Chapter Four. Cleo
FOUR
Cleo
The Witch of the East is zigzagging across the snowdrop field, her dress hoisted up and fisted in her hand to avoid dirtying the hem of the skirt.
“Where?” she demands, eyes wide and crazed.
Cleo has never known freedom.
Born under a blood moon, she was cursed from her first breath. Or at least that’s what she was told. Perhaps that’s why her mother gave Cleo to the Witch of the East before she was old enough to speak.
Her first memories are those of desperation.
She wanted to please the witch. After all, she was meant to be a gift (wasn’t she?) and gifts shouldn’t annoy, irritate, or infuriate.
Stay quiet, Cleo told herself. She had to learn this rule on her own, by instinct.
Delphine, the Witch of the East, liked the sound of her own voice, so because of this, Cleo’s voice should be silent.
And now, unsurprisingly, words are failing her.
She is not here by accident, just south of the Yellow Brick Road in the middle of the snowdrop field.
But accident or not, the instructions were vague, the details murky.
“There,” Cleo says and points at some random spot to Delphine’s left.
Delphine grumbles and stomps off.
The wind shifts and the old oaks surrounding the field creak in despair.
Cleo scans the woods, waiting.
Some nights, when she was finally alone after the witch was fast asleep, high on Oil, drunk on ozrum, Cleo read aloud to herself in the dim quiet just to remind herself she had a voice.
It was easy to forget the shape of words, the melody of what seemed like random letters strung together to form hope and friendship and power.
Hope seemed like a fairy tale.
Friendship like a lie.
Power a drug.
Most days, Cleo would wake at dawn to ready the witch’s bath, then her tea. She needed the tea to clear her head to drive away the hangover. She needed the salt bath to help ease the ache in her bones.
As soon as the witch was finished with breakfast, Cleo was cleaning up to prepare for lunch, then dinner, another bath, more drugs.
Would it ever be enough?
Cleo wasn’t sure.
And anyway, did it matter? She was cursed. Perhaps it wasn’t a Great and Terrible one, but a curse was a curse.
She just needed to survive.
She didn’t think there was another option.
At least not until the Witch of the West presented her with one.
It is a well-known fact that the witches of the Ends are often at odds with one another and from the inside, Cleo is privy to the truth of it—Delphine is afraid of the West.
The West is more powerful than the East. It means Delphine, deep down inside, knows that she does not deserve to rule. She is a Cardinal Witch only because she is pliable. A placeholder.
What has Delphine accomplished in the years since the Great and Terrible War?
Nothing.
Absent of ambition, Delphine can only spend her days aimlessly searching for gratification.
And the only thing she knows how to do well is gorge herself on the fruits of her position.
Money, drugs, power, bread and sweets. The East End is known as the breadbasket of Oz and there is no shortage of indulgences.
And now the Witch of the West is ready to move against her.
Cleo wasn’t meant to speculate on the business of Cardinal Witches, but she couldn’t help but wonder why the West had chosen her.
Most days, Cleo was loyal to Delphine, almost to a fault. Delphine might have been a terrible mother, but she was the only maternal figure Cleo knew and betraying her had never crossed Cleo’s mind.
But like most coups, it took just the right whisper at the right time.
The older Cleo got, the less she wanted to obey. It started as a pressure in her chest one night when Delphine decided Cleo had looked at her wrong and so should stay up all night scrubbing the stone floors on her hands and knees.
Then again, later, the pressure followed by a grit of her teeth when Delphine demanded Cleo remake breakfast because it wasn’t hot enough.
Then, an explosion.
Delphine had ordered Cleo to hand-wash every single one of her twenty-seven silk robes by sunrise. A task that would have taken Cleo several days.
Cleo lost it.
She screamed at Delphine.
The words didn’t come out right, and only half of them made sense, but she was on a roll and she couldn’t stop.
The only thing that stopped her was a slap across the face.
The hit surprised Delphine as much as it did Cleo.
For all her cruelty, for all the terrible things she’d done to the East End and the people who inhabited it in her endless pursuit of power and relevance, Delphine had never raised a hand to Cleo.
Cleo rubbed at the sting, silent.
And Delphine, nostrils flaring, turned and stormed off.
Perhaps that was the beginning of the end.
The pressure returned and did not leave.
Cleo wasn’t sure how she would escape Delphine, but she was determined to figure it out.
She never would have guessed that the Witch of the West would drop a solution straight into her hand.
And the solution? A long, narrow feather that gleamed like an oil slick.
The feather belonged to a winged monkey. The Witch of the West had given it to Cleo and told her simply to show it to Delphine.
Seeing the feather, Delphine had likely felt her tenuous grip on power slipping. If the winged monkeys, who belonged to the West, were flying over the East, they were encroaching, breaking the rules, and who would order them to do such a thing?
That no-good, narcissistic, vainglorious Witch of the West.
Delphine had gritted her teeth and said, “Show me where.”
Now they are here, south of the Yellow Brick Road in the middle of the snowdrop field. As instructed. The Witch of the West said she’d take care of the rest.
“Here?” Delphine asks now and drops her skirt, spreading out her arms.
“I think so,” Cleo answers, because what else is she to do? How long is she to stall?
Then …
A thundering from above. A shrill whistle that follows.
Cleo and Delphine look up at the same time.
The rest, it would seem, is a house falling from the sky.