Free Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 by Son of a Witch

cypress trees. Some were splintered in half, pulled down for such tinder as they might provide. Many open spaces, around fountains memorializing successful military campaigns, were filled in with makeshift homes, some cardboard, or oilcloth stretched over chicken wire. Cooking pots stank of dinner. The broken spout from a fountain still trickled a little: a common toilet. “Ugh,” said Dorothy. “My earlier visit didn’t take me through this neighborhood.”
    “You had civic guides,” guessed Liir. She nodded.
    The people of the boulevards ducked behind the shawls tacked up as curtain-doors, or hid their faces in sheets of old newsprint when the travelers passed. “You’d think we were leprous,” said Liir.
    “Perhaps we’re too clean,” said Dorothy. “We shame them.”
    Liir didn’t think Dorothy was as clean as all that, but her eyes were bright and her step sure, and perhaps that counted more than cleanliness. “Maybe they’re used to police action against them, and they just don’t know which side we represent,” said Liir.
    “Oh, really,” said the Tin Woodman. “Look at us: a man of straw, a man of tin, a Lion with a bow in his hair like a lapdog! A girl, a boy, a surly little dog. How could we possibly be authorities? We’re too—”
    “Unique?” asked Dorothy.
    “Lacking in camouflage?” asked the Lion.
    “Fabulous?” proposed the Tin Woodman.
    “Ridiculous?” asked Liir.
    “All of the above,” decided the Scarecrow. But the indigent seemed not to be convinced and avoided the peculiar travelers.
     
    W HEN THEY REACHED the great piazza before the Palace of the Wizard, Liir wanted to hang back. The Witch had despised the ruler of Oz; how could Liir show his face? “Don’t be a sissy,” said the Lion, “I’ve got that covered for us all.”
    “It’s not fear,” said Liir, though it was, in part. It was also anger, he realized. How capable, how flexible anger was: he could feel it for the Witch, who had gone and died on him, and for the Wizard, the orchestrator of her murder, both at once. Then why, for Dorothy, did Liir feel nothing but an increasing exhaustion? Perhaps he harbored a zesty secret anger toward her, too, but if so it kept itself in disguise. If Liir lashed out at Dorothy—well, what would he have left in the world? Who? Pretty nearly nothing. Just about nothing at all.
    “Well, we can’t wait while you dither,” said Dorothy. “You’d be a fool to pass up this chance. The Wizard can give you your heart’s desire, after all. He’s good at that.”
    He remembered a conversation with Elphaba, suddenly.
    What do you want, Liir, if the Wizard could give you anything?
    A father.
    “He’s like Santa Claus.” Dorothy’s eyes were button bright with apostolic zeal.
    “Don’t know what you mean.”
    “ Santa Claus? Jolly old elf! Magic as anything. At Christmas every year he comes to your home and leaves you treats, if you’re good. Or if you’re not, coal in your stocking. We don’t always have extra coal in Kansas so once he filled my stocking full of manure. I cried like the dickens but Uncle Henry said it was punishment for me singing too brightly in the hog pen. I was scaring the pigs shitless, he said, and here was the proof.”
    “The Wizard of Oz puts manure in your socks?”
    “No! Listen and stop being an idiot. I just mean the Wizard is like Santa Claus: he’s a charitable sort. Come and get what you need. What’s to stop you? What do you have better to do?”
    He wobbled. If the Wizard was handing out rewards, why shouldn’t Liir deserve one? He was an orphan now. He didn’t need to say who he was, did he?—or where he came from?
    “He owes you lots.” Dorothy was solemn with assurance. “Without your help, we wouldn’t have gotten back alive. The creepy Yunamuffins hiding on the trail, that repulsive Elephant monster, queen of the Scrow-folk. I had jeebies crawling all over my heebies.”
    “Maybe I will,” said Liir.
    What do you