Notes: Oh hello! Thanks so much for the reviews, they are really encouraging:D Also I forgot to mention and thank my two awesome proofreaders who are, incidentally, awesome, and who listen to me whine about my silly writings without even hitting me too much (unless I ask them to, for motivation!). Did I mention that they are awesome??
Also, too; I'm gonna go ahead and tentatively call this fic Boq/Glinda, in case you were curious.

It was getting dark by the time he dragged into the village where he had been born. Several days' walking had brought him this far. He was hot and thirsty and sore, with dust clinging all about his feet and legs and his spectacles sliding down his nose, and far too exhausted to notice or care that the farmers in the fields he staggered past were staring at him and whispering.

The countryside was supposed to be patrolled by Guards, but he hadn't seen any. Probably many of them had been recalled to the Emerald City for the engagement ball. He shouldn't have had any problems even if he had run into a guard post, with a proper traveling pass in his pocket, although he had heard stories about the Guards harassing even legitimate travelers out of boredom, or bigotry, or whatever it was.

Boq had not been out on his own in almost three years, if the courtyard of the mansion didn't count – and he did not count it, because even though he could see the sky there, he was still surrounded on all sides by the walls of that hateful, stifling place. And although he had been kept busy dashing from this room to that, up stairs and down, fetching things and running errands, it wasn't the same as proper exercise, he had realized. In all of his life, working in the fields with his father since he was old enough to march along behind him carrying a bag of seed or an armful of tools, he could not think of another time he had been this tired. Couldn't think very well at all, actually, but that didn't matter now, he was home.

His father's farm, one of the more successful ones in this hardscrabble place, was beyond all the others on the outskirts of the village, and as he approached it he recognized his father, Bfee, and two of his brothers gathered in front of the farmhouse, unhitching a Munchkinlander pony from a wagon, their day's work done. His throat, dry anyway from lack of water, clenched so at the sight that he was unable to call out, but as he got closer they looked up one by one and noticed him.

"What business do you have, young master? I don't think we know you." Boq's father peered at him through the growing darkness, but his brothers, Kievan and Elikh, stared, stricken, as though he had just risen up suddenly out of the ground.

"It's me, dad," Boq rasped.

Bfee stared. Kievan made a feeble warding sign, as if confronted with an evil spirit. Elikh asked, hopefully, "Boq?"

"Mercy from the Unnamed God," Bfee whispered. He still didn't move. "I don't believe it. Boq? It is you?"

"Of course it's me. Who else?" Having made it this far, all Boq wanted was to have a drink and then sleep for a good long while, and this confusion wasn't helping. "Can we go inside now?" He almost lost his balance and all three made a move at once to steady him, but Bfee caught him first.

"Kievan, Elikh, you finish up out here," he said. Through a haze of exhaustion Boq was just aware enough to notice the fact that his father's voice was shaking. That was unusual. "I'll take Boq inside. Your mother will want to know her son is alive."

So he was led into the house, forced to sit down and given a drink of water. His siblings all crowded around to see him and stare, but no one knew quite what to say or do when faced with someone they had thought was dead, except for his mother, Laelia, who wrung his hand in hers and cried silently until he felt profoundly uncomfortable.

"Where have you been?" they all asked. "Why didn't you write?"

"I tried," was all he could say.

They told him that the last letter they had received from him, three years ago, had been a hastily-scribbled note saying that he was escorting a friend home to visit her ailing father. After that, as far as they or anyone outside Colwen Grounds knew, he had vanished completely. They had waited and wondered, sent letters to the school and gotten infuriatingly unhelpful replies, suspected foul play, and finally despaired of ever seeing him again.

He listened to all this, dully, too tired to react; someone must have realized it, because he was dimly aware of being led to another room and collapsing into bed, filthy clothes and all, before falling blissfully asleep.

Slowly he became aware of a conversation between two of his sisters, who were hurrying around the bedroom and whispering over him in too-loud voices. Surely it wasn't morning yet, he'd hardly even slept at all, had he? But curtains were drawn back and sunlight seemed to burn through Boq's eyelids. He tried to resist the return to awareness, but no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, the persistent reality of the waking world gnawed at the edges of his mind. He wasn't ready to wake up yet, there was too much to think about, too much to deal with… if he could just go back to sleep and put it off a little longer…

"Oh, Abbey, will you look at this, the entire bed needs cleaning now."

