“Say a little, though. Since you brought it up.”
Melena shivered; she hadn’t gone for the shawl. She could not move. She was heavy as stone.
“Workers from the Emerald City and other places, they to come to Quadling Country. They to look and taste and sample the air, the water, the soil. They to plan the highway. Quadlings to know this is wasted time and wasted effort. They do not to listen to Quadling voices.”
“Quadlings aren’t road engineers, I suspect,” said Frex evenly.
“The country is delicate,” said Turtle Heart. “In Ovvels the houses to float between trees. Crops to grow on small platforms hooked by ropes. Boys to dive in shallow water for vegetable pearls. Too many trees and there is not enough light for crops and health. Too few trees and the water rises and roots of plants floating on top cannot to stretch to soil. Quadling Country is poor country but beauty rich. It only to support life by careful planning and cooperation.”
“So resistance to the Yellow Brick Road—”
“Is only part of the story. Quadlings cannot to convince road builders, who want to build up dikes of mud and stone and to cut Quadling Country in pieces. Quadlings to argue, and to pray, and to testify, and cannot to win with words.”
Frex held his pipe in his two hands and watched Turtle Heart speak. Frex was drawn to him; Frex was always drawn to intensity.
“Quadlings consider to fight,” said Turtle Heart. “Because they think this is only the start. When the builders to test soil and to sift water, they to learn of things Quadlings are smart for ever, but Quadlings to keep still.”
“Things you know?”
“Turtle Heart to speak of rubies,” he said with a great sigh. “Rubies under the water. Red as pigeon blood. Engineers to say: Red corundum in bands of crystalline limestone under swamp. Quadlings to say: The blood of Oz.”
“Like the red glass you make?” said Melena.
“Ruby glass to come by adding gold chloride,” said Turtle Heart. “But Quadling Country to sit atop real deposits of real rubies. And the news is sure to go to the Emerald City with the builders. What to follow is horror upon horror.”
“How do you know?” snapped Melena.
“To look in glass,” said Turtle Heart, pointing to the roundel
he had made as a toy for Elphaba, “is to see the future, in blood and rubies.”
“I don’t believe in seeing the future. That smacks of the pleasure faith,” said Frex fiercely. “The fatalism of the Time Dragon. Pfaah. No, the Unnamed God has an unnamed history for us, and prophecy is merely guesswork and fear.”
“Fear and guesswork is enough to make Turtle Heart to leave Quad-ling Country, then,” said the Quadling glassblower without apology. “Quadlings do not to call their religion a pleasure faith, but they to listen to signs and to watch for messages. As the water to run red with rubies it will to run with the blood of Quadlings.”
“Nonsense!” Frex fussed, red himself. “They need a good talking-to.”
“Besides, isn’t Pastorius a simpleton?” said Melena, who alone of them could claim an informed opinion on the royal house. “What will he do until Ozma is of age but ride the hunt, and eat Munchkinlander pastries, and fuck the odd housemaid on the side?”
“The danger is a foreigner,” said Turtle Heart, “not a home-grown king or queen. The old women, and the shamans, and the dying: They to see a stranger king, cruel and mighty.”
“What is the Ozma Regent doing, planning roadworks into that godforsaken mire anyway?” Melena asked.
“Progress,” said Frex, “same as the Yellow Brick Road through Munchkinland. Progress and control. The movement of troops. The regularization of taxes. Military protection.”
“Protection from whom?” said Melena.
“Ahh,” said Frex, “always the important question.”
“Ahh,” said Turtle Heart, almost in a whisper.
“So where are you going?” said Frex. “Not that you need leave here, of course. Melena loves having you around. We all do.”
“Horrors,” said Elphaba.
“Hush now,” said Nanny.
“Lady is kind and Goodness is kind to Turtle Heart. Who did not mean to stay more than a day. Turtle Heart was on his way to the Emerald City and to get lost. Turtle Heart to hope to beg audience with Ozma—”
