The second sun was sinking fast behind the distant mountains of the zone as DG watched from her balcony window. Green and gold swathes were melting into the grey, dusky hues of night in the O.Z. and for the first time in weeks, she was completely alone. Since the defeat of the sorceress, she had been swept here and there by duties and promises and harried looking maids who insisted she wear "the correct attire, Princess." She'd done magic, undone magic, sat at meetings, been polite to the old court, entertained the new one and had to dance with what felt like every nobleman's son this side of the gap, all while trying to get used to all the rules and routines of living in a palace.
Azkadellia had been excused most of these visits and formalities. She'd come to some, even without their mother dragging her, but mostly she sat in the corner, watching. Rationally, DG knew it wasn't right to feel jealous of her sister, but Az wasn't the one who had to dance with anyone who asked until everything ached. Az hadn't had to give a speech, either, or give strange tea parties for other girls her age. It was irrational and unkind and she knew that Az still needed time, still needed solitude and support for now, but...
I just want my sister back.
But now, she was finally alone. Az had retreated back into her rooms, overlooking the lake. The maids had all vanished for the evening, back to their own homes and their families, or their rooms in the palace. Her parents had gone to try and negotiate with the Munchkins – and wasn't that a task she was happy to sit out on – and Cain and Jeb had gone to help the resistance disassemble and get settled back into normal life. They had taken Raw with them, in case they found any more of his kind wandering around. The thought of Cain settling down, on a farm maybe with some horses and a nice little house of his own was... odd. Somehow, she couldn't imagine him ever having a 'normal' life. But he must have done, once. He had Jeb, after all, and hadn't they been talking about an uncle or something who may have escaped to the Realm of the Unwanted? Cain still had family.
"And if he does, he probably won't come back. And it's not fair to ask him to, Deeg. Everyone else has their happy ending, after all."
She turned away from the rolling landscape and flopped, dejected, onto her king sized bed. Above her, the star-shaped light her mother had given her floated round and round the ceiling, somehow managing to keep the light levels the same throughout the room as it did so. It was some kind of magic, she suspected. No way it would work otherwise.
She rolled over and buried her face in the duvet.
It wouldn't take much magic, Toto said, to animate an object.
But to keep it going on and on whenever I use it? She was sure that took a little more energy. Maybe Azkadellia...
Through the mound of pillows and sheets, she heard a soft tap at the door.
"Come in!"
Glitch stepped in, meekly, and closed the door behind him with a grin.
"Hey, doll. What'ya doing?"
She sat up, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
"Not much. Just thinking."
He began to walk around the room, brushing his fingers along the wall.
"Oh, that old thing. Wouldn't put too much stock by it."
Glitch was a lot of things – "a lot now that I wasn't then, not that I remember it" – but perceptive was not often one of them. You could imply a thousand things in words and he'd never understand, but somehow silence spoke to him. Every silence said something different, spoke in a different way; he'd tried to explain it once: "they're all different colours, Deeg. Can't you see them?" Silence wasn't speech, but to Glitch it always seemed to mark a kind of... understanding.
So when she didn't answer, and he turned towards her with a soft, sad smile and simply said "Oh", she wasn't really surprised. He walked back towards her, shoving over her fluffy embroidered duvet and flopping down beside her, gazing at the ceiling.
"You know," he said as he picked up a pillow and hugged it, "the thing I miss least about thinking, I think, is over thinking everything I thought. And I did, you know. Or he did. We did, perhaps? We over thought an awful lot, about everything. What coat to wear, what to say, how to say it; round and round in a big ol' circle because it's hard to do anything when all you're doing is thinking." He frowned down at the pillow and squished it a little more. "At least, I think so."
She laughed and he grinned at her, patting the pillows. Obligingly, she settled down again. Silence surrounded them as they watched the lampshade with its shining star centre float round and round the room. In a big ol' circle.
"I was just thinking about Az."
"Azkadee sure hasn't been around much, has she?"
"Glitch, you saw her this morning."
"I did?" He turned towards her, looking confused and just a little upset. "When?"
"When we said goodbye to my parents. When they went off on their trip?" He closed his eyes, nodding slightly as he tried to focus on the moment, the memory. "I guess you're right, though. She's come to everything mom's suggested, from balls to speeches and everything in between, but she's never quite –"
"Silver sheen!"
She stared at him.
"What?"
Glitch grinned back, puffing out his chest a little.
"She was wearing a dress with a silver sheen. It was green – gold – no definitely green, but with her silver sheen on it. I definitely remember that."
DG thought back. She didn't remember seeing a silver sheen on anything, but Glitch was right: Az had been wearing a green dress. She had stood, demure and polite next to Glitch against the shadow of the orchard wall.