"Of course it does. And he'll need a bath and a change of clothes. And a few good meals, too, see how pale he is, poor thing…"

"Someone really ought to have changed his clothes before they put him to bed. No wonder the boys all slept on the floor last night, and woke up cranky." There was a pause; something partly blocked the light streaming in from the window, and the voice continued from much closer. "Goodness, look at him. He looks like a half-drowned sheep dragged a mile through the dirt. If I had a pair of scissors I'd cut his hair right now before he wakes up…"

"Now, there's no need to pick on him just because you're feeling put upon."

"Those were unrelated observations. Don't scold, you know he can't hear me anyway."

Exasperated and finally giving up on getting any more sleep, Boq pulled a pillow over his face and growled into it, sleepily. "Wrong, Norin."

"Oh!" Undaunted, Norin snatched the pillow away from him, holding it by one corner as if it were contaminated. "Have you been eavesdropping?"

"It's not eavesdropping when you're standing right next to me." Blinking in the light, he glared up at her, but any real annoyance he might have felt vanished in an instant.

Abbey and Norin were his older sisters, complete opposites but nearly inseparable. They were both wearing the very modest plain dress that Munchkinlander girls were known for, but Norin had her pretty brown hair done up in a modern style such as he had seen worn by fashionable girls at Shiz, while Abbey tied hers back with a simple ribbon only to keep it out of her eyes. They looked older than he remembered; of course on some level he had expected that, but he hadn't been prepared for the degree of change. Maybe he should have been. More than five years had passed since he had last seen them – when he went away to school. How much had to have happened since then, it occurred to him uneasily; how much he must have missed – and not only here within his family, but in the rest of Oz. He knew nothing but what Nessa chose to tell him, and that was mainly what he least wanted to hear… But that was another thought he was not ready to deal with just yet.

Abbey sat gingerly on the edge of the bed as he struggled to sit up, every muscle protesting, feeling even sorer than he had yesterday. "We're all very glad to have you back, little brother," she said, and put a hand on his arm, almost questioningly. Worried about him. How strange it must be to have a dead person show up on your doorstep out of nowhere, apparently alive and well. In the face of her concerned expression, he had to force a smile.

Sulking at being suddenly ignored, Norin pulled Abbey to her feet. "Our brother is sorely in need of washing, and we are distracting him. Are we going to make you something to eat, Boq, or do you think you'll be spending the rest of the day laying about? It's nearly noon, you know, you might as well waste the whole day as waste half of it –"

Abbey shot him an apologetic look. "You ought to hurry if you can. Mama won't relax until she sees you up and about again, she's been wandering around in a daze all morning. I think she still doesn't quite believe you're back…" She hesitated, as if she had more to say, but Norin took that opportunity to drag her out of the room and towards the kitchen. The prospect of food was enticement enough to force Boq to crawl painfully out of bed and wash up as best he could. Clean and with a change of clothes borrowed from one of his brothers, he began to feel a bit better, and steeled himself to venture into the kitchen again.

The house was mostly quiet. His father and brothers had undoubtedly been working in the field since dawn and wouldn't be back until dusk, and he didn't know where his younger sister was. On the table was a small pile of neatly-folded clothes, and his mother sat mending a hole on a shirt sleeve, in an absent sort of way. When she noticed him watching, tears sprung to her eyes at once and she rose to her feet with noticeable difficulty. He gave her a shaky smile and accepted her embrace, feeling awkward and hating it.

"My poor boy," she murmured. "Are you all right? Did you sleep? You were so tired last night I had Elikh put you to bed, you didn't hear a thing we were saying to you, I worried all morning when you didn't get up – "

"Mama, I'm fine," he said evenly. "I'm going to sit here at the table with you and eat. Is that all right?"

"Of course it is. Sit here, where I can see you." She pushed the pile of clothes to be mended to the other end of the table, and sat down in the chair beside him, wincing. Boq noticed it, uneasily; could she really have aged that much since he had last seen her? Abbey had been about to tell him something before Norin interrupted her; maybe she had meant to prepare him for it.

