41. Chapter 41
forty-one
Dorothy, Nick, and I entered Nick’s study together, the same room in which we’d held our last meeting. Stacks of books burdened the table, but their ranks did not include the one Dorothy had retrieved from Rye’s rooms.
“Where’s Sebastian?” I asked Nick as I approached the table, too anxious and preoccupied to claim a seat.
“He was down in the kitchens earlier with Tavish,” answered Dorothy.
I nodded but said nothing else. It made sense that Sebastian would want to catch up with the tavern owner. A man he’d spent plenty of time with since, for a spell, he’d been Sebastian’s employer.
Dorothy went silent, too. And even though Nick glanced between us with something that might have been curiosity, we both ignored his unspoken questions.
Still, someone—likely me—was going to have to speak up soon and divulge the particulars of Sebastian’s waylaid plan. I would need to tell Nick, and possibly Rye when I met up with him again, about Ginger and Andre, too. I wanted to wait, however, until Sebastian was home again, through the mirror. Out of the reach of Oz and anyone in it who, because of our bond, could do him more harm. After that, I would see Ginger and hopefully a restored Andre home, too. But…all in good time.
“The books,” said Nick, rounding to one of them, which he flipped open. “They all skirt the issue of Ozma. She remains an enigma. Pastoria, however…”
He trailed off, glancing toward Dorothy as if giving the floor to her.
“The pages of this book on Pastoria’s reign,” said Dorothy, scooting toward her the one we’d all been poring over the day of the meeting. “They aren’t blank because they are enchanted. They’re blank because they were left that way intentionally. A clue, I think.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“The topic of the princess was skipped over,” explained Dorothy. “But room was still left for her story. Like the author somehow knew she still existed but couldn’t put that speculation into writing.”
I nodded, trying to keep up. A difficult task when my mind wanted to wander off after Rye or wend its way down to the kitchens where Sebastian had retreated. My next conversation with him, how would it go? Not well I wagered.
“This book was commissioned by Pastoria himself,” said Dorothy, flipping to the front—to a dedication page. “Look.”
Dorothy pointed, and I tilted my head, reading the inscription there.
Commissioned by King Pastoria
For his Daughter
Ozma of Oz
“Oh,” I said, fingers trailing the words, longing arising within me. A bittersweet yearning to truly be the daughter mentioned here. Because that meant I’d had someone who sincerely loved the child I’d once been. I’d had a father—an honest-to-goodness parent. Someone who had wanted good for me. Someone who had wanted me.
But…there was something off about the dedication.
“The timeline of this book,” I murmured. “You said it goes all the way until the Ozma Fountain was built. That’s well after The Wizard took over.”
So, well after Pastoria’s death. If Pastoria had indeed commissioned the book, he would have had to have done so before his demise. If that had been the case, the author, whoever he or she was, would have finished the book much later. Finished it but left the section detailing Ozma’s mysterious childhood and disappearance purposefully blank.
“Who is the author?” I asked, flipping back a page, and then forward again, searching for a name.
“The book just says it was written by a Royal Historian of Oz,” said Dorothy. “But the book isn’t nearly as important as the pages. The blank ones. Once I stopped trying to figure out what they might contain and instead focused on answering why they were left blank, I had a thought.”
“Which was?” I peered up at her, desperate for an answer—one that would tell me for sure, in irrefutable black-and-white terms, that I was Ozma. Rye didn’t doubt it. And neither had Morella. Perhaps some part of me still did, even if Gleeah had mistaken me for Lurline herself. Even if the ancient tree had confirmed I was half Fairy. Even if I’d done amazing things—overcome my bracers, turned Rye human, brought Dorothy Gale back to Oz…
“What if the princess couldn’t be written about during those years after her birth and before the fountain simply because she’d been out of sight?” Dorothy asked. “The book mentions Ozma’s birth, glosses over Pastoria’s death, breaks with the blank pages, and then picks up after the princess’s disappearance and chronicles the time in Oz thereafter. As we discussed before, Ozma would have been seven at the time of her abduction. And Diggs built the fountain five years later when Princess Ozma would have been twelve. But…that’s when I did the math. Re-did the math.”
“We are in agreement that Ozma would be twenty-four today,” said Nick.
“We’re in agreement that’s how the math works out,” I said.
“But you’re nineteen,” said Dorothy. “You said you were roughly two, though, when Mombi found you.”
“That was according to her,” I said. “But it adds up. I have no solid memory before her, after all. But I do remember being seven. It was right about then that I started pickpocketing for Mombi. I was certainly not here in Oz.”
“Nineteen minus two is seventeen,” said Dorothy. “You spent seventeen years with Mombi.”
I nodded, my focus hers now more fully.
“Ozma was said to be seven years old when she went missing.” Dorothy raised a pair of fingers. “As we’ve already established, you, however, were two when Mombi claimed to have found you. If you think about it, we only have five years unaccounted for.”