A green dress...
And then the memory, as happened so often now, came to life around her. She took a moment to look, really look at her sister. Her beautiful long hair hung in waves over her shoulders and down her back, falling to cover her face when she looked at the ground. Her hands were bare – no more gloves, no matter the occasion – and her dress was green. A dark green, like pine forests, so she easily slipped into the shadow.
In the memory, Glitch leaned over to her, smiling, to whisper something in her ear, and Az jumped slightly, at the unexpected sound. And when she jumped, the fabric of her dress caught the sunlight as she turned.
"DG?"
The memory fell away and she was back in her bedroom with Glitch, who had a hand on her shoulder, looking concerned.
"I'm OK, Glitch. Just my cooky memory system going again." She smiled. "And you're right: Az did have a silver sheen on her dress."
He nodded and grinned, turning his gaze somewhat vacantly onto the ceiling again.
"I was right? That's nice. Which dress?"
Sometimes, Glitch would find himself in the midst of a silence so loud, one so focused and controlled, that they could derail his train of thought. After they had found Adora's grave, DG and Cain had spent an awkward half hour desperately trying to speak without sound, and they must have managed it because when Glitch and Toto – Tutor, she told her mind, viciously – had come back with firewood, Glitch had walked in between them and had frozen, dropping the logs he had brought and leaving his mouth hanging open, mid-word.
"Speaking of silver, did you see Azkadee's dress this morning? She put a lovely silver sheen on it."
"I know, Glitch. I know."
"It's nice, I think. Like we're getting the old Azkadellia back."
DG rolled over, propping herself up with one hand to look at him.
"How do you mean?" she asked.
"Magic, DG." He raised his hand and began to trace strange, looping patterns in the air. "She always used to do it, put a little shine on her clothes. She said it made her... She said that she wanted... that she... She always used to do it, put a little shine on her clothes. She always used to –"
"She did?"
Knowing just when to interrupt him, she found, was as much of a skill as keeping him on the conversation track. A moment too soon, and he lost his train of thought, but watching him glitch was... It was painful in a way she didn't quite understand. Perhaps because of his expression, she thought; when he was confused, when he couldn't follow a thought through, his mind brought him back to when he was happy with the sentence, with the line. And then because it couldn't go anywhere else, it looped and looped and looped until it was stopped.
Part of her, a deep hidden part that she didn't like to think about, wondered how long he could glitch for, if left unattended.
"Mm-hmm. Always. She said it made her... I think she liked the way it looked in the sunlight. Yes! Like scales!"
And then there were the moments where he worked it out himself, where the patterns aligned and the kaleidoscope suddenly made a bizarre kind of sense and he looked so happy and so delighted with his success that it was difficult to think about anything else.
"Scales, huh? Like a fish?"
He looked at her incredulously.
"A fish? Why in Ozma's name would anyone want to be a fish? No, silly. What else has scales?"
"What else? Well..." she mused, considering. "Mermaids and dragons have scales. But they aren't real, are they?"
"Oh, aren't they?" His shoulders slumped. "Are you sure? I always thought there was something... that a dragon... what kind of noise does a dragon make again, Deeg?"
What kind of noise does it make, Ambrose?
"Well, I guess a kind of growling, roaring noise."
"A Raw?"
"Yes. No – roar. Like a lion."
"Oh," he said. "I always thought they went Tick-Tock-Tick." He pointed at his finger, swinging back and forth above them. "Like that, see?"
"No, silly. That's a clock. Tick-tock like a clock."
See? It rhymes. Now you can't forget, doll.
"You're worried about Azkadellia, aren't you."
Glitch wasn't looking at her. He was still watching his hand, back and forth, but his wide grin had been replaced by a slight curve of his lips that DG had started calling his 'Ambrose smile'. It was... it wasn't Glitch and she couldn't think of any other way to describe it. Even her mother, when she had mentioned it, had agreed, but she had looked so sad that DG had changed the subject. They didn't often talk about Ambrose, or the brain room.
"It's just... she's come to everything she's been told to, and done everything she's supposed to and she's only ever half there. Sometimes," she thought of that morning in the cold autumn light, "it feels more like she's looking through me."
Glitch sighed and brought his hand back down, slowly, to rest on his chest.
The silence descended again, settling comfortably back on the pillows.
"Have you ever nearly drowned, Deeg?"
"What?"
Glitch swung his legs over the side of the bed and moved into the middle of her floor, moving directly underneath her light and walking with it, as it moved.
