“I never got to no book yet. Books is stil al secrets.” Disgruntled, the girl slumped in her seat and, forgetting her place, leaned against Glinda. “The mister says that letters are the key, but even when you know the whole family, there’s so many combinations you can make. And they break their word.”

“Yes. Wel. You’l get there.” Against her better judgment she couldn’t help putting her hand on the girl’s hip. “I don’t remember learning to read, but clearly I did, because I can.”

“What does that bit say?” Rain pointed.

“Wel, this is hard, even for me.” She couldn’t serve winter on a bed of water to Cherrystone, however often the Grimmerie recommended it. She closed the book, and it slid back into the casing of its casual disguise.

“Secrets. Pfaaah.” The girl was vexed. “Look at that Oz, what I showed you previous.” She traced her finger against the inlay of the table, along the Z whose termini and angles met the encircling O at four points of the oval:

. “It looks like a person trapped in an egg. Bent back, on her knees. Can’t stand up straight. Can’t get out. Why don’t the O let her out?”

“That’s Oz for you,” said Glinda. “Al about crimping. And I don’t mean piecrust.” Perhaps a lambkin pie with a summer salad of peas and potatoes?

Glinda with Miss Murth, later in the day. “Please take down this message. Eighteenth Highsummer four hours beyond noon. Zackers colon: I need the folowing colon: four little thingies of lamb eight potatoes the yelow jacket kind blue peppercorn four ripe pears peeled two cloves a dish of clover mayonnaise about sixty peas al the same size and a sharp smal knife stop. Oh, and some bickory root. Read that back to me.”

Murth did. “How shal I sign it for you?”

“I realy need these things. Sign it Mum.”

“I’l do no such thing.”

Murth took so long writing out the signature that Glinda knew she was adding a paragraph of specifics she’d cribbed from Cranston’s Encyclopedium of Gentry. The honorary degrees, the citations of merit in the cause of charities from Madame Teastane’s Female Academy to Crage Hal at Shiz. The whole nine yards of it. “Oh, Miss Murth. Are you so jealous as al that?”

“My job is to protect you, Lady Glinda, even if you are losing your mind.”

The kitchen, next day. Zackers served as sous chef and personal bodyguard. Twice he saved Glinda from immolation. His pimples hadn’t improved, but he wasn’t a bad sort. His grandparents had been Munchkinlanders from Far Applerue, he told her, but they’d migrated to Tenniken in Gilikin after the Wicked Witch of the East had risen to be the de facto governor. They had smelt secession in the winds, he told Glinda, and they didn’t like it.