread I reread Wicked Wicked for the first time in quite a while. I was startled to see something I'd never noticed before: a little plot device I had worked up to explain the mysterious presence in Elphaba's life of the dwarf (in for the first time in quite a while. I was startled to see something I'd never noticed before: a little plot device I had worked up to explain the mysterious presence in Elphaba's life of the dwarf (in A Lion Among Men A Lion Among Men called Mr. Boss). I saw that his employment and employer bore similarity to aspects of Susan Cooper's novel for children called called Mr. Boss). I saw that his employment and employer bore similarity to aspects of Susan Cooper's novel for children called The Dark Is Rising, The Dark Is Rising, which I'd read some fifteen years before writing which I'd read some fifteen years before writing Wicked Wicked. While I have had fun in the Wicked Years slipping sidelong references to books by L. Frank Baum and other inspiring fantasists, and to the famous MGM film of 1939, I didn't intend my homages to descend into appropriation.

At once I wrote to Susan Cooper-a long-standing friend and colleague-and I apologized for the accidental theft. She answered with her usual clarity and courtesy, citing a remark by J. R. R. Tolkien (who had once been her teacher at Oxford) that reminds us of the differences, in ancient storytelling, between invention, diffusion, and inheritance: "Speaking of the history of stories and especially of fairy-stories we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty." Had she been possessed by a litigious mood, she might have gone on to quote: "There are many things in the Cauldron, but the Cooks do not dip in the ladle quite blindly. Their selection is important."

About the Author.

GREGORY M MAGUIRE is the bestselling author of is the bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, Mirror Mirror, and the Wicked Years series, which includes and the Wicked Years series, which includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, Wicked, Son of a Witch, and and A Lion Among Men. Wicked, A Lion Among Men. Wicked, now a beloved cla.s.sic, is the basis for the Tony Awardwinning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts. now a beloved cla.s.sic, is the basis for the Tony Awardwinning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts.

www.gregorymaguire.com Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Gregory Maguire

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

Lost

Mirror Mirror

Other books in the Wicked Years

Wicked

Son of a Witch