“Going to sleep, when I can,” she said. “So you’re the dwarf, and this is the thing Avaric talked about.”
“The Clock of the Time Dragon,” he said, “open for business tomorrow night, and not until.”
“I’ll be dead and gone by tomorrow night,” she said.
“No you won’t,” he answered.
“Well, gone anyway.” She looked at it and straightened up, then something came back to her. “I wonder how you knew Yackle,” she said.
“Oh, Yackle,” he said. “Who doesn’t know Yackle? Not such a surprise.”
“Was she killed today?” said the Witch. “By any chance?”
“No chance,” he answered.
“Who are you?” She was afraid, suddenly, after all this headiness of sorrow and violence.
“Oh, the least significant little one,” he said.
“Who do you work for?”
“Who haven’t I worked for?” said the dwarf. “The devil is a very big angel, but a very little man. But I have no name in this world, so don’t bother with me.”
“I’m drunk and disorderly,” she said, “and I cannot take any more riddles. I killed someone today, I can kill you too.”
“You didn’t kill her, she was already dead,” said the dwarf calmly. “And you can’t kill me, for I’m immortal. But you try very hard at life, and so I will tell you this. I am the guardian of the book, and I was brought to this dreaded, forsaken land to watch over the book’s history, to keep it from getting back to where it comes from. I am not good, I am not bad; but I am locked here, condemned to a deathless life to guard the book. I don’t care what happens to you or anyone else, but I protect the book: that is my charge.”
“The book?” She was struggling to understand; she felt drunker the more she heard.
“What you call the Grimmerie. It has other names—no matter.”
“Then why don’t you take it, why don’t you have it?”
“I don’t work like that. I am the silent partner. I work through events, I live on the sidelines, I dabble in causes and effects, I watch how the misbegotten creatures of this world live their lives. I interfere only to keep the book safe. To some extent I can see what’s coming, and to that extent I meddle in the affairs of men and beasts.” He jigged like a little fiend. “You see me here, you see me there. Having second sight is a great advantage in the security business.”
“You work with Yackle.”
“We sometimes have the same intentions, and we sometimes do not. Her interest seems to be different from mine.”
“Who is she? What is her interest? Why do you hover at the edges of my life?”
“In the world I come from, there are guardian angels,” said the dwarf, “but so far as I can work it out, she is an opposite number, and her concern is you.”
“Why do I deserve such a fiend? Why is my life so plagued? Who positioned her to influence my life?”
“There are things I don’t know, and things I do,” said the dwarf. “Who Yackle answers to, if anyone, if anything, is beyond my realm of knowledge or interest. But why you? You must know this. For you”—the dwarf spoke in a bright, offhand tone—“are neither this nor that—or shall I say both this and that? Both of Oz and of the other world. Your old Frex always was wrong; you were never a punishment for his crimes. You are a half-breed, you are a new breed, you are a grafted limb, you are a dangerous anomaly. Always you were drawn to the composite creatures, the broken and reassembled, for that is what you are. Can you be so dull that you have not figured this out?”
“Show me something,” she said. “I do not know what you mean. Show me something the world hasn’t shown me yet.”
“For you, a pleasure.” He disappeared, and there was the sound of mechanical parts being wound up, moving against one another, the grind of lubricated gears, the slap of leather belts, the chuck-chuck of pendulums swinging. “A private audience with the Time Dragon itself.”
At the top, a beast prowled, flexing its wings in a dance of gestures, both bidding welcome and holding at bay. The Witch stared.
A small area halfway up was illuminated. “A three-act play,” came the voice of the dwarf, from deep within. “Act One: The Birth of Holiness.”
Later she could not have said how she knew what it was, but what she saw, in an abbreviated pantomime, was the life of Saint Aelphaba. The good woman, the mystic and recluse, who disappeared to pray behind a waterfall. The Witch flinched to see the saint walk straight through the waterfall (a guttering spout overhead drained real water out into a hidden tray below). She waited for the tiktok saint to come out, but she didn’t come, and eventually the lights went out.
“Act Two: The Birth of Evil.”
