“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 passing 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?”