"I'm sorry you were worried," he said, impulsively, and took his mother's hand in his. "I'm sorry you – I'm sorry that I was gone for so long." I'm sorry you all believed I was dead, he thought, but that went without saying. "I did try to write you. If there had been a way to let you know I was all right – "

"I know," she said simply.

The afternoon passed quietly. The men returned from the field briefly to eat lunch (Boq's youngest brother Farran made a point to shake his hand, which was somewhat mystifying) and then went out again. Little Elinna returned from her trip down to the lake with a string of fish for dinner, smiling shyly at Boq but responding as briefly as possible to his attempts at conversation. She had been only seven years old when he left for school; now she was, what? Twelve, thirteen? He hardly recognized her, and he wouldn't have been surprised if she had forgotten all about him.

While their mother cleaned the fish for dinner and Abbey and Elinna assisted her, Norin offered – threatened, really – to cut his hair, and he was happy to accept. The only reason he had let it grow so long was because Nessa would not stop hinting that she would prefer it short, and the thought of having taken pleasure in such meaningless rebellion was almost embarrassing now.

Norin dragged him outside and was far too eager to pour a bucket of water over his head, just to straighten out his hair a bit, she said, but there was a mischievous glint in her eye.

"Don't worry," she told him, opening and closing a pair of scissors in the air experimentally, making sure they were sharp enough. "I've been practicing on Farran, and so far I've managed to leave both his ears intact."

"Comforting." He smiled, even though she was standing behind him and wouldn't see it.

"He's sort of taken after you, since – well, in your absence. When you disappeared, all of your possessions were sent back by the university, your books and papers and things. They seemed to think they were doing us a great favor, despite not being at great pains to find out where you had disappeared to…" She trailed off, disgusted. It was quiet for a moment, except for the sound of the scissors, busily snipping.

"Dad might have gotten rid of the books," she continued, "since they took up too much space – you know he's never really seen the use of books anyway – but Farran spoke up for them, and mama intervened too. So dad relented and we ended up stashing it all in boxes under the boys' bed. Abbey's idea. Farran absolutely treasures them."

"He kept everything?" Boq asked.

"As far as I know. Would you stop moving around so much?" She tugged on his hair irritably.

"Ow. Sorry." He tried to stop fidgeting. "What makes you say he's taken after me?"

"Reading at every opportunity, dreaming like there's no such thing as work, disappearing up trees all day until evening and making everyone think he wandered off and drowned in the lake…"

"That only happened once."

Norin made a sound of amused disbelief. "Anyway, if you want to reclaim any of your things, you might have to fight him for them. Just so you know."

It was strange, almost dreamlike, how quickly he was accepted back into the old routine. Everything, everyone had changed, but he seemed to be the only one who noticed. It was disconcerting.

Although they were clearly glad and amazed to have him back, it was strange to Boq how short-lived their curiosity was in exactly where he had been and why. Of course, he hadn't forgotten how much strength and mental energy it took to keep up a farm this size, so he supposed it wasn't surprising that his family wouldn't have much extra to spare for him. No matter what happened – no matter who died or came back from the dead – there was always work to be done to keep food on the table.

At dinner that first night they questioned him intensely. As soon as they had begun to understand what had happened – that the friend from school that he had been escorting home when he disappeared was now the Governor of Munchkinland, that he had spent all this time at Colwen Grounds – they grew quiet.

"You were a friend to the Wicked Witch of the East?" asked Farran.

"The – what?" Boq was confused for a moment, wondering how they had known about Elphaba without him having told them. But no… the Witch of the East? "Do you mean Nessa – the Governor?"

"Of course he means the Governor, don't play stupid," Kievan snapped. Bfee shot him a warning look, under which Kievan relented; still, Boq was shaken by the sudden tension around the table. Except for Elikh's (focused on resolutely arranging the food on his plate into even patterns before beginning to eat), all eyes were on him, concerned, perhaps even suspicious.

"That's what many of us have taken to calling her lately," Abbey explained.

