“You’re too kind—but I need to find the Wicked Witch of the West,” Dorothy said. “I said THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST. I’m so sorry to trouble you. And it looks like a perfectly wonderful castle. Perhaps on the way back, if my travels take me this way.”
“Oh, well, she lives here, too,” said Liir. “With me. Don’t worry, she’s here.”
Dorothy looked a little pale. “She is?”
The Witch appeared at the doorway. “She is indeed, and here she is,” she said, and came down the steps at a clip, her skirts whirling, her broom hurrying to keep up. “Well, Chistery, you did good work! I’m glad to see all my efforts haven’t been for naught. You, Dorothy, Dorothy Gale, the one whose house had the nerve to make a crash landing on my sister!”
“Well, it wasn’t my house, in a legal sense, strictly speaking,” said Dorothy, “and in fact it hardly belonged much to Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, except for maybe a couple of windows and the chimney. I mean the Mechanics and Farmers First State Bank of Wichita holds the mortgage, so they’re the responsible parties. I mean if you need to be in touch with someone. They’re the bank that cares,” she explained.
The Witch felt suddenly, oddly calm. “It’s nothing to me who owns the house,” she said. “The fact is that my sister was alive before you arrived, and now she’s dead.”
“Oh, and I’m so very sorry about that,” said Dorothy nervously. “Really I am. I’d have done anything to avoid it. I know how terrible I’d feel if a house fell on Auntie Em. Once a board in the porch roof fell on her. She had a big bump on her head and sang hymns all afternoon, but by evening she was her old cranky self.”
Dorothy tucked her little dog under her arm and went up and took the Witch’s hands in hers. “Really I’m sorry,” she insisted. “It’s a terrible thing to lose someone. I lost my parents when I was small, and I remember.”
“Get off me,” said the Witch, “I hate false sentiment. It makes my skin crawl.”
But the girl held on, with a ragged sort of intensity, and said nothing, just waited.
“Let go, let go,” said the Witch.
“Were you close to your sister?” asked Dorothy.
“That’s not the point,” she snapped.
“Because I was very close to my Mama, and when she and Papa were lost at sea, I could hardly bear it.”
“Lost at sea, how do you mean,” said the Witch, detaching hersel
f from the clinging child.
“They were on their way to visit my grandmama in the old country, because she was dying, and a storm came up and their ship went over and broke in half and sank to the bottom of the sea. And they drowned, every soul onboard.”
“Oh, so they had souls,” said the Witch, her mind recoiling at the image of a ship in all that water.
“And still do. That’s all they have left, I suspect.”
“Please will you not cling so. And come in for something to eat.”
“Come on, you too,” said the girl to the Lion, and it sulkily rolled onto its big padded paws and followed along.
So now we turn into a restaurant, thought the Witch darkly. What, shall I send a flying monkey down to Red Windmill to engage a violinist, for mood music? What a most peculiar murderer she is turning out to be.
The Witch began to think about how she might disarm the girl. It was hard to tell what her weapons were, except for that sort of inane good sense and emotional honesty.
During dinner Dorothy began to cry.
“What, she would have preferred the vegetables to the cheese?” said Nanny.
But the girl would not answer. She set both her hands on the scrubbed oaken tabletop, and her shoulders shook with grief. Liir longed to get up and wrap his arms around her. The Witch nodded grimly that he was to stay put. He whacked his milk mug hard on the table, in annoyance.
“It’s all very nice,” Dorothy said at last, sniffling, “but I am so worried for Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Uncle Henry frets so when I’m just a wee bit late from the schoolhouse, and Auntie Em—well, she can be so cross when she’s upset!”
“All Aunties are cross,” said Liir.
“Eat up, for who knows when another meal will come your way,” said the Witch.
The girl tried to eat, but kept dissolving in tears. Eventually Liir began to tear up, too. The little dog, Toto, begged for scraps, which made the Witch think of her own losses. Killyjoy, who had been with her eight years, a fly-ridden corpse going stiff on the hill among all his progeny. She cared less about the bees and the crows, but Killyjoy was her special pet.
