“Yes. Well, they’ll seem less adorable if they conquer their aversion to scraping the faces of their visitors. After all, when you were a child you were an adorable heathen, too, but you got over it.”

“I don’t appreciate your wit, Sister Doctor.”

It began to seem for a short while as if the maunts might disobey the instructions of their superior and split up. However, the Princess Nastoya requested a final interview with them, and she felt well enough to sit up on her pallet.

“Have you taken the full measure of my ailment?” she said, through Shem Ottokos. “To avoid the pogroms of the Wizard against the Animals, I went deeply underground many years ago, accepting a witch’s charm as a way to hide myself. I am an Elephant, and want to go to my death as an Elephant, but I am cursed to remain in this human body. I used to be able to change for a brief time, but infirmity and age have eroded those talents, and now I am trapped. I fear the Elephant within me has been dying for some time, and may be in part dead already; but I would join it, if I could only have help. Ten years ago I asked the Witch’s boy for help, but he disappeared. Now through your exotic skills you have helped me rally, and so I must press this request. Please return to your hive and collect the boy, the man, Liir. Bring him here or send him here; get him here safely. He may not be able to help me, but even the most blessed of witchcraft has gone underground in these trying times, and he is the only one I know who might be able to help.”

“Do you really think he is Elphaba’s son?” asked Sister Doctor.

“He had her cape, he had her broom,” said Princess Nastoya. “Maybe he wasn’t her son, but he cared about her life, and he may have learned something anyway. What other course can I take?”

“We’ve never even seen him awake,” admitted Sister Apothecaire. “It would be hard to promise we could persuade him when we don’t know what he’s really like. Yet.”

“In return for his help, I’d promised him something in exchange.” She began to wheeze a bit, and Ottokos collected her phrases haltingly. “I want—to tell him what I’ve heard—

about—the word on the street in the Emerald City.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fascinated,” said Sister Doctor. “If he ever wakes up.”

“The threat to Animals during the Wizard’s reign crowded me—humanward—and I have been safer than many. Now, as our violently holy Emperor demands all our souls, I want to go to my death as an Animal: proud, isolate, unconsecrated. Find him for me.