"I would call her worse, but there are ladies and children present," Kievan said, bowing sportively to Elinna, who ducked her head shyly and pretended she hadn't noticed. "Her and her blighted travel restrictions, and her Guards getting the run of the countryside, poking around wherever they please, while she hides in that sprawling great mansion feeling superior to the like of us." He was nearly snarling. "At least her sister inflicts her witchery without bias, rich or poor – some of her victims must deserve what they get, unlike us."

"Kievan!" Abbey scolded. "Don't speak that way over dinner, please!"

"I haven't really been in a position to hear her criticized so openly," said Boq carefully, as Kievan shot a fierce glare at Abbey, "but we certainly aren't friends."

Kievan wouldn't give up yet. "What were you doing working for her, then?"

"I was not," Boq growled, "working for her. I was not there willingly, if that's what you're all so worried about." And they did look relieved, somewhat.

He went on to explain, trying not to look as self-conscious as he felt, as much of the situation as he could bear to put into words. The very fact of having been made a servant was humiliating enough – they were poor and they were common, but Boq's family was fiercely proud of their independence – without having to mention that Nessa had been in love with him, or that he'd had a hand in convincing her of it, or, heaven forbid, that the Witch of the West was involved, too. Would they have even believed him?

"If she was so cruel, then why did she finally let you go?" his mother asked placidly. "Had a change of heart, did she?"

Boq nearly choked, but was saved from having to answer as Farran leaned forward eagerly. "I heard that she is hideously deformed, barely even human – is that true?"

"I heard that her travel restrictions were only made because she has no legs and resents those that can walk," Kievan muttered.

"And that she is deranged and sleeps in a bed lined with the pelts of cats she killed herself," Norin said.

"You are deranged," Boq said, stunned. "Or whoever thought that up is deranged. I can't believe you would honestly think those things are true."

Norin frowned at him. "Well, there's no need to get so insulted. We were only having a conversation."

That was true, and Boq wasn't entirely sure himself why he found the rumors so disturbing, as ridiculous as they were. Nessa certainly wasn't going out of her way to be liked; most of her subjects had never even seen her. When someone in such a prominent position was so shrouded in mystery, her actions seemingly inexplicable, stories like this were bound to crop up. Perhaps without any regard to truth or plausibility.

When they had all finished eating and the ladies were busy cleaning up, Boq's father gave him a shrewd look and asked, casually, "You'll be joining us in the field tomorrow, I'm hoping?"

Boq opened his mouth intending to plead exhaustion and explain that he could use another day of rest after a somewhat harrowing last few days, but his brothers were waiting keenly for his response and what he found himself saying instead was "Of course."

Bfee didn't reply, but the merest flicker of pride in his expression was enough to convince Boq he had made the right choice.

When they returned the next day from planting, the men (sunburnt and stooped and dead tired from the work) found Elinna sobbing, distraught, and the other women gathered around her. Between trying to soothe her and looking awestruck themselves, they hardly acknowledged anyone at first, until they all gathered around Elinna in a half-circle, anxiously checking that she was all right.

"What happened?" growled Bfee.

"It's the Witch," Laelia said, pale but smiling. "The Wicked Witch is dead."

Boq was dimly surprised that no one seemed to notice his sharp intake of breath at the words, even in the stunned silence that fell after them. "Who – which one do you mean?" he asked, hearing his own calm voice strangely, as if from a distance.

Meeting his eyes from the other side of the circle, Abbey said, grimly, "Our Governor."

Kievan grinned fiercely. "You mean our former Governor." He nudged the still-sniffling Elinna in an attempt to cheer her up. "Come on, moppet, what are you crying for? This is good news."

"Oh, don't tease her, the poor thing. She was there when it happened," Laelia murmured, smoothing Elinna's hair in sympathy.

"When what happened?" Boq demanded, so sharply that even Elinna looked up at him in alarm. Before anyone could react, Abbey pulled him aside so that they could speak without being overheard.

"Are you all right?" she asked first.

"Yes." She frowned at him, disbelieving. "No, honestly, I'm fine," he muttered, "just shocked. What happened?"

