The Wicked Years Complete Collection Read online

  The Wicked Years Complete Collection

  Gregory Maguire

  Contents

  Wicked

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Prologue: On the Yellow Brick Road

  I Munchkinlanders

  The Root of Evil

  The Clock of the Time Dragon

  The Birth of a Witch

  Maladies and Remedies

  The Quadling Glassblower

  Geographies of the Seen and the Unseen

  Child’s Play

  Darkness Abroad

  II Gillikin

  Galinda

  Boq

  The Charmed Circle

  III City of Emeralds

  IV In the Vinkus

  The Voyage Out

  The Jasper Gates of Kiamo Ko

  Uprisings

  V The Murder and Its Afterlife

  Map of the Land of Oz

  Reader’s Group Guide

  E-Book Extras

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for

  Credits

  Son of a Witch

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Epigraph

  Map

  Under the Jackal Moon

  The House of Saint Glinda

  Abroad

  Southstairs

  The Service

  The Emperor Apostle

  One Plus One Equals Both

  The Conference of the Birds

  Kumbricia’s Cradle

  Dragonfings

  Siege

  The Eye of the Witch

  Raising Voices

  No Place Like It

  Acknowledgments

  A Lion Among Men

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Significant Families of Oz

  A Brief Outline of the Throne Ministers of Oz

  Deposition of an Oracle

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  The Nursery in the Forest

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  No Good Old Days to Speak Of

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  A Coward for His Country

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  A Question of Influence

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  The Past Approaches

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  The Shroud of the Cowardly Lion

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  Out of Oz

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Wicked Years: A Note to Readers

  Charting the Wicked Years Chronologically

  Maps: The City of Shiz, Gillikin; The Emerald City

  Significant Families of Oz

  A Brief Outline of the Throne Ministers of Oz

  Prologue: Out of Oz

  I. To Call Winter upon Water

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  II. The Patchwork Conscience of Oz

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  III. The Chancel of the Ladyfish

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  IV. The Judgment of Dorothy

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  V. At St. Prowd’s

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  VI. God’s Great-Niece

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  VII. To Call the Lost Forward

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  VIII. Somewhere

  1

  2

  3

  Acknowledgments

  Coda

  Credits

  Tell Your Friends

  About the Author

  Other Books by Gregory Maguire

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  WICKED

  The Life and Times of

  the Wicked Witch of the West

  A NOVEL

  GREGORY MAGUIRE

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY DOUGLAS SMITH

  Dedication

  This book is for Betty Levin and for all those who

  taught me to love and fear goodness.

  Epigraph

  ‘Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

  —DANIEL DEFOE, A SYSTEM OF MAGICK

  In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

  —LEO NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOI, WAR AND PEACE

  “Well,” said the Head, “I will give you my answer. You have no right to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me in return. In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets. If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must do something for me first. Help me and I will help you.” “What must I do?” asked the girl. “Kill the wicked Witch of the West,” answered Oz.

  —L. FRANK BAUM, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraphs
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  Prologue: On the Yellow Brick Road

  I Munchkinlanders

  The Root of Evil

  The Clock of the Time Dragon

  The Birth of a Witch

  Maladies and Remedies

  The Quadling Glassblower

  Geographies of the Seen and the Unseen

  Child’s Play

  Darkness Abroad

  II Gillikin

  Galinda

  Boq

  The Charmed Circle

  III City of Emeralds

  IV In the Vinkus

  The Voyage Out

  The Jasper Gates of Kiamo Ko

  Uprisings

  V The Murder and Its Afterlife

  Map of the Land of Oz

  Reader’s Group Guide

  E-Book Extras

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for

  Credits

  Prologue

  On the Yellow Brick Road

  A mile above Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind’s forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling away by the turbulent air. White and purple summer thunderheads mounded around her. Below, the Yellow Brick Road looped back on itself, like a relaxed noose. Though winter storms and the crowbars of agitators had torn up the road, still it led, relentlessly, to the Emerald City. The Witch could see the companions trudging along, maneuvering around the buckled sections, skirting trenches, skipping when the way was clear. They seemed oblivious of their fate. But it was not up to the Witch to enlighten them.

  She used the broom as a sort of balustrade, stepping down from the sky like one of her flying monkeys. She finished up on the topmost bough of a black willow tree. Beneath, hidden by the fronds, her prey had paused to take their rest. The Witch tucked her broom under her arm. Crablike and quiet, she scuttled down a little at a time, until she was a mere twenty feet above them. Wind moved the dangling tendrils of the tree. The Witch stared and listened.

  There were four of them. She could see a huge Cat of some sort—a Lion, was it?—and a shiny woodman. The Tin Woodman was picking nits out of the Lion’s mane, and the Lion was muttering and squirming from the aggravation. An animated Scarecrow lolled nearby, blowing dandelion heads into the wind. The girl was out of sight behind shifting curtains of the willow.

  “Of course, to hear them tell it, it is the surviving sister who is the crazy one,” said the Lion. “What a Witch. Psychologically warped; possessed by demons. Insane. Not a pretty picture.”

  “She was castrated at birth,” replied the Tin Woodman calmly. “She was born hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male.”

  “Oh you, you see castration everywhere you look,” said the Lion.

  “I’m only repeating what folks say,” said the Tin Woodman.

  “Everyone is entitled to an opinion,” said the Lion airily. “She was deprived of a mother’s love, is how I’ve heard it. She was an abused child. She was addicted to medicine for her skin condition.”

  “She has been unlucky in love,” said the Tin Woodman, “like the rest of us.” The Tin Woodman paused and placed his hand on the center of his chest, as if in grief.

  “She’s a woman who prefers the company of other women,” said the Scarecrow, sitting up.

