SWALLOWS YOU DOWN? That advertisement hides from everyone’s view a private stage you never saw because I never mentioned it. To anyone. When I’m alone I go sneak a look there. I watch for direction every few days. Even if the Clock prefers to show no opinion about what might happen, always before this it has quivered with secrecy. It’s been like a child trying to keep perfectly stil. Can’t be done. No one can play dead dead enough, not even a Clock. Until now. It gave me one more tirade while you were gone, today. Then—it died. It’s mastered the art of being dead. Or comatose.”

“What did the Clock say?” asked Ilianora.

“It said keep away from any grubby underage girlykins who have no business mucking with history.” He tossed his brow toward Rain but couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “And then it colapsed.” The lads were settling down into their usual mound. They always slept apart from management. Rain was lost into a dream of her own.

“Perhaps the Clock needs the Grimmerie to function properly?” suggested Brrr. “Like a kind of yeast, or a key? Maybe now that we have it back…?”

“More often than not, the book has been clear of the Clock, and stil the Clock told me whatever it needed me to know. The Clock and the book are separate systems, though sharing a cousinly interest in influence.”

“Then maybe the Clock doesn’t like having the Grimmerie back,” said Brrr. “Maybe you should hot-potato it back to Lady Glinda’s lap.” He wouldn’t relish being delegated for that mission, not in the current climate.

“Right. And maybe the stars are realy the toenail cuttings of the Unnamed God. Don’t talk about that which you don’t bloody get, Sir Pussykit.” So even history can get tired too, thought Brrr. How many futures has the Clock told in its time? It’s been humping around Oz for what, thirty, forty, fifty years now? And the dwarf slaving in attendance to it except during the periods when the Clock was hidden in some crevice of Oz, and the dwarf could go out and live something of a life? “Wel, if you can’t start it up with a hand crank, maybe it wants to be dead,” said Brrr. “Ever think of that?”

The dwarf only groaned. “The Clock isn’t just a font of prophecy. It’s—a kind of conscience, I think.”

“It won’t be the first conscience ever nodded off. I’m joining it. Good night.”

But the Lion’s rest was pestered by the cals of hootch-owls and the slither of pelican beetles under dried pine needles. He was worried that the dwarf seemed immobilized by the Clock’s paralysis. He was worried they shouldn’t be sleeping here, but should be on the road already, getting away. He could hear marksmen in every scrape and shudder of forest.