"Elinna walked around to Stonespar End this morning to meet some friends. The Governor was there, she said, giving a speech – she doesn't know what about, Elinna doesn't, she says she wasn't listening – and a storm kicked up, of a sudden, out of nowhere, and…" Abbey hesitated, seeming to doubt the words even as she said them. "And then there was a cyclone, and it dropped a house right on the spot where the Governor was standing. I know it sounds impossible."

"Was it – was it some kind of sorcery, or…"

"Of course, it has to have been – Elinna insists there was a young girl inside the house when it landed, alive – a girl and her little dog," Abbey went on, helplessly. "Everyone assumed she was a witch. I don't know if it's true."

"It is impossible," Boq said quietly, reeling. "A little girl? And crushed by a house… oh, Elinna, I wish she hadn't had to see it, I wish…" He found himself leaning heavily against the wall. What had Nessa been doing, going out among the commoners like that? Kievan had been right about that, at least; she had never wanted to associate with her subjects any more than she had to after her father's death. At first Boq had thought she was simply in mourning, but he later realized that she had never seemed at ease around the other servants, either; never seemed to know how to talk to them without falling to snapping out orders. So why the sudden change of heart?

"All right, Boq?" Elikh had edged up to him in his awkward way, concerned.

Without thinking, Boq nodded, and tried to gather himself back into the moment. Norin and Farran were sitting to either side of Elinna, making up some inane story to keep her from dissolving into tears again as Kievan tried animatedly to convince their parents that they should host a meal for the whole village to celebrate the Witch's death.

Boq took a deep breath, as if testing his resolve. Was he all right? Nessarose had been killed, after all. Violently. Possibly murdered. It would be right to be upset, wouldn't it?

No. It wasn't Nessa, it was the Governor of Munchkinland was dead, the terrible, unfeeling ruler, universally despised by her subjects. The selfish, spoiled girl who had kept him locked up like a disobedient pet that she could train, somehow, to love her. The Wicked Witch of the East, that's who was dead. There had been nothing left of Nessarose that was worth mourning, not for a long time; and so he would not mourn her now, he thought, with a decisiveness that did nothing to quell the sick feeling building in him.

Sure enough, in a few days the small house was full of the bedraggled inhabitants of Rush Margins, spilling out into the yard when it got too close inside, talking too loudly and eating too much and making exuberant toasts to the alien girl who had killed their despised Governor, and Boq had retreated to his room, pleading a headache. They had a right to celebrate and he had a right to be disgusted by the whole thing. He didn't want to think about it anymore, that was all.

He was trying hopelessly to fall asleep, with a pillow over his head to muffle the noise, when the door opened; he just barely kept from growling at whoever it was to go away before he heard Farran call, "Are you all right?"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"

He heard the door click shut. "Maybe we're just concerned. Why are you sulking all alone in a dark room?"

"Maybe I was sleeping."

"I doubt it," Farran retorted, but cheerfully. "Are you bored? Would you like something to read?"

Boq was up immediately, all pretense of sleep forgotten. "Yes!"

Grinning, Farran went around to the opposite side of the bed and knelt to pull out a wooden crate. "You might recognize these," he said, a little shyly, and handed Boq the top book in the pile.

It was his Ozian history textbook from his first year. He opened it to the middle, where the first page of the chapter on Munchkinland was still dog-eared to mark its place, torn between amusement and a vague disquieting feeling he couldn't quite decipher.

"Norin told me how you fought to keep these," he said. "Thank you for taking such good care of them."

"It was… well, I thought it was all we had left of you." Farran tried to laugh. "Certainly no one expected you to show up and reclaim them."

The strange feeling grew. Boq imagined the trunk full of books and papers being brought in, his mother broken all over again at the sight of it, his father gruffly throwing himself into work, barking orders at everyone over nothing, determined not to show how the loss had hurt him.

"You can keep them," he said hollowly. "I don't need them anymore." He closed the textbook hastily and handed it back.

Farran's eyes widened. "Thank you!" he said. "I mean, you're free to borrow them whenever you'd like, but… Oh, wait!" He began pulling other books out of the crate, searching for something. "I've always wondered, and now I can actually ask you – here." He drew out a bound notebook, the kind they had sold in the school store at Shiz, and flipped through it.

"Are you so desperate for reading material that you have to stoop to reading my homework as well?"

