“Oh, watch me,” snarled the Witch. The crows blew away in a black cloud and dropped like buckshot through the sky, down the jagged precipices, until they came to the travelers.
“A pretty sunset, is there?” said Nanny, coming up to the Witch’s room in one of her rare forays, Chistery as always providing service.
“She’s sent the crows out to blind the guests coming for dinner!”
“What?”
“She’s BLINDING THE GUESTS COMING FOR DINNER!”
“Well, that’s one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose.”
“Will you lunatics hush up?” The Witch was twitching as if with a nervous disorder; her elbows flapped, as if she were a crow herself. She gave out a long howl when she found them in the glass.
“What, what, let me see,” said Liir, grabbing the thing. He explained to Nanny, because the Witch was almost beyond speech by now. “Well, I guess the Scarecrow knows how to scare crows, all right.”
“Why, what’s he done?”
“They’re not coming back, that’s all I’ll say,” said Liir, glancing at the Witch.
“It still could be him,” she said at last, breathing heavily. “You might get your wish yet, Liir.”
“My wish?” He didn’t remember asking for a father, and she didn’t bother to remind him. Nothing had yet suggested to her that the Scare-crow wasn’t a man in disguise. She would not need forgiveness if Fiyero had not died!
The light was failing, and the odd band of friends was making good time up the hill. They had come without an escort of soldiers, perhaps because the soldiers really believed that Kiamo Ko was run by a Wicked Witch.
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“Come on, bees,” said the Witch, “work with me now. All together on this one, honeys. We need a little sting, we need a little zip, we want a little nasty, can you give us a little jab? No, not us, listen when I talk to you, you simpletons! The girl on the hill below. She’s after your Queen Bee! And when you’re through with your job, I’ll go down and collect those shoes.”
“What’s that old hag blathering about now?” said Nanny to Liir.
The bees were alert to the pitch in the Witch’s voice, and they rose to swarm out the window.
“You watch, I can’t look,” said the Witch.
“The moon is just like a pretty peach rising over the mountains,” said Nanny with the telescope to her old cataracted eye. “Why don’t we put in some peach trees instead of all those infernal apples in the back?”
“The bees, Nanny. Liir, take that from her and tell me what happens.”
Liir gave a blow-by-blow recounting. “They’re swooping down, they look like a genie or something, all flying in a big clump with a straggly tail. The travelers see them coming. Yes! Yes! The Scarecrow is taking straw out of his chest and leggings, and covering the Lion and Dorothy, and there’s a little dog, too. So the bees can’t get through the straw, and the Scarecrow is all in pieces on the ground.”
It couldn’t be. The Witch grabbed the eyepiece. “Liir, you are a filthy liar,” she shouted. Her heart roared like a wind.
But it was true. There was nothing but straw and air inside the Scarecrow’s clothes. No hidden lover returning, no last hope of salvation.
And the bees, having none left to attack but the Tin Woodman, flung themselves against him, and dropped in black heaps on the ground, like charred shadows, their stingers blunted on his fenders.
“You’ve got to give our guests credit for ingenuity,” said Liir.
“Will you shut up before I tie your tongue in a knot?” said the Witch.
“I suppose I should start down and get some hors d’oeuvres going, they’ll be peckish after these ordeals you’re setting them,” said Nanny. “Have you an opinion as to cheese and crackers or fresh vegetables with pepper sauce?”
“I say cheese,” said Liir.
“Elphaba? What’s your opinion?”
But she was too busy doing research in the Grimmerie. “It’s up to me, as always was the case,” said Nanny. “I get to do all the work. I’m supposed to be teary with joy, at my age. You’d think I could rest my feet for once, but no. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”
