“Dear Traper?” Miss Murth’s outrage was controled and magnificent.

“—that you join me for a meal in the knot garden. Stop. The prettibels are perfection and the roses aren’t too shabby either. Stop. I’l cook. Underline the I’ll twice. Tomorrow night at eight question mark?

Are you keeping up, Murthy?”

“Shal I sign it, Love and kissies, your little Glinda?”

“Don’t be absurd. I’l sign it myself.”

“I’ve already signed it.”

Glinda snatched the paper and read Cordially, Lady Glinda, Arduenna of the Uplands.

“Exactly how I would have signed it. You have perfected my signature after al this time.”

“I aim to serve,” said Murth, aiming herself out the door.

“Miss Murth,” said Glinda.

Murth turned.

“Would you kindly try not to be so cheerless. It’s unsociable and it taxes the nerves. I do know what I’m about. I’m not the idiot you take me for.” Miss Murth attempted a kind of curtsey that had gone out of fashion four decades earlier. Her knees clacked like ivory dominoes dropped on a plate.

Glinda in the kitchen. “Zackers.”

“Mum.”

She gave up on insisting on Lady Glinda. “In the absence of Ig Baernaeraenaesis, otherwise known as Chef, I’m attempting to put together a little meal. Do you know where the cookery books are kept?” Zackers found a shelf under a window seat. Some parish committee’s colection: Munchkinlander Aunties Share Secrets of the Sauce. And Glinda liked this one, printed in large type with drol and useful drawings: Avoid Prosecution for Poisoning: Cooking by the Book. Particularly wel thumbed was Widow Chumish’s famous volume, Food You Can Actually Stomach. She grabbed al three and told Zackers she would send down a list of ingredients.

She was almost excited. The dishes, the pans, the wooden spoons! The heat of the stove would rosy up her cheeks and curl her hair. She hoped it wouldn’t also steam off the highlights. She had found more than one frizzle of grey nestled among the gold and wrenched it out, but now it was either dye the traitorous locks or resign herself to mid-age baldness.

Glinda with Rain. The Grimmerie lay on the games table, sweetly dul in its disguise. Glinda sat before it, and Rain stood at her side.

“Your interest in reading seems to inspire this book’s playfulness,” said Glinda. “I wonder if you could open this book to any page?” The girl didn’t understand. Lurline, but she was a slow train to Traum!

“Now watch me.” Glinda banged open the cover. The merciless slabs of dense print on every page looked like torture. No pictures, no diagrams, very little white space on which to rest the eye and let the mind wander. Glinda riffled the pages to make the book’s point, whatever it was. “Now you do it.” She closed the book and pushed it toward Rain.

The girl paused, then opened the volume. It transformed under her hands, becoming the Grimmerie, proffering the page with the spel: To Call Winter upon Water.