Farran nodded absently. "Homework's interesting when I'm not the one who has to do it. Ah, there it is." With a suspiciously eager grin he handed over the notebook and sat back to watch. Confused, Boq glanced from his brother to the page, read a few words, and promptly slammed the notebook shut, mortified.

"Ha!" Farran said delightedly. "You did write them!"

"I did not," Boq choked, fighting a very powerful urge to hide. "I – I copied them out of a library book."

"Oh, I see. Was the book a collection of especially gawkish poetry?"

Boq forgot that he was trying to disclaim the writing and looked back at Farran plaintively. "What?"

"I'm only joking, some of it's not so bad," Farran said, although Boq distinctly got the feeling that he was just being polite. "Besides, I bet you could write much better now."

"Not really," Boq relented. "I haven't even tried since…" He gestured at the crate of schoolbooks vaguely.

"Lost your inspiration?"

Boq smiled to himself, wistfully. "You could say that."

"A girl?" Farran asked quietly.

Something in the tone of the question made Boq hesitate almost imperceptibly, but he decided to overlook it. "Yes."

Farran smiled ruefully and didn't press the matter. In truth he didn't seem that interested, which Boq was grateful for. He had been too preoccupied for the past week to think about what he intended to do – to think about her – but now the half-formed plans and daydreamed possibilities began to whirl around in his thoughts once more.

Knowing his father as he did, Boq realized grimly that this was not likely to be a pleasant conversation, and it took him a few days of agonized indecision before he convinced himself that it would be best to get it over with. Whenever he tried to envision how it might go, his mind constructed elaborate scenes that somehow always ended in disaster. Of course it undoubtedly would, but it wasn't comforting to know that his own imagination had so little faith in him.

After dinner Boq sat up straighter and tried to sound stern. "Dad, there's something important I'd like to discuss with you."

Bfee tilted his head back appraisingly, but his expression was unreadable. "Well, then?"

Thrown off guard, failing utterly to hide it, Boq tried again. "W- couldn't we go somewhere… couldn't we speak in private?" The sounds of cleaning from the kitchen were subtly muffled as the girls all tried to listen in, and Kievan, Elikh and Farran were still sitting around the table, pointedly not watching, but obviously eager to hear what was so important.

With a nod Bfee dismissed them. Farran shot Boq an apprehensive look as he passed; behind him, Boq heard their bedroom door slam shut conspicuously as a sign that they could continue. It did nothing to convince him, since he knew from experience that they would be listening in under the door, anyway. Still, there was no point turning back now.

"I was hoping –" He took a deep breath. "I intend to go to the Emerald City, as soon as you can spare me."

"You are? And how are you thinking of paying for it?"

"I hoped that I could borrow some money, to be paid back after I find a job there, and –"

"Of course," Bfee interrupted, disgusted. "Why do you want to do such a damn fool thing as that?"

He had attempted to find a way of explaining the situation that didn't make it sound quite as absurd as it actually was, but hadn't been very successful. Quickly, before he lost what was left of his resolve, he recited, "I am in love with a girl I met at school and now she is in the Emerald City and she is going to be married so I have to find her and talk to her first," and then stared fiercely at the edge of the table.

"If she already has a fiancé, does she really need you to come poking your nose into her life? What are you planning to do, talk her out of her marriage with that silver tongue of yours?"

"Well," he stammered, "no, but –"

"What sort of background does this girl have? She is Munchkinlander, I hope?" The guilty look on Boq's face told Bfee otherwise, and he sighed. "Well, at least you are not chasing after some pretty little servant girl. Tell me that much."

"Sort of the opposite," said Boq sheepishly.

Bfee stared, then passed a hand over his eyes, losing what little patience he had. "You do realize how stupidly you are behaving, don't you?"

Boq closed his eyes. "Dad, I have to do this, I have to. I never got the chance to really tell her how I felt, before –"

"Don't tell me what you have to do. You have a responsibility to this household and to the livelihood of the entire family, and we have already had to do without you for too long."

"That wasn't exactly my fault," Boq said between clenched teeth. He was losing patience, too.