"I think I nearly did, once. Or maybe I did, but I guess," he grinned, "I guess I wouldn't be here then, would I? If I'd really drowned, I'd be dead." He stopped and watched, raptly, as the little light continued to waltz across the ceiling. Then, so suddenly she barely caught the movement, he flicked the light switch.
The room was plunged suddenly into darkness and DG found herself stifling a scream.
"Glitch?"
She sat up in the bed, gripping the sides of the mattress to remind herself that yes, still here, still where you were before.
"I'm here, DG." His voice was loud against the black and much, much closer than she'd thought. "I'm right here." His voice moved as he spoke, sliding along the wall. "Funny old thing, isn't it? Darkness, that is. Are you afraid of it, doll?"
Slowly, her eyes were starting to adjust. Lights from the world outside were leaking in through her pale curtains, just enough to make out Glitch's figure by her wardrobe.
"No."
"Were you afraid when I turned off the light?"
"I..." she thought. "I guess I was. A little."
He laughed, softly.
"But when you get used to it, it's not so scary anymore, right?"
"Glitch, where are you going with this?"
"Wow, doll. You sounded an awful lot like Cain there." Light blazed in front of her and she jumped back on the bed, banging it against the wall. Glitch wasn't by the wardrobe. He was standing beside her, smiling his curious little Ambrose-smile with one eyebrow raised. In his outstretched palm was a glowing pale stone. "Thought we'd lost the tin men for a while there."
She laughed, blinking furiously and rubbing at her eyes.
"Whew, sorry Glitch. You startled me! How the hell did you get over here so fast? I swear you were just over there..."
He turned to look, following her gaze.
"I was? Where? Well, I'm here now, aren't I?"
Glitch was back with his big grin and the spark of emptiness, just behind his eyes.
"I guess you are." She looked down at the stone. "What's that?"
"What's wh – Oh, this little thing. It's a GLRD – a greater light retention – " Her silence must have spoken again, because he ducked his head and muttered, "it's a glowstone."
"OK. And you couldn't have just turned the main light on, because...?"
He paused, seemingly at a loss himself, before his lips quirked up again.
"Well, the light startled you, too, at first. Right?"
"Well, yeah, but..."
And then she looked at him. Glitch was smiling his little smile again, the glowstone still outstretched. His coat, still old and battered and road-worn, drooped off his shoulders. His waistcoat was new, buttoned correctly and stylishly, but he had sewn a little line of shiny memory discs down one side. One shoe was laced, one not, and his trousers were stained with oil and mud and marked with black patches and holes where it looked like got a little too close to the fire, and his head was tilted to one side, eyebrows raised, watching, waiting.
And that's how it looks, she thought, to be smarter than you can be.
She stood up, flailing for a moment amidst the pillows and sheets, and faced him. The glowstone shone between them, its pale white light sending strange elongated shadows across the floor and under her bed. Slowly, feeling as though she were taking part in an old ritual, she took the stone.
It was flat, underneath, and smooth. She had thought it would be hot, or at least warm, but instead it radiated a kind of cold, numbing her fingertips and seeping down into her wrist. She closed her fingers around its rounded top and the light cut off immediately, leaving them in darkness once more.
This time, it was Glitch who yelped.
She unclenched her fingers just in time to watch him spin around in the sudden light from the stone, facing her once more with a sort of relief.
"Oh, Deeg, there you are. Though I'd lost you in the... thought I'd lost..."
She smiled at him, nodding to say she understood and looked down at the stone, releasing a breath she didn't know she'd caught.
He followed her gaze.
"Oh! That's very pretty. A glowstone! Don't see 'em round here anymore. They're awfully rare, you know, since they have magical properties. Handy, huh, if you need some light. Speaking of, didn't you have a light in here? It's awfully dark apart from that..."
He frowned and turned to the wall, trying to find a switch, then spun back to her.
"Oh, hi doll. That's a pretty glowstone!" His expression softened, focusing in on the shadows it made and running his hand through them. "You know, I was going to give you one of those. For your birthday. You never were very fond of the dark after... since... well since you came back to the Northern Palace. I thought you'd like the light. Then, of course, I never got the chance because you..." He smiled. "I carried that old thing round for years, I think, in this coat. Then Azkadee went and caught me and... Huh. I wonder what happened to that old thing. Maybe it... maybe, maybe... Doll? Are you OK?"
He reached out a hand, tentatively, and brushed a spot of wetness on her cheek.
"Yeah, Glitch. I'm OK." She turned away, flicking the switch and setting her wayward star light back on its circuitous route. "How about you and I go see if we can scrounge some apples from the kitchen?"
He grinned.
"I do love a juicy apple."