About those teeth. Some still whisper that Elphie was born with snake dentures. If so, maybe that’s why her mother has dragged Nanny along on this mission to Quadling Country: to wet-nurse the new baby the way she did Elphie. Somebody has to. Though the younger child’s gums are soft and pink and normal, and the baby teeth poking through are little gems of standard design.
Melena has always valued her assets, especially now that her portfolio is limited to what’s left of her personal allure. A few better gowns and a fine embonpoint, which signals social capital in some circles—for instance, those of Colwen Grounds, her childhood home in Munchkinland. And, yes, all right, point taken: Melena has sidestepped the oversight of her family these four years and counting. But that formative influence, apparently, she hasn’t quite escaped. Attitude, poise. The confidence of her breeding. Now, a fine bosom is nearly all she has left, or so she concludes when the sour cloud shadows her.
Elphie has no memory of harboring daggered pincers within her mean little smile. Her second-growth teeth have come in unnaturally early, and more conventionally shaped. She won’t remember having pulled out her own milk teeth when they got loose. (Perhaps no one else risked putting a hand inside Elphie’s mouth.)
Nanny always says, “Don’t kiss the baby, Elphie. You might scare it.” There is that. The baby in its swaddles, the baby in its sling hung from the bough of a moss palmetto. Going on two years old, but slow to grow. Small and immobile, like a much younger child. A lump of sweet silence beneath the mosquito netting. “Jaguars don’t care for the smell of moss palm fruit, so she’s safe there. The monkeys can’t undo knots to get her out of her nest. Don’t worry about her.”
Worry doesn’t enter into it. Maybe dimly remembering her sharp milk teeth, Elphie has thought of chewing the strings so as to make the bothersome creature more accessible to thieving monkeys. After all, they take everything else that isn’t tied down or caged.