“Give me my eyes,” said Yackle. She sounded like a crazy old lady, nothing more, but Brrr knew what she meant, and answered her. Brrr described what he saw.

The castle was painted gloomy and quaint, bats in the window and crossbones on the door: a bit over the top, if Brrr could rely on his own memory. But up came the magician, if that’s who he was, in his tall hat and his unrespectable beard; he delivered air-knocks on the castle wall, and then he laid the book down on the floor before the doors, which anyway were painted shut. Once he’d accomplished this, the magician puppet was yanked into the fly space by the Clock’s impatient gearwork.

“That’s how the Grimmerie came to be at Kiamo Ko,” said Ilianora, almost in a whisper. “I remember my mother telling us about it once. An old peddler or a mystic of some sort left it there, and years later Elphaba found it in the attic.”

The book sat on the floorboards. The rest of the stage set was bare. Nothing happened.

Shadowpuppet chose this moment to comment. “A tiktok entertainment leaves something to be desired in the way of dramaturgy. The plot has gone slow here. Are we to wait here and watch the cobwebs grow, while armies are approaching? If you call this a reliable witness, Sir Brrr, why don’t you just haul the Clock of the Time Dragon back to the Emerald City magistrates? Get it to deliver your deposition for you? If you trust it so much?”

“I’m not sure I’d take advice from you, Shadowpuppet,” snarled Brrr. “Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn’t it?”

“As long as we’re chatting,” said the Cat, “the name is Grimalkin. Malky for short. Shadowpuppet is just so…so you.”

Yackle threw her fists in the air and uncurled her palsied fingers as far as she could. “Enough! Will nobody do as I ask? Dragon, dwarf, lady, Lion, someone: Ask the Clock for the book!”

Brrr was stunned. “Ask where it is now?” he said.

“Don’t you understand? I have seen how my story ends. It’s here. It’s here. In the clock. Bring it out.”

“It was a play-action, it was a fake book,” Brrr reminded Yackle. Was she losing it at last?

“Shhh, old mother,” said Ilianora, stroking the skin pleating on Yackle’s trembling forearms.

Even the dwarf showed some remorse at getting Yackle all wound up for nothing. “I’m afraid they’re right, Mrs. Mysteriousness. We’re out of tricks. Show’s over. Nothing to see here. Move along. Keep to the left. Tell your friends. Blessing of Lurlina on you, and all that rot.”

But the Time Dragon had other ideas. It flexed a forearm and draped an accordion-pleated leather wing across the central display chamber. It lowered its head with a clanking sinuousness both sinister and noble. Its ruby-glass eyes bulged in their leathern sockets. Its gooseneck armature struck forward, pinning Mr. Boss to his ground. From its nostrils issued a smell of scorch that wrinkled their noses. Calamitously thick smoke spilled from the dragon sinuses, clouding the courtyard, watering every eye.