Part 13 (1/2)

He couldn't tell why they stood back and let her pa.s.s unrestrained. Perhaps they realized she was still spitting mad. Perhaps they saw that Brrr was calming her.

Muhlama led the way. She had a seriously keen sense of smell and followed a track through sweeping cl.u.s.ters of vine until, after a few minutes, she had reached the edge of a pool. Here she laid herself down, reclining her hindquarters fully, her chest torquing into an elegant curve, so her head reared back upon her neck. Nacreous shadow behind her, blue and lavender and mauve. Her eyes lowered. Her ears lowered. ”There is no one trailing us,” she said. ”I would hear them if they were.”

He sat down close. Not too close. Close enough that he could feel the heat from her pelt. Musk of a rare sort; he'd never apprehended such a naked barb of invitation. A scorched-pecan, apricoty, humid sort of appeal.

”You are so royal, you can bring on estrus at will?” A bold thing to say and would have been crude said to anyone but a princess; and indeed he meant it as a compliment.

”I am am talented,” she replied, lifting her tail another parabolic sweep higher, ”but you give me too much credit.” talented,” she replied, lifting her tail another parabolic sweep higher, ”but you give me too much credit.”

They didn't speak for a while, as the evening birds exchanged their bulletins, as the bullfrogs dove into the water out of a surfeit of modesty. A hummingbird, a whipping blossom, came along and perched on Muhlama's ear, until it realized its mistake and fled.

”You can't be so kind to me,” said Brrr after a while. ”It isn't possible. No one ever has. I don't fit in.”

”It's I who don't fit,” she said, ”I with my strong-minded ways, my temper, my appet.i.te to leave the very home that I am tethered to. I look a princess, I know; but I am a slave here, no less than the tree elves, no less than you are. I don't belong.”

She angled her rump, and the movement of her tail changed. It became the pendulum on a metronome, counting the slow moments until she pushed her pelvis higher and threw her head back, nipping at Brrr's throat as he covered her beautiful coat with his own.

When he could think in words-was it then, was it later, he didn't know-it was simply this: Now I fit in.

His reverie was delicious. Eyes closed. He was partly conscious of the floating strings of the world, its selvages rest.i.tching themselves into a prettier apprehension. Some might call it afterglow. For Brrr it was as if a new appet.i.te was just beginning to stir out of his dreamy slumber. But it was interrupted by hissing alarums. He hardly knew what was closing in on him until it was over and done with.

The discovery in flagrante by Ivory Tiger scouts. The forced return to the camp. The accusation of Uyodor, his recitation of Brrr's offenses against the n.o.ble line of the Ghullim camp. Was this an attempt to thwart Uyodor's regime? Was Brrr a stooge of the Wizard of Oz, working his way in here, seducing the daughter of the chieftain of the Ghullim?

”There was no seduction, sir!” Brrr was aghast. He glared at Muhlama, looking for testimony. Muhlama neither concurred with her father nor protested his accusations. She couldn't speak. For anger, for regret? Then he saw what they had seen already. She had begun to bleed. The iron stench of it, a wound too large to hide. A rivulet of orangish blood that wouldn't stop.

It seemed he hadn't quite fit in, but she'd let him try anyway.

With a cold resolve, she hectored him, too. ”Go. Don't you see? Don't you get it? Go, before they have your head on a trophy backboard. You've done quite enough.”

Perhaps because she was still Uyodor's daughter, they let him go. Though Uyodor declared, as Brrr backed away, ”You are no creature of the wilderness, Lion; you do not belong here. Should we come across you again, or should our allies, you are fair game for the predator. A marked beast. You have ten minutes before we enact our promise to seek vengeance.”

So he pelted away, but ever after he wondered why. Was it just to preserve his own life? His life had a tinny cast to it, an artificial quality, hardly worth preserving. Or had he left not so much to save his own skin as to avoid having to see Muhlama's life bleed out of hers?

In any case, he was gone. Not for the first time, nor the last: an ign.o.ble retreat from a fray that had grown too hot for him.

Back into the wild, back into woods, back into exile. And this time he would endure a loneliness made more cutting by the recent experience of consanguinity. Or call it love, if you must.

