Deciding on a destination always makes the weather improve, or seem to improve. Though the sun remained brutal and the winds weak, and the humidity felt heaped on like a sodden coat, the uncompanionable companions stepped sprightly. The farther they got from Mockbeggar Hal, the better off they’d be. The pines gave way to long gravely stretches, like dried-up streambeds, perhaps evidence of a flow that had once moved from Kelswater into Restwater. The companions camped by day if they could find shade; by night they trod, wordless and lost but not, Brrr thought, in despair. Or not yet, anyway. As soon as the moon sank they stopped and rested too. No matter how hot it was, Rain slept against Brrr as if she were his kit.

Some days later, on the horizon, the first of the great oakhair trees began to lift their frondish heads. Brrr remembered this terrain from last fal. At noontime, they came within sight of the mauntery where Brrr had interviewed Yackle, and she him.

It sat and sulked by itself on its flat, like an armoire set out on a lawn. It looked deserted, but Brrr didn’t propose going nearer to satisfy his curiosity. Neither did anyone else. They kept to one side of the establishment, pushing south, deeper into the oakhair forest.

Ilianora carried the scythe the boys had sometimes wielded and she knocked down what bracken she could. If shadier, the woods were stiler, too. More spiders. Brrr hated spiders, but Rain scurried sideways to peer through each fretted oculus.

“What are you looking for?” he heard Ilianora ask her once.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “The spider world. The world the spider sees. The other world.”

“Little goose.” Ilianora takes such a fond tone when trashing the dreams of the young, Brrr observed. “Little monkey. Little moron. There is no other world. This world is enough.”

“Of course no one asks me my opinion about other worlds,” growled Mr. Boss. “I who actualy have traveled a good deal wider than some.”

“Wel?” Rain rarely addressed the dwarf. “What would you say?”

He glowered at the girl, as if she were responsible for the Clock having suffered its rigor mortis. “Ah, what I could say, were I free to spil the beans.”

“Don’t fil her head with nonsense,” snapped Ilianora. “It’s unkind.”

“What about that Dorothy?” asked Rain. “En’t she from the other world?”

“Who told you anything about her?” asked the dwarf.

“Murthy did. When Lady Glinda was busy twisting her hair with that hot fork.”

“I knew it,” said Brrr, shaking his natural curls.

“Wherever she was from, Dorothy was a stooge of the Wizard,” said Ilianora. “She did his bidding, from what I heard. She kiled Auntie Witch—” She paused. Brrr rarely heard her mention Elphaba Thropp. He knew his wife wel enough to guess that the phrase Auntie Witch, rising to her own lips, had startled her. He swished his tail in his wife’s face to amuse her. She blinked at him in a noncommittal way.