The glob was only an inch from Glinda now. He did not know what it could do to her, but he was sure that it was not desirable. Though it might be capable only of startling her, that would give Erakna a momentary edge. That was probably all she needed to strike Glinda dead.
Erakna—still shrilling, "You lie! You lie!"—gripped the handle of her scarlet umbrella with both hands and pointed it at her enemy. A glowing red cloud sprang into being from the end, swirled, and then formed a blood-red face which undulated but still had definite features. It was that of an old, old, toothless woman with unusually deep eye-sockets and unusually large eyes. They glowed; one green, one red. A scarlet tongue slid out out from greenish gums.
"Look upon the face of the Bargainer!" Erakna screamed. "It's a face you've never seen before, you lying bitch! But it'll be the last face you'll ever see!"
"I have seen it," Glinda said calmly.
Hank bit his lip so savagely that it hurt him. He had to divert Erakna's attention to him, but he knew that he would die.
The face was moving as slowly as a sick sloth towards Glinda. Both her hands were up with the fingers extended towards it. She was fighting against it, but she could not stop its inexorable advance.
"She will eat you alive!" Erakna screamed. "Bit by bit!"
Her face was twisted, and sweat poured down her. But the umbrella was as unmoving as if it were in the hand of a statue.
The blob had halted; it moved again. He could not even see the floor between it and Glinda's heel.
He sprang up with a hoarse yell. At some time, he did not know when, he had lifted the chain from his neck. Now he held the housekey in his left hand. His unconscious had done it for some reason, a reason that he knew a second after he was aware that it was in his hand.
Erakna turned slightly, her skin paling, her eyes becoming even larger. She must have thought that he was dead. But she still pointed the umbrella at Glinda. One hand loosened its grip and pointed at Hank.
Glinda flung her arms up as the doughy thing touched her heel, and she jumped forward.
The face shot forward, but it stopped when it was within a few inches of the fingers Glinda held outwards again. Glinda was looking into the eyes of her death, and they were again moving very slowly toward her.
Glinda shouted hoarsely, "If you use your power against him, I will turn the Bargainer against you! She has promised me that I will win! I will go where no one wants to go, but I will have sent you to a worse place, and I will have saved my people!"
Yelling like a Comanche, Hank ran toward the Red Witch.
Erakna screamed, and from her finger sped a fiery globe. It was far smaller than the others, the size of a baseball, and it did not travel as swiftly.
He pitched the key at it, unsure that its path would intercept that of the destroying thing because it was so small. And he did not know that the key, if it passed through the sphere, would do anything. The sphere was ungrounded.
He was aware that Erakna was still screaming, but the cries sounded different. They were not born of hate but of horror and pain.
The key arced and touched the sphere.
Hank was deafened and thrown back by the explosion. His head struck a table, half-stunning him. He got up groggily, saw the key on the floor, and saw what Glinda had done to Erakna.
The face had been turned around and pushed back during that very brief time when Erakna's attention and power had been divided. It was attached to the Red Witch's now. At least, Hank assumed that it was. He could not see it clearly. It was almost invisible from behind and did not look like the back of a head. He did not know what it looked like.
Erakna rolled on the floor and tore with both hands at her own face as if she were trying to rip the thing off. Suddenly, she quit screaming. Her hands fell off her face and lay motionless by her sides. Her eyes looked fixedly and unblinkingly at the ceiling. Her mouth gaped. Her skin turned gray.
Two wisps, wavering and semi-transparent, rose from her head and floated through the ceiling. They looked to Hank— surely, it was his imagination—as if Erakna's face was against the Bargainer's, and the horrible old woman was kissing Erakna.
Hank jumped, and he swore as the corpse gave a tiny scream.
"An echo," Glinda said. "Poor woman."
Her voice was faint, and she looked too exhausted to move.
He leaned on the table, but it was not enough support. He sat on the floor and looked numbly at Glinda. She moved now, though slowly and stiffly.
"It is over," she said. "I knew that you should stay in the castle."
"I'm not sure that you did not plan all this."
She smiled slightly. "No, Hank. I did not know what would happen when she came here. If it hadn't been for you I'd be dead."
The light outside was getting a little brighter.
"Did you... really make a compact with the... Bargainer?"
"No, Hank. I lied to Erakna to shake her up, make her less confident, confuse her."
"Glinda the Good," he murmured.
Author's Notes
1. Somewhere out there is somebody who will check up on the weather at Fort Leavenworth on April 1, 1923. Don't bother unless you want the exercise. I got my data from the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Times. An interesting item which has little to do with the weather is that the "King Tut Craze" was just reaching its peak. The professional models who appeared on Easter day at the Auteuil races in Paris wore King Tut hats, green robes with slashed sleeves, floppy waists, tight hips, long skirts, and slashed gauntlets. Many had kerchiefs with Egyptian figures around the necks and arms.
2. The circumstances surrounding President Harding's death were mysterious, or so many claimed. One ex-government official even wrote a book in which he claimed that Mrs. Harding had poisoned her husband. This story seems, from all known, to have been a vile canard. Mrs. Harding did, however, refuse to let an autopsy be performed on her husband. Thus we can speculate that the coroners may have missed Glinda's calling card, but the embalmers would have found it. Perhaps they did not. In any event, the Signal Corps project was kept secret. Somewhere in the U.S. government files, though, may be the complete story. It would be as difficult to find as the Ark of the Covenant, also stored by the government.
3. Did the ancestors of the Amariikians diminish in stature because of something in the water? Or was the shrinking caused by the presence of the firefoxes? No one, except possibly Glinda, knows.
4. If the energy beings called mind-spirits or firefoxes could be used by old red witches to keep them animated, why didn't the witches use them to transfer their mind contents to new bodies? The answer is that the body the witch would like to possess had a mind which would have rejected any attempt at takeover. However, it was said that there had been a few times when firefoxes possessed idiots. If this was so, why didn't the witches use the firefoxes to possess idiots? They undoubtedly tried to do this, but they failed. A firefox operating by itself could sometimes possess an idiot. But the combination of a firefox and the mind-contents of a witch could not effect a transportation, though the witch could control the firefox while it was in her own body. In fact, the witch, if she tried to shunt her mind-contents to another body, was likely to have them discharged electrically, erased as a tape is erased. The firefox would then take over the body and mind structure with ease. After this happened a few times, the old red witches avoided this type of attempt at longevity.
5. The Witch of the East was killed by the impact of Dorothy's house falling over her, and she immediately became dust. The Witch of the West dissolved into a puddle of water when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her. (This action by Dorothy could be called "dirty pool.") I had figured out some years ago just how these two events came about, but it is only fair to record that Doctor Douglas A. Rossman, in an article, "On The Liquidation of Witches," in The Baum Bugle, Spring, 1969, extrapolated much as I had. I was not a member of the International Wizard of Oz Club then, but when I found out about the article in 1981, I had Fred Meyers, the Club's secretary, send me a copy.