some through force. He let them work at embodying lesser ideals, to give him more and more control over the world. He’s killed and lied and stolen. You’re not the first of your flesh. He’s set Jackdaws and Crow Girls on this road before, let them get almost as far as you have, and then he’s had them killed, for one reason or another. They’ve all been imperfect. You’re imperfect. You entangled too early, and you didn’t develop exactly along the lines he had set for you. He wants you dead. He’s said so, in as many words, because your successors are ready to take the iron shoes and rainbow ribbons and wish you right the fuck out of the Up-and-Under. I don’t know how many ways I can say this. You leave, you die. You stay with me, you listen, maybe you live. Probably not. I don’t think the odds are ever going to be in our favor. But at least with me, you get a maybe.”
“What does any of this have to do with the Up-and-Under?” asks Roger.
Erin groans. “Oh, God, I should have found a way to start teaching you this crap years ago. Look: when Baker created the Up-and-Under, she split it into four countries, representing the four stages of the alchemical path—novice, apprentice, journeyman, and master. Hyacinth, Meadowsweet, Aster, and Crocus. More accurately, Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. They match the four Humors that control the body, and the four Temperaments that determine everything we do. For a while, this whole damn country matched her map, because she had that much power. She embodied part of the Doctrine in herself through sheer sympathy with its existence, and she got to set the definitions. When her rivals attacked her, that embodiment was the first thing they sought to undermine. They couldn’t undo it completely, not with the number of children who read and believed in her stories, but they were able to break some of the fundamental laws she’d tried to impose on the world. That’s where Baum came in. His fictional countries changed the orientations. Reversed them, cast them into alchemical flux and moved them into sympathy with Oz. The alignments have been switching uncontrollably ever since.”
“Meaning what?” asks Roger.
“Meaning we don’t know whether we’re currently in the master’s territory of Fire and the Choleric, or the novice’s territory of Water and the Phlegmatic. And that makes all the difference in the goddamn world if we’re trying to beat a hundred-year-old alchemist at his own game!” Erin’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes are overly bright.
Roger and Dodger stare at her, united in their dismay. Finally, Dodger asks, “Why should we believe you?”
“Aren’t you the one who said she talked to her own past?” counters Erin. “You should believe me because if I’m lying, you’re losing your mind. That’s a genuine concern of yours, isn’t it? Little number girl who’s never been able to figure out how humans work, who hears the voice of her brother in her head when she’s scared or lonely. Are you even sure he exists? Maybe he’s something you made up.”
For the first time, Dodger looks alarmed. “Of course he’s real. He’s right here.”
“So am I, but you seem awfully eager to dismiss everything I’m saying, even though it answers the questions you’ve been asking your entire life,” says Erin. “Baker was an alchemist. Reed follows her teachings, in a twisted way. You’re the product of an alchemist’s desire to control reality, and while I realize this is a lot to dump on you all at once, all you have to do is think about what I’m saying and you’ll understand how true it is. It’s a single equation that explains your entire life. If you don’t want to accept it, there’s not much I can do for you.”
Dodger stares at her. Erin glares back.
Dodger is the first to look away.
“If we’re going to fight them—and we’re going to fight them; we don’t have a choice, unless the two of you want to roll over, show your bellies, and die the sort of death I wouldn’t wish on a dog—we need to figure out whether we’re in Hyacinth or Crocus. There isn’t time to get to one of the stable countries, and the Impossible City is out of the question.”
“Why?” asks Roger.
The look Erin gives him is one he remembers all too well from his childhood, when adults accustomed to dealing with a smart kid would be disappointed by his