“Perhaps,” she answered. “Or not.”

“You might well have had a childhood yourself,” he said. “Suppose you lived eighty years of some life choked with drama and feeling, and then you had a stroke or some other illness. When you came around, in that basement in Shiz, you were like a child again. The slate wiped clean. It’s been known to happen to the elderly, Animals as well as people.”

“No, no,” she replied. “Even those whose memories are corrupted by illness still have their pasts pocketed somewhere. But I have nothing to remember-no childhood to flee from. Don’t you understand? I think that’s why I can see the future-to the extent that I can. I suppose it’s your principle of compensation. I can’t remember the past, so I can remember the future.”

“All right, then. Prove it to me. Remember for me what is going to happen to me when I get back to the Emerald City with the information they want. Which you’re about to give me.”

He was playing with fire, but what was there left to lose? Not dignity-he couldn’t lose face with this harridan, who couldn’t see his face to begin with-or could see it all too clearly. One or the other.

“You don’t really want to know.”

“Or are you the scam artist that most oracles are? Look, I gave you my shame, which you asked for. Tell me about the Thropps, then. The Thropps.” He tapped his pencil on the notepad. “Or are you losing memory capacity so fast? The bucket leaking while we sit here? Your past draining away?”

“If I only had a past. I have no past.”

He grinned at her, wondering if she could intuit an expression. “And if I don’t get what I’m looking for, I have no future. So begging your pardon, can we hurry it up?”

4

H E WATCHED as she descended into what memories she had. The poor old macaroon. What possible good could come of her in the end? Of any of us, he amended.

Did her memories sting and surprise, as that sudden recollection of a cage had done, coming over him in Traum at the height of the troll massacre? And returning to him now. Always a cage, no?

I REMEMBER MORE than you think.

I can’t always tell what it means, though. Every oracle is a scam artist, even those with talent.

My departure from Shiz. Under cover of night I packed up what little I owned and I spent my last coin on a midnight carriage to the Emerald City.

The journey-it means nothing to your investigation. But I do remember sucking on the edge of my lace shawl, to savor a taste of potato stew I had trailed the garment through. I was at wit’s end. I was spooked by the challenge of the Emerald City, but I desired it, too. I hoped I could glean something from some other old crone at a bingo parlor or a chapel testimonial. Maybe I could hear that someone else had been born old. Then I might learn why I was so blighted.