THE FARAWAY LANDS OF OZ - Book One

Part Five, Chapter Twenty-Six: The Seven Deadly Sins

GLINDA

Evanora immediately jumped up and began to pace the room. It was one of her many tics whenever something didn't go as planned or if she had thought of a situation developing differently.
After a while of pacing around, she decided to pull a scroll out of one of the wide pockets of her sweatpants. She placed the yellowed piece of paper onto her palm and closed her eyes. Within half a minute, it disappeared in a poisonous looking green smoke which made the Seeker appear next to her in the same manner.
"You have called upon me, ma'am?"
Its ethereal voice that was echoing in all of our heads still gave me shivers. His entire being gave me shivers. The way his tentacles kept him afloat and how he looked like he never belonged anywhere. At least, the Whispmother has some human features despite her sovereignty. Evanora spoke out with a loud voice.
"Yes, Seeker. We need your assistance with the Lords of Fear. The two claim – and mother has confirmed – that they are not acting out of their free will. We have to know who is responsible for this."
For a while, there was only silence. When the Seeker spoke in our heads again, it almost made me jump; that's how sudden it was.
"I am afraid I cannot help you any further, madams and mister. All you need to know, I have already told you. The higher powers forbid me to say any more no matter how much I want to. I hope you understand."
Why is it always with these oracles that they firstly, talked in riddles when they tell us about what was to come and secondly, when someone asks them to elaborate, they cannot tell anything more because "everything one needs has already been said in their prediction."
"I understand. Thank you, Seeker, we'll call you when we need you. Feel at home here."
With a small bow that rather reminded of a quick nod, the Seeker excused himself and disappeared with the poison-green smoke. The question remained now: What are we supposed to do with the Ice Queen and Baba Yaga?
"So, Ev... What should we do with the two then?" I asked a while after the Seeker had disappeared and silence began to spread across the room. Evanora was still thinking. I could see in her eyes that she was fighting with two options that she had thought of. She always comes up with something spontaneously and I could never.
I always need at least half an hour of planning in advance. What we pulled with Zion was so out of my comfort zone. After another minute of me sunken in thoughts, Evanora replied, "We will have to see the new Lord and attack the Emerald City. He would be a fool to dare to defend himself; I know everything about my palace. And we will take these two with us. If they are truly innocent, they will help us reclaim our home. It is time for the Lords to finally see who the boss is. Talking of the new Lord: Who actually is he?"
I have never seen my sister as hostile as now; not since Morgana. She moved very closely to the cage with a fierce and murderous look on her face. But the two witches did not appear too bothered. Zion's energy was also protecting them from harm. Baba Yaga replied with a slow, Slavic accent, "He came to us only recently. We don't know much of him; his name is Overlord and he quickly claimed leadership although I have never seen his fabled power in person."
My sister nodded sharply, her hostile body posture not changing a bit. "Alright then. Another reason for you to help us. We'll move by nightfall; I want everyone in the war room after lunch. Glinda! Call the other counties; we'll need all the help we can get."
With that said, the party dismantled and eventually moved to the dining hall where the faithful Quadlings had already set the table with the magnificent lunch they always used to make.
Despite loving to cook on my own, their food was magnificent. I hurried off to my room where I had my pen and paper for the fire messages.

I don't know how it happened but I somehow managed to mix up the rooms and ended up in mom's one. I was definitely not used to living here.
"Oh mom, sorry I thought it was my room; why aren't you down... stairs? Mom, what is that?"
Mom had been sitting on her bed, attaching bags of yellow liquid onto a medical rack and was trying to hide them under her sheets now, making the plastic bag drop to the ground. A long tube was connected to it and her left arm.
"Honey, you should be downstairs, please go!" Her voice was struck with fear and embarrassment as she had given up hiding the bag and collapsed to the ground, shaking from sobs. The medical rack dropped beside her as well as the tube that was hung over it. I knew exactly what those were. As a medic, there was no way that I didn't.
"Mom... Why didn't you say anything? I could have removed it." I kneeled down beside her and took her chin onto both my fingers to make her look at me. Only now did I notice how pale she was and especially because of her eyes being bloodshot from crying.
"I didn't want to burden you with it. You lost your dad and now me too? I just wanted to enjoy our last moments together without any bad thoughts." The tears began to well up inside my eyes as well and I pulled her close to me into a tight hug. I do not cry. And I will not allow her to do so as well. The future is not set in stone and the outcome of this is not as well.
"You never were and never will be a burden, mom. We love you and you know that, right?" I released her from my embrace and placed my right hand onto her cheek. She nodded twice and moved to kiss my opposite one.
"I do. But this is the only thing that will help. It has spread everywhere; my Magick blood has prevented symptoms from showing but that is just that. Not even Ruby could remove them; they were mutating too quickly. Instead, she is altering the treatment to work faster so that I am gone no longer than five minutes instead of a couple of hours."
I just stared into mother's wet eyes with my own. She was right. Losing father and the thought of losing her too was much more than an emotional burden. But as I had said earlier: Nothing is set in stone!
"I understand," I decided to reply in order to break the uncomfortable silence. "How long have you been on? When are you going to stop?" I continued but only got a sigh from her before her response.
"Almost immediately after you left the announcement party. Ruby said that she's monitoring me and will inform me once she notices regression, but she cannot tell for sure how long it will be."
I nodded a couple of times, thinking and contemplating what to do with this information.
"Promise me, Glinda that your sisters won't know of this. No, swear it! I don't want to tell them just yet. All of us have been through too much and let's not add more pain to the already persisting one."
I almost asked why I should keep my mouth shut. They were my sisters after all and had just the same right of knowing as I did. But I decided not to. If this would have been mother's last request, it would have only made sense for me to respect it. Living with the guilt of ignoring it wouldn't have been possible.
"I swear it, mom. If you need something, let me know. Be sure that I'll ask Ruby about medical information."
She nodded and kissed me one more time on the cheek. "Thank you."
We stood up, waited for her daily dose of treatment to be over before I scribbled down the warning on a piece of paper, mother copied it, and I sent out the fire message to the other Lords of Oz. After that, the two of us walked down to the dining hall to join the others for dinner.
Even Baba Yaga and the Ice Queen joined us for lunch; Evanora did not want to leave them out of sight and my place had no holding cells anyway. It would have been quite controverse for a general pacifist to have one. Unfortunately, recent events have not allowed for diplomatic approaches, or we probably wouldn't have been sitting here in the first place.
We had Spaghetti Carbonara with asparagus and rosemary potatoes. We ate it in silence and I could no longer move my thoughts away from Evanora's plan. Oh, and I had to write Josie and Marcy. We had sent them to grieving counseling right after the attack, on their request.
Josephine had lost her parents and Marceline was still scared by what Morgana had done to her. Aliyah had been heartbroken to hear it but she agreed with her daughter and did everything to make her feel comfortable. Now, they'll be in therapy for about a month and after that time, we'll see how things are going and if we should prolong their stay.
We'll just have to find time to tell Evanora and mom would have to find time to tell her and the other two about her disease. It was still a hard thing to believe. She had always been so strong and had never been sick once in her life. The thought of mother having cancer was too surreal to even be true...