“He was on his way to a Conference,” said Mother Yackle.

“Enough,” said the Superior Maunt. “Enough of this. Sister Cook, who is this novice?

Where did she come from?”

Sister Cook was grinding her teeth in annoyance at the missed opportunity. “Candle,” she muttered. “Left here by a gypsy cousin for safekeeping, said he’d be back in a year.

Either she’d be mauntified by then or he’d reclaim her, but I said I’d take her on. She causes no trouble because she can’t gossip with the other girls, and she knows how to make a mean marrow gravy. I’ve had her working with Sister Sauce on the feast day roast.”

“Can you spare her?”

“Can I spare a Red Pfenix is a better question, and the answer to that one isno .”

“We don’t eat Animals,” said the Superior Maunt. “I know times have changed, but it’s in our charter. We don’t eat anything that can talk back to us, Sister Cook, and if I find you have been butchering behind my back…”

“I can hardly spare her,” said Sister Cook, looking at the musician. “But if you make her take that unnerving domingon with her, I’ll call it even.”

“Domingon, is that what it is. I’d read of them, but never seen one. Come, my daughter, domingon and all.” The Superior Maunt gestured, with as tender a smile as her crabbed old mouth could assume. The girl rose. She took the Superior Maunt’s hand in an easy, unaffected way—the other girls snickered. Yes, she must be simple.

“I had come looking to ask you what you remembered of a novice we once housed—the strange green girl, Elphaba.”

“Before my time,” snapped Sister Cook, and left.

Mother Yackle scratched her nose and yawned.

The Red Pfenix was still screaming in the sky. He circled the towers of the mauntery, safe now, and recovering the ability to be affronted. He was like a clot of blood swimming above the infirmary.

“Did you say there’s a boy in the house?” asked Mother Yackle. She let her shawl slip back, and raised her bleary, milk-clotted eyes toward the Superior Maunt. “Did he bring back the broom?”

7

THESUPERIORMAUNTwas going to need a long rest after lunch, she knew: all these stairs. A certain penance regarding the joints. But she exerted herself, and Candle lent a willing arm without being asked, which was a good sign that the girl wasn’t hopelessly slow.

The sun was high enough overhead by now that the room had grown warmer and begun to sink into noon shadow. The young man lay as he had lain, twitchless, blanketed with an unnatural calm. Sister Apothecaire and Sister Doctor had brought their small chores close, so they could be nearby while they worked—Sister Apothecaire, the grinding of herbs in a mortar, and Sister Doctor the annotating of symptoms in a ledger. Sister Doctor sat on one side of the bed, Sister Apothecaire on the other.

“You know this novice?” said the Superior Maunt.