Exiled, even unto himself, until and unless something came along to redeem him.

What came along some time later-days, or was it weeks?-near where the Wend Fallows petered out into the Corn Basket, was that toothsome morsel known as Dorothy. Another rare and delicate human, a girl this time, improbably making her way along the stretch of Yellow Brick Road that originated in central Munchkinland.

- 4 -

IT WAS an accident of the light, nothing more, that caused the little girl and her pair of noodnik companions to leap in terror at the sight of him. Or had it been too long since his most recent wash-and-set? In any case, he steeled himself for the inevitable interview, and wondered how much of his sorry history he could gloss over. Maybe they had some provisions to share. an accident of the light, nothing more, that caused the little girl and her pair of noodnik companions to leap in terror at the sight of him. Or had it been too long since his most recent wash-and-set? In any case, he steeled himself for the inevitable interview, and wondered how much of his sorry history he could gloss over. Maybe they had some provisions to share.

Dorothy, though, was not riven with wild curiosity. She seemed to take his bowdlerized biography at face value. She asked no probing questions. She just smoothed the edges of her ap.r.o.n and consoled her quivering little pup. ”Oh, Toto, have you ever imagined imagined a Cat so big in your wildest nightmares? I hope you don't lose your lunch.” She nuzzled her face against her dog's in a way that might cause some citizens of Oz to question her sanity. a Cat so big in your wildest nightmares? I hope you don't lose your lunch.” She nuzzled her face against her dog's in a way that might cause some citizens of Oz to question her sanity.

Still, he found to his surprise that he felt some small measure of sympathy for Dorothy. He was no longer inclined to consider human beings warmly, but maybe he was able to make an exception because she was so clearly a foreigner. Brrr imagined she was an orphan like himself, as humans didn't usually leave their young to wander the high road alone. And no half-decent parent of any species would hire a Scarecrow and a Tin Woodman as chaperones and aides-de-guerre. aides-de-guerre.

”Come with us,” said the girl. ”We're headed for the Emerald City.”

Propitious words.

One doesn't know, necessarily, when one meets the trip-action person in one's life. A good teacher, a flirt behind the dry-goods counter, a petty thief wielding a knife. Any one of a thousand chance encounters might be the chance of a lifetime. Or a deathtime. A lost girl in a blue gingham skirt and a white pinafore hardly seemed a likely amba.s.sador to a rosier future: still, stranger things had happened.

He considered joining them. What else did he have scheduled? He couldn't risk running into the Ghullim again. Neither the nabobs of s.h.i.+z, nor the Bears nor the Ozmists, nor the Glikkuns with their dirks, nor any affectionate soldier boys astray in the Great Gillikin Forest.

It seemed there was nothing in the wild for him; it was civilization itself that must be tamed. Perhaps this was his lucky break. It sure was about time.

And who better to serve as his escort back into society but this Dorothy? She possessed a writ of safe pa.s.sage from Lady Glinda, who had met the foreign girl when investigating the sudden death of Nessarose, the most recent Eminent Thropp and governor of Munchkinland. It took Brrr several weeks to pry the whole story out of Dorothy, about the tornado, the plummeting house, the glittering shoes. By then he deduced that Glinda was moving the girl out of harm's way, because Munchkinland was up for grabs now that its governor was dead. Would Nessarose's sister, Elphaba, come back to Colwen Grounds and rule the seceded nation?

Every step away from Munchkinland would be a step away from the Wicked Witch of the West, Brrr figured. Accurately or not, his name had been linked to her before; he wanted no reunion, thank you very much.

And once in the Emerald City-well, there was the famously reclusive Wizard of Oz to meet! The WOO! If Lady Glinda's offices were as well connected as she had attested to Dorothy.

”Oh, do join us. Lady Glinda is so good,” said Dorothy. ”I'm sure the Wizard will honor her request and see us. After I've come all this way-and through that dreadful storm, no less. A thousand miles from any outhouse. I won't tell you what I had to do while aloft; it was revolting.”

