Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 Read Online Free PDF

send for a bowl of scented water, something? Is there a way we can offer charity to you?” said the Superior Maunt. “We don’t have visits from the likes of you often. In fact, I think never.”
    “I’m only passing through,” said the Red Pfenix. “There’s a Conference farther west. But the music drew me down.”
    “You love music?”
    “If I loved music I wouldn’t have stopped. She doesn’t play very well, does she? No, I don’t love music; it interferes with my homing devices. I was merely curious to see an instrument like this again. The sound of her playing reminded me of a time I had seen one long ago; I’d quite forgotten. But thank you for your charity. I require nothing but a little rest.”
    The Red Pfenix looked at the musician, who stood shyly in her pale grey novice’s skirts. “She’s a puzzle, that one is,” said the Red Pfenix.
    “Got him!” shouted Sister Cook, coming up from behind with a snare, and indeed she had. The Red Pfenix squawked and thrashed; all the eyes in his plumage contorted. The scream was horrible. “Pfenix steaks!” said Sister Cook. “I have just the recipe!”
    “Let him go,” said Mother Yackle.
    It was not her place to speak next, and the Superior Maunt was irritated. She knew Sister Cook was thinking: Pfenix steaks! With knobs of butter, and tarragon mustard, and small new potatoes roasted in the same pan…
    “Let him go,” said the Superior Maunt, more sternly than Mother Yackle.
    “Shoot,” said Sister Cook. “I spend fifteen minutes creeping up on this bird, and with my lumbago I actually manage to catch it, and you say ‘Let him go’?”
    “Do not question my authority.”
    “I merely question your sense,” said Sister Cook heavily. She turned the snare over, and the Red Pfenix exploded away from the orchard, cursing.
    “He was on his way to a Conference,” said Mother Yackle.
    “Enough,” said the Superior Maunt. “Enough of this. Sister Cook, who is this novice? Where did she come from?”
    Sister Cook was grinding her teeth in annoyance at the missed opportunity. “Candle,” she muttered. “Left here by a gypsy cousin for safekeeping, said he’d be back in a year. Either she’d be mauntified by then or he’d reclaim her, but I said I’d take her on. She causes no trouble because she can’t gossip with the other girls, and she knows how to make a mean marrow gravy. I’ve had her working with Sister Sauce on the feast day roast.”
    “Can you spare her?”
    “Can I spare a Red Pfenix is a better question, and the answer to that one is no .”
    “We don’t eat Animals,” said the Superior Maunt. “I know times have changed, but it’s in our charter. We don’t eat anything that can talk back to us, Sister Cook, and if I find you have been butchering behind my back…”
    “I can hardly spare her,” said Sister Cook, looking at the musician. “But if you make her take that unnerving domingon with her, I’ll call it even.”
    “Domingon, is that what it is. I’d read of them, but never seen one. Come, my daughter, domingon and all.” The Superior Maunt gestured, with as tender a smile as her crabbed old mouth could assume. The girl rose. She took the Superior Maunt’s hand in an easy, unaffected way—the other girls snickered. Yes, she must be simple.
    “I had come looking to ask you what you remembered of a novice we once housed—the strange green girl, Elphaba.”
    “Before my time,” snapped Sister Cook, and left.
    Mother Yackle scratched her nose and yawned.
    The Red Pfenix was still screaming in the sky. He circled the towers of the mauntery, safe now, and recovering the ability to be affronted. He was like a clot of blood swimming above the infirmary.
    “Did you say there’s a boy in the house?” asked Mother Yackle. She let her shawl slip back, and raised her bleary, milk-clotted eyes toward the Superior Maunt. “Did he bring back the broom?”
    7
    T HE S UPERIOR M AUNT was going to need a long rest