  “She’s the spurned lover of a married man.”

  “She is a married man.”

  The Witch was so stunned that she nearly lost her grip on the branch. The last thing she ever cared for was gossip. Yet she had been out of touch for so long that she was astonished at the vigorous opinions of these random nobodies.

  “She’s a despot. A dangerous tyrant,” said the Lion with conviction.

  The Tin Woodman pulled harder than was necessary on a lock of mane. “Everything’s dangerous to you, you craven thing. I hear she’s a champion of home rule for the so-called Winkies.”

  “Whoever she is, she must surely be grieving the death of her sister,” said the child, in a somber voice too rich, too sincere for one so young. The Witch’s skin crawled.

  “Don’t go feeling sympathetic now. I certainly can’t.” The Tin Woodman sniffed, a bit cynically.

  “But Dorothy’s right,” said the Scarecrow. “No one is exempt from grief.”

  The Witch was deeply irked by their patronizing speculations. She moved around the trunk of the tree, stretching to catch a glimpse of the child. The wind was picking up, and the Scarecrow shivered. While the Tin Woodman continued fussing over the Lion’s tresses, he leaned against the Lion, who held him tenderly. “Storm on the horizon,” said the Scarecrow.

  Miles off, thunder echoed. “There—is—a—Witch on the horizon,” said the Tin Woodman, tickling the Lion. The Lion got spooked and rolled on top of the Scarecrow, whimpering, and the Tin Woodman collapsed on top of them both.

  “Good friends, should we be wary of that storm?” said the girl.

  The rising winds moved the curtain of greenery at last, and the Witch caught sight of the girl. She was sitting with her feet tucked underneath her and her arms wrapped around her knees. She was not a dainty thing but a good-size farm girl, dressed in blue-and-white checks and a pinafore. In her lap, a vile little dog cowered and whined.

  “The storm makes you skittish. It’s natural after what you’ve been through,” said the Tin Woodman. “Relax.”

  The Witch’s fingers dug into the bark of the tree. She still could not see the girl’s face, just her strong forearms and the crown of her head where her dark hair was pulled back into pigtails. Was she to be taken seriously, or was she merely a blow-away dandelion seed, caught on the wrong side of the wind? If she could see the girl’s face, the Witch felt she might know.

  But as the Witch craned outward from the trunk, the girl at the same time twisted her face, turning away. “That storm is coming closer, and in a hurry.” The feeling in her voice rose as the wind rose. She had a throaty vehemence, like someone arguing through the threat of impending tears. “I know storms, I know how they come upon you!”

  “We’re safer here,” said the Tin Woodman.

  “Certainly we are not,” answered the girl, “because this tree is the highest point around, and if lightning is to strike, it will strike here.” She clutched her dog. “Didn’t we see a shed farther up the road? Come, come; Scarecrow, if there’s lightning, you’ll burn the fastest! Come on!”

  She was up and running in an ungainly way, and her companions followed in a mounting panic. As the first hard drops of rain fell, the Witch caught sight, not of the girl’s face, but of the shoes. Her sister’s shoes. They sparkled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood, and thorny stars.

  If she had seen the shoes first, the Witch would never have been able to listen to the girl or her friends. But the girl’s legs had been tucked beneath her skirt. Now the Witch was reminded of her need. The shoes should be hers!—hadn’t she endured enough, hadn’t she earned them? The Witch would fall on the girl from the sky, and wrestle those shoes off her impertinent feet, if only she could.

  But the storm from which the companions raced, farther and faster along the Yellow Brick Road, troubled the Witch more than it did the girl who had gone through rain and the Scarecrow whom lightning could burn. The Witch could not venture out in such a vicious, insinuating wetness. Instead, she had to tuck herself between some exposed roots of the black willow tree, where no water could endanger her, and wait for the storm to pass.

  She would emerge. She always had before. The punishing political climate of Oz had beat her down, dried her up, tossed her away—like a seedling she had drifted, apparently too desiccated ever to take root. But surely the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a twisted life, hadn’t it also made her capable?

  No matter that the companions had hurried away. The Witch could wait. They would meet again.

  The Root of Evil

  From the crumpled bed the wife said, “I think today’s the day. Look how low I’ve gone.”


  “Today? That would be like you, perverse and inconvenient,” said her husband, teasing her, standing at the doorway and looking outward, over the lake, the fields, the forested slopes beyond. He could just make out the chimneys of Rush Margins, breakfast fires smoking. “The worst possible moment for my ministry. Naturally.”

  The wife yawned. “There’s not a lot of choice involved. From what I hear. Your body gets this big and it takes over—if you can’t accommodate it, sweetheart, you just get out of its way. It’s on a track of its own and nothing stops it now.” She pushed herself up, trying to see over the rise of her belly. “I feel like a hostage to myself. Or to the baby.”

  “Exert some self-control.” He came to her side and helped her sit up. “Think of it as a spiritual exercise. Custody of the senses. Bodily as well as ethical continence.”

  “Self-control?” She laughed, inching toward the edge of the bed. “I have no self left. I’m only a host for the parasite. Where’s my self, anyway? Where’d I leave that tired old thing?”

  “Think of me.” His tone had changed; he meant this.

  “Frex”—she headed him off—“when the volcano’s ready there’s no priest in the world can pray it quiet.”

  “What will my fellow ministers think?”

  “They’ll get together and say, ‘Brother Frexspar, did you allow your wife to deliver your first child when you had a community problem to solve? How inconsiderate of you; it shows a lack of authority. You’re fired from the position.’” She was ribbing him now, for there was no one to fire him. The nearest bishop was too distant to pay attention to the particulars of a unionist cleric in the hinterland.