Laboriously Brrr figured the dates backward and concluded that the great twister carrying Dorothy to Oz was the same storm that had given Uyodor H'aekeem nightmares and begun the sequence of events leading to Brrr's expulsion from the Ghullim. He spent a few moments over a dark fantasy of revenge against Dorothy. But she hadn't orchestrated that storm into being; she was a victim of fate as much as he was. So he let it go.

”I'll come with you,” he told Dorothy and the others.

At this point-the moment when Brrr stepped into the limelight of history-he was perhaps twenty, though of course as a Lion that meant he was middle-aged. Twenty, and he'd conducted his sordid affairs and peccadilloes only in Gillikin and Munchkinland. But he'd spent his life within earshot of Oz's great capital city, which pulsed with so much power it was almost a nation unto itself-a state on its own. Perhaps what was scandalous elsewhere, in hidebound provincial centers like s.h.i.+z, would seem penny-candy stuff in a capital city. Perhaps the EC was large enough, urbane enough, to consider Brrr's trials and shames not only incidental but unremarkable.

He had little to lose now. If Dorothy's stamp of approval from Lady Glinda proved genuine, he might be traveling with diplomatic immunity. After all, Dorothy had shown him a writ on a scroll, though he couldn't read it well enough to pa.r.s.e its curlicued grandiosity.

The Kiss of Lady Glinda, it was called: a pa.s.sport requiring its bearer safe pa.s.sage to the Emerald City under penalty of prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, et cetera, et cetera. it was called: a pa.s.sport requiring its bearer safe pa.s.sage to the Emerald City under penalty of prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, et cetera, et cetera.

It was signed with a flourish and a little scribble of a heart with a smile inside it, which looked to Brrr like a picture of an extracted tooth delighted to be liberated from some foul mouth.

A good deal of what happened next-the Matter of Dorothy-was a story he didn't choose to dwell upon. How decla.s.se, to arrive with a crippled human decked out with tin prophylactics and with a Scarecrow, sweet enough but clueless as to his own origins-though who wasn't? Brrr liked Dorothy, though. One evening he found himself imagining her as Jemmsy in a dress and pigtails, which seemed too weird, if fun, so he steered his attentions elsewhere.

The Emerald City lifted itself onto the horizon, more pomp and glory than Brrr had imagined possible. Emerald overdrive. Even the loo paper was green, which Brrr considered a sort of design error. But The Kiss of Glinda The Kiss of Glinda worked its magic, as it were. The magnificent and dreadful Wizard of Oz agreed to meet them, though in separate interviews. Brrr's was last, and he was expecting a great Head, like the one that had shown itself to Dorothy, but perhaps the wine had been more toxic than he'd realized, for all he could see was light s.h.i.+ning from the throne. worked its magic, as it were. The magnificent and dreadful Wizard of Oz agreed to meet them, though in separate interviews. Brrr's was last, and he was expecting a great Head, like the one that had shown itself to Dorothy, but perhaps the wine had been more toxic than he'd realized, for all he could see was light s.h.i.+ning from the throne.

Steeling himself, Brrr remembered the Ozmists, and thought: Barter! Barter! He would negotiate for some government sinecure in exchange for having escorted this foreign dignitary to the palace. ”I have a request of you,” he began, ”O great-and-powerful-and-all-knowing Oz.” He would negotiate for some government sinecure in exchange for having escorted this foreign dignitary to the palace. ”I have a request of you,” he began, ”O great-and-powerful-and-all-knowing Oz.”

”Courage,” said the Wizard.

”No, not courage,” said the Lion. ”I mean, well, courage would would be nice. But I was thinking of something more in the line of a job.” be nice. But I was thinking of something more in the line of a job.”

”I will give you what you most need,” said the Wizard, ”if you bring down the Wicked Witch of the West.”

”Bring her down? I had hoped she wouldn't even come up,” murmured Brrr. The Wizard was better at bartering than he was.

Later, Brrr said to his new companions, ”I'm all for engaging in a little cut-and-run action here. Why should we do the Wizard's dirty work? He has his own military presence. The EC is crawling with soldiers.”

Some of those middle-aged military personnel might once have known Jemmsy. But Brrr let that thought pa.s.s.

”Yes,” said Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman. ”And any one of those soldiers could take you into custody for refusing the request of the Wizard.”