“May I take it and look at it?”
“I don’t care. He never said not to read it,” said Sarima. “At the time I perhaps couldn’t read at all—I forget. But look at that beautiful angel there! Do you really mean to say you don’t believe in the Other Land? In an afterlife?”
“Just what we need.” Elphaba snorted as she picked up the tome. “A post Vale-of-Tears Vale-of-Tears.”
6
One morning, after Six had tried and given up once again at some sort of lessons for the children, Irji suggested an indoor game of hide-and-seek. They drew straws and Nor lost, so she hid her eyes and counted. When she got bored with waiting she called out “One hundred!” and looked about.
She tagged Liir first. Though he liked to disappear alone for hours at a time, he was bad at hiding when it was required of him. So they hunted together for the older boys, and found Irji in Sarima’s Solar, crouching behind the velvet ruffles suspended from the perch of a stuffed gryphon.
But Manek, the best at hiding, couldn’t be found. Not in the kitchen, the music room, the towers. Running out of ideas, the children even dared to go down into the musty basement.
“There’s tunnels from here all the way to hell,” said Irji.
“Where? Why?” said Nor, and Liir echoed.
“They’re hidden. I don’t know where. But everybody says so. Ask Six. I think because this used to be a waterworks headquarters—it did. Hell burns so hot they need water, and the devils tunneled up to here.”
Nor said, “Look, Liir, here’s the fishwell.”
In the center of a low-vaulted room, damp with moisture beaded up on its stone walls, stood a low well with a wooden lid. There was a simple device with a chain and a stone for shifting the lid sideways. It was child’s play to uncover the shaft.
“Down there,” said Irji, “is where we get the fish we eat. Nobody knows if there’s a whole lake down there or if it’s bottomless, or if you can go down right to hell.” He moved the rushlight about, and there was a round of black water shining back a reflection, in chips and circles of chilly white light.
“Six says there’s a gold carp in there,” said Nor. “She saw it once. Biggest old thing, she thought it was a floating brass kettle bobbing to the surface, and then it turned and looked at her.”
“Maybe it was a brass kettle,” said Liir.
“Kettles don’t have eyes,” said Nor.
“Anyway, Manek’s not here,” said Irji. “Is he?” He called, “Hello, Manek,” and the echo rolled and dissolved in the wet dark.
“Maybe Manek went down to hell in one of those tunnels,” said Liir.
Irji swung the lid back on the fishwell. “But you’re it, Nor, I’m not going to look down here anymore.”
They gave themselves the creeps, and raced back upstairs. Four yelled at them for making too much noise.
Nor found Manek at last on the stairs outside the door to Auntie Guest’s rooms. “Shhh,” he said as they came near, and Nor tapped him anyway, saying, “You’re out.”
“Shhh,” he said again, more urgently.
They took turns looking through the crack in the weathered grain of the door.
Auntie had her finger in a book, and she was mumbling things to herself, sounding them out this way and that. On the dresser next to her squatted Chistery, in an uneasy, obedient silence.
“What’s happening?” said Nor.
“She’s trying to teach him to talk,” said Manek.
“Let me look,” said Liir.
“Say spirit,” said Auntie in a kind voice. “Say spirit. Spirit. Spirit.”
Chistery twisted his mouth to one side, as if considering it.
“There is no difference,” said Auntie to herself, or maybe to Chistery. “The strands are the same, the skeins are the same; the rock remembers; the water has memory; the air has a past for which it can be held accountable; the flame renews itself like a pfenix. What is an animal, but made of rock and water and fire and ether! Remember how to speak, Chistery. You are animal, but Animal is your cousin, damn you. Say spirit.”