"It's because of your schooling, isn't it, that you think you are too good to till the same earth as your father does, and your grandfather did, and your great-grandfather? Filled your head with lofty ideas, and now you think to insinuate yourself into the life of a society lady who cannot be expected to have any regard for you?" Bfee shook his head, his voice lowering, bitter and imploring all at once. "I was afraid this would happen. Ever since you were a child, you had so little use for anything I taught you. Rather read those storybooks of yours and dream about nonsense than build something real, something respectable. So eager to abandon us for something better."

"That's not true," Boq said quietly, shaken by the accusation. "It's not true, and I don't like that you would believe that of me so easily." Hesitating, unsure of how to continue, he glanced to one side and realized his mother had entered the room without either of them noticing.

Silently she moved to stand beside Boq. "Stop acting as if this has anything to do with you," she told Bfee. "You forget that he is grown now and fully able to make his own decisions, don't you?"

"So long as I am alive, I reserve the right to protect my children from making stupid decisions," growled Bfee.

Laelia put a gnarled hand on Boq's shoulder. "He only wants a chance to see this lady friend of his again. If it is a mistake, then let him make it, and realize on his own that he was wrong. The farm will still be standing when he gets back, either way."

"By encouraging this behaviour, you have only made it worse, Laelia," he said in a low voice. "Sentimentality has no place in this work, in this life. It will only make him hurt worse when reality sets in."

"You would have him stop feeling altogether."

Bfee sighed, and Boq could see that he was giving in. "If it would keep him here…"

"You may be right, but I won't know unless I try. And I promise that I will be back," he added impulsively, although right away he regretted it. For a moment the weight of responsibility had seemed about to lift… now it crashed down again, heavier than before.

Bfee leaned forward. "Back when?"

"Next year," Boq found himself saying, "by springtime."

And that was all. Shaking all over, not knowing whether to feel triumphant or defeated, Boq slipped past his sisters all wide-eyed gathered in the doorway of the kitchen, and dutifully pretended not to notice when his brothers leapt away from the bedroom door as it opened and tried to look disinterested.

It was only in the absolute stillness of that night as he lay awake that he was able to convince himself that it would be worth it in the end.

Boq wished that his siblings had not insisted on looking so betrayed, or that his father had done more than nod at him brusquely in parting, but the mood in the small house was unpleasantly tense already, and he was still too on-edge from yesterday's conflict to risk creating another scene now. At least his mother was not hurt by his leaving, although despite her unexpected stoicism she was still reluctant to stop hugging him and let him go.

Kievan drove Boq to the carriage stop at Stonespar End the next day in the horse-cart, with a bag packed and more money stashed away inside it than the family could truly spare now, since the year's crops were just now in the ground and there was no guarantee they would harvest enough to turn a profit. Boq tried not to feel too guilty about that, or about the fact that he was deeply glad to be leaving home again, if temporarily. Everywhere he turned there he expected to find a ghost (or perhaps a Witch's ghost, although he stubbornly refused to let himself entertain such a thought); it was all too familiar, oppressively so, and yet at the same time he could not escape the evidence of how much he had missed.

On the side of the road they passed people walking, singly and in groups, talking and laughing and boisterously enjoying their ability to do so without harassment. The mood of the countryside had lifted remarkably since the day that cyclone hit. Battalions of Guards had been seen marching northward without stopping, presumably returning to the Emerald City. For the moment the question of succession was only being asked in hushed tones; the Thropp line was broken, or as good as, since no one would suggest putting a practicing Witch in power to replace of a nominal one.

Although he would never admit it, Boq knew that his father had been unsettlingly accurate in pinpointing his reasons for leaving. Years away from home had made him unbearably restless when suddenly faced once again with the bleak and colorless life he had been born to. Eventually he would be forced to settle into it – to settle for it – but for now he was young, he could travel, and (he thought, with an irrepressible sheepish grin that he hoped Kievan wouldn't notice) he was in love.

He would try to see Glinda one more time, at least – and maybe, maybe…

When they arrived, Boq vaulted over the side of the cart and Kievan handed him his bag. "Good luck, Boq," he said, and it was clear that he meant it.

As the cart rattled off over the uneven road, Boq turned away. Home was already behind him, and his thoughts were in the City.