She was talking about the first five years of Ozma’s life.
“Are they unaccounted for if I never lived them?” I asked.
“But,” said Dorothy, her eyes widening, her tone going hushed, “what if you did?”
“I cannot be twenty-four,” I argued.
“Pastoria,” she pressed, flipping back to the dedication, and pointing out the old king’s name. “The book says that, after Lurline left Oz, he aged rapidly…and died. All the fairies of Oz left when Lurline did, too. The half-bloods as well.”
I frowned, my mind again thrown back to that flash I’d gotten in the ballroom of the Emerald City Palace; a younger Mr. Diggs standing next to a wizened man wearing a crown, his thin form hunched, his beard long and white. Still, that man had smiled at me. And I had been a little girl. I could have been two at that moment. Certainly, I’d been no older. Not seven.
“When the Fairies were here,” said Dorothy, “according to the books, they never aged. Not the full-blooded ones. And Pastoria, he never aged either. It was said before the time of Oz, Lurline, a full-blooded Fairy, had fallen in love with a mortal man.”
“Allow me,” said Nick as he took the book and opened it to a marked page near the front before reading aloud. “It is known by all that Lurline created Oz so that she and Pastoria might be together for always. From Lurline’s love sprang the realm of Oz, which she designed as a paradise away from Pastoria’s former realm—an oppressive place that sought to tear the two apart.
Together, Pastoria and Lurline ruled for over a hundred years. In 1866, Lurline gave birth to a daughter whom the royal couple named Ozma. And so, the land had a princess and the throne, an heir.”
“Tip,” said Dorothy, “Lurline left Oz in 1871. You would have been five.”
“Ozma would have been five,” I stressed, a horrible doubt creeping into my veins with this information.
“Yes,” said Dorothy. “You were…but you weren’t.”
“No one knows why Lurline left,” said Nick, his tone becoming gentle now. “To this day, her sudden departure remains a mystery. But Dorothy, I feel, now has a sound theory.”
“You wouldn’t age,” Dorothy said.
My eyes popped wide. My hands lept to cover my mouth.
“Five years,” stressed Dorothy. “That’s what we’re missing when it comes to your age. But those years, Tip, they’re not missing at all. You are twenty-four. But you are also nineteen.”
“Pastoria,” I said, my voice breaking.
“Lurline’s presence in Oz,” said Nick. “It is what kept him suspended in age. But then, likely much to the couple’s dismay, it was what kept you suspended as well.”
“What are you saying?” I asked them. “That I was a baby—an infant—for five years?”
“A Fairy infant,” Dorothy clarified. “Half Fae, anyway. But the spell Lurline had placed on Pastoria must have passed to you as well. And it must have been her influence, her love, her nearness, and their union that kept him, and you, the way you were. Tip, she had to leave. And Pastoria…during those two years before your “disappearance,” the years—the decades—he had lived. Well, they caught up to him. He knew he was going to die before you could know him. So, he commissioned this book.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. This had to be the truth. It had to be. Somehow, Dorothy had cracked the riddle of my age. And it made sense. Especially since no one had known why Lurline had left Oz. As Dorothy said, Ozma had been seven when she’d been taken from Oz—that much was true. But she’d also been two. At least she’d appeared to be two. This would explain why I didn’t recall my time in Oz, my mother, or anything about the Emerald City. Nothing except that brief blip I’d experienced in the ballroom when I’d been dancing with Rye.
“The Wizard,” said Dorothy. “Tip, he did this. He sent you with Mombi back to my world—his world. That’s the only answer. He did it because he wasn’t about to have the legitimate heir to the throne come of age and end his stolen reign.”
“Ozma was said to have gone with Glinda,” I argued. “Glinda took Ozma to her palace in Quadling Country.”
“I told you,” said Dorothy, her tone dropping. “Glinda was in love with The Wizard.”
“You think she could have been part of this?” I asked, turning the question on Nick.
“Your abduction?” asked Nick. “That is hard to say. But…no matter what, Glinda knows far more about you, Princess Ozma, than she has ever cared to divulge. Pastoria and your mother, too. She has much to answer for. If, indeed, she survives this war.”
I shut my eyes and let the weight of my final and lingering uncertainties about my identity at last fall away.
Dorothy’s research, her willingness to find the answer and to reveal the truth had bought me a peace I’d been prepared to live forever without, even if I had the reassurance that came with Rye’s confidence.
“We need Glinda to survive,” I told them, opening my eyes. “And we need to find The Wizard, too, if we can manage. Mombi as well.”
“You want to hold them accountable,” said Nick, his tone dropping with a bleakness that suggested he both understood the impulse and feared my affirmation. Or, at the very least, that he feared I truly did harbor the inclination to punish.
“Not so much as I want them to tell the people of Oz the truth,” I said. “My truth.”