Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 by Son of a Witch

colleague. “You don’t mean a talent for magic? That’s distinctly forbidden in the order.”
    “Come come. You know perfectly well we resort to it when we must. Not that we’re very good at it. I need hardly remind you that these are dangerous times. Perhaps the Superior Maunt thinks that in the rehabilitation of the boy, such a talent is called for.”
    By the straightening of her spine Sister Doctor signaled that she did not intend to second-guess the Superior Maunt’s motives. Sister Apothecaire regretted having brought it up. “Well,” she continued, falsely jolly, “I don’t have much of a sense of Candle one way or the other. If she’s got common magic or common sense, it’s news to me either way.”
    “She certainly has no talent for music.” Sister Doctor sniffed. “I do remember the day she arrived, though. I happened to be suturing one of the novices in the kitchen. I turned to ask kindly for water, and there was that Candle, her rickety domingon slung over one shoulder like a crossbow. Mad old Mother Yackle had her by the hand, as if she’d just created her out of calves’ foot jelly. ‘The gypsy Quadling, her uncle leaves her to us,’ said Mother Yackle.”
    “Mother Yackle doesn’t speak and hasn’t in years.”
    “That’s why I remember the event so distinctly.”
    “Did you see the Quadling uncle?”
    “I went to the window, and he was making his way rather hurriedly through the kitchen garden. I called out to him, for there are procedures for the introduction of a novice, and this wasn’t one of them. But he wouldn’t be stopped, merely called over his shoulder that he would be back in a year if he was still alive. It’s rare to see Quadlings this far north these days. I imagine the poor girl is quite lonely.”
    “Well, yes. No one speaks Quaddle.”
    “I believe the term is Qua’ati. So is Candle mute or is it that she just hasn’t anyone to speak her native tongue with?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Perhaps it was Candle’s silence and self-control that had inspired the Superior Maunt to choose her for keeping vigil over Liir. The maunts began to regret their tendencies to bark and spark at each other. Thinking on their noisy failings, they fell into a silence now.
     
    I N THE FOLLOWING FEW DAYS, they came across their share of blue squirrels, bald egrets, and disagreeable emmets. The egrets kept to the ground cover, rarely taking wing; the emmets preferred the bedding. It wasn’t until near dusk on the fourth day that the maunts came across an Animal, a lone and pagan Water Buffalo in the shallows of a cove of Restwater, Oz’s biggest lake.
    “Oh, oh,” moaned the Water Buffalo at their approach, “not the missionary voice traveling in twos! Not again! I bury my own waste, I only speak when spoken to, I lick my knees fifty times a night before I sleep—what more am I to do to appease the fates? I don’t want to be converted! Don’t you understand? Oh, all right, get it over with. I’ll lapse before nightfall, I promise you. I can’t help myself. Perhaps I’m too far gone for you to bother with me?” He peered, both gloomily and hopefully, at them.
    “We’re not converters,” said Sister Apothecaire. “We haven’t the time.”
    “And who cares about you? You can go to hell,” said Sister Doctor, meaning to be cheerful. This was the right note, as it happened; the Water Buffalo began to smile.
    “Scarcely see a soul coming from your direction who doesn’t have designs on my immortal soul,” said the Water Buffalo. “It used to be I was worried about my hide. I always thought a soul was private, but it appears it can be colonized against your will if you don’t watch out.”
    “Well, we are maunts,” admitted Sister Apothecaire.
    The Water Buffalo winced. “ No . Say it ain’t so. You’re plates of glamour and glasses of fashion, as anyone who rests a sore eye upon you would have to agree.”
    “Don’t be mincing,” snapped Sister Doctor.